Highly impressed. I used to brush him off as just another wunderkind who got lucky. In retrospect, his business acumen, especially when acquiring Instagram for a then pricely sum of a billion dollars has made me realize that he truly is special.
Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
31–40 of 188 posts
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> learning a second language [...] is super impressive. Perhaps as an adult. But if you do it as a kid in school, then almost everyone can pick up a language or two.
Per hour, adults are more efficient at learning languages. But kids forced into another language typically get more hours of exposure than adults attempting to force themselves to learn a language.
I was watching a reality TV show last week (flip this old beach house or somesuch) where a father and his toddler daughter had approximately this dialog.
Dad: "Who's my favorite?"
Daughter: "Me!"
Dad: "Are you my favorite?"
Daughter: "Yes!"
Dad: "Whose favorite are you?"
Daughter: "Yours!"
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#33Even if Zuckerberg's main motivation was to learn his wife's language, I believe this will effectively raise the bar for CEOs in the years ahead. I wouldn't be surprised if this seemingly unnecessary skill could signify new business opportunities for large corporations.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took Chinese in high school and did ok. Didn't use it and have tried to pick it up twice as an adult and have yet to get the tones down in conversation. Put a book in front of me, I can get it. Let me listen to someone speak it and I am lost. Any ideas on how to conquer that fault?
Watch reality Chinese television with subtitles. You get both the visual confirmation alongside the sound. They can be kind of a drag to get through (esp if you're used to HBO-level stuff), but the benefit of reality TV is that you can miss parts of a conversation and not be completely confused as to what's going on as there is no real plot.
can you recommend some shows/channels? Are there any online streams?
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#35A German professor once told me German is actually harder to learn than Chinese.
Of course a German professor would say that. (-: I've taken years of both languages in high school and college, and I'd have to disagree with him. An example of the difference in difficulty is that when you learn German coming from an English background there are only four more letters to learn (ä, ö, ü and ß), whereas there are 214 Mandarin radicals to memorize. And these radicals aren't even the entire "alphabet", they're just the basis that all characters expand upon.
Also, Mandarin is a tonal language, along with having vastly different grammar than Germanic languages. While English has plenty of influence from Romance languages, most of it is strictly vocabulary; English, at its core, is a Germanic language. Thus it'd be rather hard to prove that German is more difficult for an English speaker to learn than Chinese. However, I would love to hear his arguments to the contrary, or anybody else's for that matter!
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#36A German professor once told me German is actually harder to learn than Chinese.
Without knowing how closely related the learner's own language is, it's meaningless. For example, a Dutch speaker would likely find German easier to learn than Chinese. On the other hand, (Mandarin) Chinese is easier for a Cantonese speaker to learn than German.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#37Regardless of his technical achievements, learning a second language ( and such disconnected one ) is super impressive. Great job.
Chinese is actually much more similar to English (structurally) than a lot of people realize:
It doesn't mark case or gender like English (and it doesn't even really inflect verbs).
The word order is for the most part the same or similar (German has this verb-at-the-end construction that you not only have to learn, but you have to train somewhat to remember enough context to bind the verbs to the clauses they apply to; Japanese is SOV rather than SVO like English/Chinese).
The writing system takes a really long time and a lot of memorization, but if you're learning only to speak and listen, you don't really have to deal with it.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#38Kudos.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#39Even if Zuckerberg's main motivation was to learn his wife's language, I believe this will effectively raise the bar for CEOs in the years ahead. I wouldn't be surprised if this seemingly unnecessary skill could signify new business opportunities for large corporations.
Isn't speaking relevant foreign languages considered a plus in business settings? That seems to be the layman perception, at least.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University
#40Regardless of his technical achievements, learning a second language ( and such disconnected one ) is super impressive. Great job.
> learning a second language [...] is super impressive. Perhaps as an adult. But if you do it as a kid in school, then almost everyone can pick up a language or two.
I'm unconvinced that a school-setting can teach children languages vastly more effectively than an adult (or an adult can self-teach). Maybe for very young children, but even that I'm sceptical of.