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It’s probably time to learn Chinese

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Re: It’s probably time to learn Chinese

#41

Post by amaccuish »

BuckRogers wrote: post #12

The canary in the coal mine here is that you have to keep practicing language or you lose it. All of that effort is admirable and intellectually interesting but if you have no one to regularly speak with when you leave China, it's not a good use of time and effort. Unless one never wants to return to their home country, or marries a native. He's right about French. It's probably my favorite language, I lived and work…

> You will generally not be encouraged and will definitely not be welcomed as one of them, ever.

I study French, German and Russian at Uni. I am completely with you. As much as I love the French language, I will not keep up my knowledge of it after graduation. I've rarely had a positive experience of real french use, compared to almost every time with Russians and Germans.

Re: It’s probably time to learn Chinese

#42

Post by commandlinefan »

_8j50 wrote: post #3

Hate to be a naysayer but I disagree. English is used in international dealings and is spoken in a very large number of countries due to the british empire's wide reach and influence compounded by americas dominance after WW2. Mandarin is a great language to learn in as much as Japanese,French and German are. Japan has long had a strong economy and exports a large number of goods,same with France and Germany except t…

I thought the same thing about Japanese back in the 90’s, when Japan seemed to be going the same way. Being able to speak, read & write Japanese has not been professionally useful to me in any way. I’m glad I learned it and all, but it definitely was no kind of “investment”.

Re: It’s probably time to learn Chinese

#43

Post by BuckRogers »

_8j50 wrote: post #21
beojan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mega nations are an example of the end of the traditional nation state.

They're empires. They're end of nations in as much as empires were. Even if a country ends,a nation persists (look at Jewish and Roma people as an example). A nation ends if the people intermix ad intermarry with others.

I don't really want to engage in a discussion on empire vs nation vs country vs state, especially when tinging concepts with race, but I'm not sure your example holds up for either the Jewish[0] or Roma peoples.

[0]https://www.livescience.com/40247-ashkenazi-jews-have-europe...

Re: It’s probably time to learn Chinese

#44

Post by bbody »

KerrickStaley wrote: post #8

I disagree with this article (and I've spent 8 years learning Mandarin part-time). English is far more valuable in business and scientific contexts, and the cost of becoming proficient in Mandarin is considerable (1000s of hours before it's useful in a non-trivial way). And I expect things to remain that way within the next 100 years. Mandarin + English is not a very distinctive skillset: you're competing with millio…

I have learnt Mandarin for a similar amount of time, passed the HSK6 exam. I have also found it marginally useful in my professional life.

Re: It’s probably time to learn Chinese

#45

Post by posterboy »

Gys wrote: post #40

It will probably not be very long anymore before we can use tools for instant translation between major languages. See for example: https://www.skype.com/en/features/skype-translator/ It might not be perfect, but learning Chinese perfectly will be very hard as well.

It's not hard, past a certain age, it's pretty much impossible to get anywhere near proficiency.

And, since cultural aspects inform the language, it pretty much depends on what you want to say, whether the machine can translate it or not. Hence, machine translation is missing a large part of the reason to learn another language, and I don't even subscribe to the sapir-whorff hypothesis.

Re: It’s probably time to learn Chinese

#46

Post by lern_too_spel »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #26
whoisjuan wrote: post #9

Everyone knows that Chinese is hard. "Hard" is of course subjective, but I think everyone can objectively say that English is easier than Chinese. In fact, easier than most languages. For that very reason, Chinese doesn't have the potential or practicality to become a default language.

For reading and writing I agree, but just the language itself definitely not. At least not objectively, but how do you define that anyways?

Consider that you can improve your conversational English by just reading more on your own. This is much more difficult in languages with logographic writing systems.

Re: It’s probably time to learn Chinese

#47

Post by KerrickStaley »

bbody wrote: post #44
KerrickStaley wrote: post #8

I disagree with this article (and I've spent 8 years learning Mandarin part-time). English is far more valuable in business and scientific contexts, and the cost of becoming proficient in Mandarin is considerable (1000s of hours before it's useful in a non-trivial way). And I expect things to remain that way within the next 100 years. Mandarin + English is not a very distinctive skillset: you're competing with millio…

I have learnt Mandarin for a similar amount of time, passed the HSK6 exam. I have also found it marginally useful in my professional life.

Nice! I've only passed HSK4 although I think I'm most of the way to HSK5 now. What techniques did you use to study?

Re: It’s probably time to learn Chinese

#48

Post by jason_slack »

KerrickStaley wrote: post #30
jason_slack wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been learning Chinese for 4 years now. I can read and write well but my speaking always sounds awkward. I traveled to Xiamen for 2 months and knowing Chinese made things a lot easier. There was still struggles because often times colloquial speech was difficult for me to understand right away and also locals didn't always understand my speaking because they weren't used to someone speaking and it not sounding…

Download Pimsleur's Mandarin III and spend time going through that. Pay close attention to how you sound vs how the recorded speaker sounds.

Thank you!

Re: It’s probably time to learn Chinese

#49

Post by rue »

shanghaiaway wrote: post #10
_8j50 wrote: post #3

Hate to be a naysayer but I disagree. English is used in international dealings and is spoken in a very large number of countries due to the british empire's wide reach and influence compounded by americas dominance after WW2. Mandarin is a great language to learn in as much as Japanese,French and German are. Japan has long had a strong economy and exports a large number of goods,same with France and Germany except t…

50 years from now, Mandarin will be much more useful than Arabic or French, because it will be the largest market in the world. If you deal with China professionally, knowing Mandarin will be an advantage.

50 years from now, translation technology has made speaking foreign languages obsolete.

(Except for your own benefit.)

Re: It’s probably time to learn Chinese

#50

Post by bbody »

KerrickStaley wrote: post #47
bbody wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have learnt Mandarin for a similar amount of time, passed the HSK6 exam. I have also found it marginally useful in my professional life.

Nice! I've only passed HSK4 although I think I'm most of the way to HSK5 now. What techniques did you use to study?

Just reading study guides and doing practice tests I bought off Taobao. The 6 months leading up I almost exclusively did Chinese classes (level around HSK5) and the 6 weeks leading up to the exam studied HSK couple of hours a day. I was a university student then and had a lot of spare time.

A nice trick I learnt is, don't spend too much time on the grammar section (if they still have it). It is incredibly hard and you will struggle to find native speakers that can explain the concepts to you. Instead randomly select answers and use the saved time on other parts.

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