Is Mandarin Becoming An Important Language To Learn For The Future??

SharpshooterTom

Would you regard Mandarin as important language to learn in the future? Particularly for Irish kids at school now?

I attempted to learn Japanese for a while but haven't done much with it and considering switching to Mandarin because of its "global importance".

Really you should learn a language based on taking an interest in the culture not because its "important". I considered learning Swedish but I wouldn't regard it as important, I was just interested in it.

Are any of you considering to learn Mandarin in the future? Potentially the worlds most important language globally alongside English??

Pushtrak

No.

Doc Ruby

One of the main reasons to learn a language is employment, and I don't see the Chinese employing too many people over here. Their game is selling to us from China at low cost. Still I do love Chinese ladies, so comme ci comme ca.

old_aussie

Lots of chinese can speak english so i wouldn't waste my time learning chinese.

Einhard

Mandarin eh? Orange you the clever one.

Joko

No, but we should stop wasting a €billion teaching mandatory Irish and give students the option to learn useful stuff like C++ or other computer coding languages.

yore

Joko wrote: »

No, but we should stop wasting a €billion teaching mandatory Irish and give students the option to learn useful stuff like C++ or other computer coding languages.

There is life outside of computers

galwayrush

All Chinese restaurants and take aways display their menu's in English, so no need.

jam_mac_jam

Dont be silly, it used to be Japanese.

eth0

No, feck the Chinese, shower of communist savages

galwayrush

eth0 wrote: »

No, feck the Chinese, shower of communist savages

Impossible to feck so many..

I would like to learn another language after getting a good bit better at german and maybe brushing up on my french, but I'd learn more towards something like danish or completely different like russian
wouldn't be mad into learning mandarin

SouthTippBass

In before a great bunch of lads.

im invisible

A great bunch of characters

ejmaztec

galwayrush wrote: »

All Chinese restaurants and take aways display their menu's in English, so no need.

I just take a stab at the numbers and hope for the best.

Mr Benevolent

No. There are far too many dialects in China to consider learning just one. Either learn a selection or stick to English, as it's more useful globally.

Fussy Eater

Unless you've grown up with it the language would be so damn near impossible to learn that it doesn't seem worth the effort...

Wibbs

No, for a few reasons. Yes it's one of the most spoken languages in the world, but that's because Chinese people make up a large percentage of the world's population. Very few non Chinese speak it, so it's not close to being a world language like Spanish, French, or English.

Secondly while it's basic rules are simple enough, because it's a tonal language where the slightest inflection on a word can make a huge difference it's very difficult for people from non tonal languages to learn and understand. By comparison, if you take say a German person who would have difficulty pronouncing W in English(because it's a different sound in German), it comes out as V sound. EG Ve Hav Vays of making you talk = (stereotypical)German accented English. Still, another English speaker will understand that. Ditto for say English speaking Spaniards who find the differences between I and E sounds in English difficult to hear. EG "There is dogsheeet on the floor", the words peas, piss and peace sound very similar to their ears too, yet another English speaker will understand what's going on. Put a German and Spaniard in a room each having some English and they'll be able to chat. You can say the same of Spanish, French and German. Hell you could take our own Irish language and a German, Spaniard and Connemara man could have a conversation if they had any Irish. Those types of differences would mean game over in a language like Mandarin.

Sub paragraph on that would be the incredibly unwieldy written language, which while beautiful and complex and stuffed with history* is needlessly complex. Certainly when compared to the European 20 odd letters.

Thirdly, while the Chinese economic miracle is truly impressive, I'm of the opinion it's decline may well be as rapid as it's growth. Why? Worldwide slowdown, increasing disparities between the urban and rural and the rich and poor which will lead to issues and most of all their demographics. That economic powerhouse had a ready supply of young, educated and cheap workers. That wave has crested already. They're facing a rapidly aging population and less and less workers coming into the factories and industries. They may well get old, before they get sustainably rich. No economy has survived such a demographic shift without problems. Now the Chinese are a clever bunch with one helluva culture behind them, so they might get away with it, but I doubt it. Not unlike what happened to Japan and older folks will recall how one time they were going to "take over the world" too. And Japan is arguably a smaller and more homogenous and stable society which tends to mitigate against such swings. I fear China may not be, or it's a far harder tightrope to walk for them.

TL;DR? I'd put my money on emerging economies in South Americas. Watch that space. I'd also be teaching other indo-European languages as that's where the vast bulk of our futures are likely to lay, with the handy side effect of opening up the aforementioned South Americas to us.




*actually the relative static nature of the language is often commented upon favourably by outsiders and Orientalists. The idea that someone today can easily read a 1000 year old letter is a good thing. I would disagree. For me that shows some level of stagnation in a culture. You don't have to go very far back in French, English, German, Spanish and indeed Irish and reading them with a modern eye is bloody difficult. Shakespeare in the original text is very hard going. This for me shows cultures in flux, adapting constantly and rapidly and this is a good thing. This is reflected in the different histories of the European and Chinese "empire". China has had remarkable spikes in growth followed by long centuries of stagnation.

dsmythy

Wibbs wrote: »

Thirdly, while the Chinese economic miracle is truly impressive, I'm of the opinion it's decline may well be as rapid as it's growth. Why? Worldwide slowdown, increasing disparities between the urban and rural and the rich and poor which will lead to issues and most of all their demographics. That economic powerhouse had a ready supply of young, educated and cheap workers. That wave has crested already. They're facing a rapidly aging population and less and less workers coming into the factories and industries. They may well get old, before they get sustainably rich. No economy has survived such a demographic shift without problems. Now the Chinese are a clever bunch with one helluva culture behind them, so they might get away with it, but I doubt it. Not unlike what happened to Japan and older folks will recall how one time they were going to "take over the world" too. And Japan is arguably a smaller and more homogenous and stable society which tends to mitigate against such swings. I fear China may not be, or it's a far harder tightrope to walk for them.

TL;DR? I'd put my money on emerging economies in South Americas. Watch that space. I'd also be teaching other indo-European languages as that's where the vast bulk of our futures are likely to lay, with the handy side effect of opening up the aforementioned South Americas to us.

When the Chinese bubble pops expect the authoritarian government to rally behind Nationalism. Plenty of minorites to scapegoat and neighbouring countries to spoil for a fight with. Latin American's seem to always find a way to screw up their economies.

Capt'n Midnight

Joko wrote: »

No, but we should stop wasting a €billion teaching mandatory Irish and give students the option to learn useful stuff like C++ or other computer coding languages.

because aptitude in languages translates into programming skills ?

Capt'n Midnight

Confab wrote: »

No. There are far too many dialects in China to consider learning just one. Either learn a selection or stick to English, as it's more useful globally.

most chinese speak / understand it so a fairly safe bet.

but more important is the writing system which is the same for all

ScumLord

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

most chinese speak / understand it so a fairly safe bet.

but more important is the writing system which is the same for all

If they are having difficulties understanding you all you need to do is say it louder and carry out the relevant charade.

The Chinese are manufacturers, it's all they can do. They have little in the line of creativity when it comes to design. I think having a big rich/poor divide works against a nation too, you've smaller pools of skills to pull from despite the large population, a big rich/poor divide is also a sign your people aren't able to cooperate effectively.

Capt'n Midnight

Wibbs wrote: »

*actually the relative static nature of the language is often commented upon favourably by outsiders and Orientalists. The idea that someone today can easily read a 1000 year old letter is a good thing. I would disagree. For me that shows some level of stagnation in a culture. You don't have to go very far back in French, English, German, Spanish and indeed Irish and reading them with a modern eye is bloody difficult. Shakespeare in the original text is very hard going. This for me shows cultures in flux, adapting constantly and rapidly and this is a good thing. This is reflected in the different histories of the European and Chinese "empire". China has had remarkable spikes in growth followed by long centuries of stagnation.

I'd argue that all that's happened is that some dialects were favored over others.

Back in Shakesperes day there were many different dialects of English so perhaps even then they couldn't read everything from the country. Many odd english spellings are just bad writing formalised (really), At unification less than 2% of Italians spoke what is now considered Italian. The French language was changed for political reasons a few centuries back. And don't get me started on Websters obsession with (re)forming spelling the way he thought it should be rather than the way it was. Irish was re-formatted in living memory. Lots of continental languages have lots letters recently , which is a real shame because computers can now handle such stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography_reform_of_1996
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Portuguese_orthography#A_timeline_of_spelling_reforms

Fluorescence

Wibbs wrote: »

No, for a few reasons. Yes it's one of the most spoken languages in the world, but that's because Chinese people make up a large percentage of the world's population. Very few non Chinese speak it, so it's not close to being a world language like Spanish, French, or English.

This is the main reason. We don't need to learn Mandarin or Cantonese because the Chinese are more than happy to learn English. English is seen as the international language of business. There's no push for that to change any time soon/

Wibbs wrote: »

Wibbsian wall of text re tonal languages

Even though Mandarin and other tonal languages are considered the hardest for native English speakers to learn (on a scale of 1 to 4, it's a 4 :pac:), it's not actually that bad. You can learn tones very easily if you have any ear for music or sound recognition at all. In fact, the "difficulty" presented by tones and hanzi is outweighed by the "easiness" of the grammar and word order. Chinese languages are almost exactly like English in these respects.

To be perfectly frank, there's no real evidence to suggest that any language is more difficult than another. Each has it's own difficulties to overcome but all it takes is time and practise.

I fully intend to learn Mandarin after I'm happy with my Swedish :P Not because it's useful, but because it seems interesting.

cocoshovel

No. The language isnt just going to overtake any other large language out there just because their economy is doing great. Anybody that thinks it will are probably the same fools who believe the statement "SHUR WE'LL ALL BE SPEAKING MANDARIN IN 50 YEARS TIME". i.e read too many crappy daily mail articles.

Wibbs

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

I'd argue that all that's happened is that some dialects were favored over others.

Yes, but I think my point still stands CM, European(and other) languages have mutated at a far faster rate over the same time. They're significantly more fluid in this respect. People sometimes muse what might have happened if Rome never fell. Maybe we'd have been on the moon in the 1700's and all that stuff? I would disagree with that idea and I look to China as a broad example. China is less a country and more an empire and empires tend to have sharp peaks of innovation followed by long troughs of stagnation to one degree or other. Closer to home, the eastern Roman empire a good example. It never really fell, but continued as the Byzantine empire. Intense competition(among other things) between smaller nation states drives innovation much more than centralised imperial states.

The languages reflect that. Latin and Greek the lingua francas of imperial Rome started to evolve and change very rapidly after the fall. Greek pretty much disappeared in what was the western Roman world and Latin started to diverge locally within a century or two. China reached a point where no one could really fcuk with it, so there was little external or internal pressure to adapt. Even when their "barbarians" the Mongols hove into view they defeat them by taking out the centre and then end up being more Chinese than the Chinese themselves. The same Mongols faced with a Europe type situation would have had a lot harder of a struggle. For a start there was no "centre" as such. You might take out one nation, but you'd have a hydra of all the others ranged against you. Much harder to control.

Look at something like shipbuilding. The Chinese were building huge junks when Euopean ships were small and not particularly good at sailing beyond sight of land. The Chinese sent out a huge fleet of these junks to collect info. They reached all over the Pacific and Indian ocean, even Australia, may have even reached the Americas. Then they came home, the Imperial court thought this a waste of time and money and promptly burnt the ships. Daft to us now maybe, but perfectly logical when your country is already an empire doing very well thanks very much. Meanwhile back in Europe... The Portuguese start building better ships. The French, Dutch, Spanish, Italians and British think "ah here" and start competing/stealing ideas and within a very short time are busily exploring and trading and sticking their flags in far flung places, building the modern world as they go, while China remains in stasis until the mid 19th century and the same Europeans were sticking their flags in them too. This filtered down to the peasants in both areas too. A European peasant of 1000AD was a very different person by 1700AD, whereas a Chinese peasant could have woken up at any point in those centuries and not noticed much change if at all.

ScumLord wrote: »

The Chinese are manufacturers, it's all they can do. They have little in the line of creativity when it comes to design.

I would disagree there. They've certainly been creative in the past. Highly so. However the cultural bias towards stability may run against this. They came up with gunpowder and used it but not a great deal and didn't seem to spot it's real murderous potential, but when the rest of the world got it, especially in Europe, they started changing the maps in pretty short order. They had printing before Europe(though contrary to popular didn't come up with it), but printed little beyond religious texts. The complexity of the written language didn't help. Printing hits Europe and the first truly staggering information revolution kicks off within a generation. They have zero problems with innovating. Shít they had suspension bridges in the 7th century, their metalwork from the bronze age on made the rest of the world look like dribbling morons, their ceramics ditto(but they never mastered, nor saw any value to glass funny enough. Big mistake), but they do seem to have more cultural problems with exploiting such innovations.

Fluorescence wrote: »

This is the main reason. We don't need to learn Mandarin or Cantonese because the Chinese are more than happy to learn English. English is seen as the international language of business. There's no push for that to change any time soon/

Pretty much.

To be perfectly frank, there's no real evidence to suggest that any language is more difficult than another. Each has it's own difficulties to overcome but all it takes is time and practise.

That's not so much the problem I'm highlighting. The problem comes when you try to make such a specific tonal language a worldwide language able to survive the onslaught of local accents themselves tonal. Read an interesting article on such local tones(like the German V/W Spanish I/E and V/B) where it was found that generally speaking if one isn't exposed to such tonal differences at a very early age it becomes very difficult to pick up the differences later on. Yes one can if talented with languages do this, but for a large majority it would prove difficult. Even if a Spaniard or a German or French etc person never picked up those English tones(and vice versa), they can still make themselves perfectly understood to each other with significantly less effort and chance of misunderstanding and the same can be said for the other non tonal languages. Even among native speakers you see or rather hear this. You can chat with say a Canadian and each of you will have slightly different tonalities and inflections on words, but because of the simplicity of those tonal rules very rarely are words misunderstood. I mean we say snooker and they say snuker, but you know they ain't referencing their grandmother.

I fully intend to learn Mandarin after I'm happy with my Swedish :P Not because it's useful, but because it seems interesting.

Oh fair play and good luck with it

Fluorescence

Wibbs wrote: »

That's not so much the problem I'm highlighting. The problem comes when you try to make such a specific tonal language a worldwide language able to survive the onslaught of local accents themselves tonal. Read an interesting article on such local tones(like the German V/W Spanish I/E and V/B) where it was found that generally speaking if one isn't exposed to such tonal differences at a very early age it becomes very difficult to pick up the differences later on. Yes one can if talented with languages do this, but for a large majority it would prove difficult. Even if a Spaniard or a German or French etc person never picked up those English tones(and vice versa), they can still make themselves perfectly understood to each other with significantly less effort and chance of misunderstanding and the same can be said for the other non tonal languages. Even among native speakers you see or rather hear this. You can chat with say a Canadian and each of you will have slightly different tonalities and inflections on words, but because of the simplicity of those tonal rules very rarely are words misunderstood. I mean we say snooker and they say snuker, but you know they ain't referencing their grandmother.

I actually read a similar thing recently, but it was to do with colour and not sound. Apparently, the human ability to perceive colour comes from having a name for it. There was some language that didn't have a word for "orange", and people who spoke it couldn't see it. They couldn't differentiate orange and red or orange and yellow. Depending on the shade, it all looked the same :eek:

Quite interesting when you think about it. Perhaps the same principle applies here. Although it's completely untrue that you can't learn to differentiate unusual sounds. It was once thought that native english speakers could never learn to roll "r"s correctly. Obviously we can

Wibbs wrote: »

Oh fair play and good luck with it

We'll see how it goes :pac:

mikemac1

The buyer controls the language of business

And for now, we're buying off them but not selling lot a whole the other way

Pedant

Why the hell did they name a bloody language that has over 1 billion speakers after a small citrus fruit? It makes no sense!

Fluorescence

Cause it's a cute and juicy language?

Wibbs

Fluorescence wrote: »

It was once thought that native english speakers could never learn to roll "r"s correctly. Obviously we can

Actually I can't. I physically can't roll R's. I know others the same. Funny enough I knew a Spanish woman who couldn't do it either and it was thought of as a slight speech impediment, well more like an oddity and she grew up surrounded by people who do.

cocoshovel

Fluorescence wrote: »

Cause it's a cute and juicy language?

Cute and Juicy? :eek: It sounds like a bunch of slurs to me, and I dont mean that in a bad way. So many Sh and r sounds, with a few w's thrown in there too!

Stinicker

supplies!

Capt'n Midnight

ScumLord wrote: »

The Chinese are manufacturers, it's all they can do. They have little in the line of creativity when it comes to design.

People used to say that about the Japanese too.
You'd think all that would have stopped after 1904, but same sort of attitude before WWII and long after it until people started to see all the stuff Sony was churning out.

Chinese now have maglev trains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TD-SCDMA - who needs US mobile phone patents ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beidou_navigation_system - and their own GPS system

you have to remember that China's internal market is big enough to support new developments of technology

Wibbs

I agree with you re the other points CM, but I'd be a lot less confident of...

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

you have to remember that China's internal market is big enough to support new developments of technology

It's internal market is actually quite small and that market doesn't have the financial clout to support itself, yet. It may get there, but I personally suspect both the economic and demographic bubble may get there first.

Fussy Eater

Fluorescence wrote: »

To be perfectly frank, there's no real evidence to suggest that any language is more difficult than another. Each has it's own difficulties to overcome but all it takes is time and practise.

Seriously? For an English speaker it isn't any more difficult to learn Japanese or Mandarin than it is French or Italian? lol! I think not...

Wibbs

For some people with a facility for languages it seems not to be FE. I've known a few people who just seem to pick up languages remarkably easily(remarkable for me anyway as I find it very difficult). They have an "ear" for it, as if they never grew out of that ability that young children have.

Fussy Eater

Wibbs wrote: »

For some people with a facility for languages it seems not to be FE. I've known a few people who just seem to pick up languages remarkably easily(remarkable for me anyway as I find it very difficult). They have an "ear" for it, as if they never grew out of that ability that young children have.

But that certainly would be an exception rather than the norm. For most people having to learn a language that uses the same alphabet and shares much vocabulary is going to be vastly easier than learning a Far-Eastern language where you're essentially starting from scratch. And then there's the cultural influence from being in close geographical proximity. For example we use many French expressions and words in English simply because we've shared so much history together compared to say the Japanese.

Obviously empire building has left pockets of European languages all over the world but as a rule of thumb I'd judge the further one gets away from their home country the harder the local language will be to learn.

Fluorescence

Fussy Eater wrote: »

Seriously? For an English speaker it isn't any more difficult to learn Japanese or Mandarin than it is French or Italian? lol! I think not...

French and Italian have difficulties of their own. They're not easy languages.

The only truly easy language is Esperanto, and that's because it was made to be that way

Fussy Eater

Fluorescence wrote: »

French and Italian have difficulties of their own. They're not easy languages.

The only truly easy language is Esperanto, and that's because it was made to be that way

Well Esperanto aside learning any foreign tongue is no picnic and requires a vast amount of time and effort spent in mastery. I know a bit of French and have lived for a few years in Francophone environments. Sure it isn't easy but I reckon it's a piece of cake compared to me trying to learn Mandarin. Of course if you're from the Middle-East/Asia you may have a different perspective on what you find easy and hard but for an English speaker other western European languages are as 'easy' as they come.

Fussy Eater

Fussy Eater wrote: »

Well Esperanto aside learning any foreign tongue is no picnic and requires a vast amount of time and effort spent in mastery. I know a bit of French and have lived for a few years in Francophone environments. Sure it isn't easy but I reckon it's a piece of cake compared to me trying to learn Mandarin. Of course if you're from the Middle-East/Asia you may have a different perspective on what you find easy and hard but for an English speaker other western European languages are as 'easy' as they come.

It's difficult to say if you haven't tried learning mandarin though

Fussy Eater

bluewolf wrote: »

It's difficult to say if you haven't tried learning mandarin though

Do you know, I honestly don't think it is. Common sense and wisdom are enough for me!

What could a non-speaker/beginner understand:

Je deteste regarder le sport

or

写韵

?

Fussy Eater

Fussy Eater wrote: »

Do you know, I honestly don't think it is. Common sense and wisdom are enough for me!

What wisdom? "I've never given it a go so I'll take a wild guess"?

Fluorescence

Fussy Eater wrote: »

Do you know, I honestly don't think it is. Common sense and wisdom are enough for me!

Tell you what. Spend a year learning Italian, and then spend a year learning Mandarin, and come back to us after those two years are over to compare similarities and differences in learning styles between two very different languages.

Then your opinion might mean something :pac:

Fussy Eater

Fluorescence wrote: »

Tell you what. Spend a year learning Italian, and then spend a year learning Mandarin, and come back to us after those two years are over to compare similarities and differences in learning styles between two very different languages.

Then your opinion might mean something :pac:

Va chier connard!

Fussy Eater

bluewolf wrote: »

What wisdom? "I've never given it a go so I'll take a wild guess"?

Tu es con ou quoi?

Bad Panda

No.

Also, China - buck up your ideas! Your food is bleedin' mingin'!

ScumLord

Wibbs wrote: »

I would disagree there. They've certainly been creative in the past. Highly so. However the cultural bias towards stability may run against this. They came up with gunpowder and used it but not a great deal and didn't seem to spot it's real murderous potential, but when the rest of the world got it, especially in Europe, they started changing the maps in pretty short order. They had printing before Europe(though contrary to popular didn't come up with it), but printed little beyond religious texts. The complexity of the written language didn't help. Printing hits Europe and the first truly staggering information revolution kicks off within a generation. They have zero problems with innovating. Shít they had suspension bridges in the 7th century, their metalwork from the bronze age on made the rest of the world look like dribbling morons, their ceramics ditto(but they never mastered, nor saw any value to glass funny enough. Big mistake), but they do seem to have more cultural problems with exploiting such innovations.

Oh come on now, you can't use examples from what, over a thousand years ago? But there is a running theme there. China has always had a lack of interest with the rest of the world to the point they could have ruled the world hundreds of years ago but they didn't see any value in dealing with other cultures.

Chinese themselves will admit their method of education crushes creativity in favour of things like mathematical abilities. They are intelligent but their education system doesn't encourage creativity. When your dealing with Chinese manufacturers you have to be extremely specific as if there's a mistake to be made they'll make it, and they don't seem to care they made the mistake.

Loomis

是的，它將是巨大的

ball

Does no one else think its bad that as native English speakers, we refuse to learn another languages voluntarily.
We always assume that everyone else will learn English.

Fluorescence

ball wrote: »

Does no one else think its bad that as native English speakers, we refuse to learn another languages voluntarily.
We always assume that everyone else will learn English.

It's a major disadvantage to us, alright. It locks us into a very anglophone view of the world with no incentive to speak other languages unless we have an interest. At least other cultures have the motivation of needing english to conduct business.