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

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Whether Mandarin is the language of the future or not remains to be seen but I for one am learning it albeit slowly.

I can speak English and German fluently and technically I live in Munich. However for the next year or two my job will land me in Beijing. I have been there already for a few weeks this year and to be honest on my first arrival was a bit of a shock. The first thing you realise is you are illiterate. It can be a bit of a stumbling block. Getting into a taxi with some mandarin characters scrawled on a piece of paper and hoping the driver knows where you are going is very annoying. I couldnt speak a word. Secondly I just feel damn ignorant being there for so long and not speaking a word of the language.

I think that it's all well and good expecting them to speak English but learning a language , any language, be it Basque, Gaeilge, Mandarin or Swahili is not so difficult. The key is putting in the effort and the rewards are great. I feel that living in Germany if I didn't speak German I would always be an outsider and would never really get to know the people or the culture. The two are so intertwined. In mandarin at the minute I am finding it difficult to learn the tones but I am getting there. I am writing messages to my co workers in Beijing in Hanzi. I can read and understand about 30 characters. This is the problem. It takes me time to learn the characters. If I spent the same time on a langauge like German I would be far more advanced by now. However as I am learning the characters slowly it's not exactly difficult. The key is time. Most important part is speaking a few words for the ladies.

Before I was learning Mandarin I decided to learn Russian but gave up as I had just started and was going to China. Hopefully someday I will get back to Russian. I know a huge amount of Russian speakers in Germany and they are always speaking Russian. With Russian the challenges lie elsewhere. The grammar is hugely more complicated than English, German or CHinese from what I can tell.

One thing that can help you though is in a country like China or Russia is you are forced to speak more. I was in Saint Petersburg in February and had so much fun just trying to use a few russian phrases. Most Russians don't speak English and in some Cafes the girls ran away when I asked to speak English to order a coffee or something. I began learning German when I was 12. Its more difficult the older you get but the problem with learning a language like German is the Germans can all speak English pretty well. This is another challenge.

TLDR: LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE. ITS ENDLESS FUN AND THE REWARDS ARE GREAT. It doesn't matter if it is the language of the future or not.

Fussy Eater

Fluorescence wrote: »

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.

But have you spent 12 months learning Mandarin and 12 months learning Italian? If not I'm not sure your opinion has any meaning...

CruelCoin

A vast economy growing at 8% per year, with quickly growing international operations,

A fast developing military and ever more bellicose language towards its' neighbors,

A population greater than the US and the EU put together.

What do you think?

Wibbs

bluewolf wrote: »

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

Not really. Objectively speaking it's quite logical to conclude that learning a language within ones language family, one that uses the same alphabet, that isn't tonal is clearly going to be simpler than learning a language outside that family, that uses a completely different alphabet(and rules within it) and is tonal in nature and vice versa coming from the other direction.

ScumLord wrote: »

Oh come on now, you can't use examples from what, over a thousand years ago?

Oh sure S hence I said "in the past" and "cultural bias" would(and has IMHO) affected that.

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.

True, but more because they already ruled a vast empire, so extending it didn't hold much appeal. Plus they might have stood some chance of world domination a 1000 years or so ago, but since around the 1500's they would have had a real difficulty facing down western nations who were streets ahead of them in military tactics and technology and actual practice at war. Just on he latter front it's hard to find a decade in the last thousand years where European nations weren't at war with each other. Practice makes perfect and all that.

CruelCoin wrote: »

A vast economy growing at 8% per year, with quickly growing international operations,

An economy that has already contracted, is down on previous years and shows some red flags(no pun) about the future of the economy.

A fast developing military and ever more bellicose language towards its' neighbors,

True, but the "west" would still tear them a new one if it came to it. Single instance rip offs of stealth fighters notwithstanding.

A population greater than the US and the EU put together.

A population that is rapidly getting older, with the result of fewer young cheap workers coming into the system, a population with huge disparities between urban and rural and rich and poor, divides that are growing.

What do you think?

I think their wave has crested already and they face quite a few difficulties down the line on more than a few fronts.

Fluorescence

Fussy Eater wrote: »

But have you spent 12 months learning Mandarin and 12 months learning Italian? If not I'm not sure your opinion has any meaning...

Why yes, I'm fluent in both :pac:

Fussy Eater

Fluorescence wrote: »

Why yes, I'm fluent in both :pac:

Me too. Didn't you find Mandarin so much harder? Just like the Testicle said above: much more effort required than learning a European language...

Wibbs

I'm a "testicle" now eh? Must be lost in translation and she meant "cooler than a fridge full of polar bears". Easy mistake. See what I mean about tonal languages. EDIT Wrong testicle. Dr Bollocko to the thread, stat!

Fluorescence

Wibbs wrote: »

I'm a "testicle" now eh?

There's a poster above called MrThirdTesticle

Wibbs wrote: »

Must be lost in translation and she meant "cooler than a fridge full of polar bears". Easy mistake. See what I mean about tonal languages.

Of course you are *pinches cheek* :pac:

Capt'n Midnight

Wibbs wrote: »

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.

OK they might not all be buying cars and 42" TV's
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/chinas-mobile-phone-subscriptions-top-a-billion/articleshow/12469143.cms

BEIJING: China said on Friday it had broken the barrier of one billion mobile phone accounts at the end of February, as more people in the world's most populous country ditch fixed phones.
...
hina also has the world's largest web population with more than half a billion Internet users, according to official figures.

Wibbs

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

OK they might not all be buying cars and 42" TV's
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/chinas-mobile-phone-subscriptions-top-a-billion/articleshow/12469143.cms

True but it's no great indicator of future economic growth*, not when ranged against the problems they face. China IMHO is a pretty classic example of a bubble economy. Indicators such as:

An increase in credit and the notion of easy money on the back of it(a massive leap in same for the Chinese)

Investment booms in construction and other areas. We built and have ghost estates, they have ghost cities and a host of other new towns working the "build and they will come" notion where few have. In 2010 their national grid noted that over 60 million(yes million) appartments used no electricity for over 6 months, yet their building boom remains in full flow with gov and private money. They've stated they're aiming to build 20 new cities a year in the next decade. Eh wut Ted?

Dubious allocation of capital(see above)and a rise in conspicuous consumption again in a huge way for the Chinese.

A young, cheap and previously growing population whose wave has well crested. Their fertility has declined since the 90's. In 1990 China had nearly 800,000 primary schools, by 2009 that had dropped to 300,000. That's a huge shift in demographics.

China has been publicly underestimating/hiding it's debt for years.

The idea of a given, damn near a meme when it came to continued growth.

Any of this sound familiar to us Irish people? Not that long ago we were "all" thinking this would never end, that if it did it would be a soft landing, well all save for a few who were considered economic quacks and the end is nigh/glass half full types.

I watched a recent programme from China that observed the growth of a Chinese village to a city in the last decade. What really stood out and echoed the Irish experience was how that city and the inhabitants were today. The ones that had "made good" were property developers and landlords and shops that sold home furnishings and DIY stuff all backed by loans, yet this brave new world had left many behind. More, this new city had but one factory actually producing anything for sale.

IMHO? Forget years in college studying economics, the real litmus test of a bubble is how many tile and bathroom furniture and sofa shops are springing up. If you want to write the end is nigh, write it on an overpriced fancy porcelain tile.





*nor even current growth, EG in many African countries that are in economic trouble mobile phones have largely taken over from landlines. Hell remember when Ireland had one of the highest penetration of mobies in the world?

Franticfrank

Good post on the subject. I'd agree it sounds pretty familiar. And boy, will that be one huge mess if the bubble bursts. I guess we can still learn Mandarin until that happens, right?

123balltv

Irish language is dead and buried Mandarin is the future

Wibbs

123balltv wrote: »

Irish language is dead and buried Mandarin is the future

I do hope you're in jest, rather than someone who didn't bother reading the thread and/or woefully uniformed on both subjects.

Toby Take a Bow

Wibbs wrote: »

I do hope you're in jest, rather than someone who didn't bother reading the thread and/or woefully uniformed on both subjects.

Or troll?

For me, I'd love to participate in this thread, but there's WAY too many pages for me to go back through. Sigh.

Wibbs

Toby Take a Bow wrote: »

Or troll.

You'd hope so, though of late I've been surprised at how many "trolls" turned out to be in earnest and that's scary. :eek::D

Toby Take a Bow

Toby Take a Bow wrote: »

Or troll?

For me, I'd love to participate in this thread, but there's WAY too many pages for me to go back through. Sigh.

the thread is 2 pages :pac:

Rabies

Would prefer to know some spanish, more beneficial I think.
Although some handy mandrin or cantonese phrases would be handy. Some of my chinese mates have tried teaching me some basic phrases in the past, in one ear out the other though

Toby Take a Bow

bluewolf wrote: »

the thread is 2 pages :pac:

Or 5 pages. 2s and 5s do look kind of similar, I suppose.

Toby Take a Bow

Toby Take a Bow wrote: »

Or 5 pages. 2s and 5s do look kind of similar, I suppose.

max posts per page setting

Toby Take a Bow

bluewolf wrote: »

max posts per page setting

Hmm. It's nearly like we have different settings on our accounts. (Having said that, I didn't realise you could change amount of posts per page. Thanks!).

Capt'n Midnight

Rabies wrote: »

Some of my chinese mates have tried teaching me some basic phrases in the past,in one ear out the other though

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