Why learn Chinese?

Jeffrey, I guess there aren’t many Chinese people in my area, either that or my boss is a bit racist.

Because Chinese girls are the fittest on the planet.
… that’s why I learnt to speak Thai: an utterly useless language… never made me a penny, but it got me layed more times than Grandma’s dining room table.

I learn Chinese because living in a country (Taiwan) and not at least trying to learn the language is rather ignorant, in my eyes.
Have had an “interesting” experience, being the only foreigner in my company: People usually try to avoid speaking to me at all costs.
Can’t say it helps my language learning, but it sure gives me more paid
“spare time”.
To all you Chinese learners out there I want to say: You do not know much (next to nothing, I’d say) about a people and the country they live in until you have worked there, with the people – then, and only then, you REALLY get below the surface.

1. It’s challenging but not difficult. I think a key in my own learning was to stop looking for similarities to English. Once I accepted this was something completely new and different, it was somehow easier. I think English is a much more difficult language to learn with the poor fit between spelling and pronunciation alone. I mean, how do you pronounce “-ough”? Thought/though/bough/tough/trough….jeez! Learning the pinyin system is a breeze compared to that.

2. The shock factor！ I love to watch Chinese people’s reactions when they hear 中文 coming out of my 大鼻子 mouth!

3. The benefit to my career. I’ve been an English as a Second Language teacher for many years, and the experience of having learned Chinese and lived in China & Taiwan for two years has made me a much more empathetic and effective teacher. When I’ve had Chinese students, the knowledge that we share a common language provided an emotional safety net for them — not that we spoke a lot of Chinese in ESL class, but they knew that if they ever had a problem in school, there was someone who could help them communicate.

4. I have to disagree with a poster above — Clever Dick, I believe — who said that Chinese people laugh at foreigners who try to learn Chinese. In my experience, nothing could be farther from the truth. Chinese people are incredibly welcoming and encouraging toward us 外国朋友 in our linguistic endeavors. Even if you know little more than 你好 and 谢谢, people are very kind and will frequently compliment you.

In Taiwan, I once made a terribly embarrassing language mistake. A non-Chinese speaking co-worker needed to see a doctor for a 便秘 problem. I went with her, and in filling out the registration sheet I mistakenly wrote “便蜜“ （蜜 meaning sweet/honey). The office staff definitely had a little smirk when I handed in the paper but no one laughed at me — although I’m sure they roared with laughter when they got home. It wasn’t until a few days later that I realized my mistake. 哎哟，不好意思！I wouldn’t walk down the street past the doctor’s office for weeks. haha

Anyway, learning Chinese has been, and still is, an extremely worthwhile experience for me. Finding ChinesePod a few weeks ago has been a great boost to my enthusiasm and diligence! 谢谢中Pod!

>that Chinese people laugh at foreigners who try to learn Chinese.

I never ever never had that situation. Never. It’s more like, I say “nihao” and the local is puzzled with amazement by my Mandarin knowledge.

I’ll Agree with fox as well. I’ve had arguments with taxi drivers and you say Hi and the place you want to go. You get a lot of “You speak Chinese very well” Telling them they can’t say that because all you said is 你好 leads to rather strange argument where your telling him he’s wrong in Chinese thus proving that he is in fact correct （to a degree).

Some other favourites of mine” are ohh you can use chopsticks! but can you pick up these oil coated peanuts?… WOW you can do that too. can you take a peanut from my chopsticks? (Note: the trick with this one is to twist the peanut out not to try and pull it out)

Another great one is when toasting with some if that person is older than you or your boss or something then you chink your glass’ together with your glass lower than theirs. If the person sees you doing this as a matter of respect you will get a nod of approval. If the actual social standings between you and the other person are in question you can end up in this funny “I’ll put my glass lower than yours” fight pretty much until your both down to the table which is where it ends in laughter and a careful toast making sure your both perfectly equal.

新年好! 各位中文大侠们!
Happy new year to every Chinese-master here!

過年快到了–It is right expression which means New Year is coming and is the same as 新年快到了. Here, 過年 is a noun.

On the other hand, the 過 of 過年 could be a verb in meaning of crossing through.

There are lots of preparation works such as shopping or cleaning prior to the Chinese New Year, family gathering and friends and relatives greeting afterward.

過年快到了 has sort of an implication of the whole process coming soon. People use the phrase all the time. Now, it is a common and correct expression as 新年快到了.

Anna

This is interesting blog subject and I thought I throw in my perspective.

I have very deep love hate relationship with this language and still have not fully decided whether it’s worth it. I’ve studied for over 5 years now, second major in college, a semester at Beida, a semester at Qinghua IUP. I have currently moved to Shanghai to work as the director for a large manufacturing and trading company that has its China rep office in Shanghai… though my work experience in the industry was as much a part of the position as the language. But here is where I get anxious.. very anxious.

As far as any person of non-Chinese background that I have personally met face to face, I speak the best Mandarin of any westerner I have ever run into, in business or in school with the exception of two people… one a 65 years old former u.s. embassy director and second a former professor of mine who is also a professional translator for not just big business, but also subtitles in many of those blockbuster movies we love coming out of China these days. I say this about my Chinese NOT to boast, I do NOT speak a natively fluent Chinese (studying Spanish and meeting people who have truly mastered Spanish has taught me what the words natively fluent really mean). I DO speak it well, amazing well for what the Chinese are used to hearing from Western mouths.. that is to say.. enough to say anything and understand anything in standard Mandarin, knowledge of well over 3000 characters and far far more words, more important than this.. enough to really be getting close to complete pronunciation control over the tones and accents, enough to read 90% of any newspaper article, enough to use chengyus regularly..

But if true mastery is the goal (by this I mean the mastery that we as Americans expect when people in our country are talking to us, and especially when doing business) I am worried about the feasibility of this or, perhaps, if not the feasibility, just the worthwhile-ness of learning to speak Chinese. It’s too late for me to turn around, I am already committed. The opportunity cost ventured is already very high… but what about those not 5 years down the road?

Why learn Chinese?… Is it worth it.. is it even truly possible for non-Chinese background foreigners to truly KNOW Chinese and TRULY SPEAK IT..: to speak it to the degree that if one is on the telephone, a Chinese person would not know the difference other than maybe a faint accent. Some might say that’s simply too high a goal to set and not really necessary, if even possible, especially when taking it up after early childhood. But remember now that almost every Chinese who lives abroad and also a Huge number who just live here in China, can make exactly that claim about English. The lovely Jenny is a great example of this. But is the reverse of this really possible??? After over five years I know it’s possible… sadly, very sadly, not for everyone I think, especially not for those who can’t wrap themselves around the tones… and I have seen many like this that I know will never ‘get it,’ but continue studying anyway. There is something really admirable about their persistence even as it worries me they are wasting their time. The tones and a knack for the accent are truly indispensable at the higher levels. I also know five years is not enough for mastery and even if you have language talent. In other words this is not Spanish.

According to some on this post Chinese is an easy language… and on the surface IT IS. But Chinese reminds me of an old saying… and I hate to be a sayings guy but I guess living in China rubs off on you. The saying is by Alexander Pope and it describes the language even if it is far from being a Chinese saying itself:

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

A little study will make you happy and success will seam all but inevitable. Early successes will be that way for those who have really pushed through. For those who then continued further after this language, I think they will agree with me, however, that the “this is an easy language” idea is very shallow. Yeah, if you want chat a way with some Chinese and really impress foreigners and without doubt impress Chinese themselves that can be done, that first step into Chinese is easy. It takes time and there are inititial hurdles, but most anyone can do it. Intermediate level is harder with many plateaus, but given time they are also slowly conquered. And in this process you can do a hell of a lot of impressing people.

YET I return to the fact which most are afraid to face. There is a big difference between speaking a language and REALLY speaking a language that I don’t think most westerners.. especially Americans like myself understand. Many Westerners I have met claim to speak Chinese and many of those people have devoted endless hours to studying the language, I’ve known some that have studied for over 10 years, one for over 25 years (a scholar at Stanford University who knows more about reading Ancient Chinese and technical Chinese than 99.99% of Chinese and he is a white guy of German descent). Many of those people definitely write Chinese far better than I…. better than I might ever write, or plan to be able to write. Hell they write better than most Chinese, but the truth is their spoken is still anything but fluent.

Is Chinese worth studying? Or better put, are the language intricacies inherent in Chinese worth the time… worth the opportunity cost? Is the language even possible to overcome? I think it is, though as far as real face to face evidence of this, sadly I have not truly seen much if any of it. I’ve been to six different provinces and met hundreds of people trying to learn, I studied at China’s top two universities with all different levels… but the real thing? Sure there’s Dashan and a few others on TV now and then that are really really good… but there numbers are depressingly small. Is Chinese worth studying? My answer is spit.

1.) Chinese has helped me get a very high paying job even by western standards especially for someone my age and even more so when I calculate the reduced cost of living in China along with the benefits of an expat package. I know this point might sound shallow, but its real and regardless of whether my lofty goals come true or not, I should be thankful for what Chinese has already helped make possible.

2.) Chinese has helped me meet great people and understand myself more in the process.

3.) Chinese has brought me contact with an amazingly deep culture and people and has taught me many things personally along the way.

On the other side though,
1.) It’s a huge investment, with an uncertain payoff in terms of language success. That is to say I don’t think everyone can learn Chinese. You can either master the tones, or you can’t. And complex grammar and phraseology, especially written, is no cake walk.
2.) As far as business goes… though I love to use it in meetings sometimes its more advantageous for me to make them use English. English is expected in high-level business and as one post said, why give up the home court advantage. Besides I have to do business in many provinces and I don’t care if they promise not to speak the local dialect, in many places what they consider putonghua, with their accent and even tones, is anything but standard.

3.)…. Well I guess I could come up with a third but I don’t want too. I like to play devil’s advocate now and again, but I’m already a believer in Chinese and its 5 years too late to turn back.

Is Chinese worth studying? Yes… It’s a bitter struggle though.. the adventurous student is so easily drawn in by hope and ambition to do something different, something great, only in the end to be swallowed up in an endless horizon of characters and unending shifts of phrase.. the complexity of this language (which conversely is best described in its tricks of brevity and even simplicity) hold its true beauty, uniqueness, and history. Yet it also its curse, making it not just hard for foreigners to master, but also as I have discovered, occasionally causing Chinese themselves to miscomprehend eachother; but who said the best hopes and dreams were easy anyway.

I just thought of another reason to add to your list, though not early enough to make it into my previous comment. When I was in Cairo afew years back, I remember the same overreaction to me when I said “thank you” in Arabic after a transaction. The man I was talking to suddenly looked so excited, nearly teared up and said in an awed voice, “You speak Arabic.” Well, not really. But the reaction showed me not to underestimate the power of taking an interest in another person’s culture. No matter how widespread English may be among people from the non-native parts of the world, it means something to them that you take the time to learn their language and appreciate their culture, that in your mind your own culture isn’t the center of the universe and that they exist and have value too.

Yeah, I hesitated to even start reading such as long post as Tim’s but it’s indeed quite relevant and worth reflecting upon
Yv

Regarding Tim’s (interesting!) post I agree with Bayun.

For myself the degree of perfection that Tim strives for will forever remain a daydream, and there will always be a strong 洋腔洋调 left. Different league. But that is not the point for me. Right now there are just too many interesting people who I cannot freely communicate with when I am in China. In my experience even rudimentary language skills can rise the fun factor 10-fold.

I would be happy if one day (in a Galaxy far, far away?) I could approximate the level I achieved in English, which also comes with an abundance of mistakes and a strong Kraut accent.

If I had to weight the pros and cons from Tims post I would come to the conclusion that it was definately worth it for him.

By the way: Tim, do you still learn new stuff from the podcasts here?

Tim’s fatal logical flaw (at least from my point of view):

That so many Chinese people speak such good English. By the standards that some people seem to apply to foreigners learning Chinese they certainly do not. Jenny has excellent English, but is obviously not native sounding and sounds like a Chinese person speaking English. There are still a few words that she pronounces strangley and occaisionally she uses an idomatic expression slighly off key. Not only that I could pick any one of a number of guys from my office and launch into a conversation of deliberitly twisted and idiomatic English, with recent UK cultural references that even someone of Jenny type calibre would find next to impossible to follow (this is not to take anything away from Jenny, I wish that my Chinese could be so good in the far future). I am sorry to say that most Europeans are not fluent in English by the types of standard that seem to be applied to Mandarin (Scandanavians maybe hitting nearest the mark).

It is a language, I want to communicate in it, I bet many Chinese people who use Mandarin on a daily basis are not fluent by the standards Tim is apiring to.

My definition of fluent, is the point where a normal native Mandarin speaker doesn’t have to think too hard to understand what I am trying to convey and doesn’t have to think to hard to dumb his speech down for me. Now if a highly educated, cultural Mandarin speaker wants to talk in an educated manner then I will always be stumped. Likewise many foreign speakers of English if the boot were on the other foot, and many Chinese Mandarin speakers who learnt it on top of their native dialects (I have this from the horse’s mouth, and Tim alludes to this also).

So my native dialect is English, I will learn Mandarin well enough for sound communication with a vast majority of Chinese people and if anybody doesn’t like it then stuff them………

grrrr…. snarl…. gnash…..

Tim, the last time I was moved by such an extant, I downed a gallon of prune juice. Just go ahead and speak what’s really on your mind. Seriously, I like the fact that Tim speaks what’s on his mind. Obviously I don’t agree with my boy, but let him speak his peace. I know he’s a cocky little chiwawa, but that’s what makes him so interesting. I’d rather listen to the pompus ramblings of a Tim, than the same old “Please encourage me because I suck at Mandarin” whiners that need encouragement every night and day.

Before you judge me, and if you really knew me you would quickly, let me throw my cards on the table. I live in the decadent world of New Orleans, and down here people have their own flavor for butchering the English language. It’s common to hear phrases such as: “How’s your momma and dem, Da’aint no more dawling, and Dats da way we do it.” You might be wondering why in the hell I’m commenting on this, frankely, I don’t know. But a point I was trying to make is that even in the good ole USA, people struggle with the English language. They can improve if they want to, and so can the speakers of Mandarin. Oh, by the way, Jenny, your English is fine.

I’ll leave you with this for the picture minded people, such as myself. A friend of mine bought a crappy house that was practically destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. This is what he did:

1) Removed the trash ( started to practice Mandarin).
2) Removed the sheetrock (practiced Mandarin 1 hour every day)
3) Cut the grass (bought some books)
4) Fixed the broken windows (bought some CD’s)
5) Fixed the broken doors (subscribed to something like Chinesepod)
6) Replaced the sheetrock (practiced with fluent speakers)
7) Replaced the roof (Stayed motivated by surrounded himself with anything Chinese) Paved the driveway (Didn’t give up, even when he was tired)
9) Put his house for sale (His characters and writing improved)
10) Sold his house (His focus was always on the outcome. Never how it looked in the beginning)
11) He bought another crappy house (He repeated the process)

As a man thinks in his heart, so is he (Bible). If you think you will never be the best Chinese speaker in the world, you’re right. If you think you will eventually be a better Chinese speaker than Jenny, you’re right. YOU WILL ALWAYS CONFORM TO YOUR FOCUS, IN ANYTHING THAT YOU PURSUE IN LIFE. Most people, “Hop on the bus gus, or make a new plan Stan,” because they don’t take the time to let it grow. If you plant seeds on Monday, you’re not going to have a harvest on Tuesday.

Man I’m smart. Can’t help it. Little bit of Tim done rubbed off on me.

I know I will never be mistaken for a native speaker–I’ll be lucky if I ever feel comfortable enough to get past vocalizing “excuse me, please, and thank you”–but I look forward to being able to be polite when I finally make my grand trip to China.

2. If I ever run into Andy Lau here in California, I want to be able to say hello properly. In the meantime, it would be nice to be able to sing along with his Mandarin songs and have some idea what I’m singing.

3. Movie subtitles are not enough sometimes. It wasn’t until after my first several C-pod lessons that I could finally tell whether it was “I’ve chosen” (the subtitle) or “you’ve chosen” (the actual line) in Infernal Affairs. (My smattering of French has also been useful in this way.) We AR’s care about these things!

4. When the Gouren take over, I want to know what they’re saying so that I may rise quickly through the ranks of the Resistance.

Given the level of mastery I’ll never attain, I’m sure you could make a case for my efforts being a waste of time. But I waste a lot more time on crossword puzzles and sudoku. Studying Mandarin, especially using Chinesepod, gives me a good brain workout, in addition to the above benefits.

Sometimes a little knowledge is just fine.

Miss Mann

I’m with Bob Mrotek and Lantian on this one.

If someone is studying Mandarin because they think it will make them more money they are not being realistic. You could become a chartered financial analyst with less work and time than it takes
to become a good Mandarin speaker and CFAs make big bucks. Or, if you spent your Mandarin study time knitting sweaters instead and selling them, you would be further ahead financially.

The thought occurs to me that you could maybe knit sweaters while you do Cpod lessons. Maybe I will try that sometime.

I listen to and imitate language recordings while I drive (about an hour a day). I listen to recordings while I run (about seven hours a week). There is no opportunity cost that I can see in doing this. (This isn’t of course the only time I put in to studying)

I know nothing of the difficulties of learning to read and write Chinese, but, silly old me, I persist in thinking that the difficulties in learning to speak it are somewhat overrated. The language yields to the right study methods.

Anyone who has read past Cpod posts will be aware that people agree to disagree on what those study methods are. But you can always try out different ways for yourself and see what seems to work. I would only suggest you pay most attention to people who have shown the ability to learn one or more foreign languages quickly and well. Be very skeptical of anyone who claims to have the answers but hasn’t demonstrated them in his or her own language learning.

If you study a language like Spanish, your progress will certainly be quicker in the beginning. But some of this is deceptive. To really master the language, you have to master a mass of verb endings in many tenses, and be able to correctly substitute direct and indirect pronouns etc. In my experience, few of the people who think they speak Spanish have done this. They may impress their friends, but the native speakers know.

With Mandarin, you should expect progress to be very very slow in the beginning. It might take you a ridiculous amount of time to learn to accurately pronounce and understand a single sentence without looking at the pinyin. But if you continue learning sentences, and listening to speech, you will find a slow acceleration in your learning time taking place. Eventually it gets easy, and you can just concentrate on learning vocabulary and expressions. You might even overtake your Spanish learning friend who is still struggling with past compound subjunctive tenses.

Here is one more reason to study Mandarin. A few months ago, I talked with a high school teacher. When I told him I was studying Mandarin, he said “Isn’t Mandarin a kind of crude and primitive language? “

!!!!!!!!

Well no.

I can’t imagine anyone studying Mandarin making a fool of himself by uttering such a dumb and ignorant statement.

Hey maybe I am oversensitive :O I am going to set up a few audio tests. See what other English people thing about a few voices.

Hi,
I think the reasons why someone should learn chinese makes sense. Give me a few resources on the internet fgrom where I can get started ( both writing a pronounciation ).

Hello Ken Carroll: I am Sunny, the english editor in CUROO. Curoo is a quite new website focused on China’s business market. We are going to publish a free english e-magazine and there is a chinnel on learning chinese. So we want to introduce some learning experiences from chinses learners just like you. Could you grant permission for us to release your article titled ‘why learn chinese’on our e-magazine?

Thanks! Best wishes!
look forward to your reply!