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Post by Tricky on Feb 19, 2006 10:00:37 GMT -5
Which language is most beneficial to learn or which one is becoming a commonly used language such as English? Tell us why in relation to where you live.
I'm more Asia orientated in my travels, so which Asian language do you think would be most useful if I wanted to work or live in Asia. I'm thinking Malaysia mostly and Japan or China.
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gb
Junior Member
Posts: 173
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Post by gb on Feb 19, 2006 10:07:54 GMT -5
If japan, japanese. If anywhere else, Chinese.
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Post by helles on Feb 19, 2006 10:12:31 GMT -5
Mandarin is the obvious choice.. Its now the 4th largest economy and still growing, everyone wants to do business with China.
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Post by Tricky on Feb 19, 2006 10:15:29 GMT -5
Romanized languages might be a little easier than having to learn to write Asian script/characters. I did do an Asian language before, I just couldnt keep up. Chinese as in Putonghua?
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Post by z. on Feb 19, 2006 10:16:16 GMT -5
everyone wants to do business with China. ^ yeh! i've notice that. i'd like to learn mandarin... but chinese seems too hard to learn for me... although to work for Cathay Pacific you're required to have fluent command of one mandarin or cantonese, both spoken and i believe to a lesser extent written.
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Post by Tricky on Feb 19, 2006 10:22:58 GMT -5
Mandarin is the obvious choice.. Its now the 4th largest economy and still growing, everyone wants to do business with China. My sister learnt Mandarin, she's now working in HK. A few years back when she first started looking to go overseas, Mandarin wasn't important, she thought it was a waste of her time. Now everyones looking for someone who can speak Mandarin, just as important as English. The only thing that sets her back is that her Cantonese isn't very good. Do you speak Mandarin btw?
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Post by helles on Feb 19, 2006 10:24:37 GMT -5
Romanized languages might be a little easier than having to learn to write Asian script/characters. I did do an Asian language before, I just couldnt keep up. Chinese as in Putonghua? Chinese - Putonghua - Mandarin, basically mean the same. Technically, you could learn Mandarin just by the romanisation rather than characters - mostly speaking wise, not the reading/writing. Although its not recommended.
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Post by helles on Feb 19, 2006 10:35:59 GMT -5
My sister learnt Mandarin, she's now working in HK. A few years back when she first started looking to go overseas, Mandarin wasn't important, she thought it was a waste of her time. Now everyones looking for someone who can speak Mandarin, just as important as English. The only thing that sets her back is that her Cantonese isn't very good. Do you speak Mandarin btw? Yeh, I studied Mandarin at uni, even went to China for a year's study abroad there. I'm fluent(-ish) in cantonese and at work it is around 90% cantonese - communication with colleagues/training etc, and 10% English - anything on the computer/written work. I was very suprised at how few western people work in my office. And Mandarin-wise, its not really used at all apart from those who are working on PRC cases. This is only in my dept though, the rest of the company have a lot of direct contact with China and lots of people frequently travel there for work.
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Post by Tricky on Feb 19, 2006 11:06:32 GMT -5
Chinese - Putonghua - Mandarin, basically mean the same. Technically, you could learn Mandarin just by the romanisation rather than characters - mostly speaking wise, not the reading/writing. Although its not recommended. Oh yeah I know they're the same thing. You mean pinyin? If I were to learn another language I'd prob want to learn to read and write as well. There are too many characters to learn plus when I look at a character, I don't see how it has anything to do with the meaning, so there's no easy way to remember it. I guess it's really my own laziness... It'd be a lot easier if I had someone to speak to at home. (not in English) I think a reason there might not be alot of westerner's is coz lots of HK people study abroad I just know alot of people come to Aus. to study and then go back home and try to find a good job. My sister doesn't travel to China at all, that I know of. It might have been better for her to learn Japanese since she goes there pretty often for work.
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Post by Tricky on Feb 19, 2006 11:14:41 GMT -5
What does your sister work, if I might ask? IT
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Post by jefe on Feb 19, 2006 23:34:32 GMT -5
I read many sources which tried to quantify the MOST IMPORTANT languages in the world (not the ones with the most speakers) and lists have been developed. Number of speakers was one criteria, but also was use in international conferences, research, journals, media, cultural exchanges, geographic distribution of speakers, how widely it is studied, etc. I think the top 10 are something like English French Spanish Arabic / Russian / Mandarin Chinese (neck and neck) German Japanese Portuguese Hindi
Mandarin Chinese will likely emerge as #4 in the world, well beyond Japanese.
In Asia, the leader is still English (in importance), but Chinese is close behind and growing. It surely is surpassing the importance of the Japanese language in Asia. It is being studied more and more in Korea, Thailand, etc., not to mention Greater China, Singapore, Malaysia, etc. Chinese is growing the fastest as a language to learn in North America as well, but I doubt it will surpass Spanish anytime soon, as the USA is becoming more and more bilingual.
Difficult? Well, of the 1 billion plus people who use Mandarin, a few hundred million have below average intelligence. Tens of millions are morons. If they can learn, so can you. And millions of Chinese with average or lower intelligence are not inhibited from learning English because of its difficulty. It is difficult only if you believe it is.
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Post by jefe on Feb 19, 2006 23:40:30 GMT -5
My sister learnt Mandarin, she's now working in HK. A few years back when she first started looking to go overseas, Mandarin wasn't important, she thought it was a waste of her time. Now everyones looking for someone who can speak Mandarin, just as important as English. The only thing that sets her back is that her Cantonese isn't very good. Do you speak Mandarin btw? Yeh, I studied Mandarin at uni, even went to China for a year's study abroad there. I'm fluent(-ish) in cantonese and at work it is around 90% cantonese - communication with colleagues/training etc, and 10% English - anything on the computer/written work. I was very suprised at how few western people work in my office. And Mandarin-wise, its not really used at all apart from those who are working on PRC cases. This is only in my dept though, the rest of the company have a lot of direct contact with China and lots of people frequently travel there for work. I began working continuously in HK since 1995. In 1995, Mandarin was more of a novelty than a requirement. English was really the only important language, but Cantonese was useful for discussions only among locals, but not useful for official government or business communication. My Mandarin was actually better in the USA, and deteriorated after coming to HK. Of course the current situation is very different. Mandarin is often a job requirement here now. We frequently have conference calls in Mandarin, for example. What I am more worried about is my writing ability. It would take me 10X as long to write something in Chinese as English, and my Chinese would have errors. I really want to work more on this. And it is not just for PRC. About 30-40% of the Mandarin I use is with Taiwan, and some also with SE Asia or the USA.
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Post by erika on Feb 20, 2006 1:18:31 GMT -5
I want to learn mandarin. I better scrub up on my japanese first.
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Post by etudes on Feb 20, 2006 4:44:54 GMT -5
i want to know chinese, (mardarin or cantonese? i duno. the popular one)but i don't want to learn hundreds of symbols :S
i want to learn french tho. i wanna go to new caladonia. and my bike coach said french is a gud language to learn if you wanna go to france, where all the cycling stuff's giong on.
it's funny. THere's a time when every1 wants to learn japanese. And now that's slowly shifting to Chinese. but the ironic thing is that korea's in between those two countries; is korea missing out? like it's passing fromjapan to china; giong west. next up, the next language craze thing might be like hindu or something.
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Post by Sensei on Feb 20, 2006 22:51:11 GMT -5
I'm probably biased, but I'd say Mandarin too! Hindi might be a good one in the distant future, since I heard India's economy will be the fastest growing in Asia by 2010, but it's still going to take them a long time to catch up with China.
Just remember though that languages like Chinese and Arabic take three times as much time to learn as European languages--so you really need to be serious.
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