Reply to S/O what''s the point of studying Mandarin?

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[quote=Anonymous]My husband is from China and moved here for college. He's now fully fluent in English (though he has an accent of course) and conducts international business in China.

There are a decent number of Chinese Americans (born in America) that he interacts with. As PP with latino friend noted, those Chinese Americans can't fully do business in China. In part, they lack the language skills -- they grew up speaking and practicing mostly "family" language and the language learning you do in school (many of them did Chinese school) isn't adequate to become business-level proficient.

The bigger issue, though, is that they are epic failures at understanding the culture and nuance of business conversations in China by native speakers there. They didn't grow up in the culture, and for business in particular (and specifically in Asia), you need to be able to read the subtext of what someone is saying -- a complex and advanced skill that only comes from years of exposure in the actual culture.

Is isn't as much an issue in HK or English-predominant territories or countries in Asia (Singapore, etc), but even in English conversations, you have to know the culture to get anything done.

I think language learning is great, but thinking that some white kid learning Mandarin in a school in the U.S. at 3 is going to give them an edge is fantasy.[/quote]

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