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

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[quote=Anonymous]I speak basic Mandarin (as in I can get around China when I visit on business and handle all basic tasks in Chinese), along with 5 other languages mostly at basic level. Language does reveal a lot about culture, like how in Chinese there's a specific word for every relative including birth order. For example, where we may say brother, they have a specific word for the oldest brother, second oldest, etc. Same for uncles -- they're all just uncle to me, but in Chinese they have words for each specific uncle (e.g. mother's 2nd brother). To me, it shows the importance of family and relationships in the culture. You can see this in many other languages too, like in Russian how the formal and informal "you" pronoun change the whole tone of the discussion (as a side note, it was said that Medvedev always addresed Putin using the formal "you").

Now, will a 3-year old pick up on this? No chance. I'll still have our DD learn langauges as I think it fosters critical thinking and is good to have in her toolbox of skills, but I doubt she'll ever be engaged in high-level business negotiations in any foreign language.

As for languages, my recommendation is to know one romance (Spanish or French are easiest), one slavic (Russian is most widespread), and Chinese. It's easy to pick up another language from the same language group once you know one half-way well.[/quote]

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