Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It will never be the language of business? Are you serious or making a joke?

I know. OP, you realize that Hong Kong and Shanghai are two of the largest business centers of the world, right? And that China is the single largest (yes, bigger than the US) new business target in the world. The population is so large and the economy is booming, so that this is the world's largest marketplace, hence so many international companies are looking for a foothold in China.

Right now and for decades to come, those having Mandarin as a fluent language will have a lot more economically profitable opportunities than those without. There are many, many jobs right now which are open for those who communicate fluently in Mandarin to work in or support business in China.

You are woefully misinformed if you think that Mandarin is a waste or will be a waste for the foreseeable future.

Maybe he realizes that China's one child policy has cause a population decline which in 15 years will likely prove disastrous for the Chinese...In 15 years 2/3rd's their citizen will be retired. He is thinking long term, imho, China will not have the labor force for a thriving economy.

So basically what some of you are saying is that unless a skill or study registers with and relates to you personally then you perceive it as a pointless pursuit.
Hmmmm - I see why you have such difficulty understanding. Enjoy your small closed-minded corner.

I don't know. I grew up learning Mandarin as a second language. All my jobs since have been in the US. Mandarin has not helped me one lick, hardly ever use it.

Anonymous wrote:I’d say it looks a lot more impressive on the college app than French or Spanish.
It’s harder, therefore more of an accomplishment.

It is going to look worse when your kid has trouble getting a 5 on the AP test in Chinese because so many students of Chinese heritage take Mandarin and score a 5. Almost 11,000 students who are exposed to Mandarin at home took the AP Mandarin test (and their average score was 4.43) vs. almost 1200 other students without exposure to Chinese at home (and their average score was 3.28). I don't think people realize how many kids of Chinese descent live in California. Those American kids who speak Mandarin well are the ones who will get any jobs requiring speaking fluent English and Mandarin.

Anonymous wrote:Great if you want a job in intelligence, kind of like people who learned Russian during the Cold War.

Or academics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with 11:48 completely.

me too. but it doesn’t answer the question: why Mandarin?

There is this concept called Language distance. And Mandarin is the most distant from English. It will surely stretch your brain in different ways.

I think it is useful to learn a second language. But I don't think Mandarin is necessarily the best choice. Personally, I'd pick Spanish for my kid, because it will have some utility in her daily life and she will have many opportunities to practice it. But unless the second language is spoken at home or in the extended family, or the kid has an interest in which specific language skills would be useful (Italian for opera, for example) I think they're otherwise mostly all the same.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work in career services at a large university and am not currently seeing a demand for US born Mandarin speakers in the job market.

The kids most in demand are the ones with true global fluency, like the diplomat's kids who grew up speaking a native language but attended English speaking international schools in multiple countries. The Chinese students are marketable back home for their English skills. There is very little demand for mandarin speakers here in the US and it is not easy for an American to get hired in China due to visa and work permit regulations etc.

I support the study of foreign languages for the pure sake of it but at least as of right now the market is speaking and Mandarin isn't much in demand. Whether it will be in 20 years or not is another question.
Right now I'm not seeing it.

+1. A friend of mine (white, Jewish) studied Mandarin to college level and then lived and worked in China (running a factory) for 5 years. When he returned to the US he was completely unemployable. He searched for a job for THREE YEARS before giving up and going back to China where his skills were actually in demand as a native English speaker with fluent Mandarin. There was no demand in the US at all for someone with his language skills.

Anecdotally, I have a very different experience. I'm a first-generation American (ABC or American born child of naturalized Chinese parents). I have grown up knowing quite a lot of Chinese ranging from long-time (over 50 years) naturalized Chinese, other ABC's and newer naturalized Chinese. I know hundreds of Chinese families. And while many of my generation are as another poster mentioned, colloquially fluent in Mandarin, we are not technically fluent in Mandarin and would find it difficult to conduct business in Chinese. However, we all have the foundations of Mandarin and can learn technical Mandarin much easier than a non-Mandarin speaker. I know many who use their Mandarin for their jobs. I know some that work for the state department, some that works as language translators, some that work for international corporations colloborating with colleagues in China or Chinese speaking areas (like Taiwan). My father retired in 1992 from Westinghouse where he worked as a mechanical engineer on power generation systems. From 1983 to 1992 he worked as a liason between several Westinghouse customers from Taiwan, Shanghai and Chinese regional power plants who were purchasing power generation systems from Westinghouse. He was the translator and escort for these visiting engineers. This type of work is far more common than it was back in the 1980's and 1990's. Now, many many companies need translators and escorts for visiting merchants, engineers, scientists who are coming from China to learn more about products, services, engineering, science, etc from the US and take it back to apply in China. If you look on job sites even ones like Monster or indeed, etc, you will find that there are hundreds of jobs where Mandarin is preferred. And many current jobs where they say Mandarin preferred, they need you to be able to communicate with Chinese colleagues. In those cases, you can speak mostly in Chinese and intersperse technical English words and often get by pretty easily.

In this day and age, the millenials and younger are having a harder and harder time finding entry level jobs. With a smaller job market out there and more people including older unemployed workers trying to fight for the same number of jobs, there are a lot of boomerang children coming back to live in their parents home because they can't find a job. The market is expanding again, but not fast enough to employ all of the unemployed, new graduates, and chronically unemployed out there. If you want to help your child get a job in a tough market, you give them any advantage that they can get. And knowing a foreign language will help them to expand their options. Even if they are only colloquially fluent like I am, that will still be a head up on many other applicants. Once you know the language even colloquially, it is easier to expand your vocabulary and language to include technical language than trying to learn from scratch. The need for Chinese speaking individuals will grow, not shrink and knowledge of this language will open up additional job opportunities.

As for why start learning at a young age? It has been studied and children who learn a foreign language at a young age, even if they don't retain that language later, will have an easier time learning foreign languages when they are older. Children who are bilingual or at least understand a second or third language as toddlers through early school years learn new languages faster when they are high school and college aged. So, one advantage of starting young is to increase your child's facility with languages later in life.

I have a child at Yu Ying, and we have no other connection to Mandarin. She also takes ballet and violin. Do I think she is going to be violin-playing ballerina who lives in China someday? Of course not. But she's very good at languages and loves ballet (though she is NOT gifted at dance, takes after her mother, sadly). We don't have any idea what the future holds for our children, so we are trying to instill a love of language, learning, and the arts in all kinds of ways. Some of which will be useful and others of which will not. I'm okay with that!

why study it? Because they are everywhere. You can tell them: stop crowding; stop pushing; please don’t befoul the toilets; stop hocking loogies on my shoes and many other useful phrases that are apropos.

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.

Anonymous wrote:I am a native Cantonese speaker. I hate to learn Mandarin when I was young in China. If my kids are interested in learning Cantonese or Mandarin, I am happy to teach them for the cultural aspect. But I won't force my kids to learn any Chinese dialects. And no, i really don't them to live in China or do business with Chinese. Sorry, my childhood experience in China was horrible.

another post about “forcing” the kids to learn [Chinese]. OP wasn’t asking if you should “force” your kids to learn Mandarin.

I am a native Cantonese speaker. I hate to learn Mandarin when I was young in China. If my kids are interested in learning Cantonese or Mandarin, I am happy to teach them for the cultural aspect. But I won't force my kids to learn any Chinese dialects. And no, i really don't them to live in China or do business with Chinese. Sorry, my childhood experience in China was horrible.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with 11:48 completely.

me too. but it doesn’t answer the question: why Mandarin?

I guess the answer would be "why not Mandarin"? The English language is too well entrenched in the world for Mandarin to take over as the language of business. You can thank the British for that one. However, I could see how it could be helpful if you end up traveling to China on business to speak to the cabdrivers, waitstaff, etc.. But as people have posted, English is more widely used, and will probably continue to be in the future, for any high level business meeting. However, I work for a multi-national company and have conference calls with people from all over the world. We speak English in the meetings, but most of the Asian coworkers don't speak English as fluently, so it would be great if I knew some of the East Asian languages just because it would make the meeting a lot easier. I don't think I could conduct the entire meeting in that language, but it would be helpful.

I’d say it looks a lot more impressive on the college app than French or Spanish.
It’s harder, therefore more of an accomplishment.