5 Reasons Why Learning Chinese Could Be a Waste of Your Time
Is learning Chinese a waste of your time?
If you want to maximize your ‘return on investment’ in terms of a good job, income, and ‘opportunity costs’, I’d have to say this is an almost certain yes. The Economist thinks so too.
While there are quite a few reasons why you might want to study Chinese, let’s look at some of the reasons why it could be a waste of your time:
Why Learning Chinese Could Be a Waste of Your Time
- Many Well Educated Chinese People Would Prefer to Speak to You in English – Even if your Mandarin is better than their English (uncommon, but not unheard of – and no the prime minister’s Mandarin in the linked video is definitely not better than the interviewer’s English)
- Little Applicable Value Outside of China - Most mid to upper level Chinese managers speak okay to great English. The only people you typically need Mandarin to communicate effectively with in a business environment is low level management. If you aren’t stationed in China, then, knowing Chinese won’t help you much in communicating with most Chinese companies.
- Possible Negative Market Value – To really be able to use your Mandarin, you’ll need to move to China, where you may have to take a large pay cut to get a job in which being fluent in Chinese would be an asset. This quote from the economist article linked above sums up things nicely:
Within China companies can hire an expatriate who speaks Chinese. Or, more often, they take their pick from an abundant supply of local graduates in English who are happy to work for 2,000 yuan (£130) a month. “I took an 80% pay cut to come here because I wanted to learn the language,” says Ken Schulz, a software engineer from Silicon Valley who studied Chinese full-time for four years at Beijing’s University of Language and now works in the capital at WorkSoft, an outsourcing firm. “I’m the only foreigner in an office of 1,200 people, and I hardly get any opportunity to use my Chinese.”
- Huge Opportunity Cost – To really learn Chinese well, including reading and writing, you need to spend years studying intensively. These are years in which you could learn several romance languages or another skill set or perhaps even a profession.
- Non-Negligible Maintenance Costs - Even though I speak Mandarin when dealing with customers, read a Chinese magazine / newspaper daily, watch a bit of TV, and speak almost exclusively in Mandarin with my girlfriend (and some friends), my Chinese skills are slipping. It takes a lot of effort just to maintain, nonetheless improve, your Chinese.
Do I Regret Learning Chinese?
No, but from a practical standpoint there are many things I could have done with my time to get into a better job and develop a skill-set that is worth more on the job market. Learning Chinese was a good move for many other reasons, just not the ones that have to do with making money or getting a better job.
And if you’ve already set yourself on the improbably hard journey of learning Chinese, this commentary won’t sway you one bit anyway. 加油!
Why Is Learning Chinese NOT a Waste of Time?
I hope you help out in the comments below by taking a bite out of this question or leaving your other thoughts about this post.
This was an intriguing article. But seriously, it seems that there is a huge discrepancy between what Chinese know about English-speaking world and what the English-speaking world knows about China. This seems like a recipe for competitive disadvantage in the long run. Hey…this is a great post and thought provoking, just wondering if you think its a problem in the long term for a huge gap in understanding.
Hey Elliott – That’s a good question.
Learning Chinese definitely helps to bridge the gap in understanding between China and the English-speaking world, but usually this is only if you go to China. If you are going to live in China, then there are definitely some strong advantages to learning Chinese – including the one you point out.
But what good is knowing Chinese if you don’t live in China or travel there extensively?
This was a bit of a devil’s advocate kind of post – it makes you question the real advantages of learning Chinese – one of them being what you are putting forward.
Nice post — I don’t know whether to chortle or grimace.
I came across your article through your comment on the China Law Blog, which was also right on. Depressing in a kind of funny way.
I also posted on a complementary subject recently: why 中文 (as opposed to just speaking Mandarin) is such a pain. Now I can add your angle: not only a pain but a waste of time :^)
But I still think we’re all just mincing words around the central problem. The real thing that makes Chinese hard to learn is the infernal characters. Everything else is a cinch by comparison.
Hey syz – Yeah, have to say depressing in a funny way. It’s only a waste of time when your main goal is trying to get a well paying job or build a skill that can earn a decent amount of money. Or to put it another way, there is a huge opportunity cost to learning Mandarin. But there’s more to life than opportunity costs, right?
more to life than opportunity costs
No doubt. Blogging itself (not to mention commenting) is an unequivocal waste of time, in the economic sense. It probably doesn’t even do much social good, despite what the blogosphere would like to believe. Maybe blogging, like Mandarin, should just be put in the “it amuses me” category where no one can argue with you. If it happens to have some pleasant side effects, then all the better.
Syz,
Somehow didn’t catch this comment until now – that’s pretty funny but true. It (blogging) can help you pick up a bit of pocket change, but for most people not much.
I do believe that a growing number of credible people in the blogosphere do contribute to greater understanding of many things, and a closer version of the “truth”, however. But that’s just a small fraction of most bloggers. So your comment is very telling.
Throw blogging (along with Mandarin) into the “communication” category – better for things other than making money.
Interesting take on the issue, the comment I’d like to make reflects not only Jeremy’s post but the supplementary Economist article as well.
I agree that if you plan on touching China business casually from the West and don’t plan to travel or live in China then no Mandarin might be a waste of time.
However, in my work for a real estate private equity fund based in Shanghai I’d say that my language skills are pretty essential.
I think it’s off the mark to assume you are going to be doing business with boatloads of Western educated Chinese working for large corporations (Chinese or foreign).
The major player in China is and will continue to be the Government / SOE hybrid class of entities.
One aspect of the business I do does involve foreigners and internationally minded Chinese but the guts of this business is dealing with the local and central government and private individuals associated with these groups.
MOFCOM, SAFE, officials in the Beijing Central government, officials in development zones, land and property sellers with good relationships to the above mentioned officials -we deal with these folks all the time and I think the high value asset class is a realm still dominated by local guys with local ways whether you want to acknowledge that or not.
Of all the meetings I have had to sit through that involve the government in some way, shape, or form I have yet to experience one that takes place in English.
The question you have to ask yourself is if you are working in this type of environnment in China do you really want to sit through an important discussion with no idea what is going on?
100% is clearly too much as I know plenty of American born Chinese who struggle to get everything including idioms, politico-speak, etc.
Some young Chinese even tell me they have to think carefully through meaning when it’s an official speaking who comes from a very “party-oriented” educational background.
80-85% is a reasonable goal and lessens dependency on your Chinese colleagues and allows you to discern motivations and trustworthiness of individuals.
Anything less than half and you’d be better off taking a nap or surfing the net at your desk rather than attend the meeting.
Just my opinion as I have lived through these scenarios in different degrees during my years in China.
Hi Pete – Thank you for the thoughtful and detailed response.
There is no way that I would deny the usefulness of learning Chinese, especially to the degree that you have described (and for example I wouldn’t be able to do my current job without being at least functionally fluent in Chinese). It definitely creates more opportunities.
The question is: What is the opportunity cost?
Sure, if you spent all of the time watching TV that you spent learning Chinese over the years, the opportunity cost in NOT learning Chinese would be huge. And learning Chinese is a better use of time (over the long run), financially, than many other uses of your time.
However, it seems it’s pretty safe to say that if you devoted the time you spent to studying Chinese to something else of equal rigor and difficulty, that there would be many ‘something else’s’ that would help you much more financially and career-wise than learning Chinese.
To me, that’s the essential point of The Economist article, and some careful analysis of the years that led me here.
You may completely disagree, though (and after all, for some people learning Chinese to ‘real’ fluency is far more valuable financially than time they could have spent to, say, become a doctor or lawyer), and if so that’s great, it’s just I don’t agree =) At least for most people, or on average.
Plus, any such analysis (which will never really take place) would best include those whose goal it was to reach a level in Chinese that would be financially useful to them (not just for fun, for the experience, etc), but who gave up along the way. The graveyard of learning Chinese, you could say. I know of many such people (and someday I might be one of them).
Thanks again for the detailed response, Pete.
Ok!,
So if someone can suggest me just one language that will be most appropriate for me to learn at present, what will that be? I am currently a graduate student in United States trying to pursue patent agent job, where an international language skill could perhaps help me.
Hi Pat – I don’t know whether US patent agents need to know another language (or whether they could use this to their advantage on the job). However, if there is a place for using another language on this kind of job, it seems Chinese might actually be substantially more useful than many other languages, especially going forward.
Otherwise, my best guess for a best return on language learning investment in such a position would be Spanish – easy to learn, and the primary language of many different countries.
But someone else could definitely give a better answer than this and I hope they do.
Great! More articles like this! Discouraging more people from learning Chinese just makes our market value that much greater.
Well, to be serious with that point, although there is a great opportunity cost in learning Chinese, that also means that people who do learn the language are that much more uncommon. Also, native Chinese speaker who speaks good English is quite different from a native English speaker who speaks Chinese. While in some careers perhaps one’s English level is not that important, there are other careers where not only do you need to know English you need to possess a level higher than your average native speaker (journalism, translation, law, are just a few that comet to mind). Therefore, I think being a native English speaker with high level language skills and knowledge of Chinese is something quite valuable indeed.
Also, one thing the article mentioned was that a lot of people give up learning Mandarin because it’s too hard.
What a load of BS. That’s not a reason to not study Chinese–it’s a reason to not begin studying and then quit.
Also, Jeremy: Do you really find your Chinese is getting worse? Given what you wrote about how much you practice every day, that seems pretty hard to believe!
Hi kmm,
You’re right =)
The ‘problem’ is that most people have no idea how much effort it will take to learn Mandarin to a useful level (useful defined as: the level at which you can use it for all communications if necessary), and go into learning it blindly.
My reading and writing is definitely getting worse, but very slowly. Speaking and listening is very slowly improving, but most of the improvement is coming from learning various technical terms that I’d rather not know. I’m definitely in the wrong field to put my native English abilities to their best use, for now.
It also rings very true that, as you say in your last post Strategies for the Extremely Introverted Mandarin Learner, is that it’s important to learn things, and especially vocabulary, you love.
This whole article is just a comment from a guy who has a negative attitude. If the basis of this article/comment is that learning Chinese has not been financially beneficial to the author himself who started this discussion – I say that more reflects on his shortcomings as an opportunity seeker than it does the economic value of the wealth of opportunities available to an optimistic non native who learns to speak Putonghua.
I work in the business consulting industry – where the knowledge of Mandarin Chinese by non-native speakers carries a large premium. I would also say that the value of understanding Mandarin Chinese will grow exponentially over the next 10 years and beyond due to the obvious emergence of China in world economic markets. There will be numerous business,military,consulting,teaching,translating,import/export,entertainment, etc. etc opportunities available to those who understand Mandarin in the coming years.
XieXie
I dont think learning Mandarin is a waste of time! At the end of the day, it is your choice to learn Mandarin. If you think it is a waste of time, then it seems to me that you do not enjoy learning the language.
Thats what I think anyway.
Hi somebody,
I don’t think it’s a waste of time – it’s just there are skills you can spend your time developing which are much more rewarding financially. The thing is, many people start out learning Mandarin overestimating the financial / job benefits that will accrue to them and underestimating the time it will take to really have a functioning command of the language.
I don’t regret learning Mandarin, but I also know a lot of people who initially wanted to go really far with it but gave up along the way because it was just too much.
I’ve taught English in two Chinese universities, and on the whole the students who actually studied had good English, with great pronunciation. And they will work for peanuts.
I think that if a business person was serious about developing guanxi, then learning Mandarin would be useful for socialising with their Chinese counterparts. Not useful in the office, but useful at the restaurant and karoke bar.
There are a lot of bosses in China who rely on their cheap interpreters, who do a great job. But doing away with interpreters when socialising would help with developing the relationship.
But you don’t need perfect Chinese for that – in fact you don’t need to read much Chinese at all for that. I had a friend who was great at that, but couldn’t read any Chinese at all. He just could speak good social Chinese, and got on really well.
Only a few people are going to find that learning Mandarin pays back financially.
Personally, I’m learning it to communicate with my in-laws.
… There’s lots of discussion of the value of Mandarin education for foreigners here at China Law Blog or here from The China Expat, with the general undercurrent that the literal economic value is low is because it takes too many years to be successful at it…
I disagree with this. In the short term it can be easier to just use English but this puts us at a tremendous disadvantage when doing business (if Chinese understand our language and culture but we don’t understand theirs). Personally speaking Chinese has helped me greatly financially already. I just feel it’s so much easier to understand your counterparts when you speak their language and understand the culture, as opposed to relying on an interpreter.
I do agree that it’s much more important if you are living in China than not. Also it would be better not to study it unless you really want to go through with it and learn it well. Your field, position within the company etc. also plays a role , so I don’t think there is an easy answer. A person’s language ability and interest are also really important factors to consider.
Hi Corey – Right on. Learning Chinese is not for everyone, far from it. It’s good that you have benefited from learning it, and most who carry through to the end do. But how many can? =)
@Chris Lowe – what total, utter, tosh. I worked in a patenting office with 200 chinese engineers, all of whom were university graduates and many of whom had post-graduate qualifications. My discussions with them were almost entirely in Chinese, as was email correspondance – the reason for this was that innaccuracies were a lot less likely to creep in that way – especially given the way so many trusted that Jinshan dictionary to do the translation for them.
Was learning Chinese useful for that job? Yes – but equally as useful was the fact that I had a technical background. This is where I feel a lot of people come a-cropper, it’s not much use knowing how to speak Chinese if you have no other skills – knowing Chinese merely facilitates the use of your own skills in China.
I’ve had loads of interviews since I got back, all of them from people interested by the fact that I did learn Chinese – so you can’t say that it doesn’t at least make you stand out.
Hey Foarp – Good to hear that learning Chinese makes you stand out in the job market – that is a big plus with the visa shutdown going on and perhaps having to go home.
You’re right on that Chinese is a tool that facilitates the use of your other skills – and the more technical your job, the more useful knowing Chinese very well is. It helps avoid some of the misunderstandings that inevitably pop up.
It’s extremely easy to lose the language if you don’t use it everyday. If an individual is in a situation where they can use the language extensively than its not a waste of time to invest.
I don’t think it’s every a waste of time to learn a foreign language. Serious linguists will learn and practice more than one language at a time. I do agree with you, however, that unless you are in China, you probably won’t be using it very much.
The article, I think, makes a valid argument if the learner’s sole motive for studying Mandarin is economic gain. Certainly, the 3-4 years one would have to spend in China to achieve something close to fluency would be better invested in an MBA or a JD program, by far. That said, I can’t imagine anyone who sets out to learn Mandarin with the vague idea that it might be profitable, sticking with it for more than a week. It’s just too damn hard. And let’s be realistic, Mandarin is not an asset for Western companies. My company does extensive business in China, and has offices in several major cities. Most of our managers live in expat bubbles, and can’t pronounce “ni hao,” yet we have Chinese companies, and govt officials, lining up to do business with us. They could care less that we don’t speak Mandarin. They, as all business people, care about one thing: the bottom line.
For the purposes of this discussion, what is fluency? I can only guess at what previous posters mean, but I’m going to say HSK 6 — a.k.a. the level non-native speakers should reach to get into undergraduate studies with regular students.
I agree with Nino Brown that unless you are ready to focus hard and be consistent with effective methods, that it does take 3 – 4 years to get “close to fluency” if fluency is HSK 6. I disagree that you would “have to spend [those years] in China” to get the result.
I am approaching the 4 year mark. I spent 15 months (starting with a year in Taipei from zero) of that time in Chinese-speaking areas and the rest in Canada, studying by myself with some classes (the thing I wouldn’t have learned on my own was classical Chinese). Though I haven’t written the HSK, I think I am ‘close to fluency’ by that definition as I can recognize about 2500 characters, translate Chinese to English live for hours, or speak Chinese all day when I need to without speaking it regularly otherwise.
Chinese could be a waste of time. But, considering you can learn your target language by switching over things (reading books, watching tv, listening to music, news, radio, etc) you would do anyway and enjoy–and that you can build and maintain a vocabulary of useful size on just a few hours a day–it doesn’t seem like that huge of an opportunity cost.
To paraphrase David Moser, if you can still remember why you’re learning Chinese, give up; nothing could be worth it. If you’ve forgotten, you just might have the mindless doggedness to succeed.
I think that learning Mandarin is only when you have to deal with everyday things, like going to the restaurant or to the supermarket or to manage an informal chat with somebody who doesn’t know English. at least, my very broken Chinese comes in handy when I go to my favorite restaurant, but I would say that it’s quite possible to make a decent living in China without speaking Chinese.
Now, my job is English teaching, so they are the ones who need to learn English in the first place.
Tell me any subject of study that will help you make more money with minimal effort. Accounting ? Real estate?
Certainly, learning Chinese is a bad move if you want to make money, so is learning music, art, physics, swimming, etc, etc.
Learn Chinese if you enjoy it and want to know more about the culture of China. If that helps you make more money down the road, that is bonus.
Hey Jay,
You’re totally right on the reasons to learn Chinese.
And learning Chinese doesn’t take minimal effort, it takes about the same amount of time and effort as studying a full skill set, such as accounting which you mention.
Thought provoking article. I have used my Chinese extensively in conjunction with my Spanish. The more people that drop out, the better! The real angle is China-Africa, China-S.America, China-Middle East—I live in Mexico and the average Mexican has trouble learning English, even the super wealthy. None of them have the patiences, resources, or time to learn Chinese, especially given the majority of decent middle income jobs are in English-based tourism. So many high level deals in Mexico are still in Spanish, they would rather speak Spanish and Spanish is definitely an asset—my Chinese blows most Mexicans away-and my Chinese isn’t amazing, 5 Intermediate HSK–but conversational enough to do deals, ganbei, et al bullshit. Keep on quitting, quitters! But Mexican commodities and resources are of definite interest to Chinese–as is Chinese investment in Mexico. There are angles out there—you just can’t be a negative quitter like this poster.
Thank you all for posting. I am somewhat an odd man out, in that I live in the United States, and speak Mandarin daily to earn my bread and butter. I do it mostly by telephonic interpreting, some translating Chinese to English, and some on-site interpreting. I often feel the lack of another skill, whether technical or commercial, but I take solace in knowing that I really do need the time I have to practice and develop basic language and interpreting skills.
Nice post. I also question the opportunity
I was considering learning chinese as a way to increase my ver. I make asatility. decent income as as software engineer – can learning chinese make me “more” employable, say with a chinese firm, – without moving to china ?
@prospective learner – maybe learning any amount of Chinese would help you get a job now or in the future with such a company, but to use it in an engineering environment and guarantee it expands your opportunity set you’re going to need to put in many years of study.
Learning Mandarin is a skill that I wish that I will have one day. I currently live in Guangzhou and just taking a taxi is almost impossible. The advantages of Mandarin seriously out way the cost of wasted time for me anyway. Other languages that I need on a day to day basis are Spanish and Portuguese.
Interesting view. One that i’m leaning towards agreeing with.
I was born in Shanghai and grew up in Australia. My reasons for learning Chinese are basically 1. I am Chinese, therefore I should probably learn the language. 2. I want to eventually move to China and open up a business.
If you’re opening your own business, you often don’t get the luxury of having all your customers being fluent enough in english. China is a huge market, and if you know the language and culture and mindset of the people,you can be quite successful. One other thing is, if you are planning to stay the long term, anything above 5000 yuan per month is really comfortable living in my opinion.
On the other hand, Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn. I agree it’s absolutely not worth it to even start if you are merely curious or have no patience and will not be using it regularly for the long term.
While that goes for most languages, Chinese is a couple of notches more difficult. Especially for westerners. As you have mentioned it is also incredibly hard to retain if you don’t use it.
Hi Zee – It’s most useful if you are going to open your own business, though a lot of people have done so without learning Chinese.
5000 per month in Shanghai doesn’t get you far in Shanghai these days (unless you’re living outside of the second outer ring or have housing included), but for all second tier cities it’s more than enough to live off of.
I work in China and I use Mandaring everyday, because it is the way I communicate with my collegues. I got this job and the job before it because I could speak Mandarin. To me Mandarin is money. Many forieners in China get by just fine without Mandarin and have no plans to learn it. I think this is because they don’t know what they are missing out on. And I will admit it is not particularly obvious what you are missing. Many Chinese people take great pride in their international outlook and English skills. So they may tend to under-emphasize the need to speak Mandarin. But as another poster mentioned speaking Mandarin is a leg up and one that other people will take years of training to match.
[...] have always said that sometimes being a Chinese speaker is sometimes a disadvantage. Those who do not speak Chinese stare at me in wonder when I emphatically state this. But on a day [...]
[...] have always said that sometimes being a Chinese speaker is sometimes a disadvantage. Those who do not speak Chinese stare at me in wonder when I emphatically state this. But on a day [...]
How helpful is it for a person to take the HSK to find employment in China? Bear in mind that a) they have studied/interned there in the past and b) they have a degree in Chinese (not engineering or IT) and looking for translation or journalism type of work.
Great article and very well thought out. I do, however, think it is a bit extreme. Chinese may not have served you as well as you thought it would but that also depends on what field you go into. I also think that as the world becomes more connected, knowing Chinese will become more and more of an advantage. Their population is so huge that it is hard not to see it having advantages to knowing.
Very interesting, In 15 years of Retail, I often assumed knowing Chinese would be an asset, but after working for a while as an ESL teacher, I realized the same, most Chinese natives would rather speak in english. I thouroughly enjoyed your take on this.
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Don’t learn Chinese because it will pay off financially. There is no path to riches except doing what you love. In every industry, there are people who work for peanuts because they work for money and people who are wealthy because they are experts in their field. I’ve learning Chinese because I’m in IT and enjoy studying languages. It an additional tool that will put food on my table. If it makes me a millionaire, who cares?
Time is not infinite. Opportunities will always compete for space. The question of maximising opportunity for financial benefit is practical. However, I find that my learning Mandarin has done 2 things, 1. taught me that Yoda from star wars speaks english as a direct translation from chinese grammar. 2. By making what is seen to be a major effort to understand other people, they have little choice but to warm to you. Once people have warmed up, opportunities follow at a pace that cannot easily be reconciled with the time it takes to learn any particular skill.
I say, learn, why not. We do not live in a zero sum game, people provide opportunities, if they like you, and the force is strong within you, how can you fail?
Chinese immersion is currently very popular with US public school districts. Prepare the kidos to complete in the global econ. My wife of some twenty years is Chinese & was an elementary teacher in China, and so is sometimes asked to tutor. She tells them to concentrate on math instead. Learning Mandarin will only be useful for the kiddy when his firm is taken over by a Chinese firm & he needs to understand his new masters. If he does not do well in math he might as well learn the Mandarin phrase for “Do you want fries with that?”.
Telling anyone who wants to really interact with the Chinese not to learn their language is just pure baloney.
It’s only once you start to understand what they’re speaking, that you will realise you still have no clue as to what they’re saying, and start to close the gap.
While Chinese alone may not feed the bulldog, it can be the golden icing on any other cake you bake.
Learning Chinese has recently become very important to my job as sales manager in Asia…and allowed me to double my salary. But only AFTER 8-9 years of other work and another specialisation. Basically I have a major advantage now over most candidates for this type of role. Businesswise Chinese is important to connect with people and not to rely on other people too much. If you wish to run your own business in China you should (if you can) learn Chinese…if not hope you can trust your partners/wife etc. If you want to sell into the Chinese market you should also speak/read Chinese, in the same manner that a sales mgr for US/European market woud need English/German/French etc. Remember selling something is very different than buying…you need to provide customer service and communicate clearly and understand the market.
I would always say if it looks like you will live in China for a bit longer than you expected or have a Chinese partner you should really learn Chinese to make your life easier and earnings higher (all things considered). It is also true though that you should focus on being an expert in SOMETHING/ANYTHING before trying to be an expert in Chinese, Chinese is the great facilitator and the icing on the cake!
Taipeir – I totally agree – it is a great complementary skill for another specialization, or for doing business on your own. It’s not enough on its own to help you get a good job.
Thank you for your many insights about China and Chinese language. For most of us, learning another language well is not so much an economic advantage as it is a step in personal growth. The better I know French or Spanish, the more I’m aware of my peculiar English-speaking world. Because Chinese is such a different language, as you’ve documented so well, my understanding of my Westernness is challenged and extended. Put learning Chinese in the same category as learning an instrument. No one who practices for years to play Ravel’s “Le tombeau de Couperin” or Gershwin has wasted any time. Self-awareness is the goal, but introspection doesn’t work. Order tea in Chongqing instead.
1. Educated want to speak in English. TRUE. but just because they are educated doesn’t mean that they CAN speak passible English.
2. Not Applicable outside China. WHAT about all the Chinese Restaurants?! HA HA HA
3. Pay cut. Wow. So Chinese learning English will get a pay raise. Westerners studying Chinese get a pay cut. No wonder few study Chinese!
4. Takes years to learn. True True. I often say I will be learning for the rest of my life. I can imagine when I’m 80 and I learn the real usage of “就 jiu”!!!
5. Lots of effort to maintain. True again. Chinese is the classic “NEW YEAR” type language. You make a resolution to learn it. You do. Then lose it. Just like a resolution. UGH!
Interesting post, and fascinating. I always guessed that Chinese immersion for kids was much like French immersion in Saskatchewan (where I grew up) or learning latin in school… good for your brain in general, broadening your view on the world, and any bilingualism helps your language skills overall. Personally I am learning Chinese as it is my son’s native language (he is adopted from China) and I want to encourage him to keep contact with it. Also, I totally enjoy it since I DON’T HAVE TO learn Chinese. No one cares if I know a word of Chinese, and so it is a very pleasurable procrastination for everything else I MUST do, and gives me pride to boot when chinese strangers in the Montreal subway remark with surprise what a great Beijing accent I have and how wonderful I can say some things to my son in Chinese and how amazing I am learning at home. I figure compared to the hours many people I know doing sudoko, it is a pretty useful investment of time. And I DO one day hope to be developing beginner level complimentary chinese learning materials… so there MAY be a wee economic payoff in the distant future. But hey, 20 yrs ago I could barely cobble together a sentence of basic french, and now I am bilingual in French, and earn half my living from illustrating French texts.
Thanks for the article and all the comments!
Great article.
Love the economic view.
I do agree with the opportunity cost of time. However, given your views does this mean that learning any language, apart from English, is really worth it? You could apply this way of thinking to most if not all other languages. Wouldn’t most business meetings between a native English speaker and, say, a German native speaker be conducted in English, or with a translator?
Also your calculations seem a little out of context in that, yes people here (in Shanghai) work for peanuts, but that’s when you convert the RMB into £. Also the yuan is against the £ has recently surged. The Government are actually keeping it artificially low, thus in the future the yuan will be worth a lot more. A better comparison would be standard of living (Although I do appreciate this goes beyond the realms of this blog).
So I do agree that its a mammoth task learning and maintaining Chinese, and that at the moment it may not be financially beneficial unless you live in China. On the other hand (sorry to sound like a broke record) the economy, business and everyday wealth of people is growing, creating more opportunities to use Chinese. This could bring exciting prospects to a non native Chinese speaker. It could be seen as a future gain rather than an immediate return.
Please leave your thoughts.
Once again great article.
I forgot to mention, learning Chinese will be extremely important for one worldwide industry…tourism!
So if you want to get ahead in the tourism business pretty much anywhere in the world, at least learn some basic spoken Chinese. The Chinese are coming!
老外们你们好
HI everyone
I am a Cinese and I want to know how many people is or want to learning Chinese ,so I fond this site.
my English is not good so I think you have to imagine my real means
I think,the answer of is that worth to study Chinese, is base on your purpuse.
that means if you really want to get your goal and study Chinese could help you, so ,it is worth to learn. the reason is the reason right?
example, if you are interesting in Chinese civilization ,so I think you have to learn chinese . because almost all the chinese storys contains in the chinese characters and can’t explains by other language exactly.
Chinese have many books write hundredssssss year ago , and if you not learn chinese ,you really can’t understand the REALLY means in it , just like I read some english books like “red and black” or others, I know, I read it in chinese is very different from you read it in english .
and, if you want to make some money or get a good job, I don’t know is it good to leanr chinese, but after all, if you think it is worth, just do it. although Learn Chinese is very difficult , really difficult, I think chinese language is the MOST difficult language on the earth, but trust me ,chinese language is the best language. it is tha art. there art 12 ways to say a word “river”….
Nice article, short and sweet. And I was really thinking of learning Chinese, but this is the first article that has made me feel good about putting it off for as long as I have. It’s good to hear the opposite side sometimes because up until now all I’ve read or heard is a million reasons why I SHOULD learn Chinese. 2 of my brothers and my sister have been required to take it up in school, and while we are Asian we are most definitely NOT Chinese. Now I can laugh at them (just kidding). Anyway, thank you for balancing out the “learning Chinese” picture for me ^_^
Because you won’t be able to understand the Chinese culture and the Chinese mindset UNLESS you understand Chinese, the language. Which has pratical value, insomuch business interactions in China, especially the important ones into uncharted territory, hinge on mutual understanding.
*coughs* Of course, if you don’t want to do something important in China…Why the hell are you there, anyway?
What about the fact that most young people in Mainland China are learning English in school so in the next 10-20 years more and more Chinese people will speak English, at least the educated ones.
Really nice post. Thought provoking for sure.
Learning any new language (and especially Chinese) would give one distinct advantage though and that is the language vocabulary and phonetics are so different, your mind gets to churn different instructions all together which in turn strengthens your thought process indirectly.
I arrived in China in 2000 and have been working in and out of China ever since. Through the whole period I have been working on my Chinese. I genuinely consider myself to be ‘fluent’ (although not native-level; there’s a difference).
My perspective is very simple. Having Mandarin skills in China will increasingly become like having a university degree in the west. It won’t mean you will be able to get any job you want; it will instead become the sine qua non of ANY job in China.
There will simply be enough foreigners with real skills who speak Mandarin that there will be no need for those who can’t.
So it will become a simple decision. Do you want to work in China enough to spend the 5 or more years you need to get a grip on the language? If not, then don’t start on the Mandarin!
As for opportunity costs…well, what’s the opportunity cost of spending 4 years training for the law or IT or accounting? Are you so certain that these are risk-free areas too? So certain that they will guarantee a great career?
well, after reading most of your comments,as a chinese, I’d like to say that a foreigner who can speak a little chinese will surely welcomed by chinese people here in China. It may be difficult for you to learn chinese well, but it really worth. not just for businese, but for the
This blog brings up some very interesting points, especially the one about opportunity costs.
At the moment I am confused as to whether or not I should focus my time and energy on learning mandarin.
I am a native Northern Californian who is also fluent in French (spent some time working and studying in France and West Africa). At the moment I am teaching English in China but would ultimately like to work in the field of international trade and/or development (as a recent college graduate, I’m still not completely set on one career path). However I do know that I want to work in an international work environment.
My contract is up very soon and I’m debating whether I should come back to China in the fall to seriously study Chinese at a university or language school. I like learning languages. Many people around me say its a great idea, but then I find opposing reasons like this blog… hmm. As someone who already speaks English and French, would Chinese be a big asset to that skill set?
Any thoughts would be great!
The article at http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/14170
expresses my views best. I knocked my brains out learning Russian 1975-1985, visited the Soviet Union in 1985, was fluent in Russian then, but remember only many individual words now, but cannot form sentences. I earned A’s in 4 semesters of French 2006-2007 and 1 semester of Chinese. I am glad I took these languages, but it IS an absolute waste of time deluding oneself that one is going to DIRECTLY SPEAK OR WRITE these non-English languages. My experience has taught me that ALL effort in learning & studying other human languages should go into improving COMPUTER-AIDED TRANSLATION. This will involve the study of neurology and possibly research into telepathic thought transfer and its effect on matter. Total immersion in THIS line of research is what will pay off. Total immersion in a language does not work if one has not first studied the grammar and syntax from a book. I have “totally immersed” myself in Spanish TV for 2 decades, but I cannot form sentences. I know only a few token words of Spanish. I have Hungarian relatives who lived in America for 30+ years yet never learned to speak or understand a word of English. Learning of languages (and this goes for computer languages as well) can be done only by starting from a formal organized textbook.
I’d be glad to get a job putting all my science & engineering & mathematical modelling expertise & experience to work in improving computer translation programs.
On the subject of riches: there is NO path to riches, except a socialist or communist system which at least partly undoes the injustices of past income inequities by paying EVERYbody EQUALLY. THAT is the ONLY way to make money in the world. NOBODY has any control of whether anyone ELSE will pay them. The history of the world is the history of the vast majority of employers and people too stupid to know what to do with their money, lavishing huge sums on CEOs of corporation who do no more work than the minimum-wage worker, and often produce less.
I took the Chinese and French specifically in case I need to move to China or Canada, as there are no job opportunities in America any more. But, now I see, even that is not good enough. I should just have spent the time researching computer translation.
Seems like you need to get out of Beijing and/or Shanghai.
Having lived in Harbin for almost 2 years, I can tell you that there are still places in China where fluent Engish speakers are practically non existant.
Granted, these types of places might not be on the top 5 of anyone’s travel destinations (to put it mildly).
All the more reason to invest all effort into inventing telepathic and improving computer machine language translation.
All other studies of languages are a waste of time. The original poster is correct.
I’ve never been to Beijing.
@Emily
…given the fact that you previously stated the following:
“there is NO path to riches, except a socialist or communist system”
Im going to go ahead and ignore you.
@Dave
You just now didn’t.
Obviously you don’t understand the concept of differences of opinion.
Just like it’s my ‘opinion’ that the moon isnt made of cheese, and the earth isnt flat.
[...] do it? Well, Pǔtōnghuà is the official language of a rapidly expanding world power. Even if the effort isn’t strictly speaking cost-justifiable, I get to broaden my cultural and linguistic [...]
Interesting thoughts…I do agree in one sense- that in a simple cost-benefit analysis taking nothing else into account, learning Chinese is probably not worth it financially.
However- I do think the effort may be both personally and economically worthwhile in specific circumstances.
As mentioned earlier in comments- the tourism industry worldwide where learning Chinese now may have a huge financial benefit later. (Because filling up a cruise ship every week with nouveau rich Chinese may indeed make up for the time spent compared to someone who learned another language with far fewer nouveau rich speakers to sell those weekly cruises to)
Another, actual example of someone I know personally:
An American actor who would have maybe made it into a few B movies while waiting tables in LA if he had pursued acting in Hollywood – instead, he learned Chinese in China and now speaks fluently and works as an actor in Chinese tv shows and movies and is considered wealthy by any worldwide standard. Learning Chinese was directly economically beneficial to him in ways that no other language would have been. (Simply because Chinese producers will pay big money for his white face, fluent Chinese, and acting talent/ability all in one package)
Point being- like any endeavor- you need to know what you plan on using it for to truly make the determination of whether the time and expense are worth it for your particular circumstance.
(Oh- fwiw- I’m an expat living in Beijing and damn this language is hard to get fluent in even living here!)
Unfortunately, I disagree. Learning Chinese (including reading and writing) is very valuable. It’s not only because learning any language broadens the mind and my belief that nothing learned is useless (for example, if Steve Jobs hand’t taken Calligraphy classes DTP may never had been born) but it exercises different areas of the brain to Western languages.
I’ll never be fluent but at least I can be partly literate. I’ve also met foreigners living for decades in other parts of the world who can’t order a beer or say thank you in any language except English. I never want to be like them.
I have to question your first point a little bit. That’s true if we take “well-educated” seriously, but…most Chinese people are not that well-educated. I’m presently working in China and out of some 2000-3000 people in my company, one occasionally speaks to me in English. The others all randomly urge each other to talk to me in English sometimes, in which case the person urged blushes and shakes her/his head and says “I can’t.” Sure, they all took at least six years of English in middle school, high school, and college, but they apparently didn’t learn anything.
I suppose I should acknowledge I’m not in a particularly cosmopolitan city (ha ha, there aren’t really that many of those in China, I believe.) However, I am in a provincial capital (Hefei) of 4,000,000+ people and in a company that advertises itself as “internationalized.”
I also want to acknowledge that I did take a pay-cut to come here, even from my part-time job in the states last year. However, with the present economic climate there that was all I could get: part-time jobs, and as a new college grad I needed to build some real-looking work experience.
I definitely wouldn’t recommend learning Chinese as a way to improve your marketability. However, if you’re looking for an interesting challenge it offers that. I was pretty fluent in Spanish when I dropped it to learn Chinese, but I just lost interest in it. Romance languages are all the same, so I didn’t really want to start another. There’s And it offers you the chance to communicate with some 1.5 billion people scattered over the world. (Yeah, some of them do speak English, but talking to them in their native language gives you a chance to know them in a different way.)
Plus, Chinese isn’t really as hard as most people think it is, but the fact is people think it’s really hard. That gives you a pretty big ego boost when you tell them you can speak/understand/read/write it. I secretly deeply enjoy the feeling of superiority I get every time one of my non-Chinese-speaking American friends here talk about how they can’t figure out how to get the right bus (they take taxis and call a Chinese friend to tell the driver where to go. Ha!) or have to point at pictures on the menu to order at a restaurant. It’s a guilty pleasure, and one I try to hide from them, but a pleasure nonetheless.
Most contributors seem to agree that it could be a waste of time from an economic/financial point of view, so I won’t insist on that as it can be true or not depending on people’s luck or careful market research.
…
That said, not many studies are a sure way to become richer… It’s often a gamble and also a decision with happy consequences almost always very limited in time/history. I’m thinking of the early computer engineers of the 80s whose luck didn’t last 10 years without having to continue learning and evolving…
I studied English and made lots of money out of it (that’s particularly cool since it’s one of the easiest languages on Earth, which is obviously a big reason why it is now the “international” language) but it’s the first time in my career/life (I’m a translator from English to French) that I’m starting to think of moving on as I’m seeing (feeling…) the potential of English waning. As English has become totally banal, there maybe less and less need to translate it in the future but at the same time English-speaking countries hegemony is failing…
At the same time… China is booming….
Their level of English (even in Shanghai I assure you) is pathetic and it is clear, after a few weeks there, that they really don’t care about improving, don’t have the time and don’t need to improve their English… I had always read that in the 80s-90s they were so eager to know English and were learning by themselves at home listening to the BBC and so on… That’s so far from the truth now!!… They don’t need English at all to function. They are busy making money and getting a life in this huge, thriving and hugely populated country… Why on Earth would they so need English now like the rest of the planet? They don’t. It is easy to feel the difference just by going to the so close Japan. THEY make much more efforts, because they need it. The Chinese don’t need it.
I studied Chinese for 2 years when I was at University (more than 15 years ago so almost nothing remains since I went on doing completely other things) and I’ve been in China for 3 months (and even a great part of it in Shanghai) and I am longing to get more time to study Chinese again and improve quickly as I definitely do not find satisfactory to be stuck having to rely on my English to just barely try and function here… to eat, to send something by post, to just read anything at all! English, hence any other language of course, is near to useless even in Shanghai (Good gracious that for taxi, bus and so on, iPhone’s apps and GPS do marvels!)
I am so frustrated not to be able to read, understand and really communicate with 99% of the people in China. Sure, you can feel like you can function in English if you remain in the expatriates’ little world (the history of Shanghai proves it) but what interest would there be to be forever stuck in that little world? (on top of that, once one knows Chinese, a big chunk of Japanese complexity comes down).
China is proving that it doesn’t need English to function and prosper and in so doing might actually need it even less and less… and make us need to know Chinese more and more… Somehow, that’s a fascinating experience. So far, in recent history, to succeed, every country needed to pass through English first… What if China bypasses that?…
In Translation, very often, no matter what the original language of a text is, it gets translated to all the other languages based on the English translation… I am feeling that China might change that very quickly and those who will be able to go directly from Chinese to other languages bypassing English altogether could be very useful in the near future… Especially that foreign companies don’t find it so easy anymore to prosper in China, so more and more things will be totally Chinese without foreign interventions… and we can’t (must not!) rely on their English
This was the first country I’ve visited in my life where I could clearly feel that they really don’t need English to have their tourism industry prosper as it is already thriving with only the Chinese population (who seem to be everywhere all the time with so much time to visit despite their limited holidays that this has left me perplexed), so making efforts and investments to develop the Chinese tourism industry in English really doesn’t seem a priority nor necessity for them now and probably for a while…
Of course that shocks many people so used to the hegemony of English and, being a traveler, I do find handy that there is an “international” easy language like English that we can all use to communicate on this planet, but at the same time, somewhere, somehow, I found really fascinating and almost refreshing that a big prospering country shows the world that they might not need English unlike all of us, that they don’t really have any interest in developing services in English since such a tiny minority would benefit from it… and that to get closer to that fascinating Chinese culture, we just have no choice but to make an effort and remain motivated to learn… as they won’t help
I began studying Chinese in 1978 when it wasn’t quite so hot as it is now. I speak with total fluency such that Chinese always assume I’m Chinese when we speak over the phone. It’s been fun but overall I’m sympathetic to the original post hinting it could be a waste of time.
I think whoever said ‘view it as a pleasant and possibly expensive (opportunity cost) hobby or cultural pastime’ was on the mark.
It’s a bit like martial arts training: people get into Chinese with a fantasy scenario in their minds of speaking in just the right situation and impressing everybody, just as people start martial arts with a head full of Goldilocks type of fantasy street combat scenario in their heads.
Neither one will ever be of all that much practical use except for a few very specialized professionals, but it’s a fun fantasy anyway and both can be used to try to impress people at parties.
From reading all the comments above that all come from one SAD article, I strongly believe that learning Mandarin Chinese is a ‘MUST’ for our British. I completed agree with what Peggy stated “China is booming in every aspect”. We, our British should not ignore this, we should make efforts to learn its language and culture. It may not seem a short-term benefits in some ways, but it will provide us with great potential bonuses ahead in every way. Nothing stays the same, Chinese language will become the world language in the near future soon, we have no reason and can’t afford to be left behind.
There are 50+ million overseas Chinese outside of China. Of course, your ability to speak Mandarin will help you.
In Malaysia, for example, 26 out of 40 richest people in 2011 are Chinese.
I agree with most people here. Learning Chinese is waste of time because how many Japanese, Indians, Russians, Arabs, Brazilians, and most of Europe, etc will ever speak Chinese? the answer is Never. And those people make up 70% of world population. Vice versa too, Chinese is unlikely to learn Hindu, Japanese or Arabic too. English will be the universal language because it bonds all cultures and nations together.. it’s also language of science. For instance, even on this forum we have people from all over the World, and yet we are debating in English
The problem with Chinese is that it’s character based and have no alphabetical order.. and there’s no enough word in Chinese language compared to 2 million English words.
I think point 0 in the original post is a bit misleading. There are tons of older, well-educated people in China who can’t speak a word of English. As for the younger Chinese, if they are well-educated they will have some idea how to speak English, but many of them still have huge difficulty expressing themselves and feel much happier speaking Chinese. If you want to live and work in China, speaking Chinese is helpful in any situation.
I work for a Chinese company in a tiny town with 4 foreigners. The English level here is very low – only a handful can speak (and they’ve been educated abroad). But they are making a killing here. There are about 40 high-rises going up now, more than in many capital cities. There’s an impenetrable wall if you don’t speak the languge – you have only a hint of what is going on. The entire world is doing business with China – and everyone who doesn’t speak Mandarin is utterly clueless what’s happening with their investments or purchases. I see countless foreigners come here with blank looks on their faces because they are unable to find a restroom without a translator. Learning the language is a prerequisite for doing business in China – unless you are willing to be taken for a ride by your translator or English-speaking Chinese partner. Of course, languages are useless unless you are in the environment that uses them. But if you want to do business with China (and you will, one way or another), better learn the language. It will open the door to many opportunities; but it’s up to you if you take them. Just sitting at home knowing Chinese doesn’t translate into income; but if you come here and can navigate this place, I think the opportunities are endless, esp. compared with the deadend job market that the US has become. BTW I’m an attorney licensed in the US and the work I do here is great. It’s a tough language, yes; but worth it if you’re willing to also learn the culture and live here.
[...] seem to get enough). Here’s another blogger’s interesting take on the subject (5 reasons why learning Chinese might be a waste of your time), but in the end, one language will be the common language and if the Chinese speak better English [...]
Im studying mandarin because its great fun.
i also study korean.and i think its always good to learn languages.even if it’s not for financial gain.i started learning chinese because of kung fu.and now my life is good! peace
and also, my gf’s parents dont speak english.She speaks cantonese and about 3 other chinese dialects.
and of course mandarin.plus my hometown is basically overrun by chinese!:)
四海为家
[...] the same all over the English-speaking world. Look at this article. And this one (it’s like the other two except it’s about babies). They all tell the [...]
I feel that there are indirect ways learning a language like Chinese can help you. Like with math, which would help you with science and so forth. I’m not disagreeing with you but you can also think in way that it can help you get a job. Don’t think how is this going to help me get money. Try thinking how will this help me with other skills which will help me get a certain job.
I learn Chinese because I enjoy it. Not because I am looking for better job or anything else. In Malaysia where I come from Chinese is spoken everywhere. It some wonderful finaly to be able to understand what the sign board mean, what the Chinese person next to you in LRT is saying…It like a new world of the Chinese opening up and revealling it secret to me…