Comments on: 5 Reasons Why Learning Chinese Could Be a Waste of Your Time

By: MM

MM — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 16:37:53 +0000

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.

By: wake-up British

wake-up British — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:47:11 +0000

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.

By: Scott Meredith

Scott Meredith — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 01:50:41 +0000

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.

By: Peggy

Peggy — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:18:01 +0000

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 …

By: Tamar Harrington

Tamar Harrington — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 09:11:53 +0000

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.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:33:27 +0000

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.

By: Chinese Language Learner

Chinese Language Learner — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 03:24:51 +0000

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!)

By: Hǎojíle! Tools for learning Chinese « Crossing the Streams

Hǎojíle! Tools for learning Chinese « Crossing the Streams — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:12:35 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:57:35 +0000

Just like it’s my ‘opinion’ that the moon isnt made of cheese, and the earth isnt flat.

By: Emily Ulrich

Emily Ulrich — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 14:32:45 +0000

@Dave
You just now didn’t.
Obviously you don’t understand the concept of differences of opinion.