13 replies to this topic

[FLaKes]

Hi, I am asking this question because I would like to hear some of your opinions regarding learning chinese as a benefit in my career. I have been thinking about it ever since I learned that the company called foxconn is going to open a facility here in my city, and the so called "headhunters" are searching for people who speak english and chinese. This is going to happen a couple of months from now and there is no way I can benefit from this opportunity yet as I dont think I will be able to speak chinese a couple of months from now....

The thing is that I speak spanish and I also speak good english, and my career revolves around Information Technologies. Which is a career in which english dominates, so I have thought about it and I really dont think I could benefit much from chinese because almost everyone who works in this field already knows english. Besides, I wouldnt have any way to practice chinese, unless I get a chinese keyboard or something so that I could atleast practice in some chat's or forums

What do you all think about it? Do you think that chinese will become an important language like english?

[sonesay]

One of my dads friend reckons that it will be since the Chinese are becoming a more developed country and they are doing more business more and more with more people around the world. He even went on to say things like screw other languages go learn Cantonese or some other Chinese language. It was something along the lines of that anyway. Now this is coming from a non Chinese person (Hes white) but I don't know anything about business of economics so I don't know. With more news reports of china appearing on news about their development it does seem to make sense. They are a country with so many people. So imagine you sell a product to only .5% of the population you'd still make millions? that depends on the product of course but yeah they have so many people its insane. Cheap labor and high productivity I know of one guy indirectly who gets work done in china for dirt cheap and hes a million air here. He just has an idea and gets designers to design it then gets it built in china. One product I know of was his spanner apparently it was a super spanner that did not break and could grab any nut. The other was those boats they use to shoot movies in the water. It was large enough and stable to hold their camera and what ever gear.

I know some Chinese people who go to my university they are rich. You gotta be to be paying for international studies. Theres so many of them.

Yeah so go China.

[Bluebear]

If you are going to work in China I believe you will have a benefit if you understand or talk Chinese. My dad worked in China for many years and knows a lot of it. I would love to learn more Chinese, but it is hard. Since I am probably not going to either work or live there, I do not think I ever will even try to learn it.

Well maybe this did not help much, but my point is that if you are going to live or work there it is clever to learn. (Of course.) BUT if you are going to work in America or wherever you live... then I think English would be enough.

[day_armstrong]

Here in Singapore, the dominant race is Chinese. They make up about 80% of the population. I am no Chinese but I am learning it since I guess it will be useful for my career (to interact with them, etc). Chinese ppl are good businessmen, hence it will be good to be able to speak in Chinese when you have some business with them. I see that your job is in IT and you live in Mexico. I would not say that Chinese will not be useful. It IS always good to learn other's language. You see, China is growing market. If you have some intention of doing business in the future, Chinese will surely be good for you. Moreover, it is practically useful when you are working in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, not to mention about PRC as well. One more thing is that Chinese people are everywhere, from US to India to Africa.

[MadDog]

I reckon , if thats what your bosses have already stated, then of course it will help your career to learn it. In fact, anything that gives you the edge over a competitor for the same position, HAS to help. I dont know anything about chinese, but I have a mate who works for mitsubishi air-con and he goes there regularly. Apparently it is not the easiest to learn, until you discover out of the hundreds of characters in the language, you can apparently get by on about 50-70 well-chosen ones. Most chinese only know a portion of them anyway (hearsay ),as most are too obscure to become used everyday.

[FLaKes]

Thankyou all for the awesome replies. I have really been thinking about it, and I really liked what MadDog said about anything that gives "me an edge over the competitor for the same position has to help". Which I definitely agree upon, and It has led me to believe that I wont really need chinese for my position. I would be better of learning another programing language or getting certified in certain programs which are related to my career. Besides, at the rate in which technology is moving, I wouldnt doubt that we are near to having a high tech device that will be able to translate languages on the fly. Wouldnt you think?

[Diffusr]

Think about this: although English is kind of like the "international language" and anywhere in the world you go you will find someone who speaks english. the language spoken by the most number of people in the world is actually Chinese, though most of those still live in China.
There are over 1 billion people in China and the population of the whole world is about 8 billion. So yes, as China develops, Chinese will become more and more widely spoken. It is a wise choice of language to learn because it is so different from English and many companoes are trying to expand into China. There are about triple the number of Chinese a there are US citizens and their earning capacity is catching up.
It would almost be foolish not to learn it if you want to be successful in the future.

[tatati]

Chinese is difficult and you will benefit a lot from learning it. I've downloaded some pimsleur chinese lessons and by changing the entonation of a vowel you might transform a sentence into a negative one, how crazy is that? Even the japanese think it is difficult. And all the ideograms, there is no easier alphabet in chinese like the is for japanese, if you go read a japanese comic book you might see some other writing on top of the complicated ideograms -the furigana to show you how you are supposed to read it. But how do chinese learn their ABCs hehe for all of the ideograms man, it must take some 15 years to go past illiterate in chinese, so i have no ambition of learning to read chinese. But learning spoken mandarin sounds doable. I met a guy who stayed with this chinese family in argentina for one year, and he spoke basic mandarin. We were at a bar and this chinese guy was selling blinky stuff and what not, so they chatted up a LOT and he ended up buying just a pen

[y4nzi]

I think in the future learning Chinese would benefit many people since it really is one of the most rapidly developing countries in the world, especially when it comes to businesses and technology, not to mention the huge population size.
Having said that Mandarin is actually quite difficult to learn. SPeaking might not be so bad but there are hundreds of thousands of character for you to memorize.

[grahamdart]

FLaKes, on Feb 22 2008, 03:26 PM, said:

Hi, I am asking this question because I would like to hear some of your opinions regarding learning chinese as a benefit in my career. I have been thinking about it ever since I learned that the company called foxconn is going to open a facility here in my city, and the so called "headhunters" are searching for people who speak english and chinese. This is going to happen a couple of months from now and there is no way I can benefit from this opportunity yet as I dont think I will be able to speak chinese a couple of months from now....

The thing is that I speak spanish and I also speak good english, and my career revolves around Information Technologies. Which is a career in which english dominates, so I have thought about it and I really dont think I could benefit much from chinese because almost everyone who works in this field already knows english. Besides, I wouldnt have any way to practice chinese, unless I get a chinese keyboard or something so that I could atleast practice in some chat's or forums

What do you all think about it? Do you think that chinese will become an important language like english?

I live in Taiwan where Foxconn is based and have been studying Chinese for 4 or so years here. Learning Chinese is totally doable if you're prepared to put in a couple of years of work... It helps to live somewhere Chinese is spoken.

What city are you in where Foxconn was hiring?

Edited by grahamdart, 13 January 2009 - 08:18 PM.