Fewer university students are studying Mandarin
economist.com
economist.com
In Taiwan street signs do mostly have English translations. A lot of citizens speak English, especially night market vendors. You'll also have a lot of native English speakers in Taipei due to expatriation from US and Canada.
In Singapore signs officially are in English. And it's one of the four official languages, which means most people speaks English.
In Malaysia people usually speak at least 4 languages. Because it was ruled by Britain before, people speak English fairly well.
Lastly, in China, well, nobody is traveling there now. International travel is down 97% this year, even after reopening. And if you're doing business there, well, there's no point understanding the contract in Mandarin because most likely it won't be enforced, and will favor local business anyways by the courts. What's really screwy is the government has replaced most of the English translation on street signs from a literal translation to phonetic translation of the mandarin sound. So even if your read the English part of the sign you cannot understand it.
1.) There is a very high dislike of China across the world.
Large majorities in most of the 19 countries surveyed have negative views of China https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/06/29/negative-views...
2.) No business need to travel there. Foreign investment is down 90% this year. Literally no US/europe presence in the trade fairs in China the summer.
3.) Flights are super expensive, because of low demand, upwards of $5k-10k. travel out of China is down hugely due to the economy, you can search on youTube for videos from Shanghai airport where the airport is devoid of travelers, and filled with empty shops.
4.) It is very hard for travelers to navigate through China. No English translations in street signs. One needs Alipay to pay for anything in China, which is complicated to setup. Ethnocentrism from rising nationalism means there could be racism/violence against travelers.
On the one hand, it's staggering to me how rapid the pace of change against China has been. On the other hand, it was also staggering how rapidly they were modernizing and building in 2018.
1. You need an onerous-to-obtain visa to visit. There is no visa exemption.
2. Banking is a total pain for a foreigner. Many places only accept Alipay or Wechat, which require a Chinese bank account. Cash doesn't work well either, because the largest denomination is tiny.
3. Many US-China flights were canceled in the pandemic and never restarted afterwards. As a result, flights to China are expensive.
4. The Western apps are commonly blocked in China, and the local apps don't have an English translation. Your smartphone is a lot less useful in China.
5. Many US employers ban their employees from bringing company equipment (laptops) into China for fear of corporate espionage.
6. Lots of reports of hostile behavior toward westerners...
The list could go on. There's a reason e.g. Japanese tourism is booming!
Even Hong Kong, these days.
It's a shame, too. China has some really great cultural sites, substantial natural beauty, cosmopolitan cities, and excellent and varied cuisine. It would be a great tourist destination under a different government.
This is average schmuk stuff in China.
These are the people with the means to challenge the power structure, and they are watched more closely.
If someone in this wealth range holds up a blank piece of paper, they may end up in jail.
With any foreign country you should understand their cultural norms and laws. Your own ignorance is a valid consideration for travel, not being arrested as a political prisoner. You won't get in any trouble as a tourist or business person 99% of the time.
So there is 1% chance; and why would I take even 1% chance of getting into troubled country?
Good luck getting any Canadian that is not a dual citizen with China to visit, especially because CCP tyranny combined with Trudeau's incompetence cost these two people almost 3 years of their lives in Chinese detention.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Michael_Spavor_an...
1. My visa took less than a week. In SF, where the consulate is busier than usual.
2. This is actually better than the last time I was there in 2019. Alipay now supports international credit cards.
3. Very true. Direct flights are rare.
4. It's annoying that even Gmail etc are blocked. VPNs that worked pre-Covid don't work anymore. The only thing that reliably worked was my roaming T-Mobile connection (but slow...)
5. This was always the case at my previous employer. We were issued temporary Chromebooks that were wiped after we returned. This time, I was extra careful and took a burner phone and left my personal phone off till I got to HK.
Also starting from zero since covid restrictions.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-latest-problem-people-do...
On a more personal note I've had a family member recently return from living in China. Harassment from local law enforcement had a large part to play.
...Literal embodiment of Satan? What? You do realize they don't follow Christianity right? Nonsense. Overblown exaggeration.
Thats what I feel like anyway
Lots of English speaking opportunities too, but I wanna know what people think and how in their native language, I want access
And if you’re actually interested in riding the ranks as a career it’s a must that you can be able to work in the language comfortable for your superiors (in some places that’ll be English, of course…)
It’s possible to not have it, but every successful outsider I’ve seen in foreign countries learn the local language even if it’s “unnecessary”
Language will be a human struggle as long as humans run the world, I think you're absolutely correct on the meaningful and valuable practice of learning the language of the place you want to succeed in.
I'm only fluent in English, and I like it very much for its flexibility and expressivity, but I'm familiar with a handful of romantic languages and think every language has it's high and low points.
It is true that China like most countries at some point is experiencing a crisis at the moment.
As an aside, I think Xi needs to go. Deng Xiaoping’s strategy was better imho. The semi-planned economy approach has worked surprisingly well for now but it’s clear it’s running out of steam. China has already suffered greatly due to such a strategy before.
But still, there was one business owner arguing that there's never been a better time to do business with China because it's cheaper right now, so who knows what will actually happen.
But the machine translations are not (and will probably never be) perfect I’ll show you why:
Habló con su jefa y le dijo que le tiene ganas.
Google translate: He spoke to his boss and told her that he feels like it.
Well in Spanish this could mean:
(He/she/you) talked to (his/her/your) (boss/wife) and told (him/he)r that (he/she/it/you) (somewhere between wants and craves) (him/her/you/it).
This sentence mind you, isn’t especially contrived. It’s just how people talk in Spanish. And while all of these potential translations are good, only one is actually accurate. The only thing that it certainly doesn’t mean is:
He spoke to his boss and told her that he feels like it.
Which is what Google said it meant.
The problem is that what may be and can be ambiguous in one language, often needs to be explicit in another language. And when it must be explicit, the translator or whatever’s translating makes a choice and you don’t know what’s being said on your behalf. And while you can certainly improve a machines ability to guess what’s meant, you’d have to change the languages themselves to actually solve this problem.
What I find most amusing is when English speakers complain about why Spanish uses genders and say its pointless. Because Spanish uses genders for precisely the same reason English does. To add specificity and make things less ambiguous.
I realise this is a very long way to both agree with what you said and disagree.
However, after the first couple of times trying to teach in China and South Korea, I turned down further gigs, because I felt the students were not understanding me.
I don't think this is a fair take for a couple of reasons.
Mandarin is unlike other languages in that it's written form is famously ideographic. Phonetic translation is all that is done in any pair {L, M}. I assure you there is no such thing as a literal translation in any language.
Secondly, english as a global lingua franca is not a given and we in the anglosphere ought to be gracious in it's modern historical role, lest it decline (this is an exact mirror of dollar reserve privilege). Your statement reads as "be more accommodating for me". But through the prism of good manners it smacks of liberal entitlement.
>There is 0 reason to learn
hoo boy, i don't get paid enough for this... carry on
Could you give me an example? I just Googled "beijing airport sign" and everything seems translated as expected, e.g., Gates, Beijing Capital Airport, International Departure, Drinking Water, etc.
I assume you don't mean you want Beijing written as "North Capital"?
The English word “station” was replaced with “Zhan,” which is the pinyin or romanised version of the Chinese character.
In some places, station names such as Olympic Park and Terminal 2 of the Beijing airport were changed to “Aolinpike Gongyuan” and “2 Hao Hangzhanlou”.
https://www.economist.com/china/2022/04/13/why-china-is-turn...
Why China is turning away from English
Given that English is not a major local language outside of Hong Kong, I'd expect there's a very high chance that an English-only speaker might need to interact with a Chinese-only speaker. It could be something like trying to relay their goal to a taxi driver or delivery person, or something as critical as trying to gain the attention of emergency services (I'd assume if you called the equivalent of 999/911 and shouted a location in the phone, even if you couldn't explain further, that would be enough to trigger a response)
Providing the English speaking audience the Pinyin gives them a chance to be understood in that situation. The translated only name is more likely to be unrecognized by the lisstener.
It doesn't seem so bizarre when you go into the Montreal metro and the signs say "Gare Bonaventure" instead of "Bonaventure Station", and that's in a country where English is nominally a supported language.
But I don’t think English is a nominally supported language in Quebec. IIRC all of Canada outside of Quebec requires dual signage in english + French, but Quebec only requires French. I’d guess Gare bonaventure is an artifact of that law rather than a translation strategy.
If what the grandparent's linked Economist article says is true: "The province of Hainan has launched a campaign to 'clean up and rectify' kindergarten names by purging a variety of words, including 'world', 'global', 'bilingual' and 'international'", it does make me feel somewhat sad, as I would hope that many of the terms they list as falling out of favour should remain positive and aspirations for us as a species regardless of the political winds in Beijing.
> Mandarin is unlike other languages in that it's written form is famously ideographic. Phonetic translation is all that is done in any pair {L, M}. I assure you there is no such thing as a literal translation in any language.
There's no Mandarin/English translation for a "STOP" sign? I expect there is such a thing as a literal translation for most short instructions, the type of which you might see on a sign, for instance.
Btw, based on Wikipedia, China uses symbols for traffic signs like Russia and Europe. US and Canada are the exceptions who use text and only a small few symbols.
In Malaysia it is depend on which part of Malaysia. Not all Malaysian Chinese can speak Mandarin. Certain part speak Cantonese or other dialect.
- studied Chinese at university in both Australia and China
- worked there for about 5 years
- have a mobile app for learning Chinese [0]
I think the biggest difference between when I started learning (20+ years ago) and now is that China is no longer seen as a positive, growing force in the world economy. I started learning because I thought it would be useful for business in future, and I was probably right - up until around 2012.
Since then, the country became increasingly hostile to foreigners, foreign companies decided to cut their losses and pull out, the internet ecosystem has become worse and worse and visas are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. China doesn't have much in the way of soft power (unlike, say, Korea), so it's just not a top destination for anyone coming from overseas.
That being said, there's also been a huge outflow of Mandarin speakers to other countries (like Australia), and Mandarin is becoming the default second language at junior/primary schools.
Mandarin is always going to be relevant (I mean, there's more than a billion speakers - it's not like they're going to vanish overnight). But I do agree that the language is becoming less "useful", because there are fewer and fewer prospects for working in China. Even international tourism is becoming less and leas attractive.
When I was growing up, my parents and relatives would constantly try to convince me to learn my ethnic language, half to know my roots and half to catch the "China train".
In university, I took it upon myself to take Mandarin courses for several years, but only got to middling competency.
Now, as the years go on, I find that once innate desire to "one day learn Mandarin" gradually fade away. In terms of usefulness: - it seems less and less likely that I'll ever live in China for a significant length of time due to all the common reasons others in the thread are mentioning - I have many international Chinese friends, but our friendships are based on cultural affinity rather than linguistic affinity, so they're perfectly fine switching to English whenever we need to talk about something complex.
It's interesting, but many of my American peers of Chinese heritage are actually learning Korean or Japanese, which would have been extremely rare 10 years ago.
10 years ago Western companies though they could and should make businesses in China.
Today, even many Chinese companies believe that China is not a good place for making business (e.g: AliBaba, Ever Grande, Country Garden, Tencent, etc).
Slightly off-topic: about 15 years ago Golman Sachs would say that the BRICS were the next countries to become rich.
Guess what...
Brazil and South Africa reverted back to its historical kleptocracy, Russia to autocracy, China to communism and India stuck in its economic protectionism.
Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
A few years back I was in Xining, an obscure third-tier provincial capital. The main shopping street could have been Tokyo.or Seoul, full of neon, fancy brands and expensive restaurants. But you walk one single block out and you're in a street market with flies buzzing around sheep heads and slabs of meat hanging off hooks.
When I was in college in the late 80’s, I studied Japanese and even did a foreign exchange program there because OF COURSE I would be working with Japanese people after I graduated.
With Spanish learning rate would be high because it's just in general a very popular second language to learn, especially for Americans, regardless of any anticipated economic benefit.
With Hindi, English is also commonly spoken in India and a large portion of official business is done in English due to it being an option external from the many different languages spoken in the country. So there wouldn't be much benefit to learning Hindi specifically unless as a hobby.
Japan and Korea might be seeing an uptick in foreigners learning the language due to their cultural exports, which are increasingly popular in the West.
The article puts some import on "soft power"... but is the economic rise of China really going to be soft power? The manufacturing capacity in China is amazing. We're not talking about exporting cultural goods. It's real goods and real power.
The money quote for me:
> The market may have also got more competitive. Bilingual Chinese graduates now fill many of the jobs that require Mandarin. In terms of language skills, they are often more qualified than their Western counterparts. All Chinese children start learning English by age eight, some even earlier. University-entrance exams in China require a high level of proficiency.
So basically, the US students are being out-competed by the Chinese students. Learning Mandarin is not incentivized in the US.
I do not look forward to a time when all the important jobs require Mandarin proficiency, and none of the US graduates have the skills to occupy those positions.
I look forward to deeper comments or at least substantiated refutations.
8<--------------------------------------------
Students in the West may have also soured on the idea of doing business with China. Mandarin teachers point to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 as a seminal moment, when excitement for learning the language took off. Since then, though, China has grown more oppressive under Xi Jinping. Its human-rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong have been widely reported. In most rich countries negative views of China are at or near all-time highs.
8<--------------------------------------------
i know that if i were a student in an american university right now, the thought of doing business in or with china would not cross my mind - kind of similar to how, when i was growing up in the 80s, there was very good money indians could make working in saudi arabia, but neither me nor any of my friends would have been remotely interested in going there.
China is having less and less influence globally. Look at the decoupling. It is having more influence regionally. This is a global trend by the way - a weaker global order and a rise of regional poles of power. Regardless of this, English is the de-facto international language and China is hostile to foreign business. It's really only useful if you decide to move to China.
And even if this is not convincing, the trajectory of China is questionable at this point between allying with Russia, a complete disdain for democratic values with 0 constitutional protections (free speech, privacy, etc.), abysmal demographics, and shakey economics. There will be no Chinese global order.
No one can sleep well at night, knowing that they're completely reliant on a foreign country with such aggressive and hostile policy. Which is why many countries all over the world are starting programs to diversify and promote local manufacturing to cut back on reliance on China, one step at a time.
So, don't worry about future jobs, for me, I'm betting it's downhill from here for China. They played their card too early.
It's not China vs US. It's China vs the whole world, china has literally no friends that share its interests because it's so self-centered and intolerable, not even many of it's own oppressed people.
In short, china reputation as a safe business environment/partner is already damaged, and if it continues with the same policy and overplay its hand, then in the next two decades its role will diminish and it'll be isolated, even if it was still super power by then.
All the way down to Oceania and even the most nationalistic PRC national, every single one of them that I know have experienced Japanese manga and anime since childhood in the same way that Disney had a reach across "The West". Heck, look at today's "geek culture" in the PRC and tell me that you do not see the obvious parallels to Japan.
Going by [this list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...), you can see how if you want to expand your reach, some languages make more sense to learn than others.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/18/politics/alexandria-ocasio-co...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/border-fac...
Of course now that Biden took over, continued their operation, and quickly allowed them to overfill to the point that there's now a full blown border crisis, no one in mainstream media would dare call them that.
I think it's part of a larger trend of people choosing not to learn any language besides English because they think that everything else is "useless".
The article also mentions Korean as an exception, but it only shows the increase as a percentage. I wonder how many people are actually learning Korean though, because otherwise this could be like that xkcd joke about the fastest growing religion.
Growing up in China, everyone I knew keeps telling me our culture is fake, reconstructed from a pile of burning books and detached from both history and modern life, at least ever since Cultural Revolution.
But frankly every country is having a cultural crisis today. I just want to preserve some things more. And yes I know that is biased.
The Economist being The Economist: owned by old rich European families in a rapidly changing world.