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Comment by ezequiel-garzon | Hacker News Reader

Even if Zuckerberg's main motivation was to learn his wife's language, I believe this will effectively raise the bar for CEOs in the years ahead. I wouldn't be surprised if this seemingly unnecessary skill could signify new business opportunities for large corporations.

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Well, his wife is a second generation Chinese-American and a Cantonese speaker. So that wouldn't be a very compelling reason to learn Mandarin.

It's quite similar to businessmen in the '80s learning Japanese. If you do a lot of business within a country, you are somewhat disadvantaged if you have to rely on a translator.

J. Paul Getty learned arabic to help his oil deals...

Isn't speaking relevant foreign languages considered a plus in business settings? That seems to be the layman perception, at least.

I've been told by Americans doing business in China that, even if you have pretty good Chinese, you don't have good business Chinese unless you specifically know that you do. So you'll get a translator anyway.

Understanding the culture is important to understanding the product you provide, if it's at all different, so that can be pretty important.

This is absolutely correct. Only about 10% of the successful long-term foreign businessmen I know here speak passable Chinese.

Chinese love when you speak the language- but that does not unfortunately translate into the sort of tangible business advantages that many students of Mandarin hope for. It's a wonderful language, and loads of fun to learn- but the ROI is not as high as other areas of study.

Where's "here"? I lived in Shanghai 3 years I would have put that number pretty close to 0%.

>Where's "here"? I lived in Shanghai 3 years I would have put that number pretty close to 0%.

Shenzhen. You're right, 10% is being generous but a lot of long time expats pick up Mandarin not at work but through the "long haired dictionary" method.

I don't know any successful business people that have been here for more than five years that feel it's essential for business. Foreign companies fail here all the time due to not understanding culture, I've never heard of any failing due to the language barrier.

Value comes from scarcity- fully bilingual people simply are not scarce in China.

In Taipei the percentage of foreigners who speak good Chinese is quite high.

Maybe just because I hang out with professionals rather than English teachers.

But I agree that general fluency is a whole lot more common than business fluency.

Jon Huntsman, the politician and businessman, speaks Mandarin. As such, he served as US Ambassador to China. Zuck's not the first – I'm sure there are more examples out there.

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