Reports in the NY Times and elsewhere point to the rise of Chinese language instruction in our schools, against the backdrop of the demise of language learning in general. People justify this rush to Chinese by referring to the growth of the Chinese economy. The US government has declared Chinese a “critical language.” How realistic is this Chinese boom, and will it last? Here is a reality check.
1) Chinese will probably not help your kid get a job.
Chinese is being touted as the language of the future, given the growth of the Chinese economy. Some predict that a knowledge of Chinese will be big advantage in the job markets of the future. It is worthwhile remembering that Chinese is the language of business in only one country, China. Relatively few American kids are going to be working in China after graduating.
2) Chinese is not an international language and unlikely to become one.
Almost all Chinese speakers are in one country. Chinese is not an international language. It is not used widely by speakers of third languages. It is unlikely that this will change in the short term because Chinese is very difficult to learn, for most people.
3) Chinese is difficult.
Chinese has no vocabulary in common with English, unlike Spanish, where over the half the words are similar to English words. Most kids in the US who study Spanish do not learn to speak. English speaking school kids in Canada have had similarly poor results with their French studies. It is likely that kids who study Mandarin in schools will have even more difficulty.
4) Learning the Chinese writing system is time consuming.
To write Chinese requires the learning of several thousand characters. Each character consists of up to 15 or more strokes. Chinese children are surrounded by the written language from early childhood. Our kids would have devote an immense amount of time to this task. There is already a fundamental problem with literacy in English in our schools. Learning to write Chinese would be a major distraction for most school children.
5) There is little chance to use Chinese.
While there are around 40 – 50 million Spanish speakers in the US, there are only 2 million Chinese speakers. However, most of these Chinese speakers speak Cantonese, so students studying Mandarin would not have many native speakers to practice with, even assuming that some would learn to speak.
6) The rush to Chinese is being pushed by the Chinese government.
The Chinese government has a major program to promote Chinese language studies around the world and appears willing to pay for teachers and for trips to China for school administrators. This represents an opportunity to establish Chinese language programs in certain schools, no doubt. Is it advisable, however, for school curricula to be determined by the promotional activities of foreign governments?
7) Learning Mandarin makes sense for other reasons.
There are excellent reasons to offer Mandarin, as an option, in our schools, without the hype and without making it a “critical language”. For much of the last 4,000 years of history about 20% of humanity has been Chinese. Chinese culture has had an important influence on the course of history. The number of schools in the US offering Chinese has grown from 1% to 4% from 1997 to 2008. This is hardly surprising and is, in fact, largely overdue. Mandarin language instruction should be offered, and looked upon from a longer term educational perspective, and not as a sudden reaction to recent Chinese economic growth.
Steve Kaufmann is a former Canadian diplomat, and President of KP Wood Ltd. He is also the founder and CEO of LingQ.com. Steve speaks eleven languages and maintains a blog on language learning. He wrote the book The Linguist, A Language Learning Odyssey.
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I see the validity of your argument, but here are some alternative lines of thinking on a few of your points:
On Chinese not being useful for getting a job and not being an international language – The effects of globalization are sure to increase in the coming decades, and while it is unlikely that American children will ever be working in China, the liklihood of Americans interacting with native Chinese people is high. While many more Chinese will likely speak English than Americans will speak Chinese, there is certainly a reason to differentiate oneself by acquiring Chinese language skills, and thus having unfiltered access to the Chinese market.
On the difficulty of Chinese and its writing system – For one, there is no need to learn Chinese characters, as spoken Chinese would be far more valuable. Additionally, using pinyin or other romanizations of Chinese would be fine replacements for written Chinese characters. The difficulty of learning Chinese could actually be the best argument for it. By learning a very different language, children can literally reprogram their brains and will have much more success learning other skills as well.
Now, I am no Chinese fanatic. In fact, I can say about 4 things in Mandarin, so I’m not even speaking from experience. However, given that there is little opportunity to use many languages that are currently taught, and all language learning can be difficult, it makes sense to give more consideration to a language that is spoken by so many people and is likely to play a larger role in the business in the future.
PS – Love LingQ, am using it to learn Spanish.
“there is no need to learn Chinese characters, as spoken Chinese would be far more valuable.” This is kinda weird. It’s learning how to speak without learning how to read or write. Although you can, that’s not the correct way to learn any language. If you seriously want to pick up a language, you should learn how to speak and write.
Cheers~
Mark
I learned to speak English without learning to read or write. I only learned those skills years later. I don’t see why the same process couldn’t be effective again.
“Each character consists of up to 15 or more strokes.” This is probably true for the traditional characters. The simplified characters usually consist of fewer strokes. Traditional characters are only used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Cheers~
Mark
Mark, How many strokes in the simplified character for “I”, 我. It seems to me that it is about 13. I learned traditional characters first and then the simplified and really did not find that they simplified things a lot. I agree it is worthwhile learning the characters.
Hi Steve,
Mark, How many strokes in the simplified character for “I”, 我. It seems to me that it is about 13. I learned traditional characters first and then the simplified and really did not find that they simplified things a lot. I agree it is worthwhile learning the characters.
There are 7 strokes for the character “I” 我. Personally, I do find simplified characters are easier on the eyes. Well, maybe that’s because I learned simplified Chinese in school and am used to it. I only learned how to read traditional Chinese when I started reading Hong Kong comics when I was in high school.
Cheers~
Mark
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I live in Indonesia. Learning Chinese is actually one of the best things that I did. It has helped me to find a job with higher salary.
In my experience, learning to speak is definitely more useful than learning to read/write. If you only want to learn how to speak, you can just learn the pinyin or romanizations.
Although I said that learning to speak was more useful, I found that being able to read/write had their advantages. The Chinese characters have the same meaning regardless of what Chinese dialects you speak. If you meet someone who speaks only cantonese, you can still communicate through writing. Chinese characters are not easy to learn but once you get the hang of it, it’s not that hard. You can use various memorization techniques to learn the characters.
learn and grow,
Inge
In Indonesia I can see it. In the US I would want my kids to learn Spanish. But the choice should be up to them.
My daughter just made her middle school language choice. Her first choice was Spanish (she’s already started studying Spanish in elementary school) and her second choice was Latin (she’s fascinated by ancient Rome).
Her other options were German and French. Nice languages, some great literature, but I’m not sure how useful these languages are, in either the U.S. or in the world.
Sorry, I disagree with this. THe US government hasn’t declared Mandarin a critical language just because China has a big economy. It’s a national-security/intelligence issue. We don’t have a lot of Mandarin speakers in the government who can listen in on traffic. THe Chinese government is famous for economic espionage, and there are definitely Chinese spies in the US. We need intelligence and counter-intelligence professionals who are fluent in Mandarin. We also need State Department employees who can speak it. Maybe it won’t help you get a job in business, but it will definitely help you get a job in government– just pick a 3 letter agency.
Relatively few people are going to work in counter-intelligence.
Very interesting points.
I really liked what Amy had to say. However, that being said, I do not think that my kids are going to learning Chinese unless I want to live there.
I agree with all of the reasons that you listed above. English is easy to learn and most likely it will stay the business language for decades to come. I am not really too worried about that.
If I were to have my kids speak two languages, I would probably pick Spanish, which is much more applicable.
[...] Maybe and maybe not. A recent article I wrote for Pick the Brain. [...]
1) Nobody knows what the Chinese economy will do. It might overtake the US, and then Chinese Would be of benefit. Knowing Any foreign language is a benefit when searching for jobs as it enables you to work in more countries.
2) Chinese is only used in one country. One country that is already an economic superpower, and has over a billion speakers. Your same logic would work for Japanese and Korean, and plenty of people do really well from learning those.
3) Learning difficult things never did anyone any good. If it’s difficult, why bother? It’s precisely because it has no common words that it broadens the mind to different concepts. And also gives you a head-start in learning Korean and Japanese.
4) The children with fundamental literacy problems are not the ones who are going to be forced to learn a new language. Learning any foreign language is time-consuming.
5) Surprisingly enough, it is possible these days to talk with people Outside the US, using things like “the internet”, which make geographical proximity less relevant.
6 & 7) I agree with you on this.
I am not saying kids should not have the chance to learn Chinese if they want. I just think that hype is overdone.
I lived and worked in Japan in the 70s and 80s and only a few of the people who learned Japanese were able to find satisfactory work using that skill. That is why it is better to learn a language for the culture and enjoyment and not in the hope that it will lead to a job. It likely will not.
Most kids studying Spanish do not end up speaking. In Mandarin the results will be even poorer. But it all depends on motivation. That is why it is important to encourage choice in language learning.
I think all kids should be encouraged to learn languages. Literacy problems are far more widespread than you suggest. Kids should be encouraged to read, and first of all in their own language. For the average kid, buckling down to learning characters is a distraction in my view, unless they are really motivated.
Yes you can talk on the internet, but again this would be an exceptional situation, whereas Spanish is everywhere in the US.
I tried learning Mandarin for a while in University but gave up. It’s really difficult (but doable) I can’t see it ecoming a commonly used language any time soon.
I can only agree with point 7. Not just for Mandarin, but for any language.
Knowing a foreign language is no guarantee of getting a better job with a higher salary. Even if you have other skills and experience that the knowledge of whatever language complement. And how do you know you (or your kids) will be able to learn a language to the level of proficiency to use it professionally?
Based on my personal life as a Chinese in Singapore, I fully agree with the author on his reasons not to learn Chinese.
My father was born and educated in old China (before the Red Army took over in 1949). He read and wrote Chinese well but spoke only Hakka, one of the many hundreds of speech groups in the country (Mandarin is a foreign speech to most Chinese).
He came to Singapore in the 1930s, married and raised a family. When I was growing up in Chinatown in the 1950s, almost all my cousins and other relatives studied in Chinese schools. But my father insisted I go to an English language school because English was the medium used in government, commerce and all official transactions in Singapore and Malaya.
So I grew up knowing less Chinese than an average American. In Singapore today, the government insists every Chinese must study Chinese up to the level of being able to read the newspaper and write a letter, and to hold an intelligent discussion in Mandarin. Millions of dollars have been spent on this but till today, most Singapore Chinese know only a smattering of the language.
I have worked in many different jobs — army, factory admin, HR, newspaper reporter, Web manager — since 1970, and not once was there a need for me to write a single Chinese word or to speak in Mandarin. At home I use either English, Cantonese or Hakka. Mandarin is used only to sing tuneless karaoke songs.
Americans shouldn’t waste their time learning Chinese — the only benefit is perhaps to read Chinese novels in the original. Anyway, there are already hundreds of excellent English translations of Chinese works and classics. And to know old China, its customs, traditions and history, read the English books written by Dr Lin Yutang in the 1930s and 1940s on China, such as Wisdom of China and My Country and My People.
Red China today is the most polluted environment in the world, with an amoral government willing to shoot its own students and young people in Tiananmen Square and jail anyone who talks too loudly. Why on earth would anyone want to go to that toxic country?
By the way, the word for “I” in Chinese has only 7 strokes (in response to one of the comments).
3) Learning difficult things never did anyone any good.
@Steve: How many strokes in the simplified character for “I”, 我.
There is only 7 buddy.
@Oak:If it’s difficult, why bother? It’s precisely because it has no common words that it broadens the mind to different concepts. And also gives you a head-start in learning Korean and Japanese.
What kind of argument is that? Walking was hard, learning to read was hard, learning how to make computers, and play instruments is hard, but people have done and still do all of that. There are theories that don’t even cross our minds on a daily basis but people still research them. Is your mindset that immature?
menacel buddy,
I admit that it has been over 40 years since I wrote characters by hand. At that time I had to pass the British Foreign Exam and translate newspaper editorials in to Chinese and write Diplomatic Notes. I can still read and use a word processor, but writing is a skill that you lose quickly if you do not maintain it.
The point remains. “I” in English or yo, io, я, etc. are simple versus “The Mandarin Chinese character 我 (wǒ) shows a hand (手) holding a spear (戈). The hand radical 手 (shǒu) is used here in the form of 扌, a character which is always used in combination with other characters.
An early form of 我 showed two spears crossing. This evolved into its present form, a hand holding a spear, which is an undeniable symbol of ego assertion, and therefore an appropriate representation of “I; me.”
The average number of strokes of commonly used characters is still over 8 and not all characters have been simplified.
The total number of Chinese characters from past to present remains unknowable because new ones are developed all the time
The Zhonghua Zihai, records a staggering 85,568 single characters, although even this fails to list all characters known. An educated person needs 4,000 to 5,000 characters to read books and newspapers.
The following table will not work here but shows that many characters use in excess of 15 strokes.
Here is a
Search for Chinese/Japanese Characters by total strokes for the character:
Total strokes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35 36 39 44 48 52
As to whether kids should learn something that is inherently difficult, the issue is, to me, cost and benefit. Yes learning Chinese is a major help in learning Korean and Japanese. Yes Chinese is one of the major cultures of the world and worth learning.
On the other hand, looking at the results of Spanish and French instruction in our schools, the difficulty of Mandarin makes it likely that the results will be poorer, and the possibility of ever using it much smaller.
So, I say, make it available as an option, don’t crowd out the other languages, don’t hype it as a “must” or critical language. It is just another language. If children can learn any second language it is a good thing. Let them choose. Make more options available. Only the very motivated will learn Mandarin, or any other language.
Well, for the government, who designated it as a critical language, IT IS a critical language. Just like Pashto and Arabic are right now. It’s critical for them.
And maybe if we’re not having success with Spanish and French in schools, it’s because it’s a problem with schools NOT with learning languages. Kids are struggling to learn math these days too, I guess we should stop saying it’s important to teach calculus?
I learned more about English in French class than I ever learned in English class. I learned even more in Arabic. People told me I’d have no chance to speak those languages here, either, but seeing a Middle Eastern refugee’s face light up when I greet him Arabic is reward enough for all of the work. I’ve even seen asylees from China, so if you want to get a chance to speak a language you can. You just have to look for it.
um… I don’t really understand the point of this article.
It’s probably useful for non-English-speaking-people to learn English since it’s a world language.
Yes.
But that’s not the only reason, is it?
Learning languages has got an inherent value – even if it wasn’t useful in getting a deeper understanding of one’s only language. In my opinion, learning languages develops the brain.
Most Europeans learn more than one languages – and believe me, most people can actually SPEAK foreign languages, even though with sometimes a terrible accent
With good language instruction (and all the opportunities we have in our internet-connected world), it IS possible to learn foreign languages.
The earlier you start, the better.
So for whatever reasons the officials offer new language learning options – take opportunity and do pick up a language. Mandarin, Korean, Polish, Kisuaheli, it doesn’t really matter.
The point is that the rush to Mandarin is a little overdone.
In your view, what is it about language instruction in Europe that accounts for their success compared to North America or Britain?
Very good article – and an excellent balance to many other articles which smack a little of desparation, implying that you won’t survive in The New World ™ without Mandarin.
Of course, people have different motivations for languages, and sometimes it’s “just because”, like Mandarin & me. In reality, without learning to read/write Chinese, people can get to a basic conversational level in a reasonable period of time. Nothing to be scared of.
Fluency isn’t a requirement of learning a language, and if it’s just a hobby (with generous helpings of Chinese food & Chinese culture & making Chinese friends thrown in) then it’s very satisfying.
For example, I just got off the phone after a half-hour language exchange with a friend in China that I’ve never met, but we’ve been talking for a year now – half English, half Mandarin.
A very satisfying hobby indeed.
Greg
from MandarinSegments.com
I think Indonesian Bahasa is better to learn. Indonesia is growing and also developing globally just like China. Schools in Australia have taught their students Bahasa.
I found this quite interesting, since it challenges some unexamined notions I have. I’ve never come across someone refuting the significance of Mandarin Chinese. Everything I’ve heard hitherto has been in full support of Mandarin. So well done for this enlightening article.
Just a few minor comments (mostly objections haha) of my own.
- Point 2: I disagree. I live in Melbourne, and almost everywhere I go I hear Mandarin being spoken. Rarely will I be unable to find a Chinese speaker in my immediate surroundings.
- Point 4: I partially agree. My experience is that Chinese characters are really difficult to learn in the beginning. It was frustrating to find that I would repetitively forget how to write simple words like 动物 (Dong Wu – Animal). But akin to many other skills, characters are the most difficult at the start, and become progressively easier. Right now I am astonished at how I previously struggled to remember what I would now consider simple characters.
But trust me when I say it gets much easier after the first 200-300 characters. At that stage you start to see characters as being composed of radicals rather than individual strokes. So instead of remembering the 15 or so strokes that compose a character, you only need to remember the 3 or so radicals that compose it. Furthermore the more characters you learn, the more familiar you become with radicals (each radical is associated with a different meaning), and subsequently it becomes much easier to remember characters.
It’s like learning English, once you have learned enough words, you start to see the prefixes, suffixes, and other parts of a word, which then enable you to 1) guess the meaning an unknown word 2) remember new words with less effort.
In any case, how well one learns Chinese rains down to one’s motivation.
- Point 5: In my experience, most Cantonese speakers are also fluent in Mandarin; most of the natives I’ve come across speak Mandarin.
- About only learning spoken Chinese and not written: personally I find it much easier to remember words for future speech when I also learn its written form.
- I learn Mandarin because I find it a fun language. I get a thrill from learning new ways to express myself and being able to communicate in another language.
Take note that my view is going to be heavily biased since essentially all my relatives know Mandarin. It was a lame not being understand what my parents said to other people, so I started learning Chinese seriously in Y9.
Hi everyone.
I must say that was is said here is bullshit. I speak danish, french, english, german and chinese (mandarin), and every single language had been useful for me. The Chinese economy as well as the chinese-american economy-relations are growing very fast, and that’s why chinese mandarin is growing very fast.
Indeed, Chinese mandarin isn’t very useful to use in the streets in the states (beside chinatown), but it’s very useful is business, let me give an example: I know a businessman who needs Chinese every day, because he’s managing a factory that needs orders from China Every Single Day!! So my point is: if you have an important title in business or other branches, learn Mandarin Chinese!
The business main city must be Shanghai or Hong Kong. Hong Kong is now chinese again, so people now learn Mandarin, and not english anymore.
Chinese is the near future, English is the present, Spanish is PAST!!!!!
Svend,
Not every opinion that you do not agree with is BS. Not everyone has the same experience or perspective as you do. Not everyone is going to by involved in buying products from China.
In my view, Chinese will never be an international language, that is a language used by speakers of other languages, as a common language of communication. Spanish and English are international languages, and so are German, Russian, Arabic, Swahili, but not Chinese. Chinese is the language of the Chinese, period. I do not see that changing. It is a great language to learn for its own sake, but not based on all the hype you and others are putting forth in such dramatic terms.
In reply to Svend who thinks any opinion that is slightly anti-China is bullshit, I can see a trend among the billion China netizens who go online regularly to shout down anyone who dislikes Red China. Thankfully there are still millions of overseas Chinese who know that the Beijing regime is a monster that shoots its own students in Tiananmen Square and jails anyone who wants to find out why so many school buildings in Szechuan are made of biscuit bricks.
So, if you continue to write these kind of articles, sooner or later your site will experience denial-of-service attacks, hacking and other forms of online warfare (as Google itself has discovered).