It makes sense to learn the language of the country that owns us!!
EB

 

Every child should learn a different language. Helps then think more objectively.

Mandarin is fairly easy to learn, only four tonal sounds compared to Cantonese which has 8. It took me a year to be able to hold a decent conversation.

If you want her to learn writing as well.....god luck and start them young!
There is simplified Chinese which is what lower educated folks in the mainland learn, or traditional Chinese characters is what we use here in HK and Taiwan, which have around 10,000 different characters! Most people know 3-5000 of either one.

Business wise it is a smart thing to do.

 

We tried getting the boys into Chinese school (university town international students) we were refused because they weren't Asian.
They may start attending university classes with me so they get exposure.

 

Sue for discrimination. Might as well they would do the same thing...

 

Friends daughter attends a swanky school around here. By 7th grade she was fluent in Spanish and Chinese.

 

Friend's daughter, unless she is a lazy ass, should end up with a really good job

 

Teach her spanish instead. She'll use it a LOT more. And the usefullness is only going to increase. The city I live in effectively quite speaking english 20 someodd years ago.

 

Chinese is a very good choice, better than Mexican Spanish. And better paying job opportunites - NSA, intel (military or GS/contractor). Perhapes not as common as Mexican in day to day useage depending on area, but I'd have her stick with it.

 

Mexican is not a language.. Spanish is...Learning another language is always an advantage. Spanish, Chinese, German, Japanese will always be useful languages to learn..Of course, with twitter, texting and bad school systems learning English should be the first priority

 

Farsi, Spanish, Mandarin...all good choices. While I wouldn't base my daughter's education on any CEO, much less one whose name I cannot remember, I think it is a good thing to teach your children languages in a world that is becoming more connected. Programming languages and math are good choices as well. My better half is pretty much tri-lingual, and I took 4 years of French that actually helped me in Europe. It's useful and they'll thank you for it.

 

No russian?

 

My .02:

- Embrace conversational Spanish and French.
- Grasp the basics of Deutsche.
- Familiarize yourself with Chinese.

Spanish and French are North/South American languages; you are much more likely to encounter/benefit from knowing your way around these languages conversationally.

German is always relevant, as is french and English.

Chinese, unless you intend to travel/work there, has so many dialects and nuances that it's slightly impractical; albeit not impossible, though.

My .02 is offered up from my travels domestically and abroad. Once in the 'stan, critical communication occurred in French, between an American, *****ian and native villager elder.
Broke down in Miami; Spanish got me rescued/understood.
On assignment in South America in the late '80s, German cut 20 clicks off a mission after conversing with a local liaison.
So far, the only time I've needed Chinese was at Wal-Mart, trying to read the labels!

That's been my personal experience, and my opinion, that I only shared with y'all because I knew you were anxiously awaiting my input and guidance on this topic.

Your mileage may vary.

(EDIT: Wow! It blocked N-I-G-E-R-I-A-N??? Why?)

 

(EDIT: Wow! It blocked N-I-G-E-R-I-A-N??? Why?)

Good morning sir, I have a most esteemed offer of transaction for you......:

 

I've seen alot of young people in this country and a lot of them, don't even know English. I would make sure they can read, write and speak English first. It might make learning Mandarin a little easier.

 

Chinese is the new Russian. I grew up during the Cold War, and there was a teacher at our middle school who was Ukranian. It wasn't offered as a class, bu there were a number of us who started a club after school, and roped the teacher into teaching us Russsian.

You can't "know thy enemy" unless you speak his language. Of course, with the USA going athiest and Marxist, and China going more capitalist and seeing 80,000 converts a week, very soon WE could be ghe enemy.

 

I figure if they own us might as well learn the language. Also, I listened to a lecture by some CEO(forgot his name) but he said to teach your kids M&M's for their future.

Mandarin and Math. Those are the two things you can teach your kids to give them a leg up in the future.

If that is the future then I am very glad I don't have kids!

If I did have kids then living in the American West I would teach them Spanish as a 2nd language, making sure they know English real good or well better than I do....

Seems like that CEO is helping to make sure communist Red China becomes a super power maybe even replacing the USA as a super power?

 

It was very important to us that our daughter learn French, and so her pre-school is french immersion. As an added bonus she will be receiving weekly lessons in Chinese, but I'm unsure if it will be Mandarin or Cantonese.

 

Cantonese will be banned when china rules the world so best to start with mandarin

 

Unfortunately, knowing the Chinese language will likely come in very handy when the US government starts paying back the debt owed to the Chinese by handing over our land.

 

I just can't see that happening. I really can't. For so many reasons. Not impossible, I imagine, but I just really feel good about saying 'Nope', ain't gonna happen. No, I can't qualify my feeling, it's just in my gut. Kinda like this venison sausage, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich is about to be....

 

My three year old niece is fluent in French (well as fluent as she can be for being 3) and learning German all from my step mom.

 

No thanks, I'll stick with ******* as a 2nd language :upsidedown:

 

If a young person can achieve fluency in Mandarin it can be a real door opener in govt/mil service but also the corporate world.The really young kids have a window of opportunity (from around two to six) where learning the verbal portion of a foreign language is almost effortless and the ability to replicate proper intonation is very high (i.e. no "foreign" accent). For those who wish to serve and can pass the language learning diagnostic test, the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterrey CA is one of the best schools around, total immersion (but a high wash out rate also), when you graduate you take a battery of tests and are rated on a scale of 0 to 5, 5 being native speaker PhD level. If you can get a 3 or 4 in Mandarin (or Farsi, Arabic, etc.), you can have a lot of doors open to you while in the service and after. The Mormon church also has a great language school for missionaries, but I think you have to be a member of their church.

I think Cantonese will fall by the wayside as time goes on. Mandarin is the official dialect in China (including Hong Kong and Macao), Taiwan, and possibly Singapore. Fujianese and Wenzhounese are the hot dialects if you are in LE.If you are going to invest effort in learning a spoken Chinese dialect, Mandarin would be my recommendation. The written portion (characters or romanized alphabets) are the same across all dialects.

 

Mandarin or Spanish for a foreign language. That or Arabic. The demographic trends back all three, but there aren't many places that speak Arabic that you'd want to live or work. China may not be a great place to live - Hong Kong is better, Singapore is better still.

The cradles of English are dying (England, the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia) from a demographic perspective.

I believe that the investor/CEO you're talking about is Jim Rogers, who actually moved to Singapore with his wife and two young daughters. He is also having them learn Mandarin. He also has ensured that they have *no* exposure to US dollar denominated investments, I believe.

 

What language does the Federal Reserve speak? Last I checked the Chinese didn't even own 10% of "our" overall debt.

 

and 98% of our secrets about our weapons

 

Not saying people shouldn't learn other languages. But they should be learning the ones they might actually need. Obviously we are not going to be speaking Chinese.I would focus on something else as others have mentioned.

 

spanish is the first language i would teach any child. per capita english and spanish by far out # Mandarin. next would have to be arabic then id consider mandarin. be it latin american spanish or european spanish.

 

Uh, not even close. Not even if you combine spanish & english.

Madanrin - 935 million
Spanish - 387 million
English - 365 millionn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

 

I go to a pretty big University, I'm working on my 2nd degree, so I've been in school for a lot of years now.
There are a lot of Chinese students at American universities, like a ton. My school, which is a private institution, recruits heavily from China's budding middle class in their fast growing cities. Some of my classes (I'm now a business student) are majority Asian students, with Chinese being the most common by far with maybe 25% Filipino or Korean).

Their level of English varies from barely functional to fluent. I'm not sure how many of them plan to continue living and working in the United States after graduating, but they are for sure getting very familiar with American customs, culture etc, creating networks.

With China's exploding population you can bet your ass you will see more and more Chinese people in the U.S.
One has to ask if this economic takeover by the Chinese some sort of set-up for a neo-colonial situation in America.

 

While I understand your concern, this is not a new trend, by any culture or country. Since the end of WWI, especially WWII, many Asians, particularly the Chinese, and most recently the S. Koreans, have been wide open in attending Western universities for business courses. With 70% of China's manufacturing dependent upon English language based businesses, they want and need to know how to communicate, market, etc.

My wife is an Instructor at a private academy in the northeast that has recruiters permanently stationed in different Asian countries in pursuit of the students and their money. Not a new trend at all. Does this discount your theme? No, not really, it could occur, but the average Chinese citizen is just like your average American and average Russian, for that matter. Angry and distrustful of their govt., trying to better themselves as they can, to participate in a world where the rules change daily.

Just my .02

 

I mean that would be nice, but there are no laws to enforce that....