5 Reasons Why You Should Learn Mandarin
China is becoming more prominent on the world stage. This also increases the importance of the Chinese language (Mandarin) which is spoken by about 1.2 billion people worldwide. Here are the top 5 reasons, why you should consider learning Chinese in order to stay competitive in the world of tomorrow.
1. Get a better understanding of the Chinese culture
In many aspects, Chinese society is quite similar to that of many other (western) countries. One example is the big focus it lays on meritocracy. But there are also major differences, like when it comes to the role the state is supposed to play in the individual’s life. Knowing the language and thus the culture will help you to get a better understanding of why people in China have different values and outlooks on life. Knowing the language will enable you to understand all kinds of texts, fables, and other content that build the foundation of ancient and modern China.
2. Profit from China’s economic and technological development
China is already one of the most important economic and technology hubs in the world. It will replace the United States as the largest economy by 2030. One of the reasons for that is that the Middle Kingdom is rapidly transforming from technology-copycat to pioneering in new technologies, such as 5G, high-speed railways, mobile payments, and introducing its own centralized blockchain-based digital currency. [1]
The country has the largest number of patent filings for the past few years [2].
Chinese companies like Tencent, Alibaba, Ant Financial, and Baidu were on the 2017 “50 smartest companies” list published by MIT’s Technology Review alongside SpaceX, Apple, Tesla, Facebook, and others [3].
Knowing and understanding Mandarin enables you to be part of this development. For example, foreign companies doing business in China rely heavily on management that understands both language and culture in order to be successful. Corporations such as eBay and Amazon failed in China because they lacked people with these critical skills.
3. Get first-hand information right from the source
A lot of information coming out of China that is flawed. Bad translations or filtered information cause misunderstandings or misinterpretations. To give an example: When China announced about focusing on Blockchain technology, many people in the rest of the world interpreted the news as China wanting to adopt more public chains and cryptocurrencies. As a result, Bitcoin's price saw a big increase. What the original news actually said was that China just wants to focus on the technology and has no interest in introducing any public decentralized crypto.
Knowing Chinese will allow you to understand what’s really been said and done without having to rely on unreliable third parties.
4. The world’s elite bets on China’s promising future
Some of the world’s most influential and powerful people are investing time and resources in learning Mandarin and let their children learn Mandarin [4].
Prince George — the oldest son of the English royal family, started to learn Mandarin when he went to school at the age of 4.
Donald Trump’s grandchildren are learning Mandarin from their nanny.
Mark Zuckerberg can already speak fluent Mandarin, he showed his Mandarin skills at a Q&A session in one of the top universities in China in 2014 [5]. His daughter is also learning Mandarin.
The children of Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos were also reported to have taken Mandarin lessons.
5. Follow what students in other countries are doing
An increasing number of developed and developing countries are introducing Mandarin in schools.
The United Kingdom introduced Mandarin as one of the modern foreign languages in schools from September 2014 [6].
An increasing number of GCSE students are taking Mandarin as one of their GCSE subjects [7].
Here is a table of which summarized the number of students in England taking a full GCSE course in 5 major languages. Although Mandarin isn’t among the top choices, the upwards trend is clear to see:
In Spain, a growing number of private schools are teaching Chinese and lots of Spanish families are having Chinese Au Pairs to live with them so that their kids can learn Chinese [8].
South Africa was the first African country to introduce Mandarin into the public schools' curriculum in 2016 [9].
Uganda made Mandarin a compulsory subject for two years in secondary schools from February 2019 [10].
Kenya will introduce Mandarin in its primary schools starting in 2020.
References:
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/chinas-road-from-copycat-to-innovator/a-46353745
[2] https://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo_pub_901_2019.pdf
[3] https://www.technologyreview.com/lists/companies/2017/
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTmHtOSqHTk
[6] https://www.languagemagazine.com/mandarin-introduced-to-uk-schools/
[7] https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/download-data
[8] https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/05/27/inenglish/1558969684_386348.html
[9] https://www.languagemagazine.com/mandarin-introduced-to-uk-schools/
[10] https://international.thenewslens.com/article/112824
[11] https://studyinkenya.co.ke/blog/kenya-to-introduce-chinese-language-into-school-curriculum
