<p>Hey everyone Im new to these forums and had a few questions.</p>
<p>I am currently double majoring in political science and will be adding either economics or political economy next semester. my plan is to eventually go into international business. I need to learn a language in order to graduate and am considering Chinese because I think it would set me apart from alot of others in the job market, especially considering how much of a growing market china is. I understand it is alot of work but i am fully capable and committed to doing it. My question is do u guys think knowing chinese would help me as much as i think it would or should i rather go for an easier language and just fulfill the language req?</p>
<p>Maybe you should learn to rap, Maino. Let’s hear you battle.</p>
<p>Just kidding.</p>
<p>Are your parents Chinese? Do you have a background in Chinese? It’s a difficult language to learn. I think you should try a study abroad program and fully immerse yourself in the Chinese culture if you want to learn Chinese.</p>
<p>haha amazing call with maino, seriously. I love that song because if you take the meaning of the lyrics that way I do, it sums up the philosophy i want to live my life by.</p>
<p>as far as the difficulty goes, i fully understand that its not going to be easy. i have a back up plan though, im going to registered for both spanish and chinese next semester so if i think it gets to be too much ill drop chinese and fulfill the req with spanish. but i actually know 3 chinese majors at the moment and have a very close family friend who is fully fluent in mandarin as well so ill have all the help i could ask for.</p>
<p>but as far as international business goes, do you guys think being fluent in chinese will give me any sort of noticeable advantage or just be viewed as another item on the laundry list?
although id love to be able to communicate with 85%+ of the worlds population, ill pick a less time consuming language if knowing chinese isnt going to help me because the less time i spend learning the language the more i can spend on my other studies.</p>
<p>As far as languages go, it would probably depend on what type of international business you want to get involved in that may dictate which one will be more useful to you assuming you don’t have roots in either.
However, I think that if you want to learn the language, it would be best to spend some time in that country. Your learning curve will be steeper and in the end you will save time.
Another thing to remember, you don’t necessarily need a (insert any language) major to prove that you are fluent in the language. Native speakers will be able to tell.</p>
<p>Depending on your individual learning style and aptitude profile, learning Chinese may be no more difficult than learning a romance language. I’m assuming that you’re a native English speaker.</p>
<p>Chinese is in some important aspects far less complex than romance languages. It has a fairly simple grammar that is not too different in some important respects from English. Also, there is little complication from conjugation of various types and subject-verb agreement. Native Chinese speakers have so much difficulty overcoming these issues in English precisely because they are non-issues in Chinese.</p>
<p>The big hurdles for native English speakers are tones in speaking and especially in listening as well as characters in reading and writing. Of the two, I’d say that tonality is the tougher, but that reflects my individual aptitudes more than anything else.</p>
<p>That said, you’ll need to become very fluent in any non-English language before your language ability exceeds the average English ability of anyone you’re likely to do business with in an international setting. Though, just being able to demonstrate that you’ve made an effort to learn someone else’s language can earn you some relationship points even if it doesn’t do much to facilitate communication.</p>
<p>If I were you, I wouldn’t try to learn both Spanish and Chinese at the same time. Based on my experience with both, I’d guess that the combination would be more than twice as difficult as either individually.</p>
<p>my plan isnt to learn both, just to register for both incase i decided chinese was too much of a time commitment for the benefit it provided. I was just wondering how much of a benefit it actually would provide me with.</p>
<p>Chinese will be an incredibly useful language in the future, but it is also one of the hardest languages to learn. Unless you can study it to the point where you can actually communicate effectively in the language, there is really no point. </p>
<p>English is still the universal language for business and chances are any chinese people you work with will be able to speak english better than you can speak chinese, rendering your efforts useless.</p>
<p>As an aside, Chinese people have an incredible amount of respect for any foreigners who can speak their language, so it might be worth trying if you intend to do any business there.</p>
<p>Learning Chinese is great, but only if you really want to concentrate on international business related to China. If that’s the case, then you’ll definitely need Chinese. I don’t know if having it would be an advantage so much as not having it would be a disadvantage (absent some other business related skill). There are lots and lots of Americans these days who have studied Chinese. There are also lots and lots of Chinese who have studied English in the US and who do understand US business practices.</p>
<p>If what you want to do is stand out with a skill nobody else has, consider learning Korean, Japanese or Vietnamese. Those would put you in a much less crowded pack.</p>
<p>This is true. In general, when US companies interact with their divisions in China, or their Chinese suppliers, you, as the US business person, would be speaking with people who are fluent in English. Your knowing Mandarin or Cantonese won’t necessarily be a huge advantage, because it’s quite likely that they’ll be better in English than you will be in Mandarin. </p>
<p>The exception, of course, is if your business requires you to take frequent trips to China, or to directly supervise Chinese line workers (factory workers and etc.) Then your knowledge of Mandarin or Cantonese, depending on the region of China you’re working in, will be beneficial. It is extremely unlikely that you’d be the direct supervisor in a Chinese factory, though. Most international companies would hire locals for jobs like that. </p>
<p>If you plan to work in the US, it might be more useful for you to be fluent in Spanish. From marketing to factory production, knowing Spanish can be immediately, and extremely, useful. </p>
<p>In general, students tend to do better learning languages when the language they are learning is of personal interest to them, for whatever reason. If you’re really interested in Chinese culture, then go ahead and try Mandarin. But if you’re only doing this because you think it’d be good for your resume, then go with a different language - one that you truly are interested in. You’ll probably do better in it, if only because you’re actually kind of into it.</p>
<p>Learn Chinese can be easy and entertaining.</p>
<p>I found these books very interesting and they are availble online [Amazon.com:</a> Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com%5DAmazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com).
Learners read through interesting stories while learning Chinese characters.</p>
<p>Anyway it’s free to view several page.
Adventures in Mandarin Chinese Two Men and The Bear ISBN: 1439218137
Adventures in Mandarin Chinese The Wind and The Sun ISBN: 1439218145
Adventures in Mandarin Chinese The Fox and The Goat ISBN: 1439218129 </p>