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posted by n1 on Friday October 24 2014, @02:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the more-from-our-new-overlords dept.

Abby Phillip reports at the Washington Post that that Mark Zuckerberg just posted a 30-minute Q&A at Tsinghua University in Beijing in which he answered every question exclusively in Chinese - a notoriously difficult language to learn and particularly, to speak. "It isn't just Zuckerberg's linguistic acrobatics that make this a notable moment," writes Philip. "This small gesture — although some would argue that it is a huge moment — is perhaps his strongest foray into the battle for hearts and minds in China." Zuckerberg and Facebook have been aggressively courting Chinese users for years and the potential financial upside for the business. Although Beijing has mostly banned Facebook, the company signed a contract for its first ever office in China earlier this year. A Westerner speaking Mandarin in China — at any level — tends to elicit joy from average Chinese, who seem to appreciate the effort and respect they feel learning Mandarin demonstrates. So how well did Zuckerberg actually do? One Mandarin speaker rates Zuckerberg's language skills at the level of a seven year old: "It's hard not see a patronizing note in the Chinese audience's reaction to Zuckerberg's Mandarin. To borrow from Samuel Johnson's quip, he was like a dog walking on its hind legs: It wasn't done well, but it was a surprise to see it done at all."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by CRCulver on Friday October 24 2014, @06:59AM

    by CRCulver (4390) on Friday October 24 2014, @06:59AM (#109492) Homepage

    I don't really understand how language instruction at US universities works. People seem to come out of BA programmes there with very limited speaking skills. Perhaps it is because they don't immerse themselves enough in the language, and even if they do a study abroad term they may all too easily spend much of their time in an expat bubble, much like Erasmus students.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Ryuugami on Friday October 24 2014, @10:06AM

    by Ryuugami (2925) on Friday October 24 2014, @10:06AM (#109515)

    From my experience, that's normal. Unless you use a language in your everyday life, you'll improve very slowly - no amount of studying can replace actual usage (at least for most people).

    I participated in Japanese government's program for foreign students, where you spend a year at a Japanese university studying the language, and then enroll in a normal university as a regular student. One year was more than enough to be able to more-or-less fluently listen, speak, read and write Japanese at a university level. Of course, it was one year of exclusive language study, but still. Furthermore, I spent most of my off time reading manga, watching anime and listening to music, all in Japanese, and I'd say that my rate of improvement was significantly better than those who studied like we were supposed to.

    So my advice is: if you want to learn a foreign language, once you get the basics, go and watch some subtitled movies, read a comic (or a book, if you can), use it for fun. Studying is good, but playing is better :)

    --
    If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by ld a, b on Friday October 24 2014, @12:19PM

      by ld a, b (2414) on Friday October 24 2014, @12:19PM (#109535)

      I'd recommend anyone learning any language to start out by speaking and only learn the language once they can understand most things said to them. Just like children.
      Formal learning is like steroids. It is relatively easy to increase your vocabulary and grammar by studying a bit. Even in Chinese, you can read anything as long as you memorize 6000 glyphs. That's trivial.
      I can read and write Japanese. I know enough kanji and vocabulary to be well above native average, and yet every single word I learned before being proficient, I just can't pronounce it properly without making a conscious effort to avoid the shitty accent I assigned to it when I didn't know anything about the spoken language.
      With Chinese, however, I have been mostly exposed to the spoken language and I can pronounce the few words and phrases I know far closer to the way a native would.

      --
      10 little-endian boys went out to dine, a big-endian carp ate one, and then there were -246.
      • (Score: 2) by Ryuugami on Friday October 24 2014, @04:19PM

        by Ryuugami (2925) on Friday October 24 2014, @04:19PM (#109626)

        I'd recommend anyone learning any language to start out by speaking and only learn the language once they can understand most things said to them.

        I'd modify this a bit. I'd say that it's enough to get a feeling for the language, no need to actual understand it. I've been watching anime in Japanese with English subtitles for four or five years before I began to study the language, and at that point I'd say I had a vocabulary of less than a hundred words and my knowledge of grammar was as good as non-existent. But from all the "listening practice" (even without understanding what was said), I could speak and listen at a decent level about a month after I began study. The next eleven months were just refinement and reading/writing (which necessarily takes some time).

        TL;DR: From my anecdotal evidence, you don't even need to understand; you just need to listen.

        --
        If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber