I’ve been thinking about this more and more lately, 2016 will most likely be the year in which I learn Chinese.
Why?
Well, I think most people don’t yet realize just how much Chinese investors and capital will shape our industry in the future.
I’ve always been reasonably talented at learning foreign languages.
My English is *very* good despite me not being a native speaker, I’ve even written a 400-ish page book in English.
My German is not as good as my English at this point, mainly because I don’t use it all that much nowadays but still, I could easily run a domaining blog in German and churn out quality content.
There are two important languages missing from my arsenal:
Chinese
Spanish (since most of South America speaks Spanish)
Learning Spanish would be much easier for me but I don’t consider it a priority, as communicating with people from South America has never been very difficult.
When it comes to doing business with people from China however, there’s a significant language as well as cultural barrier that we need to overcome.
As far as the cultural barrier is concerned, I’m working on it, learning about the things that make us different as well as those we have in common is fascinating to say the least.
I can’t say the same thing about the language barrier, I’ve been meaning to learn Chinese for quite some time but never got around to doing it.
That will stop in 2016!
Have any of you guys learned Chinese?
If so, can you recommend a good course or something along those lines?
My goal, for now, isn’t being as good at speaking Chinese as I am at speaking English or even German.
Learning the basics and becoming competent enough to at the very least be able to exchange a few emails or chat with someone from China would be pretty awesome, so that’s my goal for the time being.
October 11th, 2015 at 1:31 pm
With due to respect, you have to be proactive in life not reactive.
Whole world is talking about this for last 10 years. You are talking about this now. Being an economist, I expected more.
Better late than never. Good luck.
October 11th, 2015 at 1:36 pm
LOL
Waste of time
They – many Chinese – speak & write English better than you/others will ever speak/write Chinese
In fact, many of them write (but not speak) English better than most native Americans/Brits/Aussies/NZ…
October 11th, 2015 at 2:11 pm
As someone who learned Spanish as an adult, I will say becoming proficient in a foreign language can be done but the effort, dedication and sacrifice necessary to do so should not be underestimated. There was a point in my life where exposure to Spanish language and culture was almost a daily activity and it meant spending a lot of time with native speakers (oftentimes illegal immigrants who did not speak English). Spanish is probably one of the easiest languages to learn but Chinese is probably one of the most difficult. Learning some basic phrases might be useful when traveling to China but I would ask what do you really intend to accomplish and what return on your investment do you believe you will gain by spending thousands of hours of your time over the next several years in language / cultural study (time which could potentially be devoted to other endeavors).
October 11th, 2015 at 2:12 pm
Totally agree, most of the Chinese speak and write better than most of the English speaking natives and most of them are well traveled.
They know more what going on than most of the arrogant /ignorant Yankees.