<p>if you want to learn chinese, do those language learning cd-things work or would you have to take a class… ?</p>
<p>I am in Japanese 4 right now. Going to college next fall. Should I continue my Japanese or take chinese? I know how to speak and read a little in chinese, but I can’t really write in chinese.</p>
<p>Depends on how secure you feel in your Japanese. I wouldn’t throw one language away to start learning another… </p>
<p>And yeah chinese is a real pain in the a to learn to write and read. I’ve been at it for 8 years (half assedly though) and still feel like a blind person in China.</p>
<p>If you are that level you should continue your Japanese; besides, you can always pick up Chinese as a second language in college if you feel like it while still continuing your Japanese. I will be doing the same with Spanish.</p>
<p>I’m taking Chinese as a minor next year. My mom speaks Cantonese but I have to learn Mandarin. I really want to go to China with my mom someday. She hasn’t been there since she was 12 years old.</p>
<p>ustas06: I think chinese is going to very important in the future because more US and international companies are moving their factories to china for cheaper labor.</p>
<p>u dont need to know chinese just cuz US companies r extending to china, most US companies just work straight with a chinese firm, who’ll have a representative speaking english</p>
<p>US companies cant legally or easily open shop in china</p>
<p>jinfx: you say there’s a repsentative who will speak english. But its also true the other way around. If you can speak chinese, you will be more likely to be hired by a company to go over to china.
Imagine, you will get pay in USD while living in China.</p>
<p>ah, see, I would love that…</p>
<p>Keep a few things in mind before you run off to learn Chinese or Japanese:</p>
<ul>
<li> The learning curves for these languages is VERY steep. I have studied both- one to the point of fluency (Japanese)- and the effort I had to put into learning Japanese alone was so much more than what I put into Spanish.</li>
<li> English will be the lingua franca for decades to come. Even though China may be a rising power, the fact that English/the Western alphabet is so entrenched in computers, science, and technology means that Chinese is not going to be replacing English any time soon.</li>
</ul>
<p>And that’s about it.</p>
<p>well that’s okay, I would have studied chinese anyway (for fun)</p>
<p>but I think it would be cool to go get a job in the US and then have them send you somewhere abroad. Kind of exciting.</p>
<p>using Chinese for business and not for the love of the culture. poo</p>
<p>when i visited taiwan, i absolutely fell in love with the culture and the language. i very much want to learn the language so i can return. I want to pursue either chem or physics, so i dont really expect for it to be too useful in my profession…</p>
<p>oh. no. you misunderstand (usna_reject) I would learn because I like the culture, and would like to live there. But I surely don’t have the guts to move to another country and then have to look for a job/apartment/everything else.</p>
<p>idamayer: that’s why you get a job in US and ask the company to transfer you to another country if the company has an opening.</p>
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<p>Only in Korea.
Chinese and Japanese are cool and very friendly with foreigners. Sometime you may feel like they owe you something and they are so eager to pay you back…lol
No racial discriminations there. Really cool.</p>
<p>
Still, the Americans are the ones who make big bucks, not Chinese
So English will still prevail for a long while</p>
<p>yes, that was my point. Someone had taken that idea as an implication that I do not actually like asian culture, which is not true. I wouldn’t want to move there if it were the case.</p>
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<p>You do see the very rare “Japanese Only” sign in Japan, but it’s a fast dying breed of Japanese that actually posts such rubbish.</p>