<p>If a genie appeared to you and gave you the choice between fluency in French or fluency in Mandarin, which would you choose?
(By fluency, I mean complete reading, listening, speaking, and writing ability)</p>
<p>And why?</p>
<p>Mandarin, it’s much more useful for business and so much harder to learn from English. Also I’ve been learning french since I was 8 and I hate the language.</p>
<p>French, but that’s only because I already know Mandarin.</p>
<p>Hm. The token answer is Mando but French would just be cool to speak…</p>
<p>Mandarin because its harder to learn.</p>
<p>French is not cool or useful. It’s a stupid language that is now compulosry in the UK from age 8.</p>
<p>@UKgirl how is French not useful? It has the highest number of secondary speakers of any language, if Im not mistaken. </p>
<p>Anyways I would pick Mandarin because I don’t know it at all and I dislike how it sounds (less interested in learning it) but it is a good language to know. I already take French in school, love it, and hope to continue.</p>
<p>Mandarin, probably. Although this is like comparing night and day, here: the two languages have no similarities, really.</p>
<p>French, and in fact I am taking it. Only because I already know Mandarin :p</p>
<p>But more people in the world speak English, Spanish and Mandarin. Also they are the languages of business, and generally more internationally spoken languages. Nowhere speaks French except France and a few parts of Canada and Africa.</p>
<p>More people in the world speak Chinese because, uh, China’s a big country.</p>
<p>@UKgirl23 whatt do English and Spanish have to do with this? You also forgot Switzerland, Belgium, and Monaco. Not only a few parts of Africa, MOST of Africa is francophone. Mandarin is only in China.</p>
<p>Living in Vancouver, it would REALLY help if I was fluent in Mandarin. Business is one of my interests and some municipalities in Greater Vancouver have Chinese people accounting for half the population. Also, Japanese uses kanji which is the nearly the same as Chinese characters. I love French too but I don’t plan on moving to Quebec or another country so Mandarin would be more useful to me.</p>
<p>Probably Mandarin.</p>
<p>Mandarin.
It’s spoken by more people, it’s probably more difficult for a native English speaker to learn, and the word “Mandarin” makes me think of those little oranges, which are amazing.</p>
<p>Mandarin, so that I could get an A in my class and be done with it.</p>
<p>But keep in mind that Japanese characters take from Mandarin characters, so essentially if you knew how to read Mandarin, you’d pretty much know how to read Japanese, too.</p>
<p>Mandarin. Looks incredibly better on college applications than French does. French might sound pretty, but it’s useless.</p>
<p>French- I like the sound and flow</p>
<p>kjh611,</p>
<p>Why do you think that French is useless?</p>
<p>@UKgirl23 It’s not actually compulsory in all of the UK. Here in Scotland you just need to learn /a/ language, and local councils can set additional rules.</p>
<p>I think the reason French is so common is partly traditional (it is the lingua franca, etc.) but also because we’re near to France.</p>
<p>Anyway, on the main topic, I’ve been learning French since I was 7, so I think I’d go with Madarin.</p>