Should i learn how to speak chinese? I want to use my free time

>>18017868

It's impossible to say how long it would take, because it depends entirely on your personal talent, interest and dedication to language learning. Also, your native language and previous experience in studying languages are factors that affect learning.

As for how useful it is, it depends on if you ever plan on travelling to China or what your career plans are. On some fields knowing foreign langagues like Chinese are a great benefit, but as for daily life, you probably won't much need it much unless you actually plan on going to China. However, all languages could be useful, if you employ your skills smartly.

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>>18017868
>Should i learn how to speak chinese?
yes and no. If you live in the US, spanish is much more prominent than any other foreign language.
>I want to use my free time on something that can be beneficial.
That's awesome!
>Does anyone know how many years it will take me if i take irl courses and how useful is it?
Is there an adult learning center or community college nearby? Since I don't know how well you take new info or your learning habits, it's hard to say. I got a grasp of the language in about 2 years, but then again I have a lot of practice because I live in a latino-heavy area and my job requires me to talk to A LOT of them.

That being said, practice makes perfect. If you have no one to talk chinese to, you'll likely loose the info you worked so hard to gain (Example: I was fluent in French in high school, but after I moved french wasn't necessary and I eventually lost it).

While you never TRULY lose language, not practicing will definitely hinder your learning. I'd say get find Chinese (or whatever language you choose) friend who is fluent in english and talk to them over skype, steam, etc. That way you can solidify what you learn through practice.

There's is a screencap set of an anon who learned Chinese and put it on his resume for some business job. Bosses noticed and they stuck him in China where he had a shit time dealing with shiesty people, eroding away at his soul. He recommended learning German or Japanese or anything else.

>>18017868
>Should i learn how to speak chinese?

NEIN

SPRECHEN SIE DEUTSCH ?

Good god no. Learn any other language but Chinese.


Knowing Chinese means you'll be the guy who has to deal with Chinese companies, you don't want any of that.

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OP here.

>>18017902
>>18017952

I thought of Chinese since its the most spoken language on the planet (according to babel.com or smth like that).

I'm from Greece and personally i have not met anyone with the ability or the intention to learn how to speak Chinese.

It would be quite easy to attend courses, i already know some teachers that could start teaching me immediately.

Sorry for my English btw

>>18017979
I used to, a little bit.I forgot how to though :/

>>18017982
OP
Why?
I wouldn't mind working with them

Mandarin Chinese, grammar wise is just like English but more simplified.

There are a shit ton of characters and the tones are what get people.

If you want to learn an easy difficult language, learn Russian! I taught myself, it's quite fun.

I HIGHLY recommend learning sign language. Its easy and fun.

Not only that but if you and a buddy learn together, you guys can talk shit about other people and they will never know.

Also if you have a job that works with people, it will become usefull quite a few times. Im a bartender and i use my sign language around 10 to 15 times a year for deaf or customers who are hard of hearing.

>>18018101
Most people who speak Chinese do so for business reasons. Many business production centers are located in China, so if you work in engineering or operations then learning to speak chinese is a great choice. The reason for this is that you might get promoted or have a pay boost if you can speak with the factory owner or design team in mandarin (the most common type of "chinese").

If you work in banking/finance, you should learn cantonese (the other type of "chinese") as Hong Kong uses cantonese. Most times Hong Kong works on trading stock but it also helps companies sell their stock for the first time.

If you work in tourism, mandarin is helpful because many chinese can now afford to go on international vacations (again, due to the increase in production and banking). Learning mandarin will allow you to give tours to Chinese tourists (most chinese tourists travel together in groups of 50-100, enough to fill a tour bus). This would be good as you can now have more tour groups, thus earning you more money.

If you don't work in an industry that will interact with chinese, then don't learn it. Chinese is the most common language because there are many people living in China. They aren't spread out evenly over the world, so it would be better to learn another local language as you'll interact with those people more often.

>>18017958
>>18017982
This is indicative of the 4chan mentality. I've seen that screencap myself. You people see something posted on the internet and take it as fact and think you're enlightened compared to the "dumb normies". Real world experience is the only way to know the truth of the matter for anything. That's not to say it's bad to read and learn. But if you're that guy, you know, the 4channer who solely reads things online and thinks he's so smart, you're actually retarded, not smart.

I tangented, to get back to the point, working in China could suck or it could not. Unlike you idiots, I'm not going to make a claim for either because I'm not an expert on that and would never think I'm an expert because I read an infographic.

Let's now examine the logic of the situation. If China doesn't suck, then it's a positive situation and doesn't need to be examined further. All we need to examine is if China does suck. If China does suck, my assertion is that it could still be a good thing for three reasons. The first is simple supply and demand. The more that China sucks, the less people will want to work there which means that the salary will increase until the supply and demand hits equilibrium. The second is that work generally sucks. If you have any real world working experience, you'll know that a few lucky people get to "do what you love", the rest grind it out. You think anyone works a shitty job because they want to? All those people do because they have to. If China is a shitty job, you're not any worse off than you were back home and you would get paid more. Third, China is going up, the western world is going down. I don't care to debate this, for the purposes of the original point, if the Chinese economy good and that of your home country is bad, knowing Chinese could mean the difference between any job at all or none. A shitty job beats starving to death any day.

OP

>>18018125
Thanks!
I'll consider taking on Russian.How did you learn and how much time did it take you?


>>18018144
Oh man i just thought of the pranks i could pull off with sign language.

I guess i could try and learn it, but im afraid i would forget it after some time of not practicing it.

>>18018157
As for Spanish. It's true that Spanish is the most widely used language other than English in the US. But what you have to keep in mind is who is speaking it. I'm not trying to be racist with what I'm about to say, I only bring it up for the sake of talking about the practicality of Spanish. In today's economy, Spanish is only useful in manual labor fields. Also, if ever the day comes that US becomes a Hispanic majority, sure Spanish would be useful then but you would be fucked anyway making it a moot point. Every single Hispanic country in the world is a failed state that can't get it's shit together.

>>18018159
I've been on and off for about 2 years. I've put in about 600 hours into it. I do a lot of reading and listening.

I use an e-reader site called LingQ, which has a built in dictionary (I strongly recommend this site for anyone that wants to improve their reading in ANY language).

The idea is to build up a lot of passive vocabulary, which makes speaking a lot more simple in the long run. It did help me a lot; natives think my pronunciation is very clear.

>>18018198
2 years sounds good.
Thanks for the website too, I'm going to check it out.
As for the pronounciation, i guess it mostly depends on where you live but i wouldn't mind having a bad pronounciation.

>>18018149
>>18018157
OP

I'm aiming to become an architect.My uncle has been one for many years and he told me he never happened to interact with Chinese people but i guess that doesn't really matter.

I think it's safe to say that of all the languages suggested, Chinese is the one that attracts me the most.

At this point I'm 99% sure that Chinese is the best language to learn but if anyone thinks otherwise I'm ready to listen to other opinions.

>>18018229
What type of architect? Residential? Commercial?

If you're a residential architect then there is no *business* logic to choose mandarin. You'd be much better off learning serbian, italian, arabic or maybe french as those are the areas you'll most likely visit on business. Since you live in Greece, if you happen to visit another country to build/design, it will most likely be another local area that speaks a language from the list above.

If you're a commercial architect, then mandarin might be a great *business* opportunity as you might build a factory or an office building or an apartment complex or something else in china.

Again, my point is about your job: if you like Chinese just for the fun of it, then sure go ahead and learn it. But from a pragmatic point of view, you won't be interacting with anyone in mandarin unless you work with Chinese people or visit China.

>>18018157
>unless you idiots
It's comic that you call others out for believing something and being enlightened, while you think you're enlightened yourself, because "your logic". You're probably just a philosophy student who thinks he's smart after having taken formal logic I. Also think about it like this, why do you come here? Why do you need this social fix? 4chan mentality? YOU ARE PART OF 4chan. You can either contribute something and improve it or you can just shit on it and keep coming here.
And don't gimme that "oh, I have plenty of friends and a good job, I just come here to waste time in between sex ;)" bullshit.
You're an idiot, I'm an idiot, we are all idiots.

>>18018433
You're grasping for straws buddy. The only ad hominems you could come up with were "no u 2" and philosophy student.

There's an easy test for if someone is part of a group. If you insult that group, do they get offended or not? If someone calls 4chan idiots, I agree and think nothing of it. You on the other hand got offended and tried to play it off as all being idiots. As for why I come here, this site requires no registration to post and you can generally say what you want on most boards without getting banned.

The philosophy student grasp was mind boggling. My point which you took issue with was that while there's nothing wrong with learning by reading, the only way to be reasonably sure about the truth is practical real world experience and that if you think you're enlightened because you can read and regurgitate infographics, that means you're retarded. Let me first say that there's nothing inherently wrong with philosophy students. Most kids go to college at 18, if one of them decides to study philosophy because they didn't know any better, you can't really fault them. Now that I've said that, your idea of the true believer philosophy student, that kind of person lives in their head and doesn't account for the real world and is the same kind of idiot as a 4channer. I emphasize practical reality so how on earth would I be a philosophy student? Like I said, grasping for straws if that was all you could come up with.

Let's wrap things up with logic again. Your argument was that we're all idiots. I can simply except myself from the idiot category and then I'll agree with you on the rest, nothing further to argue about.