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US Defense Department will hire good Chinese speakers (American citizens with Chinese background who can speak much better Chinese than you).
So yeah, your odds of getting a job that requires speaking Chinese is still very los since there are so many people who can speak much better Chinese than you in any job field.
Just think about it. You need employers who can speak Chinese. You would you hire someone who speaks broken Chinese and someone who has hard time communicating with the customers?
At least with Spanish, knowing just some Spanish may increase your chance of getting a job.
I don't think you have much experience of this, honestly. There are many federal government agencies that are quite eager to hire American-born both first and second language speakers of certain languages, and Chinese is one of the shortage areas. And non-native speakers of Mandarin CAN learn it fluently, even if your personal experience is with people who've lacked the talent, education or perseverance. There's also several roles where they'll also take people who've shown an aptitude and "finish" their fluency development - I myself benefited from this.
I don't think you have much experience of this, honestly. There are many federal government agencies that are quite eager to hire American-born both first and second language speakers of certain languages, and Chinese is one of the shortage areas. And non-native speakers of Mandarin CAN learn it fluently, even if your personal experience is with people who've lacked the talent, education or perseverance. There's also several roles where they'll also take people who've shown an aptitude and "finish" their fluency development - I myself benefited from this.
Did you learn Mandarin fluently from scratch? If so, how long did it take you?
Did you learn Mandarin fluently from scratch? If so, how long did it take you?
I didn't study Mandarin. But there were other people training in Mandarin from scratch (or close to it) who achieved fluency, yes.
I will say that, in my experience, generally people who are already bilingual or multilingual have an advantage in picking up yet another language, even if it's a basically unrelated language. The facility is already in place. People who have an exceptional grasp of their first language, both verbal and written, also tend to do better when learning a second language. I think that these two factors are part of why so many Americans are a bit dramatic about the challenge of language acquisition...we are a very monolingual nation that is not very enthusiastic about literacy.
Considering that almost 20% of Americans speak Spanish, kids should probably be learning how to speak Spanish first, then another language.
The vast majority of people in America who speak Spanish are first generation immigrants from Latin American countries. They are usually employed in low skill labor. Nearly all of their children end up learning English in school.
What incentive is there for an American to speak the language of an immigrant underclass?
I see a lot of people nowadays who want to learn Chinese or want to teach their kids Chinese.
I don't understand the obsession.
Yes China has 1.5 billion people, but the languages is very focused mostly on China and not widespread like Spanish and French.
Also, the kids who have Chinese parents in America, most of them don't speak Mandarin fluently and almost none of them can write. The languages is so difficult that even many people from China cannot write that well.
And I don't think people really should worry about businesses with China because English will be just fine, just like businesses with any other countries.
The chances are, no matter how much you put your effort to learn Chinese, the Chinese people will probably speak English better than you speaking Mandarin.
I've seen many people who tried to learn Chinese and they all gave up relatively quick. All gave up on basic level. Only person I have seen who learned was my teacher from college (She studied for long years in Taiwan and China).
My opinion is that unless you are 100% sure that you will go all the way with Chinese, don't even bother learning it. Better to use that time on something else.
So yeah, many people seem to be very afraid of China's economy, but there's just no way in hell that Chinese will surpass English and it would just take too much time to even learn a little that it probably does not even worth trying it.
Then don't have your kid learn it.
I don't understand why you care enough about what other parents do to make an entire post about what language their children learn as a secondary.
i noticed that a language like chinese seems to have an effect on math ability because of the math numeracy that is built into the language. Chinese has only 9 number names 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 then it goes to 10-1, etc. Also, the base ten is easily built in.
US Defense Department will hire good Chinese speakers (American citizens with Chinese background who can speak much better Chinese than you).
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No, actually, government security agencies that require a background check favor language speakers who don't have heritage from communist countries, including China. They would take people with Taiwanese heritage, but they also look for Euro-Americans with fluency. Those agencies are a huge job resource for non-Asian, non-Russian (etc.) language grads. They hire them in droves.
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