Slashdot Mirror
Why People Who Make Things Should Learn Chinese
ptorrone writes "MAKE Magazine is making that case that any 'maker' who builds, buys or creates electronics should learn (Mandarin) Chinese. MAKE outlines the resources for anyone wishing to learn the language of the soon-to-be largest economy and source of just about everything we buy in the USA."
China is poised to become the worlds largest non-native English speaking population in the world. They are learning English at a much faster rate than any Americans can learn Chinese.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
That Was The Week That Was
What remote evidence is there that the PRC will ever be the world's largest economy? They're displaying symptoms characteristic with a bubble, and their GDP is only roughly half of that of the US. Or is massive growth going to continue forever, just like it was going to for Japan and South Korea?
It's important to learn Chinese so that when you are doing business with Chinese people in English, you can understand what they are saying about you behind your back, cause that's what people do when they speak foreign languages.
I remember the 1980s when everybody said that you'll need to learn Japanese. In popular culture the Japanese were shown as our future overlords.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(TV_series)
Life imitates art, or as is often the case, sci-fi is "Future History".
Absolutely false. The benefit of me learning Chinese, compared to the benefit of using that time to read about math, science, history, and so on ... it's a no-brainer. There's no good reason for me to spend my time learning Chinese, as opposed to doing something else, unless it's something I simply WANT to do.
I mean honestly ... this guy is smart, and he says it's going to take him more than two years of ALL his free time, and a total of about 5 years, to become fluent. If he wants to do that, great! But for every "maker" (what a stupid term!) to do that, my goodness ... just think of all the things that could be created in those thousands upon thousands of hours.
It's nonsensical on its face.
Surely, some people would benefit from it ... but I suspect it would only be those who would already be inclined to want to.
You're kidding, right? Look up Uighurs if you want one example...
Yea, I remember this kind talk about the Japanese back in the 1980s( yea I'm old, get off my lawn ). Ooooh, better learn Japanese if you want to succeed in business, Ooooh, they are going to take over the world with their mysterious asian cunning, that us round-eyes will never be able to match.
Glad I could put it into perspective for you. My work is done here.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
"MAKE Magazine is making that case that any 'maker' who builds, buys or creates electronics should learn (Mandarin) Chinese.
MAKE has no idea what they are talking about. I DO manufacture electronics (electronic data harnesses primarily) for a living and fairly little of the parts we make come from China and most of what we buy is commodity parts. (wire, terminals, connectors, etc) Lots of it comes from Japan and much of it is made here in the US. Sure there are some parts from China but it isn't as much as one might think. The manufacture of many of these products is highly automated and China has no cost significant cost advantage.
Furthermore, virtually all sales of commodity electronic components are done through distributors. You simply are NOT going to buy direct from China unless you are a purchaser for a manufacturing company. Distributors have customer service representatives, most of whom do not speak a word of any Chinese dialect. And even if for some reason you did need to contact someone in China directly, there are a HUGE number of English speakers there. I've been to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Chengdu and other places in China. It is NOT hard to find someone who speaks rather good English.
source of just about everything we buy in the USA.
The US has a $3.7 TRILLION manufacturing sector and most of that stuff we make is also sold here in the US. In 2010 the US imported $364 BILLION in goods from China or roughly 10% of what the US makes itself. A big number to be sure, but nowhere close to "just about everything".
I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, German to my horse, and Mandarin to my electronics.
The cookie told me to.
Okami: pressed in Taiwanese DVD-fab factory.
Wii: full of Foxconn components (China slave labor), likely Korean laser diode in the DVD drive.
Sony TV: Taiwanese or Korean LCD, could be either.
Toyota minivan: mostly made in the US (probably Knoxville TN).
What was your point again?
Taiwan's what we really should wonder about. China's very good at stealing tech from other countries, but crap-all at doing anything else except for destroying the environment and committing acts of barbarism against farmers and monks.
There really isn't a substitute for having lived through something to provide some perspective.
There are a lot of ways the Chinese Miracle could go bad. I'm old enough to remember when Russia was the main competitor and how they were going to take over the world with their superior genetics and technological blah blah. Hell, there was even a Rocky movie about it. But then Rocky went to Moscow to fight the genetically superior Dolf Lundgren and told the Muscovites, "If I can change, then you can change and we can all change and make some change and hope and change and then we could all walk hand in hand into the bright future on the Moon" (I'm paraphrasing).
I'm sure there was a time not long ago when the people of England and France were saying "Those Americans...we've got to keep an eye on them or they'll end up being almost as powerful as our Roman Legion and Spanish Armada and then we'll have to deal with them". But of course, the British and French had gay sex and created Canada, and that did something, I'm not sure what, but they sure like their hockey up there. Hell, they fucking riot when they're behind in the second period".
Anyway, my point is, um, that learning Mandarin because you think it's going to give you some deep advantage in the coming epoch is as dumb as calling yourself a "maker" because your hobby is building steampunk costumes for your chihuahua. If you have to make up a gay name like "maker" then you should visit a tool and die shop in Berwyn, Illinois and talk to someone who actually knows how to make something without giving himself some fruity name just because Cory Doctorow says so. Please. Don't get me started on Cory Doctorow....
Now please excuse me, I have to go freshen up this drink. Did you know vodka/pineapple is a nice summer pick-me-up? You put in a shot of grenadine and slice of mango. Get a party hat. Hell, two of these and you'll feel like you're wearing a party hat even without the party hat. See? I'm a maker too!
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why would you need an electric can opener?
To open electric cans. Duh.
The "Oh the US doesn't make anything!" You see it on Slashdot all the time and it is so amazingly wrong. In fact, prior to the downturn the US manufactured more than it has ever made in the past, and prior to the end of 2010, it made more than China. It is now a close second, manufacturing more than everyone but China.
I think part of the problem is just people wanting to believe America is doomed and/or crap for some reason but the other part is people don't understand the very global and distributed nature of things these days. They also function by what they happen to notice, which in terms of "made in" stickers is a lot of Chinese things.
Ok well that doesn't mean anything but that final assembly was done there. The "made in" or "assembled in" mark has to be put on something where it was put together. That has nothing to do with where any of the parts or major part of the work was done.
As an example: Buy an Intel processor in the US and it'll generally be stamped from Costa Rica, but sometimes Malaysia. Well if you do some research, you discover they have no fabs in those countries. Most of their fabs are in the US (7 of them) 1 in Ireland, 1 is Israel and one still being finished in China. All the high tech ones, the 32nm ones, are in the US so that's where the new CPUs are being made. Why then the labeling? Because it was developed there? No, you find their R&D centers are in the US and Israel. So what then?
Well the chips are tested and assembled there (also other locations, including one new on in the US). The wafers are shipped off, and the chips are cut off, tested, and packaged, then sent back. However, since that's the final place they are put together, that's what you see stamped on the chip.
When you do some digging, you find that indeed the US does make plenty of stuff, not all of it finished products though. When the US does make finished products, you discover that their are parts from all over in them. It isn't a situation where many things are built, start to finish, in one country much less one location. Companies all over the world make things, and they buy and sell form each other.
The US has a big share of that, as I said, second only to China currently.
I personally know three westerners, neither born nor raised in China, who are completely fluent in Chinese (could pass a spoken or written Turing test), and another five who are fluent except for a foreign accent. It's absurd to claim "fewer than 50" when I personally can think of eight firsthand without even trying.
Having visited foreign consulates in China, a quick estimate indicates that there are likely at least 500 westerners with total fluency in Chinese in the embassies and consulates alone.
The GP is a nice troll, but he does have his points.
Chinese is my native and "first language" (though I'd argue English is my preferred language for reading and writing), but I still think that learning Chinese is really fscking difficult, for a lot of reasons that includes his list and more.
The 50 number is simply wrong, but the others things (even if somewhat rude and racy) aren't that far off from the truth.
I guess most people that you know who are "fluent" in Chinese (without any cultural or ethnic ties) may be fluent in speaking and listening only. Learning the characters (for reading and writing) takes a painstaking few years, and actually a lot of ethnic Chinese raised in a non-Chinese using place don't even bother to learn it, but they can "fluently" speak the language.
Japanese is quite a different language (as far as I can tell, I don't speak it), and you can often get by without learning a lot of Kanji. The number of Chinese characters you need to learn is probably at least a few times more than Japanese Kanji before you can use the language meaningfully.
Don't quote me on this.
I personally know more than a dozen blueblooded Americans (born and raised) who speak and write fluent Mandarin. I have intermediate proficiency in the language. Some facts are wrong here. For one thing, knowing about 1,500 characters is enough for basic reading comprehension. Once you get to about 3,000, you can read doctoral theses and literally anything that's published today. The only thing that would require more than 3,000 characters would be reading obscure historical texts from times when characters had not yet evolved to their current state. The pinyin romanization system allows one to read chinese decently well without knowing any characters at all. And Chinese has some things about it that are very easy. A lack of complicated declensions and conjugations, for example. No difficult plurals, no articles, few prepositions, and a general simplicity of expression.
ScrewMaster said it better than I could. Our dominance of world culture and innovation are carrying over, even during our supposed decline... at least for now. You can spot the winner by whose culture is spreading, China is starting to look like us rather than the opposite.
Actually, those of us who live in Mexiforniazona would be better served by learning Spanish, at least we will able to speak the native tongue of our future country/contested zone. At present there are more Spanish speaking invaders in my hood than Chinese, despite the fact that I live 5 miles from a major university heavily enrolled with Asians.
I too suspect that the Chinese are not interested in empire although the whole 'blue water navy' thing makes me suspect. I submit that its probably just a 'me too' thing.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
The GP is a nice troll, but he does have his points.
That's because he copied his points from this paper without giving credit. The paper makes much better reading than his post.
There are strong opinions that the transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy is the natural progression, just as agrarian to manufacturing is... I don't know yet how well this theory holds with reality, but all sufficiently advanced economies (well, ones that lasted this long...) do move their manufacturing towards the developing world to keep prices low and resources in play.
I have been following the "Manufacturing job mantra" from the White House for the last year or so, but I'm on the fence about the whole idea. Things that are made here are done so not because cost doesn't matter, but the advantage of a more skilled workforce (or things like certain defense items which have to be made here in some aspects due to National Security)... However, it is clear that the economy benefits from cheap labor, and as a country expands its wealth and influence, the possibility of having cheap labor dries up domestically. It's the natural outgrowth of more spending power and more influence the working class can have on our form of government and our economy. Through maturity of the laws and power of labor, things shift away from the 12hr days for scrip... (which I don't think anyone argues is a bad thing to have happened...)
The fun part is when China matures past its "industrial stage" and has to farm out its manufacturing to keep competitive. (I don't know if the oppressive regime there will be able to contain the growth and wealth enjoyed by the prosperity of China's economy forever.) They might try, of course... because unlike the Liberty of the West, China does a good job of keeping their people just enough under the heel of the government's boot to prevent too rapid a rise into a service economy like Europe and the US.
*shrug* It's probably an interesting subject to dive into, if you can get past the boring theories. :)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.