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."

Comments

Or Not

[Aranykai]

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.

Re:Or Not

[Swampash]

They are learning English at a much faster rate than any Americans can learn Chinese.

Hell, they're learning English faster than any American can learn English.

Re:Or Not

[ks9208661]

Three of those 4 languages are of very little use unless you don't mind being confined to western Europe.

French is useful outside of Western Europe too.

While Dutch kids spend those 12+ hours a week learning geographically confined languages like Dutch, French and German, native English speaking kids have 12+ extra hours a week to learn more useful things, and still be able to communicate more effectively and with more people than someone who is fluent in Dutch and speaks some French, German and English. American kids can take classes like art, drama, debating, literature etc. and play in the school band. Do you think kids who are forced to study three foreign languages have time for this?

In the last PISA ranking, Dutch kids outscored American kids in all categories, despite being disadvantaged with 12+ hours a week of "learning less useful things" (i.e. languages). To be fair, PISA checked only reading, maths, and science, which, like language learning, are typical "left brain" subjects.

Worse still, try to find an adult who still knows those foreign languages (other than the same basic English half the world speaks) a few years after their graduation.

I work with Dutch adults who are equally fluent in English, German|French, and Dutch. They're in their 40s and 50s, and have graduated from school for more than a few years. I didn't even have to try to find them.

And I'm learning Chinese, said Werner Von Braun

[Anonymous Coward]

That Was The Week That Was

Largest economy?

[the linux geek]

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?

Re:Largest economy?

[Mashiki]

None. 10-15 years and China will be experiencing what Europe and the US are. Slowing economy, high local debt and foreign debt. China is the hot shit right now, but most if it's GDP is coming from local manufacturing where the party is throwing money hand over fist for them to spend on things like...ghost cities, and all that.

And there's no real shortage of news stories about the number of cities with no one to next to no one in them. Here's a good one by SBS. The real problem is china is still operating on a 3 tier structure for economics, and the poor bastards at the bottom are still at the very bottom eeking out life as dirt farmers.

Re:Largest economy?

[hawguy]

Exactly. Everything I'm reading says they are dangerously close to bursting. I'm not an economics guy so I have to rely on the "experts" but it doesn't sound good. Plus, their GDP is artificially inflated with these building projects they're doing. Google "Chinese ghost cities" and take a look. Strange stuff going on over there.

Here's a few articles predicting trouble in the Chinese economy:

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/175179/20110706/china-economic-bubble-housing-bubble-job-growth-asia-bubble-china-interest-rates-recession-inflation.htm
http://www.businessinsider.com/china-economy-hard-landing-bumpy-landing-soft-landing-and-what-landing-2011-7
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0316/China-the-coming-costs-of-a-superbubble

But we shouldn't be too happy to see their economy stumble -- a major failing in China will have serious economic impacts throughout the world.

Re:Largest economy?

[PhreakOfTime]

Not that you don't bring up some good points but consider this slightly re-worded sentence you wrote;

Everything I'm reading in English says they are dangerously close to bursting

Some of their other infrastructure is coming in the form of high speed rail, with many parts of it functioning already. Rail links to the rest of Europe are already planned and being built. While there may be ghost cities right now, the 'plan' is to have the infrastructure in place for the hordes coming in from the rural areas, to avoid such nasty things like 'tin shack villages' and overcrowding becoming commonplace, like many other countries have experienced when population growth far exceeded the ability of local infrastructure to be built.

I think it is hard for many westerners to really understand what is going on in many parts of China. The growth that was once limited to coastal cities, is spreading into more central locations of the country, to take advantage of the population distribution. Human rights, and pollution controls aside(and those really are BIG things to us, and rightfully so), they are absolutely doing almost a perfect job of bringing their country into a more-than-modern era.

As far as them 'busting'. The likelihood of that happening is much smaller than it was here, or in any of the problem EU countries like greece, portugal, iceland, and italy. Why? They actually have rather sane lending policies when it comes to housing. I have been hearing the line that there is a bubble in China for just about a decade now, mainly from westerners who think that their lending practices closely match ours(they don't), and just by looking at the growth similarities, a parallel is able to be drawn to our meteoric rise, and subsequent fall(it isn't) in real estate.

It has been about 5 years since I looked when I last heard this same 'rumor' of a bubble going around since I really looked at the financial requirements and legal framework, and I do imagine some of that has changed(possibly the restriction on second homes was lifted in that time, Im not sure), but there are a LOT of reasons why what appears to be a bubble in China, is only a buibble when looked at through the experience of western eyes. I won't say something stupid like 'it's different this time', but there are serious structural and behavioral differences that make a comparison between our two economies incredibly hard to do without spending a large portion of your waking hours immersing yourself in the differences between the frameworks of the two systems.

End result, learn Chinese. Worst case, you expand your knowledge. Best case, you(more likely your children) don't become a slave.

Re:Largest economy?

[PhreakOfTime]

In a way, the US is. China has the ability to artificially peg is currency in a way that is more beneficial to them, than it is to the people lending them money. No other major world economy enjoys this benefit, and they are taking full advantage of it.

As to the problem of empty buildings, many of the empty buildings are nothing more than concrete shells waiting to have the final build out done. The manpower needed to clean any needed upkeep greatly dwarfs the manpower needed to build it. It is far better to have the infrastructure already in place and clean it, than not to have it in place and then have to deal with things like ghettos, and unbalanced infrastructure needs. Once you fall behind in that respect, the cost to bring an area 'back' to where you want it to be is many orders of magnitude greater than the initial outlay.

Want to see some large vacant areas right here in the US? Visit the large 'Manhattan West' development in Las Vegas. It is almost completely empty. That is just one of many developments. Who pays for it? Well, the bank writes it off against their loan-loss reserves, and then gets to spread that loss out to offset any profits over the next x number of years.

banking is a little strange when you fully bury your nose in it, and many, MANY things are almost counter-intuitive if its not your usual line of work. Even when it was involved in my normal line of work, there were still some areas that defied my understanding..Either way, Im not anywhere near that field anymore, and couldn't be happier about that.

As I said, I am not an expert nor am I silly enough to say this will al just somehow work out great for China. But if I had to put money on them, I would be leaning more to it working out for them as a whole. Mainly because they will do whatever is needed to accomplish that. And that involves some rather ugly things that would never be allowed to happen in a western-style democracy without heads literally rolling. Our banking system shenanigans would have ended with state sponsored beheadings in public, and China is also able to very specifically adjust its currency peg in a way that will soften the blow to them more than any other economy would be able to. This has some downsides, and I think one of the major risks is that they get too accustomed to this setup, and push it right to the edge-conditions, leaving them just as vulnerable as their western counterparts. However, they are not near that point... yet.

Re:Largest economy?

[dgatwood]

I'm assuming it's as described in 1984:

Inner party
Outer party
Proles

You have the inner party—the upper crust, the rich, the members of the party in power. Then you have the people who work for them—the factory workers, and so on. Finally, you have the people outside the cities.

Re:Largest economy?

[artor3]

End result, learn Chinese. Worst case, you expand your knowledge. Best case, you(more likely your children) don't become a slave.

More accurately: Worst case, you waste countless hours of your all-too-short life learning a skill you never use. Best case, you can communicate with people that you'd be able to communicate with anyway -- every single Chinese student who wants a college degree has to become fluent in English to pass the CET (College English Test) and high scores are necessary for many top jobs.

English has become the world's language. There's no reason to learn another language, except as a hobby. A better use of your time is to learn to understand thick accents. There are classes you can take on that, and they will likely be far more useful. Also useful would be studying Eastern cultures, as cultural context is very important in communication.

And as an aside, it's extremely hyperbolic to suggest that people who don't speak Chinese will become slaves. That's like saying Frenchmen who didn't learn English are slaves.

Re:Largest economy?

[artor3]

It ties back to the same fallacy that people always seem to fall for. The first half of an S curve looks a lot like an exponential curve, so we just assume it is one. Computers get faster? The singularity draws near! The Dow Jones Industrial going up? It'll be at 36,000 in no time! Travel gets faster? Where's my warp drive?! I grew from 1 foot to 6 feet in my first 16 years? I'll be two miles high by the time I die!

Whenever anything is advancing rapidly, we assume it will be that way forever, when in reality it inevitably slows down.

Re:Largest economy?

[epine]

China needs to achieve 25% of the American per capita income rates to become the world's largest economy as measured in raw dollars.

The main evidence that they won't achieve this relatively soon is the amount of equity they presently hold in the American economy. At the rate things are going, they'll soon wish they had invested elsewhere.

Once China reaches GDP parity with America, it will be a symbolic victory only. China will still be an economy with an agricultural sector resembling America 100 years ago. Their social institutions will take generations to evolve and improve. People underestimate the amount of social equity in an advanced economy.

The more interesting benchmark is when China achieves resource consumption parity with America for Joe Random strategic resource. That will maybe happen a decade after China reaches GDP parity.

This will create a bit of a seller's market for primary resources (short of America toppling a Chinese regime). Our foothold in Afghanistan might even pay future dividends.

As for learning Chinese, I worked with Chinese/Japanese/Korean languages from 1985 until the early 1990s back when these languages were poorly supported. I took several Chinese courses at university, and listened to a lot of Japanese instructional tapes.

Except for a very small percentage of gifted people, learning a second language *for the first time* as an adult is a hellacious amount of work. I had no trouble with Chinese grammar, because my mind already processes grammar at a higher level of abstraction.

For instance, most people think of singular and plural. Idiots. It's really singular and non-singular.

negative one books
zero books
one book
one point five books
two books

Fowler made a distinction between "fewer" for counting nouns, and "less" for mass nouns (continuous quantities). This distinction was ruined by the express check-out line. He also distinguished "between" for a party of two, and "among" for a party N>2.

Most people think of possessive pronouns as a branch of property law. Idiots. "Possessive" is actually used in language to indicated a preferred relationship according to largest eigenvalue in whichever mode of PCA analysis is established within the discourse, e.g. the car I borrowed is "my car" if the person I'm talking to is distressingly car-less, and couldn't give a rat's ass how the car I arrive in was originally procured.

Grammar devolves into metaphor surprisingly often.

Even starting from this proficiency with the abstractions of the verbal mind, in the end I could hardly justify the net-present-value of becoming proficient with Chinese to any serviceable level, without actually living in China.

The the time China passes America on more than a handful of critical economic metrics, software translation will be plenty adequate for 95% of people doing business with China.

I should add here that learning the Chinese writing system is no small project. Reading is enough of a challenge, writing is pure masochism. The Chinese speech system is surprisingly regular with only four or five challenging consonants (c,x,q,zh in pinyin). You just need to completely rewire your tone perception from the music part of your brain to the linguistic part of your brain. I'm not joking. Sounds the brain perceives as linguistic are suppressed from other forms of scrutiny. TED had a recent video about early language learning. It's very early in the language process that the brain codes which sounds are language and which ones aren't (the other active brain skills are sucking, drooling, and eye contact).

One thing I will say is that if people had more appreciation for the social equity of an advanced technological society, maybe people wouldn't be so actively trying to tear America apart from within. Some of the anti-government voices out there have no clue about the difference between the baby and the bath water. Time after time I listen to economists talk about the world econom

Re:Largest economy?

[rsclient]

The British felt the same way about the American and German "bubbles" in manufacturing and steel, too. But they just knew that eventually the two small upstart countries would slow down, resulting in Britain continuing to have a comfortable lead over all other industrialized countries.

Sometimes the view in the rear view mirror is true.

Here's why

[wsxyz]

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.

Re:Here's why

[rastilin]

Funny, but often true. It's useful knowing enough to know what your translators are actually telling them you said.

1980s all over again

[Bloodwine77]

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.

Re:1980s all over again

[Tumbleweed]

Ha, too late!

Joss Whedon (Firefly) disagrees with you

[tomhudson]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(TV_series)

Firefly takes place in a multi-cultural future, primarily a fusion of Occidental and Chinese cultures, where there is a significant division between the rich and poor. As a result of the Sino-American Alliance, Mandarin Chinese is a common second language; it is used in advertisements, and characters in the show frequently use Chinese words and curses. According to the DVD commentary on the episode "Serenity", this was explained as being the result of China and the United States being the two superpowers that expanded into space.

Life imitates art, or as is often the case, sci-fi is "Future History".

Re:Joss Whedon (Firefly) disagrees with you

[gstoltz]

Apropos Scifi. Philip K. Dick`s novels are turned into movies. John Brunners books are turned into reality. (Its a misquote, but heck, it works.) Other than that, i`d say that nothing is closer to truth about the world than old Frederick Pohl/Cyril Kornbluth novels. But i try to be strange. My working strategy is to view scifi as contemporary, not futuristic. Whatever was conceptualizable when the writers wrote it was also happening then, maybe they didn`t notice, yet they did.

Re:Joss Whedon (Firefly) disagrees with you

[chill]

Ask put in the second panel of this XKCD cartoon...

For a universe that's supposed to be half-Chinese, Firefly sure doesn't have any Asians.

Re:Learn Mandarin and buy Bitcoins

[Roachie]

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.

Complete nonsense

[sjbe]

"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".

Charles V

[puppyfox]

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, German to my horse, and Mandarin to my electronics.

Re:Learn Mandarin and buy Bitcoins

[Moryath]

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.

Re:Learn Mandarin and buy Bitcoins

[PopeRatzo]

Yea, I remember this kind talk about the Japanese back in the 1980s

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!

Re:How much do you EAT?

[c6gunner]

Why would you need an electric can opener?

To open electric cans. Duh.

Ya I get real tired of that one

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:There are fewer than 50

[David Jao]

No, it's not a fact. The "fewer than 50" claim is outrageously false. Wikipedia alone lists dozens of western speakers.

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.