[westiseast]

Gonna be a bit of a douche, but...

Why do we go googoogaga over an English speaker learning a foreign language to a competent level, when this is something millions of people do regularly? Mark isn't the first person to learn a language in the middle of a busy job and life schedule.

Doucheness not quite over - it's a big achievement, yeah, but Chinese isn't actually that hard, it's a bit of a myth perpetuated because (a) there's not enough people learning it (b) a lot of teachers are quite shit in my experience (c) hand writing is difficult. in reality spoken Chinese is very simple, grammar is easy, common vocabulary is easily learnt and repeated frequently....

[United857]

He is probably the first CEO of a American $200 billion dollar company to do so though -- and in public.

[westiseast]

I guess my point is that I don't think that's particularly relevant. The story is "man does something incredibly difficult whilst dealing with big work pressures". I doubt that Marks life pressures are greater than lots of "normal" people who learn languages everyday, and learning spoken Chinese to his level isn't actually that hard. he also has the benefits of practically unlimited resources to spend on learning.

[new299]

Agreed, private lessons on a daily basis can help you improve very quickly in my experience, you don't even need to do much self study outside that.

[stangeek]

...which is probably very telling about the general open mindness of American CEOs of $200bn companies ;)

[lingoberry]

Where is your data on Chinese not being "that" hard? According to US Military studies it's about 10 times as hard to learn as another Germanic language. In my experience, being fluent in two languages and learning Chinese, it's crazy difficult. Everybody has difficulty with different aspects of the language, for me pronunciation and tones are easy, but the ambiguity and "same soundedness" of the words really makes it difficult for me to remember anything. I know that if I put as much effort into learning German as I have Chinese, I would be pretty fluent by now. Instead I'm a still complete newb.

[westiseast]

It's my personal experience. I don't really know how you quantify a language as being 10x as hard? Do you need to be 10x more clever or work 10x more? The American foreign diplomat service routinely trains its staff to relative fluency in a couple of years.

As with my other comments, taking Chinese as a whole it is difficult, but breaking it down into components, some parts are crazy hard and parts are quite easy. I think once you get past the hump of becoming used to tones and some of the initial grammar weirdness (for English speakers) then there aren't many grammar complexities, vocabulary is very repetitive and even poor pronunciation isn't as big a deal as you think - witness Mark making lots of tone errors but being understood quite well.

[rayval]

Chinese people are amazed when they find a foreigner speaking their language. In part because they like to see themselves as speaking the world's hardest language. But also because there are not a lot of people who are able to learn and speak this, even though China is going to be the world's largest economy shortly.

[shin_lao]

It's much harder to learn a language from scratch at that age with that kind of schedule.

Every human language is hard to learn once you go beyond the basics, but what makes a language hard to learn for you is the distance with your mother tongue.

And guess what? Mandarin is one of the most difficult language to learn for a native English speaker.

http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang...

[westiseast]

Yes and no - achieving real fluency after a certain age is very very hard, near impossible. Writing chinese by hand is exceptionally difficult too. Typing characters using pinyin inputs is significantly easier. Speaking in simple conversations like Mark has is really not that hard - again, not to undermine him specifically, but rather to dispel the idea that this is some superhuman achievement. he's at at moderate level in spoken Chinese, I would expect any learner who has the same teachers and a Chinese wife and family to achieve a similar level in that amount of time.

[contravert]

You won't find a finer example of white privilege.

No one cares if a Chinese CEO (or anyone for that matter) speaks English, no matter the difficulty and effort the learning entails. Contrast this indifference with the flattery of the converse in this thread, and it's quite illuminating of the world we live in.

[VeejayRampay]

This has nothing to do with white privilege. I am a rather white English-speaking Frenchman, I've lived for 4 years in Vancouver and people never complimented for being fluent or bilingual. This is just either people fawning in front of powerful people or most likely some form of anglo-centrism where speaking a foreign language is something exceptional (which it's not).

That being said, good on him for making the effort.

[golemotron]

> You won't find a finer example of white privilege.

I don't buy it. The story is prominent person does something you don't expect, not prominent white person does something you don't expect.

[astrange]

It's not hard to understand someone speaking poor English, and we're used to encountering ESL speakers. On the other hand, if I make a mistake in Japanese, especially when writing, nobody can understand me. It takes a lot of practice to get from being able to use a convenience store to having any kind of conversation.

Some of that is because they're not used to non-native speakers, but much of it is just the structure of the language and room for error-correction. I'd assume it's the same for Mandarin with so many short words and tones.

[westiseast]

I wouldn't really agree. Mark makes lots of grammar, vocab, pronunciation and tonal mistakes and the audience seems to understand him with no problems. Spoken Chinese isnt tgat hard and in some ways is much more forgiving than English for non native speakers.

[westiseast]

Totally - I know plenty of Chinese people with equally busy lives who learn exceptional English because they have no choice. they often experience awful teachers, poor learning methods, and still manage it. I don't want to spit on Marks achievement, but I'd love a bit of realism - we should expect this standard, not wet our pants because one ridiculously rich guy can say "I like big fast trains" :)

[alexjeffrey]

white privilege? don't you mean anglocentricism? the bias would be equally present if Mark was African-American or Asian-American.

[stangeek]

Exactly. If learning Chinese is so difficult for an English speaker, why wouldn't the opposite be true?