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Italian vs Mandarin- Which should I learn
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| neo geo |
| I just came home from an awesome trip to China. After seeing the growth behind Shanghai I've realized that China will be up and coming economical power soon in the future. As an American I'm faced with a choice. I can take Italian at my school for credit towards my degree, or I can take mandarin at another university for my own personal knowledge. I'm majoring in international business and I see how many U.S. companies do business with China, so I think it would be very helpful. If I study Italian I will move to Florence after I finish my degree and study gemology. In my line of work a gemology certificate is not required, just knowledge of the jewelry business which I have about 2 years experience in. I think being a U.S. citizen knowing mandarin will give me much more of a competitive advantage. Has anyone here learned mandarin? If so, how hard was it to learn? My tour guide said that after about two years of learning the language and living in China he was averagely fluent. I really loved Shanghai and could see myself going there for about two years to study the language. What is your opinion on this. |
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| Krypton |
| Mandarin will get you much farther than Italian in any international business ventures you participate in in the future. Italian can't beat the world's most spoken language. |
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| JD8180 |
| i've heard mandarin is one of the harder languages to learn. good luck :p |
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| nchs09 |
Italian is only spoken by a bunch of stupid Italians in Italy.
Go with Mandarin (Italian does sound cool when spoken though, and from there a jump to Spanish should be easy) |
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| neo geo |
| I've always been told that mandarin is really hard. Before I went to China I learned about 20 different phrases and I had several people compliment me on my speaking skills and they all said I learned very quickly. I've never taken a foreign language , so I guess that was good to hear. My tour guide said it was not as hard as everyone thinks it to be. He said you just have to learn the tones and how to use them and then you are good from there. I guess I will see tomorrow when the Rosetta Stone comes in the mail. |
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| trewqy |
Dont be dumb. Learn mandarin. Them chinese are gonna overbreed and take over the world. I've learned it and its pretty hard to write it..but speaking it is pretty easy with enough practice.
Xie xie ni! |
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| elFreak |
| i'm taking lessons in my off hours at my school and i can say that korean has been a much easier language to learn (hangul is also alot easier to read) than mandarin. While programs like the rosetta stone are ok if you want to be a tourist, if you really want to learn it properly you will need the benefit of an instructor. He will be able to pick out the phonetic flaws in your speech much easier than you can. This is very important as asian languages often have similar tones that can completely change what a word means. Good luck, it isn't easy but its fun. (my teacher is ing hot.) If you think there is growth in Shanghai , wait till you see Beijing. |
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| elFreak |
| oh yeah i can speak functional italian...its pretty useless outside of italy. |
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| echosystm |
| italian is worthless, kgo mandarin. |
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| mndeg |
i'm surprised at how little americans are learning mandarin. at my university we only have 2 teachers that teach anything chinese or mandarin related. one teaches language, another teaches history.
we have over 25,000 students. probably less than 200 people taking ANY chinese related courses. no more than 20 that finish 4 semesters of language. i guess they aren't aware of the explosive growth of china. probably because of all those lead paint and sweatshop sensationalist news reports :)
also I remember in "The Christmas Story" there's a line that says you should eat all your food because there are starving kids in china. |
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| Ian |
| mandarin. Italian is only used in Italy & New York :p Still would be better for you to teach 100 chinese kids english though, since most people in europe can speak some of it now, esp the western halves, a universal language would be handier for sure. |
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