3 ms·

I don't think they stick to Mandarin because they want to. English is considered hip and intellectual in China, especially in the first tier cities which I supp

by erikb 10y ago

I don't think they stick to Mandarin because they want to. English is considered hip and intellectual in China, especially in the first tier cities which I suppose the developers of such modern technology are. But the problem is that English is really, really hard for Chinese native speakers, since grammar, words, culture and pronunciation are so different from all the Chinese languages. So as a team leader or project manager in China I would probably also stick with Chinese since it is much easier to find really good and not too expensive employees that way. Let them try to use English, support the ambition, but don't enforce it. And I don't know much about India but from what I heard is that it is more a cultural issue that India lacks behind. Everything is (so I heard) still very traditional and backward focussed. While China as a country spent 20-30 years to become more open for new ideas and approaches. How true is that from other people's perspective here?

gnipgnip 10y ago
There are deep social divisions in India, considering its tortured (and propagandized) history. http://sankrant.org/2011/03/the-english-class-system-2/ http://sankrant.org/2011/03/the-english-class-system-2/ There are systematic faults, which prevent much change, if the current policies are kept up (note: India's literacy rate is ~78 %, since literacy (except in English) brings no great advantage). http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/how-english-ruined-indian-literature.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/how-english... http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/11/06/the-problem-with-the-english-language-in-india/&refURL=https://duckduckgo.com/&referrer=https://duckduckgo.com/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/11/06/the-problem-... Imagine China, with only the expensive class of engineers, for instance. Or atleast, one with this class, and another class that was educated in English, but barely knows the language, let alone possessed of any usable skill. There are now villages, driven by this economics, where rural-children are being taught in English. Considering how bad the Japanese/Chinese are with English, it shouldn't be hard to interpolate how disabling this is when everything is being taught in a foreign language.

by erikb 10y ago

gnipgnip 10y ago

There are deep social divisions in India, considering its tortured (and propagandized) history. http://sankrant.org/2011/03/the-english-class-system-2/ http://sankrant.org/2011/03/the-english-class-system-2/ There are systematic faults, which prevent much change, if the current policies are kept up (note: India's literacy rate is ~78 %, since literacy (except in English) brings no great advantage). http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/how-english-ruined-indian-literature.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/how-english... http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/11/06/the-problem-with-the-english-language-in-india/&refURL=https://duckduckgo.com/&referrer=https://duckduckgo.com/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/11/06/the-problem-... Imagine China, with only the expensive class of engineers, for instance. Or atleast, one with this class, and another class that was educated in English, but barely knows the language, let alone possessed of any usable skill. There are now villages, driven by this economics, where rural-children are being taught in English. Considering how bad the Japanese/Chinese are with English, it shouldn't be hard to interpolate how disabling this is when everything is being taught in a foreign language.