55 ms·
Kenya will start teaching Chinese to elementary school students from 2020
- mark_l_watson 8y agoI took an online class at Wharton Business School and the teacher said that Africa would be an economic power in twenty years. Teaching Mandarin in school is probably a good idea. When my wife and I were in Kenya we went to two elementary schools and the kids in class seemed very happy to be there. Even at a young age someone probably informed them that education is the ticket to a better life.
- ishjoh 8y agowhat are the changes that are taking place that will allow Africa to be an economic power in twenty years?
- StreamBright 8y agoFor example building roads and infrastructure for everyone instead of building oil rigs for few? https://qz.com/africa/1326618/china-is-building-expensive-roads-in-uganda/ https://qz.com/africa/1326618/china-is-building-expensive-ro... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-18973637 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-18973637
- beat 8y ago"Africa" isn't one place, but rather a collection of dozens of countries. But in general, most of them are on the aggressive-growth path that leads from agrarian/illiterate poverty to urban/literate middle class over the course of 2-3 generations, just like Asian and European countries before them. Many African nations are growing economically at rates north of 5% annually, far faster than any "first world" nation. Colonialism has been replaced by international trade, which expects nations to hold up their end of business. That means businesses want - need - workers who can read and do arithmetic, who are reasonably healthy, have access to transportation and personal communication (phones, internet). They need roads, clean water, good airports, stable local currencies, effective legal systems, all sorts of things that the old colonial system did not require. Provide schools, roads, vaccinations, clean water, and good currency, and it affects everyone. Things get much better very quickly. This happened in America, too. Hell, both my grandfathers were illiterate. One didn't even have running water or electricity on his farm, when I was a small child and he was an old man. It wasn't weird then.
- qnsi 8y agoIreland grew 4.1% in 2018. 26 out of 54 African countries had higher growth in 2017. Africa had an average growth of 4.34%, but Libia had 55% growth. Without Libia, average growth was 3,38%. This says little about the overall state, one should examine more years, also I am comparing 2018 to 2017 but I am too lazy. Bearish on Africa
- beat 8y agoI'm looking at ten year averages from Global Finance magazine. Over ten years, Ireland is at 3.3%, and even that makes it an outlier among western nations (it's the highest ranked European country). By comparison, the US is at 1.4%, and most of Europe is around 1%. Libya is at -9.4% over the decade, largely due to the civil war there. Much of Africa is over 5% average for the decade (Kenya is 5%). Except for a few failed states like Libya and South Sudan, almost every country in Africa is above 2.5% growth over the past decade. I'm really bullish on Africa. The numbers support it.
- sanxiyn 8y agoEthiopia grew ~10% per year for >10 years. Very bullish on Ethiopia. Yes, I am agnostic about "Africa", that's too big a unit.
- elsonrodriguez 8y agoChinese outsourcing of labor to many African countries.
- Balgair 8y agoThe late Hans Rosling's Factfullness is good for many reasons, but it also espouses Africa's coming demographic and economic explosion. I'm skeptical as well on the 2040 date, but the 2099 date has Africa becoming a major player in world affairs. Changes are already taking place at incredible rates for western minds. Let's do a quick quiz for readers to introspect about their current views on the 'dark' continent: 1) How fast is the bullet train from Nairobi to Mombasa? 2) How much hydro-electric power does Guinea sell to it's neighbors? 3) How many riders/day does the light-rail serve in Addis Ababa? 4) In terms of current-day 'Californias', how many people will live in the city of Dar Es Salaam by 2099? 5) Where is the Great Wall of Nigeria? Hint: It's not dry.
- mc32 8y agoNaturally, people will gravitate to where they believe opportunity lies. It's a great opportunity now in order to foster commerce and trade with China which has focused on East Africa. Yet, this is only part of the requirements. Connections and insidership are also important. Just like learning Japanese in the 70s and 80s didn't mean you automatically qualified for a job, if you had connections and were an insider, knowing Japanese helped quite a bit. It'll likely be the same here.
- jasonjei 8y agoShouldn’t they start younger than 10? I remember reading that languages are easier to retain the younger you are.
- vinay427 8y agoAlso, it's virtually impossible to gain fluency in a script after a very young age (around 5 if I recall correctly) and verbal language isn't much better, with native fluency very rare after the age of 13-17 or so.
- nudpiedo 8y agoI speak 6 languages including some Japanese and I disagree with you. I also met people who learnt to speak languages by the age of 60 and they made it good enough for easy business.
- vinay427 8y agoI'm not sure which part you disagree with. I explicitly claimed "native fluency" is the hard part. See the source in my sibling (cousin?) comment.
- ApolloFortyNine 8y agoWhat exactly are you saying? People learn language after the age of 5 all the time.
- vinay427 8y agoYes. That's not what I'm saying. It's virtually impossible to learn a new script and have "fluency" (which I'll loosely define as being able to effortless read a page without processing individual letters) after a very young age. I read a study that described this recently that I'll try to find again.
- StreamBright 8y agoThat age limit is 13. However, learning new languages is the only skill that does not get significantly worse by age, and you can do till you turn 65. Sources are underway.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sonnyblarney 8y agoThe ability to communicate in another language can really only be a positive development for any individual group.
- peteey 8y agoHow are you judging positivity? Classroom time should be spent on the most important things. Learning for the sake of learning is meaningless. There is no value in knowing how many dots are on the ceiling. The classroom time could been spent learning something more meaningful. For example, cursive writing should not be taught. I would suggest only praising skills that help a child economically or make life fulfilling. I do not consider learning different ways to say a word as fulfilling as history, art, or philosophy.
- lotyrin 8y agoReductio ad absurdum. Could just as easily say any of the following: I do not consider learning how to smear grease on a canvas could be as fulfilling as <whatever>. I do not consider memorizing dates and people's names as fulfilling as <whatever>. I do not consider ruminating on some made up dilemmas to be as fulfilling as <whatever>. Second language learning is a hell of a lot more than learning a foreign vocabulary. People like different things (to say absolutely nothing of the other half of how you justify investing in learning -- the economic value of having mastered a second language). Even if it were possible that your individual tastes were some kind of universal truth and we're all just unenlightened -- what have you done to enlighten us here -- the value of the things you like must be self evident? Is everyone just an NPC?
- sonnyblarney 8y agoFirst - a lot of grade school is just babysitting. It's definitely not a cramped situation of required learning. Point being, there's little lost opportunity cost here. Assuming kids are getting the fundamentals ... there's lots of time for more, decent learning. Second - any second language skill is going to be immensely useful as a learning tool. It really helps one understand language and communication. Third - Chinese, it would seem, is likely going to be a useful language in a country receiving considerably Chinese investment.
- BigKurt 8y agoCould be a great idea. There's a big possibility that Chinese will be more widely used over the planet.
- fiftyfifty 8y agoWe are headed to the world (universe) depicted in Firefly!
- TomMarius 8y agoI wish they taught me Chinese as well.
- jason_slack 8y agoHave you started learning Chinese yet? It is quite fascinating. I've been learning for 4 years now.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoRecommended reading: http://pinyin.info/readings/defrancis/chinese_writing_reform.html http://pinyin.info/readings/defrancis/chinese_writing_reform... Summary: emperical evidence shows that students who were taught Pinyin (romanized, phonetic Chinese writing) were far better off than students who learned with Hanzi characters (the pictograms you're familiar with). Despite this, Chinese written language reform is unlikely to happen due to political pressures from the elites, whose family's positions are secured by the higher barrier to entry to becoming an intellectual. It takes more work to learn Chinese than almost any other language because they want it to. For this reason, even setting aside the other moral quandries presented by China, I'm against teaching Mandarin in schools. Though, as an optional class for high-school-level children, it makes more sense. Edit: probably worth clarifying that I study Hanzi characters and I am fluent in Japanese.
- zavi 8y agoThe advantage of pictograms is you can infer meaning from component radicals when looking at more complicated pictograms. Pinyin is useful but limited, e.g. there is a number of different pictograms that are all pronouced 'shi4' so simply by looking at pinyin you won't be able to differentiate without additional context that might not be available in written scenario.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoHomonyms exist in every language. The advantages do not outweigh the drawbacks.
- zavi 8y agoThere's order of magnitude more homonyms in Mandarin than English to the point where having a pictograms system starts making sense. That's why 80 percent of characters are multipart with one of the radicals carrying the pronunciation.
- knolax 8y agoHomonyms don't exist in every language to the extant that you can write an entire essay with them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_...
- Proven 8y agoWhat does that mean? It means the loan/bribe the government got from the China government "worked." Whether that curriculum makes sense or not, we can't know. Considering it's government planned, probably not.
- zhobbs 8y agoChina is investing a lot in Africa, good video on the topic, "How Africa is Becoming China's China": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQV_DKQkT8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQV_DKQkT8o
- boomboomsubban 8y agoLooking at the curriculum linked, it seems like Mandarin is being offered as an elective while English is a mandatory subject.
- lordnacho 8y agoI started learning Mandarin a few months ago. My kid goes to a Saturday school so I figured I might as as well join when they made an adults class. Thus far it's been reasonable. I do have some advantages, having parents who speak Cantonese. In fact a lot of the words seem similar. The grammar might be different, but we're not flying through the course since it's once a week. I'd say thus far it's like when I went to learn German, being a native speaker of Danish. With just a very few lessons, knowing the neighbouring language opens up the new language very fast. I could pick up a German newspaper and read it within a few weeks, it having been gibberish to me previously. Even quite complex political stuff was understandable suddenly. With Mandarin my expectations are lower. The characters are still hard to remember, and tbh I haven't spent the time trying to memorize them. What's cool is I've learned how to use a pinyin keyboard, which allows me to convert the sounds written in Latin script to Chinese characters. Much like one might write emojis. But I'm able to write stuff to Chinese friends and they can read it. The great thing is translation services are pretty good now. You can just paste the pinyin into google translate, and something sensible seems to come out. Part of this is of course I have closer priors being a Cantonese speaker. And finally I'm now on WeChat, which turns out to be one of the biggest apps in the world. Interesting to see how design is done in other parts of the world. The teacher has us write answers to questions in WeChat, and she has us pronounce stuff so she can critique it.
- jason_slack 8y agoI started much this same way. I started at a local college taking just Mandarin I. I bought a bunch of books. I spent 2 months in China too. This was really worth it. I do practice for an hour each day writing in Chinese. I also keep my day planner in Chinese and make notes in Chinese. I mean physically writing characters out. WeChat is great. Pleco is a great dictionary. I have it open all day long. Google Translate is good. WeChat Translate and Google Translate differ on translations quite a bit. Bonus that translate.google.com is available while inside China. Take a look at the "Chineasy" books. I found them great for gaining history of characters and therefore an understanding of why the characters are the way they are. Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5FNvW19GbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5FNvW19GbA There is a good TED Talk - 3,500 characters vs 26 letters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LvhjgW9zh0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LvhjgW9zh0 I actually was going to start a Discourse forum for learning Chinese. I have it ready to do basically just need to get a domain name. Edit: Added YT link.
- demarq 8y agoThis is deeply unsettling to be honest. It means kenya is looking f or a long-term relationship with China even though chinas debt driven diplomacy is already pushing the country into a precarious financial state.
- beat 8y agoWhat "precarious financial state"? The Kenyan economy has grown at a steady, rapid 5% pace for the past decade, with no backsliding or instability. Are you sure you're not making assumptions based on political conventional wisdom, rather than facts and observation? China wants trading partners, generally. It drives their economy, so it's in their best interest to see their partners do well. And since China has increased per capita GDP by 130x (in constant dollars) since 1960, they know something about lifting nations out of poverty. edit: Per world bank data, Kenya's per capita GDP has increased every year since 2002, and has nearly quadrupled in that time (from $395 to over $1500). If that's a precarious state, sign me up! [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=KE https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...]
- demarq 8y ago> Are you sure you're not making assumptions based on political conventional wisdom, rather than facts and observation? I tried really hard to make sense out of that. I really did. > What "precarious financial state"? - "Kenya debt is rising to dangerous levels"[1] - "Kenya holds the 3rd largest chinese debt["2] - "Bleak 2019 for Kenyan tax payers"[3] > rather than facts and observation? I literally live here. As for the 5% GDP growth you point out, surely much better than Tanzania, or Ethiopia right?. > China wants trading partners, generally > they know something about lifting nations out of poverty Yup. Their economy badly needs a group of poor African countries as trading partners. definitely, nothing to do with power and global politics. Here is china lifting nations out of poverty... - "Like Zambia, Sri Lanka also handed over port to China to pay off debt"[4] Yup, uplifting stuff. > Kenya's per capita GDP has increased every year since 2002, and has nearly quadrupled in that time (from $395 to over $1500) "Kenyans owe $1,0000 per capita" [5]. 1. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2018/08/06/kenyas-public-debt-is-rising-to-dangerous-levels_c1798513 https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2018/08/06/kenyas-public-deb... 2. https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/2018/09/kenya-holds-third-highest-chinese-debt-in-africa/ https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/2018/09/kenya-holds-thi... 3. https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Bleak-2019-for-taxpayers-as-Kenya-begins-repaying-loans/2560-4923632-bsy6lx/index.html https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Bleak-2019-for-tax... 4. https://www.africanliberty.org/2018/09/10/like-zambia-sri-lanka-also-handed-over-port-to-china-to-pay-off-debt/ https://www.africanliberty.org/2018/09/10/like-zambia-sri-la... 5. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2018/01/08/kenyans-owe-sh100000-each-in-public-debt_c1693640 https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2018/01/08/kenyans-owe-sh100... as bonus content, guess what security Kenya used to secure the last loan. read to find out https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Mombasa-port-SGR-loan-default-Chinsa/2560-4903360-clh5nn/index.html https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Mombasa-port-SGR-l... If none of that can convince you, I just don't know what could. I'm exhausted at this point.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoKenya holds third highest Chinese debt in Africa https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/2018/09/kenya-holds-third-highest-chinese-debt-in-africa/ https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/2018/09/kenya-holds-thi... Chinese names might be the next move :). Sorry but I don't think this is a coincidence.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- crazygringo 8y agoWarning, controversial opinion: Chinese is too hard to be cost-effective to learn. I took 3 years' worth of Mandarin in college. But when I traveled to Brazil, I was able to communicate more easily in Portuguese in just a month, than I was in China after 2 full years of courses plus two and a half months of intensive courses in Beijing. Chinese is hard because it has virtually zero cognates with English, you have to learn every word new. (Contrast with Portuguese, where I "knew" half the words already because I could easily guess that "television" is just "televisão". Same with French, Italian, etc.) And Chinese is hard because you have to learn how to "spell" every word separately -- if you thought zero cognates was hard, this is 10x harder. Quite frankly it's an insane time commitment, and unless you plan to live most of your life in China or Taiwan, it's just not worth it if your goal is communication. Chinese people are learning English so they can communicate with the world. It might seem unfair, but there's just zero practical reason for most English speakers to learn Chinese beyond some basic greetings, except as a fun hobby or some minimum vocabulary for travel. For more info, read the very famous article "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard". [1] Anybody who wants to learn Chinese should read it first so they know what they're getting into. [1] http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
- PavlikPaja 8y agoThat's only true when you already speak English, or at least another Germanic or Romance language. Otherwise, all this applies to English exactly the same as it does to Chinese.
- crazygringo 8y agoNo, it's vastly easier for Chinese to learn English (or French or German) because they're generally phonetically-spelled languages. There aren't any cognates, but you don't spend years memorizing thousands and thousands of characters to learn English. And the payoff is much higher: learning Chinese only lets you communicate with Chinese/Taiwanese people. Learning English lets you communicate with a huge proportion of the world who also learns English as a second language, simply because it's the current lingua franca.
- Bombthecat 8y agoEmbrace the change and opportunity! In germany we tried to start teaching Turkish at school. Boy was that a shit show of racism...
- tql 8y agoTeaching German kids Turkish feels like it has a political motive more than anything else. I can see Kenyans gaining opportunities of improving their lives by learning Chinese. What do Germans have to earn from learning Turkish? Are you sure the backlash was racism and not just a lot of "what a terrible waste of time and public money"?
- Bombthecat 8y agoTurkish is the most spoken language at homes with migration background. Not even speaking about the percentage of people from foreign countries speaking or understanding Turkish as a second language. Beside English and German, Turkish is the most understood and spoken language in germany. Why not teach it in schools? you can pick languages, Latin, France, so why not Turkish? (beside English)
- tql 8y agoIf all those families moved to Germany because there was no future in Turkey, it's highly unlikely that learning Turkish will do any good for them. I think the objective of a public education has to be to improve the lives of people, if they want to learn Turkish or Klingon they should pay for it themselves. Also I can imagine that adding a new language choice is very expensive.
- amaccuish 8y ago> If all those families moved to Germany because there was no future in Turkey, it's highly unlikely that learning Turkish will do any good for them The classes are for people who only speak German. People emigrating from Turkey likely speak Turkish. It's about understanding other cultures, and the ones most relevent. Just like how in England, along with learning about christianity, we learnt about Islam. It's like in the US, Spanish is the most popular second language taught in schools, since you're very close to large numbers of spanish speakers, and have a high number of spanish-speaking migrants. In the UK, amongst a load of other reasons, until very recently French was the most poopular second language in schools, since France is pretty close to us.
- mooseburger 8y agoThat's pretty bad. Yet another sign of increasing Chinese dominance. I can't imagine an autocracy like China becoming the greatest superpower will work out well for anyone.
- gxs 8y agoI know a few people in the clothes design industry and they all say manufacturing is moving out of Asia and into Africa. According to them, by next year most of their stuff will be made there. China has made a huge investment in Africa - so they will get a piece of that action. Feels like the US is resting on their laurels. Why the downvotes? This comment got a few reasonable responses and is within HN guidelines. Help me understand what is so offensive about this post
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ryanmarsh 8y agoI recently had dinner with a friend who spent 8 years working for the US State dept all over Africa. His take was simple. When the US shows up offering to build a road to the oil refinery we want to build we first ask them to make human rights reforms and so forth. The Chinese just start handing out cash until they get what they want. This strategy will result in the wholesale ownership of several African states by China if it hasn’t already happened.
- fudged71 8y agoOddly a lot of positivity in this thread. Anecdotally, the kenyans I know are really not pleased with the Chinese invasion of their culture and food stocks. There is fear of food fraud (fillers and ingredients sold as other things) for example from chinese imports.
- devoply 8y agoYou lose nothing by learning other people's language or way of thinking. Knowledge as they say is power... even if those giving it to you don't have your best interests at heart.
- Scaevolus 8y agoIt's not the language, it's everything that comes with it. The Congolese weren't happy to be learning French in 1900, either.
- learc83 8y ago>You lose nothing by learning other people's language That's not quite true. Bilingual speakers tend to have a smaller vocabularies in each individual language than monolingual speakers (even though they have a larger total vocabulary across both languages). According to some studies monolingual speakers also have faster word retrieval and better verbal fluency overall. Of course this has to be weighed against the benefits of learning another language, but there are costs.
- jean- 8y ago> Bilingual speakers tend to have a smaller vocabularies in each individual language than monolingual speakers Do you have any citations to support this? From the research I have read (and my own anecdotal experience) this is not necessarily the case, especially when taking into account the bilingual speakers' dominant language. See e.g. Pearson et al. (1993). Lexical Development in Bilingual Infants and Toddlers: Comparison to Monolingual Norms. Allman (2005). Vocabulary Size and Accuracy of Monolingual and Bilingual Preschool Children. – although note the difference in English vs Spanish vocabulary scores for monolingual vs bilingual speakers.
- odiroot 8y agoThat actually really sounds promising. Wish I had some Mandarin "for free" as a part of my HS/Uni curriculum.
- nightraven97 8y agoHow Africa is becoming China's China - https://youtu.be/zQV_DKQkT8o https://youtu.be/zQV_DKQkT8o
- wyxuan 8y agoIt might be difficult, as chinese is incredibly difficult to learn. It seems just like a way to appease the Chinese government. I wonder what how they teach english.
- standardUser 8y agoIt will be interesting to watch China try and exert soft power. Like everything they do, it's going to be a top-down affair. Hard to imagine the Standing Committee coming up with anything as influential as rock-n-roll or blue jeans. Japan proved that East Asian culture is perfectly capable of capturing the global imagination. But that didn't happen until the culture had decades to develop in a prosperous and free society. I imagine that for the most part we'll just see a lot more of this. Throwing money at nations that have a hard time saying no, and simply trying to buy cultural influence. I don't imagine it will be a huge success.
- vivism 8y agoSuccess by what measure?
- rjf72 8y agoThere's one way that China has done phenomenal with soft power already in a very bottom up fashion: tourism. At least throughout Asia, Chinese tourists are absolutely everywhere. This is a relatively new phenomena and I imagine it's a product of their middle class exploding (in a good way). You can also find countless Chinese migrating to other nations but still very much retaining their own culture. As a result of these things the Chinese language is an increasingly valuable skill throughout the continent. And you even see a variety of things like signs and other things that are also written in a local language, English, and Chinese as well. It's extremely difficult to predict where China is headed, but in my opinion they are blazing their own trail in a way that, for now at least, seems to be working phenomenally well. And there's one critical nuance here. China has a population of 1.4 billion that is mostly united. If their economic growth and general influence continues along anything even vaguely resembling its current trajectory, they will be the most powerful and influential nation in the world in the very foreseeable future.
- planteen 8y ago> If their economic growth and general influence continues along anything even vaguely resembling its current trajectory, they will be the most powerful and influential nation in the world in the very foreseeable future. I agree China will become the world's largest economy in the near future, it remains to be seen if they will be able to escape the middle income trap. China demographically is getting older and is set for a decline in population. What happens if the population starts declining before achieving high-income status?
- 40acres 8y agoThis is a double edged sword. China is increasing it's influence in Africa through it's debt and road .. ahem, I mean, belt and road.. initiative and is arguably the most influential great power in Africa. It's doubtful, even in the long term that Mandarin will challenge English and French with respect to influence in Africa, but language is one of the strongest signifiers of cultural influence, and it's obvious that China is looking to tighten its influence on Africa. That being said, the ability to speak Mandarin can only be viewed as a benefit. English is the de facto international language but there is an obvious advantage to fluency in a language spoken by the 2nd largest economy and 1.5 billion people.
- dkiarie 8y agoFrom the article: "Mandarin is set to be taught alongside local languages besides other foreign ones including French and Arabic." They could just as easily have titled the article: "Kenya will start teaching French to elementary school students from 2020." But of course that would have triggered fewer people leading to fewer readers (probably wouldn't have made it to HN either). I'm quite wary about "Chinese neocolonialism" myself, but as a Kenyan Citizen who's seen the massive QOL improvement in the country over the last few years, I really don't see the issue with teaching the worlds most widely spoken language in schools.
- qiqing 8y agoThank you for being the voice of reason by pointing out the obvious that others seem to miss.
- thereare5lights 8y agoIt's click bait. People here love to commiserate over their FUD about China.
- United857 8y agoAs a supporter of multilingual education in general I'm all for this in principle. That said, language learning really needs a media ecosystem to sustain it outside the classroom. (Most Americans take token Spanish or French but would be hard pressed to go beyond 'hola' or 'bonjour' in real life.) Beijing projects its power through economic and political means. But that's not enough. Unlike e.g. Japan (anime, video games) or South Korea (K-drama, K-pop), China still doesn't have pop-cultural "soft power" to help fuel said ecosystem -- I'd argue this is the main problem China needs to overcome for the language to really take off in non-Chinese communities.
- randyrand 8y agoShouldn't the HN title stay the same as the article? The original title is *Mandarin Chinese, unless they changed it.
- kilotaras 8y agoObviously an anecdote, but a friend of Minsk told me that knowing Mandarin can easily raise your salary x2, especially on managerial/sales positions.