Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
(OP)
What would be the most useful Chinese dialect for a Quality Engineer to learn? The reason is to make myself more marketable. I have 13 years in Quality Engineering and a total of 26 years of Engineering in metal fabrication and welding.





RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
I am sure others with more experiences in China can give better information than I can.
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
Good luck,
Latexman
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
I did take the equivalent of two semesters of Mandarin, plus travel to Shanghai and Suzhou. Work-wise, I don't think it helped much. It did help in making friends and getting around town.
For me, the biggest shock in travelling to China is becoming functionally illiterate. It's spooky to not be able to read and decipher signs.
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
Mandarin is supposed to be the official language, as debodine indicates, but, in any given region, local dialects are often spoken between native speakers in that region, and in many cases, the dialects are so divergent that they might as well be a different foreign language, particularly in the case of local idioms.
That said, again, as debodine indicates, Cantonese is a good second choice for both Guanzhou and Hong Kong. Cantonese is quite divergent from Mandarin. When I was little (~9), my mother worked in a Chinese bank, and everyone there spoke at least Mandarin and Cantonese, plus, perhaps, one other dialect. Some woman born in the rural part of Guanzhou came in, and, oddly, I was the only one in the bank that day that could understand her, and that was only because my sitter spoke that exact dialect, and I picked up a few words.
Shanghai has its own dialect, which is quite unintelligible to a Mandarin or Cantonese speaker, but is closest to Mandarin, and if you listen long and hard enough, you can make out a few words.
Beijing has a regional dialect, but it's reasonably understandable to the average Mandarin speaker.
Naturally, they all use the same written language, so one can always resort to that.
So, end result, you need to determine where you might be doing business, and the choice will boil down to Mandarin, Cantonese, or Shanghai. You can get by with Mandarin, but you might get poor service in some restaurants, but that would be either because you speak Mandarin, or because you're noy Chinese
As debodine indicated, Hong Kong and its mainland surrounds, Guanzhou, will be well served with Cantonese, but you still might need Mandarin, as there has been lots of transmigrations.
From a strict feasibility perspective, Mandarin and Cantonese are pretty much the only two dialects that you can readily get language lessons for, though...
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
Hmm? Chinese with a Boston accent.
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
IRStuff is not quite right about written Chinese though.
The mainland uses a simplified Kanji character set, while Taiwan and Hong Kong (before the English left) use the traditional character set. I'm not sure what's in use in Hong Kong now.
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
But, in any case, my wife can read most of traditional Chinese, even though she was raised in the mainland.
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
I have many fond memories of "Singrish". One of the idiosyncrasies they had was the "lah". I doubt I ever fully mastered it. It was more of a spoken accent mark than it was a word with meaning. For example, a friend is telling a friend, who has a car, they do not know how they will get to a certain location. The friend tells them, "Get in the car, lah."
Another shock for me was being a minority. Very eye opening!
Good luck,
Latexman
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
I can "read" maybe 100 or so Chinese/Kanji words. Some I know the pronunciation in both Japanese and Chinese, and some in only one of the two.
My wife is from Taiwan, she can't read any of the simplified Chinese character set.
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
Not unlike the "eh?" used in abundance in "Fargo."
Another punctuation phrase in Cantonese, is "Ai Yah!" I remember the first time reading "Joy Luck Club" and one of the plentiful aunties used that phrase, and I could suddenly hear it in Cantonese; spooky!
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
Histogram, aren't there other skills that would be easier to learn and that would improve more your marketability?
English is not my mother tongue, and I fould that to reach a level of skill good enough for a business/professional setting was not easy at all.
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
"Lah" at least with the people I know, is more of an emphatic, like, "Eat faster, lah," particularly from parents, or, "Have you gotten married, lah?" from anyone who's even a bit nosy.
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
There is a quite a bit of state regulation of the dialects spoken on TV and radio designed to perpetuate the Beijing accent.
That may not answer your question as to what is most useful to learn but my friend learned Mandarin with the Beijing accent for the several years he tried to manage an electronics manufacturing company based out of Beijing.
Interestingly, he is Welsh, he then went to the US to manage another company there and his young daughter joined the local Chinese club attended mainly by Chinese Americans, where she won the prize for the best spoken Chinese.
Was Mandarin useful to him? undoubtedly.
But, was he allowed to do his job? Not really.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
Thanks again for all your responses,
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
Gang bei.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
But, if you're really into THAT, then you should also master "mao tai" which is a measly 110 proof, amd kaoliang which is 116.
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
well that is the extent of my Cantonese...
Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
So, is Chinese a better bet now than Japanese was then? Or is English already the de-facto international business language and there are other skills better to learn?
KENAT,
Have you reminded yourself of FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies recently, or taken a look at posting policies: http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
Currently, China isn't doing much in the way of buying US companies, perhaps a wise move on their part. But, we'd be learning Chinese so that we can buy stuff from they, or pay them to make stuff for us. A slight, but significant, difference.
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
The Germans are the ones who speak perfect English.
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
or
Thank you very much for the advice.
I am a quick study!!
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
Fe
RE: Learning Chinese to increase ones marketability
Did I ever mention that my Gung Fu instructor drank a pint of Gao Liang, or Mao Tai, EVERY day? On his birthdays, there would be stacks of cases of the stuff given by his students. Fathered a kid at 75, lived to 85; worked for him...
I don't think my liver would be up to that...
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies