the ology of charm

Get Ahead, Learn Mandarin

Time, June 26, Pg 16

This sudden surge of people wanting to learn Chinese has prompted me to think a little more about my own education. Having been taught the language since I started school, or rather, 'force-fed' it, I harbour a rather bitter feeling against it. But if the world is doing it, what have I got to lose by working a little harder?

It's amazing what a bit of foresight can do. When all children were expected to be effectively bilingual, we never expected it to come in so handy, although this did cause a lot of parents to take their children out of local schools due to the inability to grasp the language. Even our Minister Mentor is taking up the language. After reading this however, I am rather convinced that Chinese is becoming increasingly significant in the world, and I am rather inspired to try harder in school. Of course from experience I know that it has given me an edge over the non-Chinese-speaking world in terms of handling certain situations such as finding where the toilet is and so on.

One day even foreigners will take over those Chinese people with a rudimentary understanding of the language. Chinese will stand alongside English as an international language. In order to remain competitive and be useful to society in order to get decent jobs, we should be more dilligent in studying what is our mother tongue. (For us Chinese, anyway.) And even in the event that this does not happen (who knows what the future holds?), it's always good to know more than one language. Besides, it's becoming increasingly common around the world to be bilingual. I think the next thing will be trilingualism, where one knows English, Chinese, and one European language such as Spanish or German. After most of the world has mastered Chinese (in this rush to learn the language), people will be looking for those with more edge. This whole idea of communication with common languages is becoming more important as the world is brought closer by technology. The most important thing is communication, so if we cannot get an edge by learning another language, we will definitely be losing out.

posted by Charmaine @ 11:23 PM