Time to learn Chinese
I’ve been thinking for a while — especially after being reminded by a post of Bruce Sterling‘s — that soon, if it hasn’t happened already, there will be more Chinese speakers online than English speakers. (Which might explain all the Chinese-language spam I keep getting.) Scott Nance brings up the point again in a commentary on the rising Chinese juggernaught. He also reminds us of all the Chinese slang in Firefly, which as you know I loved. Interesting, I was just re-watching it this weekend, so I wish that I’d had Scott’s pointer to the Firefly Chinese Pinyinary beforehand. It translates all of the Chinese in the series, which is pretty cool.
But seriously, I need to find me a good Chinese audio course for the car. I took German in high school and Russian in college, but I don’t remember much of either. I’ve done the audio-tape route for Spanish more recently, and if I go to Mexico I’m probably at the level that I won’t think everyone around me is plotting against me, but that’s about it.
But if I’m going to stay competitive in this market, I suspect Chinese is the way to go…
Technorati tag: Chinese / language / future
Yessir, the “Firefly Pinyinary” is pretty cool, BUT the pinyin is a little weird; it’s not ‘orthodox’ Romanized phonetic Chinese. That’s to say that the pinyin’s not always written correctly. I’m a beginner, but I noticed some weird misspellings.
Also, the tones are confusing to Western students (Mandarin has 4 tones, Cantonese has 9 and is harder to pronounce); if you can’t keep the tones straight, it’s easy to misunderstand or misspeak. Be careful about Internet translations, my teacher tells me; “online translator” software has a long way to go and often gives you the wrong word and wrong character.