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Last Monday when I was on my car to work like any other weekday early in the morning, I was listening to my favor radio station AM860. One of the topics discussed was what foreign language would you pick if you want to learn a second language. Of course, English is your first language. There were many people called in and gave their answers. The top ones were Spanish, French, Chinese…etc. At the end of the talk show, the host stated that if he would have learned a second language, that would be Chinese.
I was not suprised at all by his statement and I totally agreed with him. Here are some of the reasons I could come up to support his statement:
1. Language is a major tool in communication among people. If you don’t understand the same language regardless English, Spanish, or Chinese, then you can’t communicate effectively.
2. As you may know, there are 2/3 of the populations speak Chinese on the earth. If you want communicate to the 2/3 of populations on the earth, you need to learn Chinese.
3. As the global econimic grows so rapidly, many companies and businesses have expanded or planned to expand their business to Asia counties especially China. They need to hire people who speak both English and one foreign language, Chinese or other Asia languages, to help their business. If you know Chinese, then you’re ahead of others who don’t know a foreign language, Chinese or other Asia languages.
4. This one may not be a reason, but an advantage. Now a day, there are many schools (high school, college… etc) offer foreign langauge class and many of them offer Chinese class. You can pick a foreign language as one of your selective course.
To conclude, learning a foreign language as your second language regardless Chinese, French, Spanish…etc has many advantages.
In Singapore, we basically already have a second language, which is our mother tongue, namely Malay, Chinese or Tamil. English considering a first language, mainly because of the international recognition and ease of communication, hence the government made it compulsory to learn. I am bilingual in Malay and English.
Usually, for us, it’s an option to learn a third.. I’ve always wanted to learn Spanish though. And yes, having a knowledge or Chinese/Mandarin is great too. I can understand Chinese, but not able to write it though. lol. Its great and impressive on a resume if one is trilingual or even quadrilingual!! lol.
Chinese will be a challenge. It’s a very difficult language!
Yes, but I think this is disputable post.