Why Learn Mandarin Chinese?

By Antonio Graceffo

I am often asked why one should spend the time and energy needed to learn Mandarin Chinese. My answer is simple: because most don’t.

This may sound overly simplistic, but it’s true.  Not convinced? Here, let me illustrate my point with a story about a milkshake…

The Double Standard

I was standing in line forever one day at McDonalds in Washington DC. When I finally got to the register I ordered a chocolate milkshake. The girl working at the counter, obviously a recent immigrant to the U.S., looked confused. “You want a milk and a shake?”

“No, I want a chocolate milkshake.”

“You want chocolate milk and a shake? What kind of shake?”

“No, I don’t want milk. I want a milkshake, a chocolate milkshake.”

She looked deep in thought as she disappeared into the back of the shop. The line behind me grew longer and longer, and customers grew more and more impatient. When she finally returned, she handed me a weird, runny concoction. Apparently, she had added milk to a chocolate shake. I pointed at the milkshakes on the menu and said, “I want a chocolate milkshake!”

“There is no chocolate milkshake on the menu,” stated the girl flatly.

She was right. There was no milkshake on the menu. Twenty years ago, McDonalds shortened the name of the icecream-based drink to “shake.” I didn’t make the switch with the Golden Arches. To me it was still a milkshake, as it had been when I was ten. And, English native speakers recognized the word milkshake and served me a shake.

Other customers, who had also been inconvenienced by communication with this employee muttered under their breath, “Learn some English or go back where you came from.” A man standing beside me, said, “They all want the job but they don’t want to learn English.”

I am willing to bet money that if any of those people had trouble ordering a shake in Taipei, they would have made the exact, same snide comments. “These people better learn some darned English if they want my money.”

The English native speaker is by far the single most egocentric language user on the planet. Most of us believe that the world should learn English, and accommodate us. Some Americans who see themselves as more global will say, “If they come here, they should learn English, just like, if I go there I will learn their language.”

The reality, however, is that a very small percentage of foreigners living in Taiwan speak Chinese. Just doing an informal survey, I probably know about 200 foreigners all told in Taiwan, and probably less than ten of them can hold a semi-normal conversation in Mandarin. And I have only known about two or three people ever who could speak Taiwanese. About the same number would be able to work at McDonalds and not stuff up the customers’ orders.

As an English native speaker, you are lucky that you can get a relatively well-paid job teaching English, and that everyone bends over backwards to accommodate you. This system, however, is completely artificial and selfish. If you were an actual immigrant, as my family was when they came to the U.S., you would be thrown in a pool with other immigrants, doing the worst jobs, and the ticket out would be learning to speak the language.

What is the point of all of this?

1. English native speakers are lazy about learning other languages.
2. It is bad to be lazy.

The subject of this section was supposed to be Why Learn Mandarin, but instead, I have just proven that most people don’t. So, let’s get back on track. Why do you need to learn Mandarin?

Learning Mandarin Enables REAL Communication

In Taiwan, the level of English usage is quite high compared to Mainland China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, and most other Asian nations. So, you could—and most foreigners do—exist in a bubble. They surround themselves with foreign friends and then rely on their Taiwanwse girlfriend or boyfriend, often their only local friend, to translate for them and help them get by. They get extremely frustrated, on a daily basis, when simple tasks like ordering food or having their Internet repaired prove to be Herculean tasks because of linguistic and cultural barriers.

When I first started my Chinese classes, the mother of one of my students asked me why I wanted to learn Chinese. I told her because I hated having difficulties all of the time. She answered, “Oh, but almost everyone in Taiwan can speak some English. Just speak to them with simple words.”

Let’s analyze this advice. This means that during my time in Taiwan, I won’t be able to talk to everyone, only almost everyone. And when she says they speak “some” English, obviously there is a massive variance between the English ability of one person and another. So again, the pool of potential friends and helpers drops significantly. Next, she said “Use simple words.” In other words, talk like a four-year-old. Do you want to talk like a toddler for the rest of your life? You’re an intelligent, college graduate. Do you want to try and reduce your adult thoughts to the level of a small child for the rest of the time you live in Taiwan? What about when you are getting the computer fixed, arguing with a police officer, or having surgery? Do you want to trust that someone else’s cramschool, memorize-and-regurgitate English is good enough to understand what you need?

Learning Mandarin Creates New Opportunities

My background is somewhat atypical, but as a missionary for the polylingual world, I should probably explain where I am coming from. My family immigrated to the U.S. from Italy, and I was born in New York. I grew up speaking Spanish and Italian, but with English as my native tongue. I saw first hand what the lack of language did to my family. Most of my father’s relatives were extremely poor because they couldn’t speak English and they had terrible jobs. Years later, I went to college at University of Mainz in Germany. German education is free if you can pass the German entrance exam. I then had incredibly well-paid jobs because I could speak German. When I moved back to the U.S. and started working on Wall Street, I was still a trainee when I was given the entire Italian customer base, and later, all of the Spanish-speaking customers. All because of my language abilities.

So the second reason to learn Mandarin is opportunity: both future opportunities in Taiwan, and possibly more importantly, opportunities if and when you return home. Chinese is the fastest growing (and most widely spoken) language in the world. If you speak Mandarin, you could plug yourself into China’s exponential economic growth and rise up the financial ladder. If you want to live in Taiwan or China long-term, speaking Mandarin could eventually get you out of the classroom and into an executive job. If you plan to go home, you could return with a new skill that could help you land a global job, instead of just having an apparent 2-yar gap in your résumé.

Of course if you are like most people, you can come to Taiwan for a few years, learn about ten basic phrases of Chinese, and go home empty handed without having had a single real conversation with a Chinese native speaker.

It’s your choice.