Why People Who Make Things Should Learn Chinese 588
ptorrone writes "MAKE Magazine is making that case that any 'maker' who builds, buys or creates electronics should learn (Mandarin) Chinese. MAKE outlines the resources for anyone wishing to learn the language of the soon-to-be largest economy and source of just about everything we buy in the USA."
Or Not (Score:5, Insightful)
China is poised to become the worlds largest non-native English speaking population in the world. They are learning English at a much faster rate than any Americans can learn Chinese.
Joss Whedon (Firefly) disagrees with you (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(TV_series) [wikipedia.org]
Life imitates art, or as is often the case, sci-fi is "Future History".
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"Brave New World" is reality today. People are more concerned with the Casey Anthony trial than the actual, important shit going on in the government.
Coincidence?
Re:Joss Whedon (Firefly) disagrees with you (Score:4, Informative)
Ask put in the second panel of this XKCD cartoon [xkcd.com]...
For a universe that's supposed to be half-Chinese, Firefly sure doesn't have any Asians.
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So who were the people grilling dog meat under the "hot dogs" sign in the marketplace descended from when Shepherd Book was walking around trying to figure out which ship to take?
(No, it;s not a myth. Asians eat dog meat. I know two women (chinese parents) who were tricked by their parents into eating it when they went back for a visit.)
One time a Chinese coworker was sharing favorite recipes. She started into one, stopped, looked disturbed, and said "Sorry! I forgot you Americans don't eat dog!"
Then there was the time a bbq rib cart was parked outside the office. Being a huge bbq fan I bought a rack for lunch. It was given to me on a big open plate/dish thing without a lid. I left a trail of shocked, gasping, traumatized Indians marking my path from the front door to my desk! One guy covered his mouth and literally ran off.
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Re:Or Not (Score:5, Funny)
They are learning English at a much faster rate than any Americans can learn Chinese.
Hell, they're learning English faster than any American can learn English.
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Reminds me of a Dutch exchange student in middle school. The usual moron was making fun of his accent until a couple of us pointed out that said exchange student was getting an A in English while he was getting a C, even though English was his second language (of about 4).
American students really need to start learning a language much earlier than high school. Even the "gifted" kids who get to start in ~7th grade would be better served by starting a few years earlier...
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Living in Holland, I can absolutely confirm that students here do have time for that yes. The way you learn languages here is devoid of rote memorization and not the time sink you seem to think it is.
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Three of those 4 languages are of very little use unless you don't mind being confined to western Europe.
French is useful outside of Western Europe too [about.com].
While Dutch kids spend those 12+ hours a week learning geographically confined languages like Dutch, French and German, native English speaking kids have 12+ extra hours a week to learn more useful things, and still be able to communicate more effectively and with more people than someone who is fluent in Dutch and speaks some French, German and English. American kids can take classes like art, drama, debating, literature etc. and play in the school band. Do you think kids who are forced to study three foreign languages have time for this?
In the last PISA [oecd.org] ranking, Dutch kids outscored American kids in all categories, despite being disadvantaged with 12+ hours a week of "learning less useful things" (i.e. languages). To be fair, PISA checked only reading, maths, and science, which, like language learning, are typical "left brain" subjects.
Worse still, try to find an adult who still knows those foreign languages (other than the same basic English half the world speaks) a few years after their graduation.
I work with Dutch adults who are equally fluent in English, German|French, and Dutch. They're in their 40s and 50s, and have graduated from school for more th
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>>Probably because they have schools that actually teach the subject well.
No. They don't.
I've actually sat in on English classes in China, a few years back, and they're pretty horrible. Here's a sample class:
1) Copy down sentences on the blackboard 10 times each
2) Show them to your teacher
3) Ok, you can go.
The real kicker is that the sentences on the blackboard were all horrible, mangled, English (the result of graduates of the system), such as "The person go went up store bought coke." Not just "kind
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White guys are treated like rock stars in China,
Not exactly, but they get all the pussy they can handle and then some. Age doesn't seem to matter much either. 45 and wanting a 20 year old? No problem!
Forgot to mention that this only applies if you're a professional, have a job and money.
And I'm learning Chinese, said Werner Von Braun (Score:3, Funny)
That Was The Week That Was
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Largest economy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Largest economy? (Score:5, Informative)
None. 10-15 years and China will be experiencing what Europe and the US are. Slowing economy, high local debt and foreign debt. China is the hot shit right now, but most if it's GDP is coming from local manufacturing where the party is throwing money hand over fist for them to spend on things like...ghost cities, and all that.
And there's no real shortage of news stories about the number of cities with no one to next to no one in them. Here's a good one by SBS [youtube.com]. The real problem is china is still operating on a 3 tier structure for economics, and the poor bastards at the bottom are still at the very bottom eeking out life as dirt farmers.
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That was eye opening.
Re:Largest economy? (Score:5, Insightful)
It ties back to the same fallacy that people always seem to fall for. The first half of an S curve looks a lot like an exponential curve, so we just assume it is one. Computers get faster? The singularity draws near! The Dow Jones Industrial going up? It'll be at 36,000 [wikipedia.org] in no time! Travel gets faster? Where's my warp drive?! I grew from 1 foot to 6 feet in my first 16 years? I'll be two miles high by the time I die!
Whenever anything is advancing rapidly, we assume it will be that way forever, when in reality it inevitably slows down.
Re:Largest economy? (Score:4, Insightful)
The British felt the same way about the American and German "bubbles" in manufacturing and steel, too. But they just knew that eventually the two small upstart countries would slow down, resulting in Britain continuing to have a comfortable lead over all other industrialized countries.
Sometimes the view in the rear view mirror is true.
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Re:Largest economy? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm assuming it's as described in 1984:
Inner party
Outer party
Proles
You have the inner party—the upper crust, the rich, the members of the party in power. Then you have the people who work for them—the factory workers, and so on. Finally, you have the people outside the cities.
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Re:Largest economy? (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. Everything I'm reading says they are dangerously close to bursting. I'm not an economics guy so I have to rely on the "experts" but it doesn't sound good. Plus, their GDP is artificially inflated with these building projects they're doing. Google "Chinese ghost cities" and take a look. Strange stuff going on over there.
Here's a few articles predicting trouble in the Chinese economy:
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/175179/20110706/china-economic-bubble-housing-bubble-job-growth-asia-bubble-china-interest-rates-recession-inflation.htm [ibtimes.com]
http://www.businessinsider.com/china-economy-hard-landing-bumpy-landing-soft-landing-and-what-landing-2011-7 [businessinsider.com]
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0316/China-the-coming-costs-of-a-superbubble [csmonitor.com]
But we shouldn't be too happy to see their economy stumble -- a major failing in China will have serious economic impacts throughout the world.
Re:Largest economy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that you don't bring up some good points but consider this slightly re-worded sentence you wrote;
Everything I'm reading in English says they are dangerously close to bursting
Some of their other infrastructure is coming in the form of high speed rail, with many parts of it functioning already. Rail links to the rest of Europe are already planned and being built. While there may be ghost cities right now, the 'plan' is to have the infrastructure in place for the hordes coming in from the rural areas, to avoid such nasty things like 'tin shack villages' and overcrowding becoming commonplace, like many other countries have experienced when population growth far exceeded the ability of local infrastructure to be built.
I think it is hard for many westerners to really understand what is going on in many parts of China. The growth that was once limited to coastal cities, is spreading into more central locations of the country, to take advantage of the population distribution. Human rights, and pollution controls aside(and those really are BIG things to us, and rightfully so), they are absolutely doing almost a perfect job of bringing their country into a more-than-modern era.
As far as them 'busting'. The likelihood of that happening is much smaller than it was here, or in any of the problem EU countries like greece, portugal, iceland, and italy. Why? They actually have rather sane lending policies when it comes to housing. I have been hearing the line that there is a bubble in China for just about a decade now, mainly from westerners who think that their lending practices closely match ours(they don't), and just by looking at the growth similarities, a parallel is able to be drawn to our meteoric rise, and subsequent fall(it isn't) in real estate.
It has been about 5 years since I looked when I last heard this same 'rumor' of a bubble going around since I really looked at the financial requirements and legal framework, and I do imagine some of that has changed(possibly the restriction on second homes was lifted in that time, Im not sure), but there are a LOT of reasons why what appears to be a bubble in China, is only a buibble when looked at through the experience of western eyes. I won't say something stupid like 'it's different this time', but there are serious structural and behavioral differences that make a comparison between our two economies incredibly hard to do without spending a large portion of your waking hours immersing yourself in the differences between the frameworks of the two systems.
End result, learn Chinese. Worst case, you expand your knowledge. Best case, you(more likely your children) don't become a slave.
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While there may be ghost cities right now, the 'plan' is to have the infrastructure in place for the hordes coming in from the rural areas,
As far as them 'busting'. The likelihood of that happening is much smaller than it was here, or in any of the problem EU countries like greece, portugal, iceland, and italy. Why? They actually have rather sane lending policies when it comes to housing.
I'm not sure how to reconcile those two statements - how can you build ghost towns that no one lives in and still have sane lending policies? In the USA, towns are built by developers, who borrow money from the bank to purchase land and for construction costs. Who's paying for all of those ghost towns, and how long do they expect it to take before there are buyers?
Empty housing quickly degrades, in the USA, vacant houses are often stripped for recyclable materials, but I'm not sure how much of a problem tha
Re:Largest economy? (Score:5, Interesting)
In a way, the US is. China has the ability to artificially peg is currency in a way that is more beneficial to them, than it is to the people lending them money. No other major world economy enjoys this benefit, and they are taking full advantage of it.
As to the problem of empty buildings, many of the empty buildings are nothing more than concrete shells waiting to have the final build out done. The manpower needed to clean any needed upkeep greatly dwarfs the manpower needed to build it. It is far better to have the infrastructure already in place and clean it, than not to have it in place and then have to deal with things like ghettos, and unbalanced infrastructure needs. Once you fall behind in that respect, the cost to bring an area 'back' to where you want it to be is many orders of magnitude greater than the initial outlay.
Want to see some large vacant areas right here in the US? Visit the large 'Manhattan West' development in Las Vegas. It is almost completely empty. That is just one of many developments. Who pays for it? Well, the bank writes it off against their loan-loss reserves, and then gets to spread that loss out to offset any profits over the next x number of years.
banking is a little strange when you fully bury your nose in it, and many, MANY things are almost counter-intuitive if its not your usual line of work. Even when it was involved in my normal line of work, there were still some areas that defied my understanding..Either way, Im not anywhere near that field anymore, and couldn't be happier about that.
As I said, I am not an expert nor am I silly enough to say this will al just somehow work out great for China. But if I had to put money on them, I would be leaning more to it working out for them as a whole. Mainly because they will do whatever is needed to accomplish that. And that involves some rather ugly things that would never be allowed to happen in a western-style democracy without heads literally rolling. Our banking system shenanigans would have ended with state sponsored beheadings in public, and China is also able to very specifically adjust its currency peg in a way that will soften the blow to them more than any other economy would be able to. This has some downsides, and I think one of the major risks is that they get too accustomed to this setup, and push it right to the edge-conditions, leaving them just as vulnerable as their western counterparts. However, they are not near that point... yet.
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I live in Ottawa, and watched the "build out" of Nortel,JDS, Cisco and the like in the early naughties. All that was missing a few years later was tumbleweeds - I wanted to import some and spread them around for kicks.
It was a huge opportunity missed; all the local ne'er do wells in the city council were wringing their hands over what to do about the "homeless problem", and none had the gumption to shack them up in the empty HiTech campi dotting the suburbs.
Eventually they were turned over to all variety
Re:Largest economy? (Score:5, Interesting)
End result, learn Chinese. Worst case, you expand your knowledge. Best case, you(more likely your children) don't become a slave.
More accurately: Worst case, you waste countless hours of your all-too-short life learning a skill you never use. Best case, you can communicate with people that you'd be able to communicate with anyway -- every single Chinese student who wants a college degree has to become fluent in English to pass the CET (College English Test) and high scores are necessary for many top jobs.
English has become the world's language. There's no reason to learn another language, except as a hobby. A better use of your time is to learn to understand thick accents. There are classes you can take on that, and they will likely be far more useful. Also useful would be studying Eastern cultures, as cultural context is very important in communication.
And as an aside, it's extremely hyperbolic to suggest that people who don't speak Chinese will become slaves. That's like saying Frenchmen who didn't learn English are slaves.
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That is an incredibly shallow point of view.
In 10 years, your business deals with a major Chinese manufacturer. You and your competitor are up bidding on the same major project. You didn't bother to learn Chinese because you thought it was worthless, but your competitor did because he understands not only the language, but the culture.
Your competitor is able to talk to the internal departments in their native tongue, and you are not. If you have been in the three-letter business world longer than a few mi
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English had the dumb luck to be on top when globalization kicked in. It's entrenched to the point that it will be damn near impossible to replace barring some major, unprecedented upheaval in the world order. And no, the Chinese becoming a leading economy is not a major upheaval.
Let's say that tomorrow, the entirety of the United States blinked out of existence. A year later, a Chinese businessman meets with an Indian. What language do you think they'll speak? English. Because they've both learned it,
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Three networks are planned, with the Britain to China route to be extended to Singapore, and built within a decade.
Passengers on a second route would travel to the north of China and through Russia and on to Germany, where the network would join the European railway system.
A third network would extend south through Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia
You c
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Some of their other infrastructure is coming in the form of high speed rail
Oh, that classic Government Big Dick project? High speed rail doesn't pay off. There's like one high speed rail line in the world that makes more than it cost, in the densest part of Japan. That's an example of terrible government mismanagement and GDP inflation, not forward thinking.
That's not true. Korea's high speed rail has been profitable since 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_Train_Express#Ridership_evolution [wikipedia.org]
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Japan and South Korea have populations substantially smaller than the US.
China on the other hand, has a population roughly 1.5 times the US. The US has 9 cities larger than 1 million people, China has 160.
China's population is waking up and rapidly transitioning from the mostly rural poor to modern "western" lifestyles. Even as China starts dropping in competitiveness on the world market, their domestic market is rapidly grown and still has a lot of room to spare.
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Wikipedia says Chinese population is about 1,35 billion and USA has 311 million.
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Not even close. Try "more than 4 times".
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Sorry, meant to say roughly 5 times, with the US at around 300 million and China at about 1.5 billion.
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You Westerners are still in denial. Whether you like it or not, the balance of economic and political power is shifting to rapidly developing countries like China and India. No country will forever be "the richest". Your current experience proves this. Prosperity is like a wheel. Sometimes you are on top but almost certainly you won't stay there forever. Now its China's turn. Remember this the next time your nation arrogantly beat its chest about being the "sole superpower" and throw its weight around. What
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A simple theory to properly frame comparisons between income and growth of nations is the Solow growth model. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exogenous_growth_model I'm not going to outline this, but keep it in mind.)
There are 1.3-1.5 (I forget) billion people in China and about .3 billion people in the US. No prediction is 100% accurate, but contrasting some numbers always helps an argument. GDP per capita is about $4.5k and $45k in China and the US, respectively. Over time (decades to centuries of time
Re:Largest economy? (Score:4, Interesting)
China needs to achieve 25% of the American per capita income rates to become the world's largest economy as measured in raw dollars.
The main evidence that they won't achieve this relatively soon is the amount of equity they presently hold in the American economy. At the rate things are going, they'll soon wish they had invested elsewhere.
Once China reaches GDP parity with America, it will be a symbolic victory only. China will still be an economy with an agricultural sector resembling America 100 years ago. Their social institutions will take generations to evolve and improve. People underestimate the amount of social equity in an advanced economy.
The more interesting benchmark is when China achieves resource consumption parity with America for Joe Random strategic resource. That will maybe happen a decade after China reaches GDP parity.
This will create a bit of a seller's market for primary resources (short of America toppling a Chinese regime). Our foothold in Afghanistan might even pay future dividends.
As for learning Chinese, I worked with Chinese/Japanese/Korean languages from 1985 until the early 1990s back when these languages were poorly supported. I took several Chinese courses at university, and listened to a lot of Japanese instructional tapes.
Except for a very small percentage of gifted people, learning a second language *for the first time* as an adult is a hellacious amount of work. I had no trouble with Chinese grammar, because my mind already processes grammar at a higher level of abstraction.
For instance, most people think of singular and plural. Idiots. It's really singular and non-singular.
negative one books
zero books
one book
one point five books
two books
Fowler made a distinction between "fewer" for counting nouns, and "less" for mass nouns (continuous quantities). This distinction was ruined by the express check-out line. He also distinguished "between" for a party of two, and "among" for a party N>2.
Most people think of possessive pronouns as a branch of property law. Idiots. "Possessive" is actually used in language to indicated a preferred relationship according to largest eigenvalue in whichever mode of PCA analysis is established within the discourse, e.g. the car I borrowed is "my car" if the person I'm talking to is distressingly car-less, and couldn't give a rat's ass how the car I arrive in was originally procured.
Grammar devolves into metaphor surprisingly often.
Even starting from this proficiency with the abstractions of the verbal mind, in the end I could hardly justify the net-present-value of becoming proficient with Chinese to any serviceable level, without actually living in China.
The the time China passes America on more than a handful of critical economic metrics, software translation will be plenty adequate for 95% of people doing business with China.
I should add here that learning the Chinese writing system is no small project. Reading is enough of a challenge, writing is pure masochism. The Chinese speech system is surprisingly regular with only four or five challenging consonants (c,x,q,zh in pinyin). You just need to completely rewire your tone perception from the music part of your brain to the linguistic part of your brain. I'm not joking. Sounds the brain perceives as linguistic are suppressed from other forms of scrutiny. TED had a recent video about early language learning. It's very early in the language process that the brain codes which sounds are language and which ones aren't (the other active brain skills are sucking, drooling, and eye contact).
One thing I will say is that if people had more appreciation for the social equity of an advanced technological society, maybe people wouldn't be so actively trying to tear America apart from within. Some of the anti-government voices out there have no clue about the difference between the baby and the bath water. Time after time I listen to economists talk about the world econom
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The US is the largest manufacturer in the world.
Failure in translation. What was actually said was "American manufacturers are the fattest in the world".
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Most (or at least many) Japanese cars are actually manufactured in the United States.
I think a lot of assembly is done here. -- there are all kinds of tax and related incentives and so forth for doing it here. (1)
I'm curious how much of the actual component work is done here.
(1) -- VWs made in Mexico benefit from NAFTA, while those from Germany are still subject to import duties... at least in Canada., for example.
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It was a mistake to save any of them. Why?
Because it rewarded bad business practices.
Capitalism is a very Darwinian economic system. Only the fittest survive.
We managed to fuck that right up, and now we're wondering why we don't seem to be able to build a strong recovery.
also we're still manufacturing quite a bit: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/12/us-remains-largest-manufacturer-in.html [blogspot.com]
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Hell, English is almost necessary in China due to all the non-mutually-intelligible "dialects" of Chinese.
Here's why (Score:5)
Re:Here's why (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, but often true. It's useful knowing enough to know what your translators are actually telling them you said.
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Can you understaaaaaand the words comin outta my mouth?
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Why would you let them know you know Chinese?
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Like that Louisiana fellow who said I had the "hoppin's of a blue-tailed swamp vermit". I think it was an insult, but who knows.
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You're assuming they all share the same regional dialect. Unless you're dealing with some Mom & Pop business that sprung up in a single area, they won't. I have a couple of Chinese coworkers who can't understand each others' accents -- in English or Mandarin -- because their regional dialects are so different.
As someone who fits in this demographic (Score:2)
why? So I can save a few bucks on some shit PCB's while giving the knockoff capital of the world the blueprints?
Maybe its just me, but that sounds pretty fucking dumb
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why? So I can save a few bucks on some shit PCB's while giving the knockoff capital of the world the blueprints? Maybe its just me, but that sounds pretty fucking dumb
Spot on! Anyone who has any experience dealing with Chinese electronics companies knows that they WILL fuck you if you don't contract independent, non-Chinese QA folks to work on-site. There's a whole industry devoted to doing this type of QA work inside China. The QA contractors have the language skills. You don't need them.
If you're not working at a volume large enough to have your own QA guys/gals looking over your Chinese production line YOU ARE FUCKED. Your product may be good in the beginning but
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why? So I can save a few bucks on some shit PCB's while giving the knockoff capital of the world the blueprints?
If you are real maker, than 't'll be more important to you to make your stuff that who is getting the money. And if nobody else (but the Chinese) is making what you need, you aren't a real maker if you drop the idea just because somebody may get richer.
Amen (Score:2)
Absolutely true. To deny this is to not understand that the shift to offshore manufacturing isn't in its early or even mid stages - it has happened.
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Absolutely false. The benefit of me learning Chinese, compared to the benefit of using that time to read about math, science, history, and so on ... it's a no-brainer. There's no good reason for me to spend my time learning Chinese, as opposed to doing something else, unless it's something I simply WANT to do.
I mean honestly ... this guy is smart, and he says it's going to take him more than two years of ALL his free time, and a total of about 5 years, to become fluent. If he wants to do that, great! Bu
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hey pudge, i specifically mean "makers who run businesses" - which a lot of the makers who read MAKE tend to be, or want to become. it's been handy for me and if you look at all the companies i point to: sparkfun, tv-b-gone (cornfield), adafruit, EMSL, etc, etc - they're all visiting china at least once a year. these are the prolific makers that are at every maker faire and are the centers of many diy communities. my article is describing what has already happened, it's not futuristic at all :)
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hey pudge, i specifically mean "makers who run businesses" - which a lot of the makers who read MAKE tend to be, or want to become.
Silly me. I thought that the idea behind "MAKE" was to promote home brew experimentation and innovation, not provide info to the new manufacturers. I guess since I don't want to become a company making some electronic geegaw trinket I might as well stop reading MAKE. Especially that section where the guy makes things out of real money that are cheaper than the mass-produced thing he's copying.
Companies who want to do business with China will be better off hiring a US-based translator than anyone in the co
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you didn't read past the headline or the read the article
1980s all over again (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember the 1980s when everybody said that you'll need to learn Japanese. In popular culture the Japanese were shown as our future overlords.
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yea along with "We will still be a country of innovators" right after the Taiwanese started doing mass production of our products, then proceeded to clone them
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I remember the 1980s when everybody said that you'll need to learn Japanese. In popular culture the Japanese were shown as our future overlords.
When in reality, it's only the cafe maids singing "Moe" songs who control us. And don't mind. :)
Whilst on the topic of things Japanese, I just watched 'Yukikaze" - a very nicely done anime!
Re:1980s all over again (Score:4, Interesting)
Ha, too late!
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I remember the 1980s when everybody said that you'll need to learn Japanese. In popular culture the Japanese were shown as our future overlords.
They were saying the same thing in the 90's when I was in college. The government was actually paying doctoral students to take classes in Japanese. Of course, that went nowhere. It's clear now that Japanese will never dominate science or business.
Chinese will go the same way. Besides, Chinese is too much of a disaster to subject it to the world at large. It's almost as bad as English!
How about reading? (Score:2)
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Depends on your goal and circumstances. If your goal is to be conversant, I would say go with simplified, unless you plan to live in a country where traditional is used heavily. If your goal is to be fluent, that is a very very long road, so to study both forms requires less than 5% additional effort if you do it the right way.
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Complete nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
"MAKE Magazine is making that case that any 'maker' who builds, buys or creates electronics should learn (Mandarin) Chinese.
MAKE has no idea what they are talking about. I DO manufacture electronics (electronic data harnesses primarily) for a living and fairly little of the parts we make come from China and most of what we buy is commodity parts. (wire, terminals, connectors, etc) Lots of it comes from Japan and much of it is made here in the US. Sure there are some parts from China but it isn't as much as one might think. The manufacture of many of these products is highly automated and China has no cost significant cost advantage.
Furthermore, virtually all sales of commodity electronic components are done through distributors. You simply are NOT going to buy direct from China unless you are a purchaser for a manufacturing company. Distributors have customer service representatives, most of whom do not speak a word of any Chinese dialect. And even if for some reason you did need to contact someone in China directly, there are a HUGE number of English speakers there. I've been to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Chengdu and other places in China. It is NOT hard to find someone who speaks rather good English.
source of just about everything we buy in the USA.
The US has a $3.7 TRILLION manufacturing sector and most of that stuff we make is also sold here in the US. In 2010 the US imported $364 BILLION [uschina.org] in goods from China or roughly 10% of what the US makes itself. A big number to be sure, but nowhere close to "just about everything".
Ya I get real tired of that one (Score:4, Informative)
The "Oh the US doesn't make anything!" You see it on Slashdot all the time and it is so amazingly wrong. In fact, prior to the downturn the US manufactured more than it has ever made in the past, and prior to the end of 2010, it made more than China. It is now a close second, manufacturing more than everyone but China.
I think part of the problem is just people wanting to believe America is doomed and/or crap for some reason but the other part is people don't understand the very global and distributed nature of things these days. They also function by what they happen to notice, which in terms of "made in" stickers is a lot of Chinese things.
Ok well that doesn't mean anything but that final assembly was done there. The "made in" or "assembled in" mark has to be put on something where it was put together. That has nothing to do with where any of the parts or major part of the work was done.
As an example: Buy an Intel processor in the US and it'll generally be stamped from Costa Rica, but sometimes Malaysia. Well if you do some research, you discover they have no fabs in those countries. Most of their fabs are in the US (7 of them) 1 in Ireland, 1 is Israel and one still being finished in China. All the high tech ones, the 32nm ones, are in the US so that's where the new CPUs are being made. Why then the labeling? Because it was developed there? No, you find their R&D centers are in the US and Israel. So what then?
Well the chips are tested and assembled there (also other locations, including one new on in the US). The wafers are shipped off, and the chips are cut off, tested, and packaged, then sent back. However, since that's the final place they are put together, that's what you see stamped on the chip.
When you do some digging, you find that indeed the US does make plenty of stuff, not all of it finished products though. When the US does make finished products, you discover that their are parts from all over in them. It isn't a situation where many things are built, start to finish, in one country much less one location. Companies all over the world make things, and they buy and sell form each other.
The US has a big share of that, as I said, second only to China currently.
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Is it worth it to save on that?
I find, as you do, that generally the cost of things made in EU/US are double that of things made in Asia, but I still try and buy Western. It's not a matter of nationalism, or perceived quality, but a conscious decision to ensure things I own are made by people that have the assured quality of life that I would like for myself.
Yes the cost is double, but then I just buy less. And despite the occasional article (like this one) haranguing the options for buying Western, I have
who cares? (Score:2)
China is a billion people, 3x the US, I bloody well hope they'll have a bigger economy than the US at some point, because otherwise it means that they remain poor. Same with India.
The sooner they take the "#1 spot" and the responsibility that goes with it, the better as far as I'm concerned. The US is still big enough to make sure its own interests are preserved, and Europe can then kvetch about China for a while, while the US can focus on improving its infrastructure and education.
Charles V (Score:5, Funny)
I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, German to my horse, and Mandarin to my electronics.
Admirable but Unrealistic Goal (Score:2)
The author states that he intends to be fluent by 2016 by studying in his free time. I don't think this is likely to achieve fluency unless you're living full time in a Chinese speaking enviornment. Of course 'fluent' word that tends to get thrown around indiscriminantly and rarely used in the linguistic sense of true fluency. If he means functional or conversant, then it's definitely doable. If, however he means C2 on the CEFR scale, then 5 years of full time study might be enough to achieve that, but
Not just people who make things... (Score:2)
They held an expo, they built skyscrapers... (Score:2)
They held a massive expo. They're building huge skyscrapers, They've got crazy real estate prices, and now Americans are thinking of learning their language. They've got both bases covered if they want to emulate Japan, circa 1986. We all know where that went.
All we need now is for Time magazine to put China on the cover. Maybe they already did, perhaps more than once.
Despite all these contrary indicators, China rolls on... for now.
Don't bother (Score:2)
Just as in every other market, you have to look at supply and demand. The world is already brimming with people who speak English and Mandarin or Cantonese. Learning a language takes a lot of time and effort, and if you're past your early 20s you probably won't ever be a fluent speaker no matter how much you put into it.. Are you really ready to risk millions of dollars because you accidentally offended your client?
You'd be far ahead getting a second job and then hiring a translator with the money you
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China has a very large Muslim population. Every town I have lived in has had at lest one, and often several mosques. China includes Islam prominently when identifying its nations religions.
"Chinese citizens enjoy full religious freedom. China is not only a large country in terms of population, it is also a major country in terms of religion, with schools of Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism and others, and a total of 100 million religious adherents among a national population of 1.2 billio
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Re:Learn Mandarin and buy Bitcoins (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea, I remember this kind talk about the Japanese back in the 1980s( yea I'm old, get off my lawn ). Ooooh, better learn Japanese if you want to succeed in business, Ooooh, they are going to take over the world with their mysterious asian cunning, that us round-eyes will never be able to match.
Glad I could put it into perspective for you. My work is done here.
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Glad I could put it into perspective for you. My work is done here.
Can I go back to playing Okami on my Wii connected to my Sony TV that I brought home in my Toyota minivan?
Re:Learn Mandarin and buy Bitcoins (Score:4, Interesting)
Okami: pressed in Taiwanese DVD-fab factory.
Wii: full of Foxconn components (China slave labor), likely Korean laser diode in the DVD drive.
Sony TV: Taiwanese or Korean LCD, could be either.
Toyota minivan: mostly made in the US (probably Knoxville TN).
What was your point again?
Taiwan's what we really should wonder about. China's very good at stealing tech from other countries, [anandtech.com] but crap-all at doing anything else except for destroying the environment and committing acts of barbarism against farmers and monks.
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You didn't list any japanese products. I'm sure it's all made in China.
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There are strong opinions that the transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy is the natural progression, just as agrarian to manufacturing is... I don't know yet how well this theory holds with reality, but all sufficiently advanced economies (well, ones that lasted this long...) do move their manufacturing towards the developing world to keep prices low and resources in play.
I have been following the "Manufacturing job mantra" from the White House for the last year or so, but I'm on the
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Re:Learn Mandarin and buy Bitcoins (Score:5, Funny)
There really isn't a substitute for having lived through something to provide some perspective.
There are a lot of ways the Chinese Miracle could go bad. I'm old enough to remember when Russia was the main competitor and how they were going to take over the world with their superior genetics and technological blah blah. Hell, there was even a Rocky movie about it. But then Rocky went to Moscow to fight the genetically superior Dolf Lundgren and told the Muscovites, "If I can change, then you can change and we can all change and make some change and hope and change and then we could all walk hand in hand into the bright future on the Moon" (I'm paraphrasing).
I'm sure there was a time not long ago when the people of England and France were saying "Those Americans...we've got to keep an eye on them or they'll end up being almost as powerful as our Roman Legion and Spanish Armada and then we'll have to deal with them". But of course, the British and French had gay sex and created Canada, and that did something, I'm not sure what, but they sure like their hockey up there. Hell, they fucking riot when they're behind in the second period".
Anyway, my point is, um, that learning Mandarin because you think it's going to give you some deep advantage in the coming epoch is as dumb as calling yourself a "maker" because your hobby is building steampunk costumes for your chihuahua. If you have to make up a gay name like "maker" then you should visit a tool and die shop in Berwyn, Illinois and talk to someone who actually knows how to make something without giving himself some fruity name just because Cory Doctorow says so. Please. Don't get me started on Cory Doctorow....
Now please excuse me, I have to go freshen up this drink. Did you know vodka/pineapple is a nice summer pick-me-up? You put in a shot of grenadine and slice of mango. Get a party hat. Hell, two of these and you'll feel like you're wearing a party hat even without the party hat. See? I'm a maker too!
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My dad owned the same electric can opener my whole life, which is to say it over 30 years old.
My dad owned the same clothes dryer my whole life, which is to say it over 30 years old.
I cant find an electric can opener that lasts 6 months.
Therefore I say:
The Chinese need to learn to make things.
America, Fuck yea.
Silly American - don't buy an electric can opener - I've had the same manual can opener (made in Germany, I believe) for nearly 20 years. It has a handle big enough that my elderly mother can operate it, and I can open a can in about the same amount of time as an electric opener.
How much do you EAT? (Score:2)
Why would you need an electric can opener?
Re:How much do you EAT? (Score:5, Funny)
Why would you need an electric can opener?
To open electric cans. Duh.
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I have a very hard time with new spoken languages. This is a diagnosed disability: auditory comprehension learning disorder.
Will there be accommodations or will I and people like me be tossed aside?
Aside? No, that'll be a waste - there's always soilent green.
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I ask because I know 5 Americans who are fluent in Japanese. Kanji is just borrowed Chinese. Granted I have Japanese ties being married to a Japanese woman, but we're also in a small town in the mid-west. Surely there have to be at least a handful of people, on average, per state that are fluent in Chinese without having been born there. Not to mention all of Europe as well?
Re:There are fewer than 50 (Score:4)
I personally know three westerners, neither born nor raised in China, who are completely fluent in Chinese (could pass a spoken or written Turing test), and another five who are fluent except for a foreign accent. It's absurd to claim "fewer than 50" when I personally can think of eight firsthand without even trying.
Having visited foreign consulates in China, a quick estimate indicates that there are likely at least 500 westerners with total fluency in Chinese in the embassies and consulates alone.
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The GP is a nice troll, but he does have his points.
Chinese is my native and "first language" (though I'd argue English is my preferred language for reading and writing), but I still think that learning Chinese is really fscking difficult, for a lot of reasons that includes his list and more.
The 50 number is simply wrong, but the others things (even if somewhat rude and racy) aren't that far off from the truth.
I guess most people that you know who are "fluent" in Chinese (without any cultural or ethnic ties
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The GP is a nice troll, but he does have his points.
That's because he copied his points from this paper [pinyin.info] without giving credit. The paper makes much better reading than his post.