Zuckerberg bombshell: Man married to Chinese woman speaks Chinese in China Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shocked a Chinese audience with his mastery of Mandarin – a language that's as difficult to master as his website's privacy settings. The advertising kingpin was speaking at Tsinghua University in China, where he stunned attendees by ditching English and speaking in Mandarin for more than half an …
I speak Chinese, when I was learning I thought it was hard at the start. But then someone pointed out to me that everyone in China can speak it, even the stupid people. So it is clearly not anywhere near as hard as differential equations or other stuff which the majority of the population would never get regardless of how many lessons they took.
Languages are not hard, but you need to be there, take lessons and take the time to expose yourself to them and practice.
It's nice that he's trying but I'm not surprised by your comment.
After studying the language for only a couple months I can more or less follow what he's saying. It's very basic and I'm not sure where The Register's assessment of fluency comes in since a lot of times he seems to be struggling for words.
The interviewer is also clearly making a heroic effort to speak in simple sentences, very slowly and clearly.
It seems the audience is laughing not because Zuckerberg is joking with them so much as to break the tension.
"Yes, we are fully aware that the headline text is in Simplified Chinese and not Mandarin per se"
That's sort of like saying that only Old English is real English. I don't know who told you otherwise but Simplified Chinese is real Mandarin. (Simplified and Traditional Chinese are only ways of writing certain characters, the language is spoken the same way no matter which version of the characters you use - allowing of course for regional variations in vocabulary, idioms, pronunciation, and grammar that have nothing to do with the use of either Traditional or Simplified Chinese characters.)
If learning Chinese, you *have* to learn characters, not rely on Pinyin. Simplified or Traditional doesn't matter, they are pretty similar and if you read one, you can easily learn to understand the other. But you have to learn characters, once you can, it's actually far easier to read than pinyin. And you need characters if you ever go to China and need to read any signs, etc.
Yep…
There are just too many homographs in Chinese, any westernized system of representing the words, ends up messing you up, even just looking at the Chinese whilst learning the words is enough to prompt the correct usage.
But then all those so called experts would not be raking in millions from the various published systems.
But Traditional & Simplified do not have the same meaning( even for the same character groups) it is not always a 1:1 substitution.
"I don't know who told you otherwise but Simplified Chinese is real Mandarin."
ER…. no.
Simplified was introduced by Mao in the 50's to try and raise the level of education of the Chinese masses ( also to deny the people the ability to read past documents).
He claimed to have produced the form himself. ( are you saying that Chinese did not start writing 'real Chinese until the 50's?….. hint it is called Mandarin for a reason….)
Prior to that traditional characters were used, and if you go to Taiwan and say such things you would be punched in the face.
The true 'written form' has evolved over thousands of years, eventually stabilizing in about the 4-5 Century and were the central form used by the Emperors courts of China.
You seem to think that my opinion is that if Simplified Chinese is real Mandarin, then Traditional Chinese must somehow be "false" Mandarin. This is not my position. They are *both* real Mandarin.
You seem to object, for whatever half-wit reasons you may have, to Mandarin written in Simplified Chinese being called "real Mandarin"; are *you* saying that it is "false" Mandarin?
Here's another point (which I neglected to put in my previous post):
"The true 'written form' has evolved over thousands of years..." (Emphasis added.)
And so Simplified Chinese is not a "true written form" of Mandarin because you don't consider orthographic reforms - whether Mao claimed credit for them or not is irrelevant - to be part of a language's evolution.
That's certainly a very original point of view. It's also a very wrong point of view.
Yes, he probably can take as much time as likes can for lessons. Yes, he has a wife that speaks the language. What's the deal?
I speak English, have a French wife, and live in a country that speaks a third language. I took Spanish in school, and probably know it better than French or the current country's language.
Given time off for language classes (like Zuck), I may speak the three necessary languages for my current situation.
Besides, he was only shilling for his company...
Now for the down votes :-}
Since El Reg is normally a pedant's paradise, I'm surprised that no one has yet asked this question: Why keep calling it Chinese? Presumably what he was speaking was MSM, Modern Standard Mandarin, aka Putonghua, etc. There is no one language called Chinese, and since Mandarin and Cantonese are mutually unintelligble yet use the same writing system (which CAN be called Chinese), calling Mandarin "Chinese" does a disservice to every other member of the Sinitic family of languages.
It makes it simple for ignoramuses to understand, Chinese food is basically 3-4 dishes and comes in funny paper boxes, Asian people all look the same and Chinese language is all one dialect but pronounced differently depending on whether you come from north south east or west like 'merica , SunTzu is all you need to know about Chinese stratagems,
there all done
MSM, Hokkien, Hakka, Cantonese or Wu, whatever he was speaking did at least give me the chance to confirm my theory that only certain types of pedantry are approved of here - I made the post in the expectation of getting at least one down vote, and that confidence has been fully vindicated. :)
雞同鴨講
"Chicken & Duck speaking" is a rough equivalent, they say it is not used in Mandarin only Cantonese, but that is not correct, over the last 20 years there has been a merging of such terms.
It can cause all sorts of confusion in a brothel. ;-)
( Chicken =female prostitute, Duck = male prostitute)
Go check out the Hong Kong films based around his term, there are some very funny ones.
Good for him. However, if his wife and her granny had been Cantonese, the predominate dialect in Hong Kong and southern China, this article would not have been written. You can count the number of westerners fluent in Cantonese on your hands & toes and those that do are treated exactly like a talking cat. Mandarin is doable and is spoken by many westerners.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
