Is Chinese important to Amercan?

Question

I am a Taiwanese.
excuse me.
Is Chinese important to American?
has It lots of Chinese college in American's university ?
do you think about Chinese is necessary of life?
Has your country many Chinese's teachers?
Are you learning Chinese?
thank you.

Answer 1

Of course it is.
Why do you think all the schools are scrambling to create/develop Chinese language programs? My mom's one and every day she gets e-mails from top colleges looking for Chinese teachers.

I love how I know Chinese. I used to think it was stupid because people used to make fun of me but now that I'm older, I've noticed exactly how much of a benefit it is. It makes me stand out from people who elect to learn Spanish, French, or Latin. And I know I'll be far more successful than the people who teased me about it.

Knowing Chinese gives you an enormous competitive edge in life.

I know I can't wait for THE 2008 OLYMPICS IN BEIJING. I'm going to be a volunteer translator there =D.

Answer 2

What do you call someone who knows 3 languages? Trilingual.
What do you call someone who knows 2 languages? Bilingual.
What do you call someone who knows many languages? Multilingual.

What do you call someone who knows just 1 language? American!

The number of people in this world who speak Mandarin Chinese number more than those who speak english, and spanish COMBINED. And as we as a society get more cross-pollenated, there is no question you're going to run into situations where knowing Chinese will give you an edge.

I grew up speaking Taiwanese. Yes, I was brainwashed into thinking that Mandarin is an artifact from the evil Mainland, useless to all except for the KMT who used Guo Yu to oppress native Taiwanese from their culture.

Then, I married someone from Mainland China. And visited the mainland. Several times. And you know what? They have a lot of neat things there. Culture wise. Technology wise (believe it or not!). My life has definitely been enriched when I opened up my eyes and started to learn Chinese. Jiantizi or Fantizi, it all sounds similar when spoken in the common dialect.

A great way to learn chinese is through chinesepod.com, a free daily podcast that lasts 7-10 minutes each. If you subscribe, you can download their worksheets and study at your leisure. So far, I'm cheap, I just listen for understanding :)

Answer 3

Well... that's really a lot of questions. The importance of Chinese in the American society really varies from state to state. (I'm sorry that I don't have the time to do any of a little bit research on this topic). But there's one thing for sure, if Americans are to learn Chinese, they only learn Putonghua and for the writing system, they only use Simplified Chinese. People are used to naming Putonghua as Mandarin, but as a Chinese, I think you know that Chinese people only SPEAK Putonghua and WRITE Mandarin. The two words are not interchangable.

The reason for Americans(or those non-Chinese speaking people) to learn Putonghua instead of Cantonese is that the Hanyu Pinyin system is very similar to the English phonetics. It's easier for foreigners to get hold of the pronunciation. They're writing Simplified Chinese instead of the Traditional one simply because the latter is too "complicated" in every sense of the word.

"Mandarin" (as the Americans are used to calling it) is quite popular in some of the high schools in some states. But as for the universities, I doubt if there's a Chinese Department dealing with Chinese language stuff. There may be an Asian Studies Department but I'm not sure if it has anything to do with learning Chinese langauge.

Btw, "Chinese" is a general term. It can be Cantonese, Putonghua, Taiwanese(Min-nan dialect) or any other Chinese dialects. But not matter which one you're referring to, frankly speaking, none of them is necessary in everyday American life unless someone is so eager to move to China or to start bussiness with the Chinese companies(well..in most cases of commerical tradings, the language "Chinese" is not a requirement for Americans to get a Chinese company business partner).

There're plenty of Chinese teachers in America but most of them just teach "Mandarin".

Yes, I'm learning Chinese(both Cantonese and Putonghua) and doing quite well actally. ^.^

Answer 4

in my area we only have 1 chinese family. They own a popular chinese restaraunt and nail salon. Sadly chinese isn't important to myself. The schools here are focusing on Spanish as a second language. In college There were no chinese/asians around. For your last question i would love to learn chinese but it looks so hard and i would never master it. take care.

Answer 5

Where I live, there are many Chinese. So the Chinese language has become more and more valuable to people here. I would guess that the study of Chinese is gradually becoming as popular as the study of Japanese.

Answer 6

my answer to most of your questions is yes.
i'm chinese (i speak cantonese), but i'm not being bias in my answer since i was born and raised in the US.
statistics have shown and news reports have informed us that china is obviously a rising power in the world. they are fast becoming more advance than america. it has become really important for wealthy families to have their offsprings learn mandarin because many business transactions nowadays are done with china mainland businessmen.

as for whether the chinese language itself is important to the vast majority of americans? i doubt it, since they don't know anything about our chinese culture. instead, when they hear 'chinese' they think panda express which is a shame because FYI guys, that's not real chinese food.

but i know, within the next decade, china will prove to be equally powerful or even more powerful than america. and everyone will want a piece of china the way people flock to america now.

Answer 7

If you visit a bilingual preshcool (chinese-english) you'll see more and more americans send their kids there to learn chinese. it all depends on your vision of future. a news article once said there're rich new yorkers who pay 100k for a chinese speaking nanny, so that their kids can be bilingual from beginning. they believe china will catch up with or even be stronger than US by 2040, and they want their kids to be prepared.

Answer 8

American may make good money from China, so it's important, I learnt Chinese for my job

Answer 9

Most people are not studying chinese and don't care, no we don't think chinese is necessary in life. we do not study and place importance on chinese like you do on english.

Answer 10

All humans are important in life!!
Humans are Precious no matter what country they are from!!
As long as they are nice kind people