February 21st, 2007

Mandarin Chinese gaining popularity in public schools

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

NPR reports that Mandarin Chinese is gaining popularity in public schools. (But please oh please don’t take pronunciations lessons from the student at time code 3:25. His first tone was clearly a second—falling victim to the classic mistake of applying English tone shaping to Chinese syllables.) On the other hand, some of those students who chose to study Mandarin Chinese didn’t, um, do their homework:

Some say they are here by accident or because they thought it would be an easy “A”. Oops.

I do admire the argument of one parent against learning Chinese:

Everybody is going to speak English. I’m sure the Chinese all speak English.

That’s right. The Chinese all speak English. The accent? That’s just an affectation.

Category
Old New Thing
Topics
Non-Computer

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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