the best languages to learn (article)

[rdearman]

https://www.studyinternational.com/news ... -to-learn/

[Le Baron]

Alternative title: Some CEOs speak another (several) languages.

The premise seems to be: learn/speak other languages and you'll be a CEO. Or: if you're already a CEO part of your success is because you speak one or more additional languages.

Which is complete twaddle. The article is also poorly-written (as Cainntear noted with regard to the other from the same source).

The best language to learn for your job is the one stated in the job requirements. Or one which is evidently in use and therefore worth learning. There's also the option of 'no additional languages' in quite a lot of jobs. Many of the largest economies are based on monolingual interaction.

All of this stuff::

In this journey, you’ll build your self-esteem, a strong sense of identity and a deeper understanding of cultural diversity.

Is just fluff and bears no real relation to ordinary reality. There are plenty multilingual people with narrow minds and no real understanding of cultural diversity. The repeated claim that learning languages somehow makes people wordly-wise is just tiresome.

[Cainntear]

All of this stuff::

In this journey, you’ll build your self-esteem, a strong sense of identity and a deeper understanding of cultural diversity.

Is just fluff and bears no real relation to ordinary reality. There are plenty multilingual people with narrow minds and no real understanding of cultural diversity. The repeated claim that learning languages somehow makes people wordly-wise is just tiresome.

Exactly. The site in question is an agency trying to link impressionable students up with universities for their own financial gain. Whether this is advertising dollars or direct commission on students signed up and paying university fees isn't immediately clear, but either way, they need to get eyeballs on their site, and that makes rapid publication of fluff a must, and they'll just reel off any nice-sounding junk that puts the reader into a positive frame of mind.

Even beyond the articles, the site's a total mess. If I click on "universities", it gives Glasgow and Nottingham as the first two items on its "partners" list, but if I go to "countries" and click "United Kingdom", neither of them are shown. Hell, the list includes a school in Virginia and a university in New York state. Why are they shown when I ask for a list of study locations in the UK?

It's a mess.

[leosmith]

Mark Zuckerberg is fluent in Mandarin, which is one of the best languages to learn.

Yes! More points for leosmith and his god-like language selecting abilities.

[Cainntear]

Mark Zuckerberg is fluent in Mandarin, which is one of the best languages to learn.

Yes! More points for leosmith and his god-like language selecting abilities.

Hmmm.... I could have sworn that China was vehemently atheistic... What's god doing speaking Mandarin...?

[tastyonions]

No mention of Esperanto in the article so it's clearly not worth our time.

More seriously, Swedish is quite the wildcard in there. Swedish has more business value than Arabic? Than Portuguese? Than Japanese or Korean? Odd.

[Le Baron]

Mark Zuckerberg is fluent in Mandarin, which is one of the best languages to learn.

Yes! More points for leosmith and his god-like language selecting abilities.

Hmmm.... I could have sworn that China was vehemently atheistic... What's god doing speaking Mandarin...?

The fellow has an infinite amount of time for learning vocabulary, Chinese characters and perfecting his tones. Legend has it he found Hebrew comparatively more difficult.

[Sae]

More seriously, Swedish is quite the wildcard in there. Swedish has more business value than Arabic? Than Portuguese? Than Japanese or Korean? Odd.

Yeah, I thought that about Swedish too. But then the list don't really give a rhyme or reason to its choices other than "a CEO speaks it", by which point I can throw in Tamil because it's what the CEO of Pepsi learned.

[Cainntear]

Mark Zuckerberg is fluent in Mandarin, which is one of the best languages to learn.

Yes! More points for leosmith and his god-like language selecting abilities.

Hmmm.... I could have sworn that China was vehemently atheistic... What's god doing speaking Mandarin...?

The fellow has an infinite amount of time for learning vocabulary, Chinese characters and perfecting his tones. Legend has it he found Hebrew comparatively more difficult.

If you're a being beyond time, distinguishing between traditional and simplified characters must really mess with your head...

[Gaoling97]

For example, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, picked up Mandarin in addition to his mother tongue.

And he doesn’t just have a basic understanding. Zuckerberg is able to give speeches and answer questions in the language.

When Mark Zuckerberg speaks in Chinese, literally almost every single tone is wrong, and I have not otherwise seen anything that indicates much more than a very elementary level of speaking.

Seriously, I have noticed that, presumably because almost no westerners are actually at a very high level in Chinese, people seriously overestimate how good some people actually are/there is nobody to call people out when they exaggerate their abilities. And native Chinese speakers tend to be overly generous with foreigners speaking Chinese to a seriously comical extent.

Reminds me of John Oliver saying that John Cena spoke "pretty decent Mandarin", which, uh...sorry, no.

Sorry for the tangent but this kind of bugs the hell out of me. Yeah, the article is trash.