Chinese Most Popular Foreign Language For Thai Students

[w11guy]

I would think it would be silly to start on a third language where they cant even come close to master a second language in English. Some believe doing business with china you have to know their language...actually doing business with china you have to talk money and watch your back.

But you miss out on the best deals if you can't speak the language. Yes, you can get by with just English, but the really successful companies and individuals can communicate in Chinese.

[w11guy]

I would think it would be silly to start on a third language where they cant even come close to master a second language in English. Some believe doing business with china you have to know their language...actually doing business with china you have to talk money and watch your back.

If Thais put the same time and effort into Chinese as they do English, then Chinese won't get any traction. They will just speak two foreign languages badly.

Speaking two foreign languages badly, is much better than the average American or Brit who can't even speak one foreign language badly. And many of those Americans and Brits even have difficulty with English.

[w11guy]

I think many expats are either too lazy or too stupid to learn Thai, so they prefer to mock the Thai people because their English isn't good enough for the expats. You are in Thailand and the language spoken here is Thai, so why not quit complaining and make some effort to learn the language. It seem like some expats are now even more upset because Thais are deciding to learn Chinese. What's wrong? Are you insulted because they don't want to learn English? Get used to. This is Asia. If you want to speak English then move to an English-speaking country. Or hang around with expats and you can all complain together.

Edited April 24, 2012 by w11guy

[bumpkin]

With some exceptions, many of the Western expats arrived in Thailand running away from work. Gainful employmnet was not their main objective when choosing Thailand as a destination. Whereas most migrants from Asian countries are seriously seeking employment and show themselves prepared to graft. And, Thailand has never seriously encouraged an inflow of skilled and talented Westerners looking for employment. By default, they have encouraged a different category of Western visitor.

[crobe]

The ones who are using this to try to bash English and the western world should read the OP.

Chinese (Mandarin) is the most popular elective language, and the decline of the other western languages such as German and French are also elective languages - i.e additional languages chosen.

English is not an elective is is part of the core curriculum, at least to some degree, within the school system and is therefore not considered an elective.

As the OP states, there is an upturn in the languages due to the imminent AEC in 2015, but there is no prospect of using mandarin, or any of the other Chinese dialects , as a pan ASEAN language after 2015, as all of the constituent countries oppose this.

The countries of ASEAN are in the same position as the fledgling EC in Europe, where they had competing languages, and for a long time the French were insisting on using their language only, but the other countries insisted on English (the UK was not a part of the community at the time).

The AEC could be the same with Indonesia insisting that their language should be used as they have the largest population, however, in reality, the working language for legal, contractual and technical documentation is in native language and one common language - English.

I provide some technical briefings to Thai delegates to ASEAN committees and these are in English and Thai.

We are also now discussing pan-ASEAN infrastructure projects for science and the common language again for these is English, mainly due to technical documentation.

This by no means an excuse for the Brits, Americans, Austrailians, Canadians etc. who have English as their native language and are abysmal at learning a second or third language, and I am guilty of this myself.

What you have to understand is the difference between the English language and native English speakers - the language itself is now a world property, there is no ownership of this by the native speakers, which is why the language is so diverse (2-3 times larger than French and growing) and so grammatically unstructured.

Native English speakers are not just lazy, but have a difficult choice in their school years - I personally have worked in more than 10 different countries (not including the English speaking ones) and so the choice of a second or third language is not just whether but which one.

In my school years one of the major electives was Russian (due to the cold war), and in the 80s it was Japanese as this was the rising power at the time - complete with scary headlines of Japanese companies taking over America and about to rule the world.

Who has the benefit of 20/20 foresight to say that in 30 years time the prediction of the rise of China is true, and that it does not go the way of Japan, or the USSR.

So for the next 30 years the most important second language for Thai schools will remain English, but there is a value in learning the languages of your major trading partners and so Chinese as an elective is not a bad thing

Crobe

[Tafia]

Strangely enough before retiring here in 2008 I made enquiries in the UK (Dorset) for a Thai Language course, (night school, open learning, college etc) where I was informed that throughout the Uk the most popular 2nd language being learned was Mandarin.

and lets be realistic...China is the future whether we like it or not

Edited April 24, 2012 by Tafia

[Skywalker69]

Strangely enough before retiring here in 2008 I made enquiries in the UK (Dorset) for a Thai Language course, (night school, open learning, college etc) where I was informed that throughout the Uk the most popular 2nd language being learned was Mandarin.

and lets be realistic...China is the future whether we like it or not

They gradually taking ower the world and the world resources.

[crobe]

But in 30 years time the Chinese may have major social and economic problems, not least due to their one-child policy, and they will not be the largest country by population, that will be India, so maybe we should look ahead and all now learn Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi or another Indian dialect

Crobe

[thaiman]

An other clear message for the "what will they do without us" brigade.

I also predict the end of the western expat. Two month ago, we had to fill urgently an expat position and the best candidate was a young Hong Kong Chinese guy. It's a fantastic success. He get along very well with his local colleagues, we don't need to babysit him like his western colleagues. After two month he is able to speak basic Thai. We know realize that in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan we have a big source for our future expat executives, we will now think twice before hiring European expats.

You may want to brush up on your English writing skills while your at it!

[Skywalker69]

An other clear message for the "what will they do without us" brigade.

I also predict the end of the western expat. Two month ago, we had to fill urgently an expat position and the best candidate was a young Hong Kong Chinese guy. It's a fantastic success. He get along very well with his local colleagues, we don't need to babysit him like his western colleagues. After two month he is able to speak basic Thai. We know realize that in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan we have a big source for our future expat executives, we will now think twice before hiring European expats.

I guess your not a "westerner" then.

[lungmi]

The link shows you the HSK test levels for mainland Chinese (simplified Chinese) , Taiwanese (classic Mandarin) is at a higher level.

12 levels, the basic levels correspond with the TOEFL Test.

http://www.china.org...RIAL/105441.htm

How many Thais survive the TOEFL Test? For Sino-Thais the HSK Test would be a little bit easier, but it is a Mandarin Test.

Most Sino-Thais speak a Chinese dialect, the reading of simplified Chinese is limited.

Most Mandarin speakers in Thailand have connections to Taiwan (descendants of Kuomintang refugees.)

My wife is Sino-Thai, she speaks Mandarin (working 2 years in Taiwan), but she cannot read.

The global languages will be English, simplified Mandarin and Spanish.

I would say English and Spanish.

Because Chinese will learn English so there will be less need for the others to learn Mandarin.

While English and Spanish speaker don't often learn other languages.

International economic contracts at a high level need 3 languages, French and Arab for example...and English.

If contract problems emerge, English is the language for international courts.

Except mainland China. For international courts China accepts only Chinese as contract language.

HSK level 12, for everyone, Chinese or Farang is a good start to work as civil law notary in this way.

Information from my son, MA University of Leiden (Sinology) where he made the HSK Test (level 9),

PhD University Bristol, research fellow University Cambridge.

[samjaidee]

An other clear message for the "what will they do without us" brigade.

I also predict the end of the western expat. Two month ago, we had to fill urgently an expat position and the best candidate was a young Hong Kong Chinese guy. It's a fantastic success. He get along very well with his local colleagues, we don't need to babysit him like his western colleagues. After two month he is able to speak basic Thai. We know realize that in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan we have a big source for our future expat executives, we will now think twice before hiring European expats.

Make sure to let us know when he replaces you.

Done already. My two previous position are now held by Hong Kong people.

And now instead of European interns, we start hiring Chinese (mainland) interns. While it's difficult to find senior executive in China (typically people over 40), I'm really impressed by the quality of the young graduates.

So why not hire Thais instead - quality not good enough for you?

You've just answered your own question.

[JurgenG]

We hire "expat" for mainly two reasons :

1/ Expertise we can't find locally

2/ For managers, the ability to communicate with people from other countries/culture

I don't know how to put that in proper english but we found that lately Thais tend to be more nationalistic , which is not necessarily negative, and as a consequence less open to the outside world, which for an international company can be a problem for an international executive.

So the problem is not that Thais are not good, it's just that that they seem to have an integration problem with the outside world.

We also found that young executives from either HK or Singapore can communicate easily with the western world and at the same time have relatively little problem to integrate with other Asian cultures. For a westerner, to compete with these people they really need to have exceptional qualification to justify the investment.

[Baerboxer]

The article means (but doesn't say outright) is that Chinese is the most popular elective language class. English is not an elective subject, it is part of the national curriculum.

Thai and Chinese are much more similar to each other than they are to any European language. For a Chinese to learn Thai or vice-versa is like an English speaker learning Spanish. There is already some shared vocabulary and pronunciation and grammar are not too dissimilar.

Language experts say that it takes someone who speaks one European language about 500 hours of instruction and practice to become fluent in another (related) European language. However, it takes most European language speakers about 1,500 hours to become reasonably proficient in a totally non-related language like Chinese or Thai. I would think that the same is true for Thai and Chinese speakers.

Where did you get this information from? Chinese and Thai are not related languages, they are in different language families. They have different orgins, evulotions and use a completely different form of writing. Chinese pronunciation is not like Thai, the grammar is different and how many words do you think are shared? The only commonality is that both languages are tonal - but the tones and emaphasis are not the same. I found learning Chinese, including writing much easier than my current efforts to learn Thai, as have several friends.

[Baerboxer]

The link shows you the HSK test levels for mainland Chinese (simplified Chinese) , Taiwanese (classic Mandarin) is at a higher level.

12 levels, the basic levels correspond with the TOEFL Test.

http://www.china.org...RIAL/105441.htm

How many Thais survive the TOEFL Test? For Sino-Thais the HSK Test would be a little bit easier, but it is a Mandarin Test.

Most Sino-Thais speak a Chinese dialect, the reading of simplified Chinese is limited.

Most Mandarin speakers in Thailand have connections to Taiwan (descendants of Kuomintang refugees.)

My wife is Sino-Thai, she speaks Mandarin (working 2 years in Taiwan), but she cannot read.

The global languages will be English, simplified Mandarin and Spanish.

I would say English and Spanish.

Because Chinese will learn English so there will be less need for the others to learn Mandarin.

While English and Spanish speaker don't often learn other languages.

International economic contracts at a high level need 3 languages, French and Arab for example...and English.

If contract problems emerge, English is the language for international courts.

Except mainland China. For international courts China accepts only Chinese as contract language.

HSK level 12, for everyone, Chinese or Farang is a good start to work as civil law notary in this way.

Information from my son, MA University of Leiden (Sinology) where he made the HSK Test (level 9),

PhD University Bristol, research fellow University Cambridge.

French and Arabic world languages?

[Mole]

Being a "native" speaker of Norwegian, it is true there are "tones" in these languages. But it's not used the same way as in Asian languages.

In Norwegian for example, tones waries according to dialect and where in the sentence the word is located. But a word said with different tone won't mean something completely different.

Thai and Chinese, even though is considered to be different language families are still more similar than Thai and any European language. Both doesn't have the complex grammar with tenses for example.

As no European language uses tones, Chinese have a big advantage when learning Thai and vice-versa.

Norwegian, Swedish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbo-Croatian, Limburgish?

[hellodolly]

Chinese is much more useful for Thais than English. There are more Chinese speakers within 4 hours from Bangkok than the total population of Europe and Northern America, and as has been pointed out: there are lots of similarities between the Chinese and Thai languages.

Also as a earlier poster said about 80% will take low income jobs that don't need English and even in the other 20% many of them will never even meet a English speaker.

[Unkomoncents]

some good points, but look where europe is now after the ''fall of the wall'' !

Sure, in support of my contention that the west is likely to continue to decline.

I was talking about the transformation that has come to most of Eastern Europe after the collapse of the USSR.

Ask the residents of what used to be East Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovenia etc to compare their future prospects now with thirty years ago. Imagine the same transformation happening to mainland China.

I agree with everything but I think you're jumping on the media's bandwagon pretty quickly. The US is a case in point: everyone just loves to talk about how America's time is over but the US still manages 25% of the world's GDP.

. . .

I'm talking more about longer term trends, specifically responding to an opinion that used the word "never".

Admittedly not relevant to the OP, bit of a [rant] I think the moral/philosophical/political bankruptcy of my home country is much more significant than macro economic measures. The idiotic "war on drugs", "war on terror", the near-total corruption of our political processes, practically explicit class warfare, the ruthless "winner take all" rules of the current economy, abandonment of even lip service to the ideals of our founders - all these things represent to me the "hollowing out" of a society that used to lead the world in hope for man's progressive evolution.

If we want to regain upward momentum in our leadership of the world we need to recapture - or rather make more genuine once again - our willingness to structure society - not just our own but the others where we have strong influence - in alignment with our ideals, and stop letting our greedy elite drive the use of our international power to serve only their definition of our "national interest".

[/rant]

I agree but before any of that is possible, we have let go of centuries-old traditions of elitism that stem from European culture and appeals to the world's elites (because elitism is self-aggrandizing). That will take generations, if ever. America's politicians appeal to the least common denominator, so one nice feature of American politics is that the system is relatively predictable. The scarier reality to which you are referring is that Americans are fundamentally unaware of their relative status in the world; to the extent that they would sacrifice an image even further without blinking an eye to the reality. America has lost a status it continues to think is nontarnishable. It's a country riding a dead horse that it thinks is Seabiscuit.

Edited April 24, 2012 by Unkomoncents

[DeepInTheForest]

This is just pandering to the Chinese ego IMO (and the Chinese probably sit back and snigger at it). English is the international language, and a heck of a lot of Chinese students spent a heck of a lot of time and effort learning it.

I would imagine most Chinese hearing this would think - it's good that people from lesser ASEAN countries learn Mandarin, so that they can follow the instructions of their Chinese supervisors on the factory floor and leave the business side of things to the English speaking Chinese bosses.

Lamb's to the slaughter!

"English is the international language, and a heck of a lot of Chinese students spent a heck of a lot of time and effort learning it."

"Lamb's [sic] to the slaughter!"

One wishes that certain posters would spend a little time learning the English that they proclaim to be the international language.

[Edwin Buurman]

I faced the same obligation, for my Thai, Dutch daughter. I asked this huge school on Phuket to organize a way to get on one or two hours weekly base Father-tongue languages. Duth for the Dutch mixed born. French for the French, Italian for the Italian and so on. They are not interested. So now it become Obligated! Chinese. No mercy, but yes the Thai owner has Chinese roots himself and quiet some fellow students off my daughter also.

I believe Chinese is less needed because the Chinese more and more can communicate in English. "Father" tongue should get More attention.

[Sibbo]

Great, I come over to teach English......

Now I hav to lern Chinese, oh bruddy hell. Wen we lern Engrish agan please tell.

[Baerboxer]

I think many expats are either too lazy or too stupid to learn Thai, so they prefer to mock the Thai people because their English isn't good enough for the expats. You are in Thailand and the language spoken here is Thai, so why not quit complaining and make some effort to learn the language. It seem like some expats are now even more upset because Thais are deciding to learn Chinese. What's wrong? Are you insulted because they don't want to learn English? Get used to. This is Asia. If you want to speak English then move to an English-speaking country. Or hang around with expats and you can all complain together.

You are right that anyone wishing to live in Thailand should make the effort to learn Thia to the best of their capabilities.

Learning Chinese is not represented in the article as replacing the need to learn English. Infact, English is the language of business, science and academia. The Chinese recognise this which is why they put so much effort into learning it. For someone linguistically skilled having Putonghua as an additional language is a great benefit, should they want to do business or work in China, Taiwan, and much of South East Asia where business is dominated by ehtnic Chinese. (My expereinces is that all the business people speak English and use Putonghua as the "common" Chinese language between themselves). Anyone chosing not to learn English will be fine, providing they don't want to achieve an international academic qualifiaction or work in an international business.

[Baerboxer]

Being a "native" speaker of Norwegian, it is true there are "tones" in these languages. But it's not used the same way as in Asian languages.

In Norwegian for example, tones waries according to dialect and where in the sentence the word is located. But a word said with different tone won't mean something completely different.

Thai and Chinese, even though is considered to be different language families are still more similar than Thai and any European language. Both doesn't have the complex grammar with tenses for example.

As no European language uses tones, Chinese have a big advantage when learning Thai and vice-versa.

Norwegian, Swedish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbo-Croatian, Limburgish?

Agree that Chinese may have advantages when learning another tonal language over Europeans. But, Thai and Chinese are not related languages. They are from different origns and language familes, not just considered to be.

[Baerboxer]

I faced the same obligation, for my Thai, Dutch daughter. I asked this huge school on Phuket to organize a way to get on one or two hours weekly base Father-tongue languages. Duth for the Dutch mixed born. French for the French, Italian for the Italian and so on. They are not interested. So now it become Obligated! Chinese. No mercy, but yes the Thai owner has Chinese roots himself and quiet some fellow students off my daughter also.

I believe Chinese is less needed because the Chinese more and more can communicate in English. "Father" tongue should get More attention.

Where would you see the international opportunities for Dutch and Italian compared to Putonghua? It's nice if schools offered the mother tongue for children of mixed parentage but not at the expense of Thai and English and Putonghua. And, they would need numbers to justify the costs or have to charge extra.

[sparebox2]

I faced the same obligation, for my Thai, Dutch daughter. I asked this huge school on Phuket to organize a way to get on one or two hours weekly base Father-tongue languages. Duth for the Dutch mixed born. French for the French, Italian for the Italian and so on. They are not interested. So now it become Obligated! Chinese. No mercy, but yes the Thai owner has Chinese roots himself and quiet some fellow students off my daughter also.

I believe Chinese is less needed because the Chinese more and more can communicate in English. "Father" tongue should get More attention.

I agree.

Chinese is less needed that "Dutch" if you want to go "Dutch" on a date.

[kaorop]

I think many expats are either too lazy or too stupid to learn Thai, so they prefer to mock the Thai people because their English isn't good enough for the expats. You are in Thailand and the language spoken here is Thai, so why not quit complaining and make some effort to learn the language. It seem like some expats are now even more upset because Thais are deciding to learn Chinese. What's wrong? Are you insulted because they don't want to learn English? Get used to. This is Asia. If you want to speak English then move to an English-speaking country. Or hang around with expats and you can all complain together.

ummm this is asia and the one language all the asean communities learn besides their native is....hindi, italian?

(btw complaining about complainers makes you look a little silly)

[Sayonarax]

Any Thai worth speaking too, can speak English.

I sit down all the time with non English speaking Thai males.. and the amount of dribble they come out with is astounding.

I speak at an intermediate level.. will i try to be fluent? Not worth my time.

The business world speaks in ENGLISH, not Chinese. Thais should be thankful their not speaking fluent Japanese or German.

[xthAi76s]

Chinese is much more useful for Thais than English. There are more Chinese speakers within 4 hours from Bangkok than the total population of Europe and Northern America, and as has been pointed out: there are lots of similarities between the Chinese and Thai languages.

No so if they intend to be involved in international business which is largely conducted in English.

Of course, it is said that 80% of the Thais now have some Chinese heritage/blood anyway, and take that with the fact that the Chinese (after many hundreds of years of struggle and racism) have now become the masters of this country, of course the Thais and Thai-Chinese are interested in learning about China and the Chinese. It only makes sense.

In fact, about a hundred years ago, there were cultural mandates that prevented the Chinese from learning about their own culture and language in the institutions. It was forced assimilation. There is now a revival of interest in Chinese language and culture. They would do very good to learn about any of the great Asian civilizations: China, Japan, Korea. As long as they absorb it all and apply it. Chinese have MUCH to teach the thais.

[jerrysteve]

Time to get me a Chinese speaking girlfriend to sleep with now. Much better to learn to speak Mandarin in bed than in some boring University Classroom.

[jerrysteve]

Jeepers, one would have thought that the Thais would have jumped on learning Nigerian.