Should your kids learn Chinese? Website: https://www.pascalcoppens.com/ CONTENT: The video explains why I believe learning Chinese is a too big investment for most of us or our kids. Chinese kids will learn English faster than we are learning Chinese, so in future, we might not need to, especially in Business. I believe today its more important for our kids to learn Western languages earlier instead. TRANSCRIPT Should our kids in Europe, America, Australia or in any Western country learn Chinese when they're young? It will give an advantage to kids that have studied Chinese when they're young so that they can actually deal with the new economy and the new world that is coming up. My wife and I both studied for 1 year at the university in Beijing, an intense language course of Chinese. For my wife it's been very efficient because in one year's time she was able to make herself understood on the streets when she was buying things or whatever she did in China, people understood her Chinese. So in a year's time you can get to a really good level in China, if you're there. For myself it was quite a bit different because I've been passionate about China since I was 12 years old, my room was full of posters of Bruce Lee and at that time even ninjas because I didn't know the difference between Japan and China. I was passionate about the East and when I was 18 years old I went to the university and I studied Chinese/sinology, I had to study really really hard every day to understand and learn the language. These were my dictionaries that I was using, imagine, these are thousands and thousands of words. If you don't know 2000 characters, and they're unique characters that you have to remember, you can't even read the newspaper. You need about 3000-4000 to actually be understood generally by Chinese and have it at quite a mature level. So this is a huge investment but the worst thing, after 4 years of study I arrived in Beijing and most of the people didn't understand a word of what I was saying. I thought that they would all understand me, they didn't, so I had to study really hard for another year in Beijing before my level was really advanced. So is it worth the investment? And if you're not in China, I don't think you can reach any higher level at all except for some geniuses around here. But I don't believe it's really worth the investment and there's 3 reasons why I think we should not learn Chinese or let our kids learn Chinese. The first reason is that Chinese kids are learning English, most of them in 10 years from now will be able to speak very good English and this is all because of online learning. It's about this AI that's been used to personalize learning English and I've seen very young kids speak very good English. So why would we do it? The other reason is from a business perspective because that's the goal, to do it for the future, I know so many Western businessmen that are extremely successful in China and don't speak a word of Chinese. They know Nihao and Zaijian, "hello" and "goodbye" and some other terms but that's about it. They are dependent on the Chinese people around them and that is exactly the point, it's a much better investment to invest in a few Chinese friends that can translate for you, help you, that really know what you want to help reach your goals than to actually invest in the language. Except if you're extremely passionate about the language and the culture. But just from a practical, pragmatic point of view I don't think it's worth the investment. Finally, I would say that knowing that China is becoming the biggest economy in the world and knowing that this is becoming a real cultural power block, it's a civilization of 2500 years, I think instead of learning their civilization, we should emphasize our civilization here in Europe or elsewhere. I think we should maybe consider learning languages like French, German and Spanish at a much earlier age if we want to really capture the culture and the language. I studied Latin and Greek and I don't see any differences with studying 6 years of Latin and Greek or 6 years of Chinese here in Europe. So it's the same thing but in our context I would rather have our kids study Latin and Greek than have them study Chinese, because I believe that this is the culture that they will benefit from more than they would from a Chinese culture. I think there's no reason whatsoever to get our kids to learn Chinese. KEYWORDS Pascal Coppens, China, innovation, trends, keynote, speaker, public speaker, learn Chinese, Chinese language, Chinese characters, Chinese kids, teaching Chinese, ABOUT PASCAL COPPENS: Website: http://www.pascalcoppens.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pacovision/ Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTdWsl15oEt0nZZy9Z1fnhQ BOOK - CHINA's NEW NORMAL http://www.pascalcoppens.com/shop