Chinese or Russian for MFL degree language?

[MsFogi]

DS is planning to study MFL and wants to do a language ab initio - he has narrowed the choices down to Chinese (Mandarin) or Russian and can’t decide between them. Do any knowledgeable MNers have any advice? My gut instinct is that Chinese may be more interesting for graduate recruiters (as the market for Russian is somewhat limited due to sanctions now and for the foreseeable future). My understanding is that if he does Chinese he wouldn’t come out with the sort of fluency he would if he did a European language or Russian but I am not sure that is a deal-breaker - but can any more knowledgeable people tell me how much Mandarin a student would/could learn by doing it at uni and spending a year in China or Hong Kong? DS is completely undecided and I am trying to help but coming from a place of ignorance unfortunately so turning to the wisdom of MN both for insight into the language itself and into the cut-throat graduate recruitment market!

Well, yes.
At the time I was teaching, my students had one year in the UK learning, then were going to be spending one year abroad in China. I was working to ensure that their level before going out was good enough to (a) get the absolute most learning-wise out of their time abroad and (b) be good enough at the language to be able to deal with adverse circumstances such as illness, getting lost, getting in trouble with the authorities, etc.
But being able to master enough Chinese to get by and to hold basic conversation, versus being properly fluent and able read and write with ease are two very different things, and there is not really any way of getting around the fact that in the long run a learner has to put in a lot more time and effort into the language than they would have to into, say, French.

If he doesn't have a good ear for music I'd go down the Russian (or neither) route. Mandarin is one of the most tonal languages so you have to be able to distinguish between rising, falling, static and up and down tones in listening and speech.

Oh gosh I had this exact decision to make back in the day! I chose Russian and I regret it. I didn't find the language easy (and I pick up both European and non European languages easily) and I now remember almost none. That's despite spending a month in Russia improving my Russian.

Now, I work in an unrelated field but have Chinese direct reports, so some Mandarin would be so useful.

Russian years abroad from UK universities are currently in Estonia, Georgia and Kazakhstan. This is sub-optimal, particularly considering that - for some reason - public Russian speaking is on the decline in those first two countries.

Of course, if you're doing joint honours with another language, you could just spend your year abroad elsewhere.

Disagree that you won't achieve full fluency in Russian over a degree course though. The script is easy enough to master (unlike Mandarin) so no reason why you shouldn't have equivalent fluency to those doing German, Spanish etc.

Agree. For Mandarin, all jobs that someone from the UK would work in would use putonghua.

Russian would be useful if Russia eventually takes over the whole of Europe. They will force that in the syllabus anyway.

For Chinese, should be in China if at all possible. Google areas where Mandarin is spoken natively, and aim for there. I.e not Shanghai or Guangzhou or Fujian (there are of course other areas) as although Mandarin is taught and used as a lingua franca, what people are using in daily life is not Mandarin, and the Mandarin that people are using can be quite non-standard in pronunciation.

What about Beijing? I thought Putonghua would be spoken there. The Beijing accent is lovely.

Of course Mandarin is spoken in Beijing :-). (My examples were areas to avoid). One of the courses I took was in Beijing and it was very good, though many years ago now, so I have no idea how it would be now.

From the viewpoint of a Mandarin speaker, the area with the "best" accent is the Northeast. That is, all of Manchuria. Tones and pronunciation there are crystal clear. I've known people from there who were employed in film and broadcast because the accent is so highly regarded.

By contrast, Beijing accent has a very strong tendency towards tacking an "r" sound onto the end of most words, and is not considered to have the "best" sound as a result

@ohdrearydrearyme interesting. I did not know that about the Manchurian accented Mandarin. Do you have an example that you can link to? I could not find on youtube. I thought Manchuria had its own language Manchu so am a little surprised it has the best Mandarin accent. Then again, I know very little so this is news to me.

The Beijing accent does have a lot of rrr sounds to it but to my untrained ears, it is the high language.

Oh my goodness thank you all so much for taking the time to reply - ds is reading all the responses. To those who have asked his othe language would be German and just MFL at uni (not ´with’ any other subject).

I think it'd be better to do another marketable, non-MFL subject too (i.e. a combination with MFL)in preparedness for what is a very competitive graduate jobs market. Business or economics maybe?

An unusual MFL will help too but not sure it is enough unless from a very top university and your ds has sparkling grades.

My degree was Russian 30.years ago. Such a beautiful language and the history, politics and literature are absolutely fascinating to study. Moscow and St Petersburg are beautiful and fascinating cities. It is tragic what Putin is doing. I feel sad that someone learning Russian would not have the opportunity to live and study there.

Russian itself is actually a very simple language, only 5 tenses. Lots of cases as in latin for nouns and adjectives but they all follow the rules. Words are pronounced as they are spelt. The alphabet is not as tricky as you think. It is a beautifully logical language.

But apart from working for the government I'm not sure what opportunities are there. I don't use my Russian at all now. Having said that it was a huge differentiator post degree in the workplace and got me lots of interviews for graduate jobs and has always been a talking point.

Whichever he chooses it will be so interesting and will stand out in his future endeavours.

This is such an interesting thread - I've been learning a lot from it about both languages.

DD is heading off to do French and IR but the French is ab initio (although she has been doing some work online) so I'm encouraged to think it is possible to achieve fluency from beginner level if she's willing to put the work in.

I think what's funny is that very few people who have learned either Russian or Chinese are being negative about learning the 'other' language, it seems to be people who have done neither ruling out both!

French ab initio is absolutely doable and I think your DD will love it. Watching netflix in French (there are tons of really nice easy watching French shows, worth starting with Call My Agent, Lupin, The Hookup Plan and the cheesy but watchable shark movie Under Paris) with subtitles is a great way to start. The absolute best thing you can do for any language is to live there - and so many lovely options for her year abroad too! Hope she has a great time.

I studied Russian ab initio at university (alongside French which I had done at A-level).

As a PP said, you study the literature and history as well as the language, so it makes sense to choose a country that you're interested in generally. And I do think being able to spend time in the country is absolutely essential, so that would rule out Russian for me now.

Russian is a beautiful language, but learning it ab initio at university is really difficult, and to be brutally honest, I probably would have found it easier, more fun and more useful (in my personal life) to learn Spanish.

Realistically, very few Russian graduates will use it in their career - so from that point of view, Mandarin would be more useful. But I'd guess it would be even more difficult to learn than Russian. I would only recommend it if you son has a strong interest in Chinese culture and is really motivated to learn the language. Otherwise, if he just wants something that looks good on his CV, I'd look at another language or a different subject entirely to do alongside German.

How about Polish? There are a lot of Polish speakers in the UK, it could be helpful for some jobs here!

Thank you for your kind words.

I've been learning French as an interest for the past two years - I holiday there quite a lot - and have found the Internet/YouTube to be really transformative for language learning.

There are some misconceptions here about Chinese. You don’t need to be musical to learn a tonal language. It’s very different.

Dialects are not a problem. You will be leaning standard mandarin. The other dialects aren’t mandarin, they are Chinese however. Everyone speaks mandarin. I believe you can get around Hong Kong in mandarin even though it is probably the worst region for mandarin prevalence.

I haven’t considered the use of traditional scripts in Taiwan. It’s what I learned and I find it easier to read. I read simplified mainly by guessing from context. I find Taiwanese accents easier on the ear too.

Not sure if a foreign language is useful for jobs. I did engineering and didn’t use my degree either.

However a good aural memory is useful. I used to know someone who was learning about her twelfth language - Urdu for fun from the staff of the local take away - and picked things up astonishingly quickly. I was told that most people could learn most languages, but some would have to work an awful lot harder. Chinese, or at least the tones and the writing, is hard though I am told that the grammar is not such a big issue. I speak another, much easier, Asian language with pretty flexible grammar. The issue was a completely new vocabulary without Latin or Saxon roots. Having the language is a real gift as it opens up a very different world. Despite it being decades since I lived there I have kept up contacts and indeed only last week Asian friends invited me to a lovely event where it turned out I was the only Caucasian.

I was doing some work at a certain government agency in London and happened to be waiting in reception to be picked up on an interview day - there were half a dozen graduate interviewees (all young women interestingly) all chatting away to each other in Russian. So the demand is definitely there if you look in the right places.

I should add that the agency in question probably also hires a lot of Mandarin speakers.

@Needmoresleep some people definitely have the gift of learning languages and picking up accents, like my childhood friend. I speak as someone with no such gift.

It is almost as if our brains are differently wired.

My Dd has just had a similar dilemma between Russian and Arabic( previously posted) She has decided on Russian after thinking carefully about literature and culture too. Also In conjunction with German.

My DD will be applying this year to do a history and Russian degree. Many have questioned why Russian due to current political situation and we encouraged her to look at other languages such as Mandarin and Arabic. She has a deep interest however in Russian history, literature, politics and music so there was just no other choice for her. She is keen to use that degree in a career with the Foreign Office.

My DD will be applying this year to do a history and Russian degree. Many have questioned why Russian due to current political situation and we encouraged her to look at other languages such as Mandarin and Arabic. She has a deep interest however in Russian history, literature, politics and music so there was just no other choice for her. She is keen to use that degree in a career with the Foreign Office.

Good for her! When the time comes, i would also encourage her to look at other government depts as well and non graduate entry. The faststream (graduate) programme for the FCDO is incredibly competitive, but if she was not successful, there are other ways to join. I have some friends that were unsuccessful at FCDO faststream entry but joined at more junior grades and worked their way up. I myself joined a different government dept as a direct entry (so not on the grad scheme) but one that does lots of work overseas and spent the first 4years of my career travelling all around the world. Once you are in the civil service, it's much easier to move sideways between departments and you have access to jobs that are not advertised externally, so would then be able to move into the FCDO.

Personally I would choose Russian as I'm interested in the film and literature and I think Mandarin is a difficult language to learn.