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Chinese - Mandarin or Cantonese? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5415 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 18 of 23 11 September 2011 at 6:42am | IP Logged |
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Then again, Japan has a higher rate of cigarette consumption per capita, and (needless to say) it has a higher life expectancy as well.
Ditto for Greece, Austria, Switzerland, Spain and South Korea... Not trying to defend smoking, of course. My point is merely that the threadstarter could do worse than China with respect to living standards (i.e., roughly half the world). Edited by nway on 11 September 2011 at 6:42am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| aquablue Senior Member United States Joined 6382 days ago 150 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 19 of 23 11 September 2011 at 11:16pm | IP Logged |
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Life expectancy has nothing to do with the quality of your day today breathing, get it? Stop trying to skew
my argument. Pollution in china is far higher than Europe and expats hate it. Many are leaving due to it. China still is a developing country and it has lowered standards in everything including environmental and smoking laws compared to most developed countries. Food safety standards are not up to par. The us embassy Beijing is always showing a hazardous reading by USA standards. Due to these issues I am unsure if I would want to live there until the situation improves. This is a demotivator to learn mandarin as I have no current need to do business there, but I am still fascinated with the entire china thing and it's culture. I am still interested in learning but it might have to wait a few years and I may chose another Asian language. Still, taiwan and Singapore have better standards, but frankly they don,t draw my interest. Japanese would be the logical Asian starter language that could help with with Chinese later on. However, I am trying to decide between Korean and that. I,m not going to learn all 3. Edited by aquablue on 11 September 2011 at 11:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5415 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 20 of 23 11 September 2011 at 11:39pm | IP Logged |
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^ Life expectancy is measured as the number of years someone born TODAY can expect to live, meaning it fully takes into account factors such as current living standards (e.g., "the quality of your day today breathing").
In other words, life expectancy has EVERYTHING to do with the quality of the air. And again, China is a massive country, and the fact that China emits 1/3 the C02 that the US does, per capita, indicates that this pollution is concentrated in particular industrial areas. Needless to say, there's more to China than these industrial areas. And again, Taiwan. It's a separate country that speaks Mandarin, and its living standards are likely completely up to par with wherever you're living now. I've come across many expats who have spent time in China, and none of them have even mentioned pollution. It kind of reminds me of all those Europeans who say they don't want to visit the USA because they're scared of getting mowed down by bullets in a gang war ("after all, the USA statistically has more firearms and a higher homicide rate than anywhere in Western Europe!"). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aquablue Senior Member United States Joined 6382 days ago 150 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 21 of 23 12 September 2011 at 3:40am | IP Logged |
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Pollution is horrible, and it has nothing to do with co2 and everything to do with fine particles and so2' o2'
etc. Pollution was all over the news in hk. Just because no expat you know is affected means nothing. Check out the us embassy readings for Beijing on the USA scale, it is often on the highest. Sperm count is down 10 percent in shanghai due to it. Problem is you can,t escape the air, but you can avoid gang ridden areas. Anyway, it is bad and must improve. Edited by aquablue on 12 September 2011 at 3:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6379 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 22 of 23 12 September 2011 at 4:00am | IP Logged |
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I think you've expressed you views adequately. If you want to continue the debate, why don't you do so privately?
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| erinserb Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7196 days ago 135 posts - 144 votes Speaks: English* | Message 23 of 23 12 September 2011 at 4:29am | IP Logged |
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wow, this thread has gotten a little off topic. I really appreciate everyone's input though, and I have a strong leaning towards Cantonese (eventually). No matter how much Hong Kong has changed in the many years since I've been there, I just want to get back very much, and to make some good contacts - I guess Hong Kong is the only China I know - this spoken from a Navy vet from the late '70's. :-)
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