For economic reasons, it was once fashionable to learn Russian, then Japanese. Today, the equivalent language is Chinese. The world is converging to English, but I can see Chinese being much more useful than Japanese or Russian ever was.
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How would you evaluate that? I think you’re right, I just struggle with the complexity of how many Mandarin speakers also speak English and whether that should be factored in. How many speak Mandarin as a secondary language, etc.
How to evaluate the value of a language? Something like: # of speakers + their aggregate income - # of speakers who speak English, then predict growth of each variable. By and large, Chinese people can't speak English, including the younger generation. Many can read sort of.
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Chinese vs. Russian: 10x more people Stronger economic culture, thus incomes China has its own internet (which is a huge deal) Chinese vs. Japanese: 10x more people More open to immigration
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What about, say German then? While population probably 1/9 or 1/10 the Chinese, looks like 11x the income, but also a lot higher percentage probably speak English
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Yeah, exactly what i was going to say. Too many Germans speak fluent English. Even immigrants to Germany may even end up speaking English before they speak good German.
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Ultimately it’s really just those expected growth rates that makes Chinese the right answer
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Right answer even before the growth rates, IMHO. Economy is already larger than Japan's and Russia's, by a lot.
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