Quote:
Originally Posted by bizaro86
That's a pretty common misconception in Canada, imo. If I was rating languages by global usefulness I'd go something like:
English
Mandarin Chinese
<big gap>
Spanish
Cantonese
Arabic
<big gap>
Russian
French
Japanese
Korean
Farsi
Turkish
etc.
We picked Spanish for our kids because I think it's way more likely they'll end up completely fluent vs trying to learn Chinese. They already have great accents. It's quite interesting how aggressive other parents are (even those whose kids aren't learning a language) about how French is obviously better and more important.
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As a fluent Cantonese speaker it's definitely at the bottom of your list. It's prob a dying language. Cantonese classes at chinese school where my kids attend have been halved in the past 6 years.
Plus it might be the only language where a portion of the speaking and writing of it uses different words. Also with 8 tones it's way harder to speak it fluently.