Yea, well, trying to say the junk tide is high tide now. If you only speak the junk language and only absorb (and only have the ability to absorb) the mainstream junk through it, you become a damn vegetable. Now living in Yunnan, you have a great opportunity to prevent that junk vegetablisation to occur, and take strong life-vitamins against it. Such as studying tibetan for example. Thats just one example. And absorbing that culture from within the linguistic and semantic realm, while ignoring the semantics of junk, that used to cater you only one abominable reality. You need the language code for that lock, walking around in hangover on Beijing road, among neon lit Chinese characters, saying 'ni hao' to a cabdriver and having learnt to give a cig with two hands, is not enough. But the point should be clear by now, even for the fools out there. It was the weekend wisdom, and weekend is just aboutover, aint it.

I don't disagree that we might refer to some/much language use as 'junk', but I think we need a clear definition. I'd start with PR, advertising and jingoism, especially as it is run by institutionalized greed-satisfaction systems and becomes embedded in news, analysis and education. I don't know that learning Chinese, important as it is, presents any escape from these phenomena, none of which are new but all of which have grown over the past century or so. The surface level of 'junk', which is the equivalent of McDonald's, is so easy to spot that I think we overlook its grounding in increasingly-rationalized control systems. Escaping from all this may well start with something as ordinary as foreign language learning, but getting rid of it is going to have to involve deeper structural changes in society itself - probably not just a good idea, realizable or not, but a matter of survival.

Let’s start with the most commonly cited reasons for studying Chinese:

1. China is the most populous country in the world with over 1.4 billion people. Mandarin is spoken by almost one billion people. It is the most widely spoken language in the world. One out of five people in the world is Chinese;

2. Mandarin is spoken in the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, The Philippines, and Mongolia;

3. Knowing Chinese will allow students to compete effectively in the global economy of the future;

4. China is one of America’s largest trading partners;

5. Many American companies do business in China, including Motorola, Coca Cola, and Ford;

6. Knowing Chinese may be an edge when competing for a job. The demand for business people who know Chinese is skyrocketing;

7. China is playing a major role in world affairs and will continue to do so;

8. A May 2006 Newsweek article stated that “In U.S. homes, Chinese has eclipsed French, German and Italian and become the third most commonly spoken language after English and Spanish;”

9. By studying Chinese, students will develop an appreciation for Chinese culture and history;

10. Leaning a second language develops critical and creative thinking skills.

One left out: you live here, and without knowing anything about the language you will be like all the journalists who stayed in the bar in the film Living Dangerously, and will continually be misunderstanding the motives, goals, attitudes and intentions of those around you, in insulting or mickeymouse-worshpping ways. Or both.

@eChineseLearning

Now when China demolished a lot of its cultural heritage, polluted a lot of its nature, and became hyper materialistic, learning Tibetan could be interesting. In Tibetan theres still a concept of holy/spiritual nature and it could stand in a healthy balance with all the pollution and materialism around, couldnt it? Not to pollute the brains too. And such, and you can stay outside the context of having to hear "China is the worlds largest...blablabla" and that stuff, and maybe hear the story of the great mountain or the Holy lake instead. Coca cola, Motorola, ju-ju eyeballs, monkeyfinger, holy roller, feet down below his knee...got to be a joker....

Any opinion on this eChineseLearning?

The fact that you are learning something is a benefit in itself. Learning is great for the soul. How you use what you learn is another matter.

@Peter99 the holy/spiritual nature you mention is interesting. The more spiritual you delve the fewer words necessary (spoken words are the cause of much grief in the world). Vibrational sound frequencies were used by our ancient ancestors for spiritual enlightenment, healing and creation. Unfortunately, some of the vibrational frequencies in modern day language are negative/controlling.

In the Beginning was the Word: OO-O-M-M-MMM (ॐ)!!

This talk reminds me of my college days.

Stratocaster, also possible to analyze the thread from this angle: "That guy is obviously Chinese, that guy is american, that guy is clearly English and then that guy is clearly neither Chinese, American or European."

But weekend is over, maybe change topic sooner or later :)

But vicar. There will probably not be too many fans around continuing this, but still curious, how do you classify negative frequencies? Heres just assuming its the higher ones?

I tell you why Im asking also. Its not so much from a spiritual standpoint, rather a quite Western one: how Western music orchestration is done. This has a lot to do with having a broad frequency spectrum, and frequencies are both analyzed and arranged very meticulously.