[montag813]

My sons read and write Chinese - we know the effort and the ability involved to achieve a reasonable degree of literacy.

Are you Chinese? Would you recommend I have my young children learn Mandarin? Opinions vary on this.

[Joan Kerrey]

Would you recommend I have my young children learn Mandarin?

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It sure wouldn’t hurt. I’d say if you can influence your children to take up a language Mandarin would be an excellent choice. It’s where the action is and not likely to change anytime soon. What’s happening in China is truly amazing whether you agree with the politics or not. Just the sheer numbers of Chinese with advanced science and engineering degrees is mind boggling. And they’re putting those degrees to work at a frantic pace with a determination to win and control the future. It appears to me that we’re doing all we can do to help them achieve that end. Yes indeed, Mandarin would be an excellent choice.

[achilles2000]

Neither my wife nor I is Chinese. Mandarin is useful, but it requires a very serious commitment. Most children of Chinese here are wasting their time playing at learning Mandarin in Chinese school. Unless you are going to hire a tutor and your children are prepared to work on Mandarin 3 hours a day, I would invest my time and money elsewhere. I also think that it would be difficult to pull this off unless you homeschool. Please bear in mind, my attitude is that having the sort of competence that typically results from taking language classes in school is useless. No language is worth investing time in unless you are serious as a heart-attack about complete fluency. Fluency constitutes an asset. Anything less is useless diletantism.

Our sons have been doing Chinese since infancy. The earlier you start the better.