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Originally Posted by Mike Okitch
20 years ago, everybody would have said Japanese.
Today, many would say Mandarin....
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Agreed.
When I was in high school (20+ years ago) my Dad strongly advised me to learn Japanese as the most useful language of the future.
Today, talking about Internet business there is no argument it is Mandarin, which I have been struggling to learn for the last two years. Chinese people are all learning English like crazy too but there are plenty who don't take lessons seriously and/or prefer of course to speak/read in their Mother tongue.
China will soon overtake the USA as the country with the most internet users. Of course very few have credit cards but that number is increasing exponentially every year and they have several popular micro payment systems like via mobile phone, tokens etc.
So you can either trust and pay a translation service to make Chinese versions of your websites (I'm talking mostly mainstream at the moment of course) and to conduct your meetings
or learn to understand, speak and read Mandarin and really get a feel for the culture and the unique marketing methods and products that appeal to Chinese surfers. Typing in Mandarin is not real hard but fuck learning to write it.
