ni hao, ma?

Interesting article in the CSM today about how more and more Asians are learning Mandarin. I offer no additional insight, other than to point out that this is a good move, and if you ever decide to have kids, you may want them to grow up tri-lingual, with fluency in English, Spanish, and Mandarin.

Tangentially related, I’ve been watching Firefly, an excellent TV series that got cancelled a while back. The same characters went on to the big screen, making a movie called Serenity. Both are highly recommended, because it’s a damn good story.

Anyhow, in the futuristic Firefly world, there are only two languages left — English and Mandarin. It’s amusing to watch white people horribly mangle the Chinese expletives. I find that I understand what they’re saying about 20% of the time.

Update: Here’s a link to some horrible translations for the horrible spoken Mandarin in Firefly