[tsunamifury]

I have worked in with the Chinese now for two years in technical fields. I have a strict requirement that they learn English as it is a more technical and specific language and less prone to the use of metaphorical weasel words that slow progress.

I have openly stated that it is a strictly less technical language and often draws teams in to vague specifications and much more verbose language to find specificity. I have billions of dollars in progress to back that up.

There is a lot about Chinese and American culture that will surprise you when the rubber meets the road.

[gyomu]

Chinese engineers clearly have no problems building specific, technical things; just like Chinese surgeons have no problems carrying out specific, technical surgeries, etc.

So how is the language "strictly less technical and specific"? Can you give specific and technical examples?

[tsunamifury]

Mandarin is a courtly language full of back out vagueness and high context construction. This is simply a product of the society. It’s not a judgement of right or wrong it simply just is.

Rote Surgery is not a good example compared to say writing a PRD about an unknown feature.

I am in no way saying Chinese people cannot do these things. I am saying in mandarin it is less specific and more circumspect ways of getting there.

I’m guessing you don’t really know what your talking about here though and are knee jerking a response.

[noirscape]

It's not related to Chinese in specific, but in civilian air traffic, the lingua franca is specifically English[0]. The reason for this is because other languages leave too much room for interpretation. One incident not mentioned in that page that's worth bringing up is Korean Air Flight 801; the crew recognized an issue with the instruments quite a bit before the crash, but because the flight crew essentially was too polite in notifying the captain of the issue, the captain instead asserted authority with incomplete information, leading to the plane crashing[1].

Language specificity and cultural encoding in those languages can have a pretty major impact on its clarity, especially in critical situation. Speaking a secondary language instead can avoid that sort of thing simply because being a non-native speaker, you'll be a good deal more blunt in that language.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_English

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801

[niemandhier]

Saphire-Worff is dead; but I think language matters more than we usually assume.

My favourite example is Arabic, which is both an old and hard to extend language.

In Arabic you would have a hard time to express the concept of „a foreigner who is citizen but resides out of state“.

Not that we often speak about this concept in English, but the word used to refer to „citizens“ carries the connotation of „nation“ and the alternative word used for „inhabitants“ carries the connotation of being on site.

Speaking of a Yemeni citizen and than meeting an Asian person, would surprise people even if they new that the person they were meeting was named „Ho“.

[ted_bunny]

Can you be more specific about what makes it "hard to extend?"

[greekrich92]

"the Chinese"