The Language Debate - Revisited!

Hi All,


So there appear to be quite afew threads on this board relating to whether it is better to learn Cantonese or Mandarin but I'd be really grateful to hear people's opinions on my own personal circumstances:


I am moving to Hong Kong from the UK as part of my job as a (financial markets) headhunter. As a consequence, as much as I will be working within Hong Kong I will also have responsibility for covering Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia and mainland China. I would expect that I will have to go to all of these locations anywhere from once per quarter for somewhere like Singapore to perhaps never or once every 1-2 years for Indonesia.


I presume that Mandarin will be the most adaptable language to use across the region but I am not sure how easy it is going to be for me to pick up given the majority of my time is going to be spent living in Hong Kong where everyone speaks Cantonese. Does anyone have an opinion on whether it's even worth trying to be business level fluent in either Cantonese or Mandarin out in Asia?


I read of people on this board who seem to have gone for years and years without learning either so I wonder whether there really is any point, particularly given the fact I anticipate it's going to be a real uphill struggle and also that most people in financial markets tend to be able to speak English anyway. I know that's a lazy attitude (!) but I have a lot of other things that I will need to learn as part of this move anyway so I guess I'm trying to prioritise.


My personal view is to try and learn Mandarin fluently and a handful of key Cantonese phrases on top of that as well, although I am sceptical of my chances and expect that given I will not have regular day to day contact with native Mandarin speakers that this will be extremely hard to perfect...

Mandarin from a business perspective is the better one to learn. That being said I lived in Hong Kong for 35 years, I also worked in the markets. I never needed to learn either Cantonese or Mandarin (I'm not saying thats a good thing but that is the reality). You're right everyone in the markets speak English fluently and not that many of them are Chinese and even if they are, at the bulge brackets they are all educated abroad, so you would gain very little advantage. Perhaps the only market Putonghua (mandarin) would come in useful would be Taiwan, where more of the market makers and traders are local but even then I suspect they are all educated abroad as well, and if you are a head hunter I suspect your clients will all be bulge bracket, which means if language was an issue i.e. the candidates couldn't speak English, then they would not even be considered for the job. Singapore is like Hong Kong the default language is English, everybody speaks it over there more so than here.


There is an area in finance where Mandarin would be useful and give you an edge and that is in Corporate Finance/M&A, I'm not sure how much head hunting you will be doing in that area, but the current trend is to hire Star Bankers who are educated in China that either have deep roots and good connections with prominent businessmen or can easily establish those connections because they were educated in China with perhaps an MBA from abroad. Those candidates are very senior, bring big business in and would probably appreciate a head hunter who could converse in Mandarin, and that would certainly give you an edge with them. That is for very senior hires though, and I'm not sure whether it would fall into your mandate and how many you would even do if it was your mandate. For more junior positions, English is sufficient.


Do you become a more valuable asset to your company by learning Mandarin, most definitely. More business is migrating into China and though in terms of finance the market is not as deep as it is in Hong Kong, it is inevitable that it one day it will be deeper, but not for a while yet. So my advice would be to learn the language if you want to further yourself and perhaps your career, but its not necessary to be able to do your job


As far as Cantonese goes, The only Cantonese you really need to know are the swear words, so you know when someone is being rude to you in a market or shop and basically how to direct a taxi to where you want to go in terms of going left and right straight or asking him to stop. That is my view and people can call me a Neanderthal if they want, but I speak from my own 35 year experience.

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Oh and be prepared to slog when you are learning mandarin, its a really tough language to learn, I deeply admire anyone that can speak it as a second language. Cantonese is tough too

Thanks for the advice DB. Alas I am indeed focusing on senior Corporate Finance/ M&A positions (as well as structured finance/ private equity/ real estate). You are spot on that the trend is for China educated star bankers, hence part of the thinking behind my query. (Do you work in search?)


Having said this, in order to be considered to be retained for a truly senior search I would expect I'd need a fairly good track record in Asia, by which time hopefully I would have been able to pick up at least a reasonable level of the language (as well as a few tombstones). As to whether I could realistically converse with a senior level banker to a perfect level of fluency, I suppose only time would tell. It sounds from what you've said that in practice there are ways to get around it for most intents and purposes so perhaps the cost will outweigh the benefit in the end... still I am sure I will give it a go...


Thanks again

No problem. Good luck with it all.