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Comment by zhaphod | Hacker News Reader

Actually context matters here.

If some one from USA/UK/France, for example, learns a new language it definitely is a surprise. May be blows the mind is not the right word.

On the other hand, it is common for people from Southern India to know 4 or 5 languages and it is not surprising.

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We do learn 2 foreign languages in France during school (English + German/Spanish/Italian/whatever) so I'm not really sure why it would be a surprise to hear a french speak another language. They might suck at it though.

Because there's "learning" and learning.

French people "learn" german and english but are terrible at it even after learning it for 10 years.

Scandinavian people learn english and are actually fluent with a good pronunciation after a few years.

I think it's because of a stereotype in America/Australia etc that the French are very protective of their language (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France ) and would rather people learned French than "lower themselves" to using English. When I was in Paris in the mid 90s there was some sense of that.

It's probably changed now - while I haven't been to France lately, in other parts of Europe when I try to practice the local language, people under 30 always tell me "Please, speak English, we understand and it is easier for both of us."

As a European who speaks three languages fluently, meeting someone who can speak another language is certainly not surprising. However, I think we are comparing wrong things here. As my native language is Slavic in origins, I would find learning another Slavic language incredibly easy. In fact, today I can understand more than 50% of Russian or Czech without ever learning either of those languages. Having learnt English to a highly proficient level, I then had no trouble learning German to a very high level too.

However, in Zuckerberg's case what he has done is incredibly impressive because he has learned a language which shares no commonalities with his own native tongue, all while being a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. That alone makes it worthwhile news to community of geeks HN is.

During my time in France, most people of my age where pretty frustrated that they didn't learn foreign languages properly at school and tried to compensate.

For people in international companies, learning new languages on the job is also very normal, almost all companies have programs for that.

The vast, vast majority of employees working for American companies, even in an international deployment, don't tend to learn more than a few dozen catch phrases (Hello, Good Bye, How are you doing, where is the toilet, take me to the airport, etc...) for the country they are deployed to - they just hope everyone will speak english to them.

I'm wondering if Mark is the first Fortune 500 CEO to ever learn a different language while working as a CEO? I'm almost certain he's the first American CEO of a fortune 500 to learn mandarin while working as a CEO.

I'm sorry that I don't share a US-centric world view, being from somewhere else. "all US minds blown", I cannot judge. But I also wouldn't be surprised if there are others learning languages during being a CEO - it's a good mental training and can be practiced almost everywhere just with some notes and a smartphone. It's just nothing you often practice or speak about in public.

For the people I know moving to different countries, learning the local language is usual.

All my foreign employees are by the way contractually obliged to learn my local tongue (on our cost and time, obviously).

I wonder how good Carlos Ghosn's Japanese is? He seems to have studied it.

People under 30-35 in France now tend to learn and speak foreign languages. It wasn't the case before. The focus on learning new languages in France only really started at the end of the 90s with, for example, engineering degrees requiring some English certification to obtain and companies creating programs to train their employees in different languages.

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