Is it better SISU or BLCU? and 2 six month's courses or 1 year course?

[Andrea.dispe]

Hi all.

I'm torned by the decision if I should apply for BLCU or SISU in a chinese laguage course. And if should be better apply for one year course in one of them or six month course to BLCU and the other six month course to SISU.

I would like to learn chinese for work, business. I thought of SISU because I know Shanghai is the economic main core of China, but, as far as I understood, they speak a dialect that is difficult even for well trained chinese speakers. In Italy, the place from which I come from, there is a dialect for almost each region, but if you know Italian main language you will be understood from everyone. I was wondering if it is the same for Shanghai. The main question that concerns me a lot, in order to summarize, is: If in future I will apply for a job in Shanghai or outside China, yet still related with chinese language, most likely I will need to know Mandarin chinese or Shanghaiese dialect?

Sorry for my troubled answer. Hope you understood.

Thanks all.

[knickherboots]

Beijing. That's all I have to say. Seriously, though, it's hard to say. I would look at the quality of the programs, and I know nothing about either of them, so I can't advise you on that. People have traditionally favored Beijing, but if you are happier in Shanghai due to other reasons (e.g., better school environment, culture, weather), you'll probably learn more there.

[knickherboots]

Oh, and to address another issue you raised: learning Shanghai dialect should be far down on your list of skills to acquire while in China.

[Andrea.dispe]

Thank you so much! Eventually I decided to stay one year in Beijing. So you say learning shanghai dialect is not important?

omg i wrote answer instead question here "Sorry for my troubled answer. Hope you understood."

Sorry ^_^'

[lanzhoumian]

Learning Shanghainese might be interesting if you want to spend the rest of your life in Shanghai, but otherwise I think it is a pretty useless thing to do. It is not spoken outside Shanghai, they might still understand parts of it in Hangzhou and Suzhou, but thats about it (for a pretty good map of which Chinese dialects are spoken where, check the Wikipedia site for Chinese language).

While there are still quite a few people in Shanghai (especially the older generation) that struggle with mandarin, almost all of the young people know both Shanghainese and Mandarin. So you get around Shanghai with Mandarin without problems, but you might pick up a pretty bad accent when studying mandarin there. So I would say definitely Northern China, for example Beijing, but maybe also other places where mandarin is spoken.