Don't get discouraged if you can't learn Mandarin in one year. Unless you're taking daily classes and living in a Chinese speaking country, you are likely to take about five years to achieve a passable conversational ability, let alone be able to read or write effectively.
If you have some time and are serious about it, I highly recommend NTNU in Taipei. I spent this past summer in an intensive course there and I progressed a ton. It's also not too expensive.
I've been diligently learning Mandarin for the past year, and I can maybe converse with a first or second grader.
Yeah, I had kinda put languages that are very different from English onto a back-burner, where I'd sort of consider it a thing to tackle once I had a system in place (some sort of mental model, proven practice tactics, etc.) for learning the easier languages, like Spanish, French, and German. Slavic languages like Russian and Polish are high on my list of languages to learn, as places that speak them are high on my list of places to visit, but also seem very challenging. Mandarin, Korean, and Japanese take that to a whole new level of difficulty.
Thanks for the tips. I may make it a tiny part of my daily language practice (I spend about 30-60 minutes a day on Spanish right now, and find that consistency is the most important thing), and maybe in a year or two "starting" Mandarin seriously will seem like starting Spanish or French to me now.
Even if the 'empire' falls, there are still very profitable pockets that will outlive your lifespan.
Look at the UK for example. London is still a major finance center. What is the total GDP of the 6 English native countries is another thing to keep in mind vs. the total GDP of the Slavic countries or the Chinese countries.
Don't learn a language until you actually have a requirement to actually use it professionally or personally. Otherwise your time is better spent on other things, like regular exercise, healthy eating and increasing your skill in your profession or working on starting your own business.
I tend to think language learning is one of those things that are intrinsically valuable. And, I'm embarrassed to have made it to middle age without fluency in anything other than English. From a pragmatic perspective it might not 've directly profitable...but it makes me happy.
If you have some time and are serious about it, I highly recommend NTNU in Taipei. I spent this past summer in an intensive course there and I progressed a ton. It's also not too expensive.
I've been diligently learning Mandarin for the past year, and I can maybe converse with a first or second grader.