Do you have any Mandarin?

摘要

At school I became reasonably fluent in French and German and was advised to take Latin as minority subject as it might have been useful in the study of pharmacy.(I ignored the advice and my pharmacy career did not suffer.)However,there is a world of difference between being reasonably fluent in a language,and being able to cope in a foreign country with the speech of native speakers,having to deal with the speed,accents,and abbreviations used.It amazed me,therefore,upon entering university,how foreign nationals from Hong Kong and Malaysia coped not only with native speakers of English,but managed to study a subject to degree level in a foreign language.