It’s been known for a while now that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been learning Mandarin, since 2010 to be exact. Indeed, he began studying the language every day a few years back as a personal challenge to himself. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that his wife, whom he met while at Harvard, speaks Mandarin as well.
Recently, Zuckerberg put his years of Mandarin studying to the test. While participating in a Q&A session at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Zuckerberg opted to answer all of the questions in Chinese. Zuckerberg posted a video of the event on his Facebook page and it’s beyond impressive. What’s more, the audience appeared to eat up everything Zuckerberg was saying, clearly appreciating his efforts at bridging the language gap.
Commentors who speak Mandarin have chimed in, noting that while his accent needs work, his command of the vocabulary was impressive. And while there were certain points where Zuckerberg seemed to struggle with some questions, one has to admire the Facebook CEO’s ability to learn an entirely new and challenging language while simultaneously running one of the world’s most popular websites.
