Ni-How-Ma

Ni-How-Ma? You might be asking yourself? Is that the name of a product? A crazy obscure technology acronym? No, actually, based on what my Asian friends in college taught me - it means "Hello" in Chinese (I can't remember if it was Cantonese or Mandarin). Somewhere on my To-do list is a to-do of all of the languages that I want to learn in my life. While there are many that I would find practical and useful, number one on the list is Chinese. Why, you might ask? Because I believe in the next decade or so, that Chinese will be more important than English, Japanese or Spanish in the business world.

Why chinese? Imagine, if you will for a minute that every last person in the US had a cellphone, heck in fact, imagine that 1 in 3 people had two! - that would equal the current number in cellphones in China - think about it - there are 4 cellphone users in china for every 3 people in the US.

The chinese economy is going to continue to grow, and make inroads on the tech front. Ultimately, chinese companies like Huwaei Technologies and Ningbo Bird will be as commonly known as Cisco and Motorola, their household counterparts. And as much as Detroit is reeling from years of falling behind the Japanese in car sales, China might jump into the mix sometime soon as well.

So learn chinese, and in a few years, you'll all be calling me to say 'Sheh-Sheh'