Letters

Given China's growing global power, readers agreed that learning Mandarin can be an advantage—but warned that mastery of the tongue doesn't guarantee easy communication in a land of so many dialects

Re "Get Ahead, Learn Mandarin" [June 26]: I wish good luck to anyone who is learning Mandarin. Even after several years spent mastering the language, you will be able to communicate well with only people from Beijing. Linguistically, China is complicated and diverse, like Europe. Each province has a major dialect and many subdialects. Imagine Dutch, Danish, English, Welsh, Spanish and Catalan, all being spoken...