The disconnect with China

How it is getting increasingly harder for Nepal to talk to and deal with its northern neighbour.

Mark Zuckerberg takes some pride in his Mandarin, having spent years trying to hone perhaps the toughest language in the world. Yet when he speaks in the tongue, he still makes oodles of mistakes. The Meta CEO reckoned the knowledge of Mandarin would help him better understand China and Chinese culture—with the added lure of pulling in over a billion potential customers. As he grappled with the tonal language, he must have noted its endless nuances too. In an oft-cited example, put a smidgen of emphasis on the Mandarin word for ‘mother’ and it becomes a ‘horse’.