What I Told my kids. Learn a romance language(Spanish,French or Italian), learn a guttural language(German,Dutch,Persian), learn English(American,Canadian, British,Australian). And learn Sinitic. That's a great deal to learn but pick one of each and you can understand almost everyone in the world.
But Sinitic should help with most Chines dialects. Perhaps i did wrong. I know there are a huge number of Chino Dialects. I just thought Sinitic would be a base.
Haha :D
Well I'm lucky enough to have german as my mother tongue (wouldn't wanna have to learn it) and I had English, French and Spanish in school :)
And now I'm studying translation studies at uni :)
My first sentence in German was Dis is das table. Which I thought was great. Then I found out tables are feminine. so it should have been die table. But that means two tables. So now I just mention der door. because apparently doors are masculine.
Learning Spanish leads you to understand some/most; Portuguese, Italian, Castilian, French, including all dialects (Puerto Rican, Dominican Rep., Costa Rica) and every dialect across Mexico (there are lots). What a great opportunity your company gave you!
If you go to a country and have to live there, you should at least try and learn the language. You're going to a country where the majority speak it and you only make it harder on yourself.
Well I'm lucky enough to have german as my mother tongue (wouldn't wanna have to learn it) and I had English, French and Spanish in school :)
And now I'm studying translation studies at uni :)
It's "die Tür", which is feminine
Also tables are masculine "der Tisch" ^^
And plural is "die Tische" or "die Türen"