Multilinguist of the Day: Mark Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin?

On Wednesday Mark Zuckerberg did his first ever public Q&A in Chinese at Tsinghua University in Beijing to discuss connecting the world, Internet.org, innovation and the early days of Facebook.

Did we mention he did almost the entire session in Mandarin?

As surprising as it is to hear the Facebook CEO break out his Mandarin, it seems that his skill level is far from perfect. Quartz stated "his enunciation was roughly on par with the clarity possible when someone's stepping on your face" and he speaks it "like a seven year old" according to Foreign Policy.

If you are wondering why Zuckerberg knows Mandarin he listed three reasons:

1. His wife is from China and she speaks Mandarin with her grandmother. He wants to interact with her family.
2. He wants to further his understanding about China/Chinese culture. He thinks learning a new language definitely helps him widen his knowledge, etc..
3. He mentioned that Mandarin is hard, he love challenges.