Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6805 days ago 526 posts - 536 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 26 of 39 07 June 2009 at 12:04am | IP Logged |
reineke wrote:
I liked this post very much. One observation - I would not recommend using one's native language as an argument in a discussion about "easy" and "hard" languages :) |
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I was just trying to explain why Japanese has so many words to learn. As I may have mentioned elsewhere, a Chinese friend of mine here in Japan, thinks English has more words to learn. But then, he looks at Japanese as only needing to learn 2,000 Kanji whereas he has to learn 20,000 words in English.
Again, the benefit of Kanji is only in looking at them. They are more helpful in reminding you of the meaning.
Since I don't think this thread is a discussion about hard languages, I will stop here.
I know that with better language acquisition methods, speaking the language could be much much easier. And once I get to the point where it is easy for me to speak Japanese, then I suspect I will no longer have any regrets about learning Japanese. I will only regret the way in which I began.
I also use the Japanese language professionally. I live and work in Japan. But since I came to Japan with a low-level of Japanese, I have had to struggle more and run into more frustrations. But I came because I had no way of getting better at Japanese from my home.
Those of you who are good at studying languages in your home country are more likely to enjoy learning your languages. You won't go through the same experiences as people who are learning a language in-country.
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lecorbeau Diglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 6048 days ago 113 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Turkish
| Message 27 of 39 09 June 2009 at 1:48pm | IP Logged |
On a slightly related note, I sometimes wish I were more interested in learning immediately useful and/or professionally sought-after "critical" languages, like Spanish (I live in LA), Russian, Arabic, or Mandarin, as opposed to Italian (an extremely popular language despite its relative uselessness), German (spoken in very few parts of the world, and most native speakers have an excellent command of English), Portuguese (Portugal, as amazing as it is, is the least developed country in Western Europe, and Brazil isn't nearly as robust as the other 'BRIC' countries), and Croatian (enough said).
But what can I say---I have my reasons and if these are the languages I'm interested in learning then who cares?! :)
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teddo Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 6438 days ago 22 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English, Polish Studies: French
| Message 28 of 39 09 June 2009 at 6:51pm | IP Logged |
I wish I was born in bilingual country ....
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Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6693 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil
| Message 29 of 39 10 June 2009 at 11:18pm | IP Logged |
lecorbeau wrote:
On a slightly related note, I sometimes wish I were more interested in learning immediately useful and/or professionally sought-after "critical" languages, like Spanish (I live in LA), Russian, Arabic, or Mandarin, as opposed to Italian (an extremely popular language despite its relative uselessness), German (spoken in very few parts of the world, and most native speakers have an excellent command of English), Portuguese (Portugal, as amazing as it is, is the least developed country in Western Europe, and Brazil isn't nearly as robust as the other 'BRIC' countries) |
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@Italian: It's all relative, isn't it? In the European Union it definitely remains a very useful language (fourth most spoken language + Italy has a huge economy and is one of the major trading partners in many European countries + huge cultural impact on Europe).
@Portuguese and Russian: Last week, I read in the Economist that they considered Russia to be the most vulnerable of the BRICs. I quote: "Yet it now makes more sense to talk of the BICs." ('Red square blues', p.11, The Economist, June 6th - June 12th 2009).
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Caveben Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5693 days ago 40 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Romanian, Slovenian
| Message 30 of 39 11 June 2009 at 2:33am | IP Logged |
teddo wrote:
I wish I was born in bilingual country .... |
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Me as well. I'm always in a state halfway between open-mouthed amazement and beady eyed jealously whenever I see people effortlessly switch between two or more native languages.
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Kyrie Senior Member United States clandestein.deviantaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5757 days ago 207 posts - 231 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese
| Message 31 of 39 11 June 2009 at 4:31am | IP Logged |
I honestly regret learning Brazilian Portuguese. Nobody really knows the language where I live and it's not like I'm going to live in Brazil. So yeah, it's done me no good. An American teen will not benefit from knowing that language unless they live up in the Northeast near Connecticut, Massachusetts, ETC.
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Kris Newbie Australia Joined 5704 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, German
| Message 32 of 39 11 June 2009 at 2:08pm | IP Logged |
I don't regret learning any languages but have had buyer's remorse over a few materials bought in the past.
EDIT: I wish to add that I deeply regret not putting the effort into the language classes back in highschool. Looking back at it the material was pretty easy & if I had applied myself I would have aced the classes with ease.
Edited by Kris on 11 June 2009 at 2:13pm
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