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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 9 03 June 2013 at 11:28am | IP Logged |
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Before I read the article I thought that it was a warning against trying to learn Japanese because it is difficult - and just that. After the first section I concluded that the author was a perfectionist who had discovered that perfection is harder to achieve in Japanese than in a related language with more or less the same writing system as the one you have learnt in school. Like Spanish for a US American.
Then I saw the equation "2 years learning Japanese - 2 years speaking it in Japan" = a 1:1 situation. And then I thought of of my own language learning. For instance studying Latin for years on end and speaking it a total 0 minutes with with native speakers .. well, how do you divide by zero? So was it idiotic to learn Latin in the first place? According to this author's equations it would be, but I didn't just study Latin to have conversations with monks and professors: I learned it because "it was there", because I needed the certificates and because it is interesting in itself to study an extinct language with a lot of materials and living descendants. Being able to speak a language with native speakers is a bonus, and it can make travels and living abroad a lot more rewarding, but assuming that there should be a 1 to 1 correlation between study time and speaking time is just silly - a nice and funny formulation in a humoristic article, but fundamentally a sick thought. You could just as well say it is silly to study 2 years for a certain test when the test itself only lasts for about 15 minutes. I also noticed the somewhat contrived plaidoyer for a life as an expat Englishspeaking monoglot among Japanese natives who just love to hear you speak in English about the weird habits back home (like wearing shoes indoors and sneezing into your hand). Personally I would find that a pathetic and degrading existence, almost at the level of living in the streets on a diet of leftovers from supermarkets. Maybe the Japanese prefer listening to people who can speak their language well (I have read that they have TV shows where those who are less capable, but dumb enough to participate are ridiculed mercilessly). And surely that attitude will make it more difficult to learn their language. But if I somehow ended up in Japan for a year I would do everything I could to learn as much as possible of the local language - but I would just not try to use it before I felt it was safe. And more concretely: if I had to do serious business I wouldn't give my opponents an undue advantage by trying to communicate in their language, and particularly not if they didn't even reward me for the attempt. So the author does have a point in this rather limited case, but the solution is not to give up learning Japanese altogether - it is just to be more wary about imposing your dismal tarzanese on people who can't see the point in giving you free language lessons, and instead try it out on those who can accept a foreign accent and a few errors. If you can find such nice persons, of course. In other countries the locals may be more sympathetic to foreigners with limited language skills, maybe because they are less obsessed with their own attempts to learn English, but even here I would be wary about speaking gobbledigobb to random people around me. But only until I knew for certain that I could formulate myself in comprehensible localese because - then I would suddenly jump to the opposite tactic where I would speak the local language to everybody, even if they answerered in English or French or some other language. But the exception with the serious negotiations would still be relevant. I once traveled in Moçambique and spoke Portuguese everywhere, even at my hotel. But after two out of four days they asked me to leave my room. It turned out that my travel agency had made an error, but because I had prepaid the room I could stay and they had to find room for one member of a group in another hotel. Did I negotiate about that in Portuguese? Of course not, suddenly I could only speak English... Edited by Iversen on 03 June 2013 at 11:49am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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