Name: Anonymous 2006-08-20 3:45
I want to learn an East Asian language, mainly for business reasons, and simply because I love to learn new languages. I know Urdu, Arabic, and at most, an intermediate amount of Spanish and French.
As far as speaking the language goes, I have heard enough Japanese, Korean and Chinese to determine which would be easier, phonetically for me. Because of the Arabic influence, I am able to imitate Japanese sounds very accurately, but Chinese and Korean are fairly difficult.
Reading and writing will be a completely new experience for me. Arabic/Urdu have the same alphabet minus a few letters here and there, and english/french/spanish are also essentially the same. The 3 languages will be a whole new alphabet anyways, so I'm not too worried about that, since I'd have to work equally as hard to learn the new characters.
Grammar and sentence structure might be a problem. It may not be as easy to find a pattern to them as Latin based languages like French and Spanish, but neither does Urdu :P. I'm not sure how similar Japanese/Chinese/Korean are to each other.
Now the most important part is this:
I believe that there are basically two ways to effectively learn a new language.
1. When you have no choice, and NEED to use it (for example living in a foreign country where your mother tongue is used rarely, if at all). My family moved to the Middle East when I was 4, and I spent 14 years there, before coming back to the US for college. That’s how I picked up Arabic.
2. You actually want to learn the language, and you're not just doing it because you're forced to do it in school. By wanting to learn the language, you need to be motivated, and make the effort to learn and use the language as often as possible (outside of the classroom too). The problem here is that you really need to have an outlet to use the language. In the cases of French and Spanish, I couldn't really find a use for them, at least enough to be fluent at them. I figured learning Spanish in the US would be useful, since it was the second language. I've never had to use it once though.
The second point is where the issue of learning these 3 languages comes in. At the moment, I’ve really had no experience at all with Korean and Chinese, other than hearing the language from native speakers. As far as Japanese goes, I’ve seen enough anime and J movies, to be able to get a good feel of the language, picked up phrases, cultural references and many words, so I would definitely feel more comfortable learning this language, in comparison to the other two. Now the problem is how often I would use the languages. While there is a lot of Korean influence on games and the internet, I can’t foresee myself using Korean, other than when talking to some close friends of mine. I don’t have much of an interest in Korean entertainment, I don’t particularly want to move to Korea either, and I don’t really see learning it as an efficient use of my time, so I guess I can cut that out.
That leaves Chinese and Japanese. There are a LOT of Chinese people in the world, so I could definitely see this as being a useful language to know. If they do end up being the next super power, I figure it would be useful to know the language of your masters! From a business stand point, this would be ideal. As a friend of mine in eloquently put it, Shanghai and Hong Kong “Are where the shit is happening”. The problem is that there are so many dialects of Chinese. Mandarin is the official one of mainland China, whereas Cantonese is used in Hong Kong. I’m not sure how different they are too each other. Since I might move to Hong Kong after graduate school, I’d imagine Cantonese would be the best bet for me. The only misgiving I have is that I won’t really be able to use the language as often as I’d like. There are many native Chinese speakers around where I live, but I don’t exactly go around talk to random people a lot in English, and doubt I’d be doing it in Chinese (I’d most likely offend them if it turns out they speak another dialect, or are not even Chinese!). There isn’t really any other way for me to utilize it effectively, since the Chinese government is really strict with internet and entertainment censorship. But again, I’m thinking long term here.
Japanese on the other hand would also be useful since Tokyo is another viable business alternative. Also, while there aren’t exactly that many Japanese people where I am, I would still be able to utilize what I learnt on the Internet (since there are many times I’ve been browsing the intarweb and thought to myself “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if I could understand this Japanese!” Also, I am well aware that the Japanese spoken in Anime is quite different to a real life setting, but the language is still the same, so it would still help.
Anyways, if anyone has had experience with these languages, and can relate to my situation, I would appreciate any help :D. Thank you in advance.
As far as speaking the language goes, I have heard enough Japanese, Korean and Chinese to determine which would be easier, phonetically for me. Because of the Arabic influence, I am able to imitate Japanese sounds very accurately, but Chinese and Korean are fairly difficult.
Reading and writing will be a completely new experience for me. Arabic/Urdu have the same alphabet minus a few letters here and there, and english/french/spanish are also essentially the same. The 3 languages will be a whole new alphabet anyways, so I'm not too worried about that, since I'd have to work equally as hard to learn the new characters.
Grammar and sentence structure might be a problem. It may not be as easy to find a pattern to them as Latin based languages like French and Spanish, but neither does Urdu :P. I'm not sure how similar Japanese/Chinese/Korean are to each other.
Now the most important part is this:
I believe that there are basically two ways to effectively learn a new language.
1. When you have no choice, and NEED to use it (for example living in a foreign country where your mother tongue is used rarely, if at all). My family moved to the Middle East when I was 4, and I spent 14 years there, before coming back to the US for college. That’s how I picked up Arabic.
2. You actually want to learn the language, and you're not just doing it because you're forced to do it in school. By wanting to learn the language, you need to be motivated, and make the effort to learn and use the language as often as possible (outside of the classroom too). The problem here is that you really need to have an outlet to use the language. In the cases of French and Spanish, I couldn't really find a use for them, at least enough to be fluent at them. I figured learning Spanish in the US would be useful, since it was the second language. I've never had to use it once though.
The second point is where the issue of learning these 3 languages comes in. At the moment, I’ve really had no experience at all with Korean and Chinese, other than hearing the language from native speakers. As far as Japanese goes, I’ve seen enough anime and J movies, to be able to get a good feel of the language, picked up phrases, cultural references and many words, so I would definitely feel more comfortable learning this language, in comparison to the other two. Now the problem is how often I would use the languages. While there is a lot of Korean influence on games and the internet, I can’t foresee myself using Korean, other than when talking to some close friends of mine. I don’t have much of an interest in Korean entertainment, I don’t particularly want to move to Korea either, and I don’t really see learning it as an efficient use of my time, so I guess I can cut that out.
That leaves Chinese and Japanese. There are a LOT of Chinese people in the world, so I could definitely see this as being a useful language to know. If they do end up being the next super power, I figure it would be useful to know the language of your masters! From a business stand point, this would be ideal. As a friend of mine in eloquently put it, Shanghai and Hong Kong “Are where the shit is happening”. The problem is that there are so many dialects of Chinese. Mandarin is the official one of mainland China, whereas Cantonese is used in Hong Kong. I’m not sure how different they are too each other. Since I might move to Hong Kong after graduate school, I’d imagine Cantonese would be the best bet for me. The only misgiving I have is that I won’t really be able to use the language as often as I’d like. There are many native Chinese speakers around where I live, but I don’t exactly go around talk to random people a lot in English, and doubt I’d be doing it in Chinese (I’d most likely offend them if it turns out they speak another dialect, or are not even Chinese!). There isn’t really any other way for me to utilize it effectively, since the Chinese government is really strict with internet and entertainment censorship. But again, I’m thinking long term here.
Japanese on the other hand would also be useful since Tokyo is another viable business alternative. Also, while there aren’t exactly that many Japanese people where I am, I would still be able to utilize what I learnt on the Internet (since there are many times I’ve been browsing the intarweb and thought to myself “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if I could understand this Japanese!” Also, I am well aware that the Japanese spoken in Anime is quite different to a real life setting, but the language is still the same, so it would still help.
Anyways, if anyone has had experience with these languages, and can relate to my situation, I would appreciate any help :D. Thank you in advance.