The Language-Learning Thread

I have wanted to learn Korean for some time (along with a few other languages), I just wish I wasn't so gooseberry fool at them, hell I can barely get by with English.

Japanta wrote:

~Earl Grey~ wrote:Alphabet-wise, Korean is significantly easier than the both of them.

Isn't that purely based on the fact that compared to Chinese/Japanese, Hangul has barely any characters?

Yes, that's the reason. Unlike Katakana and Hiragana, Hangul symbols can be logically broken down into individual phonemes (like our letters) - so 'ka' can be broken down into a symbol for K and a symbol for A. The Japanese equivalents can't - they're 'atomic' and more arbitrary in a sense (you can't, for instance, isolate the bit that means K and the bit that means A and other syllables beginning with K look totally different).

Japanta wrote:I'd say you can safely self teach yourself as much as a degree would teach you and if you worked hard enough, you could probably do it in less time than it would take to go for the degree.

I don't agree. There's only so much you can teach yourself from a book and the internet before the lack of real world, face-to-face communication and immersion becomes an issue.

Not that I think language degrees are anything special - I think they're pointless. But they're better at teaching you a language (mostly because degrees come part in parcel with native speakers, immersion and mandatory years in the target country) than books and CDs.

The Kid That Al Shot wrote:

Japanta wrote:I'd say you can safely self teach yourself as much as a degree would teach you and if you worked hard enough, you could probably do it in less time than it would take to go for the degree.

I don't agree. There's only so much you can teach yourself from a book and the internet before the lack of real world, face-to-face communication and immersion becomes an issue.

Not that I think language degrees are anything special - I think they're pointless. But they're better at teaching you a language (mostly because degrees come part in parcel with native speakers, immersion and mandatory years in the target country) than books and CDs.

I'm not arguing with you here, but you can get that with self learning too. It's all about knowing how to teach yourself. Immersion is possible even if you're not in the country of the language you're learning, but obviously it's going to be very hard and most of the time, won't be native speaking immersion. In terms of listening/writing/reading, you can immerse yourself in that anywhere, heck even Skype is good for speaking.

So either way is good, it's just when you're self learning you're more on your own time frame.

Might help if you read on a bit dear.

EDIT: I saw that post Turok.

Also, no it isn't Anny.

state of being deeply engaged or involved; absorption.

Herr Dark Wolf wrote:Yeah, but you don't just learn the language. You study the literature, history of the language, history and culture of the country etc

Both my parents and my brother did languages as a degree and they got decent jobs. Not too worried really. BTW, my current degree is Ancient History which isn't much better for job prospects.

edit: Although I may consider a joint honours degree...

Where you thinking of doing it?

I am at Birmingham (with Aaron) doing joint honours in Economics and Japanese, and it's an "ab initio" course, so we learn Japanese from scratch, despite some people knowing more than others going into it.

What I found about it is, that it's not boring at all. We were lucky in the sense that our class is great fun, and the teachers at Birmingham are awesome. Not only are they really good, but they are great people as well. Before we left, me and my ex and another girl were taken out for a meal, all paid by one of the teachers. But that's aside the point.
It is very difficult to start with, as the learning curve is so steep. But once that flattens out a bit, and everyone catches up to the same pace, it gets a bit more manageable. To me, it became the highlight of my uni day, just because I loved learning it.

But I will say one thing. I've got 2 years down at Birmingham, and almost one semester here in Japan, and I'm still doing pure language courses. I think in 4th year you can choose some cultural modules, but so far it has been purely language that we're learning. I was like you, in the sense that, I really wanted to learn more about the history of Japan, more than anything else (obviously the language as well) and so was a little disappointed to find that we won't be doing anything like that for a while.

But it's great fun, and very rewarding. Joint honours is great, because it's not just a language degree, but has some practicality to be seen from my degree as a whole. I would very much recommend it.
I'm not too hot on which uni's are best for Japanese, except that when I went and looked around Birmingham, it just felt right. It's very good there, so I would recommend investigating there. That in mind, I applied to Edinburgh (no offer), Oxford Brookes, Leeds, and SOAS (London).

If you have any more questions, just drop me a PM.

Japan > China.

I don't think I'll ever be able to learn a Chinese language because I'm tone deaf

Just Like Kicking Jesus wrote:

Japanta wrote:Might help if you read on a bit dear.

EDIT: I saw that post Turok.

Also, no it isn't Anny.

state of being deeply engaged or involved; absorption.

Is that what you meant, the dictionary definition? Then okay, you can get immersed in your study. But if you don't get immersed in the culture(s) built on that language, then how will you ever apply your study in the real world? And what then is the point of that study in the first place except for self gratification?

Nothing really wrong with self gratification btw, it's certainly rewarding to learn a new language... but there's so much you can't get from books/audiotapes, so much you can't even get in a classroom with a real teacher.

Unless you have that rare natural aptitude for languages, you really need to live a language before you can claim any kind of fluency in it.

Well yes, but isn't that my point?

You can claim fluency through reading and maybe even writing due to the internet, speaking is the one thing however which is much harder, if not impossible. 20 or so years ago, everything about a language would be impossible to be fluent at without being in the country, but the internet has changed that.

Your last point is kind of moot, since you can live the language during self teaching or studying in a classroom. I'd say the best way of language learning is to find a way of learning that suits you really and just stick with it.

Japanta wrote:

The Kid That Al Shot wrote:

Japanta wrote:I'd say you can safely self teach yourself as much as a degree would teach you and if you worked hard enough, you could probably do it in less time than it would take to go for the degree.

I don't agree. There's only so much you can teach yourself from a book and the internet before the lack of real world, face-to-face communication and immersion becomes an issue.

Not that I think language degrees are anything special - I think they're pointless. But they're better at teaching you a language (mostly because degrees come part in parcel with native speakers, immersion and mandatory years in the target country) than books and CDs.

I'm not arguing with you here, but you can get that with self learning too. It's all about knowing how to teach yourself. Immersion is possible even if you're not in the country of the language you're learning, but obviously it's going to be very hard and most of the time, won't be native speaking immersion. In terms of listening/writing/reading, you can immerse yourself in that anywhere, heck even Skype is good for speaking.

So either way is good, it's just when you're self learning you're more on your own time frame.

The difference between self learning and learning as part of a degree probably aren't that great. At the end of the day, all you're doing is learning from some source, whether it be a text book or lecturer. I think initial progress on a taught program is probably a lot quicker as the school is likely to have experience with the best teaching methods, but like most other subjects, as you get deeper in to it, it becomes more about your own approach to learning.

I don't think language degrees are as pointless as some people are suggesting. After all, you still end up accumulating much of the same skills that people with other non-technical degrees will have (essay writing, researching, etc.) and if you would have studied said language anyway then you don't have the difficulty of trying to balance self learning with whatever other degree you're doing.

Well, it turns out the library in Central Milton Keynes is rubbish and hasn't changed since the late '90s. There was nowhere for me to go to learn Spanish without annoying someone. A bit disheartening as I'd really prefer not to be doing it at home. I'm going to be going back for other things that doesn't require a headset and my laptop so it's not all bad, I suppose.

Can't you do a night course?

Poncho wrote:Well, it turns out the library in Central Milton Keynes is rubbish and hasn't changed since the late '90s. There was nowhere for me to go to learn Spanish without annoying someone. A bit disheartening as I'd really prefer not to be doing it at home. I'm going to be going back for other things that doesn't require a headset and my laptop so it's not all bad, I suppose.

Why don't you want to do it at home out of interest?

Are you starting from scratch, Poncho?

I remember when I had to get a bit of Spanish under my belt, the BBC website and Talk books were quite good for the basics. There was even a little roleplaying video on the website called "La Vida Loca" or something like that where you watched it and it was like a little story from your point of view.

There was a hot Spanish girl in it who was helping me find my friend. If I'd been fluent she would have probably tried to sleep with me. Then I'd have a little bit more Spanish under my belt ifyouknowwhatI'msayinghopefullyyoudoorI'lllookweirdotherwise.

Yeah, I'm learning pretty much from scratch, although I do know a number of words and phrases. Oh, and lots of swear words as my mum likes to shout at me in Spanish as she's fluent. I think the hardest thing so far is just where to start and how to go about structuring my learning - trying to get a grip on another language is very daunting. I'm going to be giving Rosetta Stone a go for the first time with the headset at home when I wake up, so I'm thinking I'll let what it teaches me dictate what I concentrate on.

Bought me some flash cards to write on. I think I might start labelling everything in my house as well.

StayDead: my room/home is not a conducive environment for learning - far too many distractions.

Xeno: I have toyed with the idea, but I'm rubbish and can't seem to find anything where I live. It's definitely an option I'm considering if what I'm doing now doesn't feel good to me.

This would be so much simpler if I just moved to Spain for a while. If only it was that easy, eh?

Edit: How good is your Spanish out of interest, Parksey?

Oh God I can't roll my Rs.

Parksey wrote:

StayDead wrote:わ when used as a partical is always written as は for your future information. 私 is generally understood to be watashi yes and if you're writing then that's the best way of doing it, start replacing the hiragana words you know with Kanji and it'll slowly start flowing together and it becomes much easier to learn new words that way too.

There's also like 俺 (おれ） and 僕 (ぼく） which are the more male ways to say I. I personally use 僕 as ore sounds a bit rough. 私 can also be said atashi, which is only really used by girls to say I and not all the time, but when it is. *nosebleed*

That post sums up how much more complicated Japanese is than Chinese!

I've been concentrating on the latter recently, hence my stupid わ/は which is about the first thing I learned when writing sentences. I'd forgotten about "boku" as well. I haven't come across "ore" yet though - it sounds like it'd be easy to get mixed up with "are" when listening to a sentence?

I need to get back onto Yes Japan/Japanese from Zero and start to push ahead again on the lessons. I might see if there are any simple Hanzi/Kanji cross overs that I can use.

I wonder if there is a decent Chinese/Japanese character dictionary out there that is written in English.

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi- ... dic.cgi?1C

That works on single characters but not sure how it would work for Chinese. My post sums up for me how cool Japanese is, there's those three ways of saying I/Me and I'm pretty sure there's more. I'm not sure how my Japanese is even doing, but every time I learn new words it's still such a great feeling knowing I've learnt something new. Recently I've been slacking more than I should have especially on checking on my grammar, but I've continued to just play games and write my blog which I can't believe I managed to actually carry on with.

I'm coming up to almost a year of studying now and I'd like to think I'm further ahead than a conventional student would be from attending a sort of evening class thing. Words I learnt today include: 想像 そうぞう -imagination, guess, 密接　みっせつ - close, intimate, related, connected, 期待　きたい - Expectation, anticipation, hope. Looking forward to the next couple of weeks since I have three VN style PSP games to hopefully get stuck in to. I really want to cram as much learning in the day as possible but I keep getting distracted.

StayDead, I want to start learning Japanese. What's the best way to start?

I remember when my friends could roll their Rs and I couldn't. (We're talking when I was about eight years old here.) I practised for like three days straight and by the end of it I could do it. It's like riding a bike; you never forget.

Alpha eX wrote:StayDead, I want to start learning Japanese. What's the best way to start?

This is a hard question, but I'll do my best to explain.

First, just learn Hiragana, that's the MOST important part of starting Japanese learning in my eyes. Until you know Hiragana don't do anything else. Then from there, I can't help you as everyone learns differently. I personally learned through YesJapan.com at first and I still check it every now and then (not as much as I probably should as my grammar is still probably really bad). There's no definitive way to start learning IMO.

It all comes down to personal preference. I've got to where I am now, which isn't very far but it's a start by determination and learning the way I want to, if I got bored of something I stopped and tried something else. I've done a bit of everything, but most of it comes down to playing games, listening to music, watching TV (Haven't done much of this recently, same with Radio as J-Wave's stream went Japan only and it was awesome), reading Manga to the best of my ability in Japanese and every now and then watching unsubbed anime. Obviously anime isn't the best way to learn as people just don't talk like anime characters in real life, but it's still good for listening I think.

Alpha eX wrote:StayDead, I want to start learning Japanese. What's the best way to start?

I found the YesJapan website really useful (SD linked me to it back in the summer).

http://www.yesjapan.com/YJ6/index.php

Ignore the anime stuff - I like Japan, but not really that stuff - and focus on the core learning content and there's enough to get you to a decent level.

I bought the book, Japanese from Zero, so I could do work away from the computer, but it's mostly the same stuff on that site. I would usually do the lesson on YesJapan and then do the same chapter in the book to reinforce it.

Also, when doing the lessons online, I would write it all out in a notebook, so I was essentially reading everything twice and also writing the characters down as practice.

There's also Japanese for Busy People, which does things in a different order to YesJap. It's more business-orientated, but it still has some good stuff. Plus, as it's ordered differently to YesJap, you often revise one set of vocab in the other inadvertedly.

You want to get started learning Hiragana and Katakana first though.

http://www.realkana.com/hiragana/

That site is good for testing, though if you want an alternative, the Busy People series do a workbook which is quite cheap and good for the writing practice.