My Japanese is approaching N1-ish level, and I'm starting to think about taking up another language. Since there seem to be a number of polyglots here, I thought I would ask the forum:

What is your third (or more) language?

What did you find interesting/challenging about your L3 that was different from English/Japanese?

What did you find easy to pick because of your knowledge of English/Japanese?

Is there a particularly good resource you would recommend for learning this language (like the RTK forum but for that language)?

For me, some possibilities I'm considering are: Spanish, Mandarin, French. Also possible but less likely are Italian, Vietnamese.

I grew up bilingually with German and English, and consider myself fluent in both. Japanese would be my "3rd" language.

In the future I'd like to learn Spanish, French, and Korean... or perhaps all of them. But for now, I'll stick with Japanese

Mine's German (chronologically) or Japanese (proficiency-wise). Lately I've messed around with some Cantonese (basically just taking dictation, since pronunciation guides suck).

Well, actually Japanese is my third language, since my native one is Spanish and L2 is obviously English.
After I'm finished with Japanese I'd like to tackle Korean and French. I'm just a sucker for languages.

harahachibu Wrote:My Japanese is approaching N1-ish level, and I'm starting to think about taking up another language. Since there seem to be a number of polyglots here, I thought I would ask the forum:

What is your third (or more) language?

I'm picking up Mandarin Chinese.

Quote:What did you find interesting/challenging about your L3 that was different from English/Japanese?

Tones, pretty much.

Quote:What did you find easy to pick because of your knowledge of English/Japanese?

Hanzi - especially traditional. At one time I would of found this the most daunting part of Chinese but now that I have knowledge of thousands of kanji this is fairly undaunting to me. I never thought I would be able to say that.

Quote:Is there a particularly good resource you would recommend for learning this language (like the RTK forum but for that language)?

IDK about resources yet, and I'm still very much a beginner, mind you, but this deck is AMAZING:

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2003820603

I'd reccommend nabbing it if you are even thinking about starting Mandarin because you never know when another anki purge will happen again.

Quote:For me, some possibilities I'm considering are: Spanish, Mandarin, French. Also possible but less likely are Italian, Vietnamese.

[Zgarbas]

Japanese is my L3 proficiency-wise and L5 chronologically. There is no other language that I managed to be as stable with, though . This semester I'll be taking up mandarin, but I have huge problems with pronounciation so I'm not sure how that'll work; i'm excited to be using iknow as a resource again, though .

English is my third language, both chronologically and in terms of proficiency. I haven't found anything challenging about it, to be honest...not because it's an easy language, it's not, but because, just like with Japanese now, it was a language I really wanted to speak.

Once you have that, you're set. So, pick a language you really want to speak. If there is one. If there isn't, do something else with your time (continue getting better at Japanese, for instance: N1 is nowhere near the end of the road), because you'll fail at becoming fluent in this new language anyway. You can become advanced in a language you have little interest in, but you can only become fluent if you actually use it. A lot.

As for the language that would be easiest to learn for an English and Japanese speaker, that would be French. English gets over half of its vocabulary directly from French. But, again, that will only take you to an advanced level. From there, it doesn't matter what the language is, the only thing that matters is that you actually use it. My Japanese will probably surpass my French pretty soon, for instance, simply because I want to use Japanese. I don't want to use French. French culture bores me.

Zgarbas Wrote:Japanese is my L3 proficiency-wise and L5 chronologically. There is no other language that I managed to be as stable with, though .

I'm pretty sure that's how it was for me as well - I don't recall if my short stint with Esperanto happened before or after I took up Japanese, but since it didn't really go anywhere might as well not count it at all. Incidentally my chronological L3, Kazakh, does have some grammatical similarities with Japanese. Of course, that didn't matter to me at the time, plus the school programmes I was being taught were always overemphasising the similarities to Russian: "It also has cases!" (even though they function more like Japanese particles than Indo-European cases); "It also has three tenses!" (even though the "future" tense is just as useful in describing the present, while the "present" tense is more of a continuous) "It's got all the sounds of Russian plus nine extra ones!" (even though about a third of the letters the Kazakh alphabet shares with Russian aren't pronounced identically to their Russian counterparts). Ultimately all of this didn't help much because I grew up in a city where most people younger than 50 were much more fluent in Russian than in Kazakh and where most of the media was consumed in Russian. Add to this my lack of Kazakh ancestry and/or Kazakh-speaking relatives and there's no real incentive for me to get fluent. And now, thanks to the aforementioned similarities between Kazakh and Japanese, whenever I try to say something in Kazakh Japanese words, particles and ever verb suffixes end up creeping into the sentence.

As for languages I've taken up after Japanese, Korean has certainly been the most curious experience. The two languages' great grammatical similarity combined with centuries of shared cultural influences makes it relatively easy to translate between the two. I've managed to have meaningful written online conversations in Korean after just a couple of levels of Talk To Me In Korean's grammar lessons by translating from Japanese in Google Translate and correcting occasional minor errors. However, some differences from Japanese do make Korean a bit of a headache. In some ways Japanese grammar comes across as a more "streamlined" version of Korean grammar - the latter has more variation, more rules, more exceptions from said rules, and more exceptions from said exceptions from said rules. Plus, the phonology is noticeably different and takes a lot of time to get comfortable with, both in terms of speaking and listening comprehension.

mandarin shares about half its vocabulary with japanese. as well as a script.
and has lots of english words spelt with ateji.
it also has the benefit of 4,000 years of culture behind it, and is the world's most common natively spoken language...dwarfing english.

http://blog-assets.rosettastone.com/wp-c...jpg?240931

tones are weird in the beginning but you get used to it faster than you'd think.
starting from english and japanese, i think mandarin is a pretty good choice.
(disclosure: i'm doing this)

My levels of proficiency (reading ability only) from most to least is as follows (other than English which is my native language):

French
Latin
German
Japanese

That's pretty cool, congratulations.

Japanese would be my third language. English is my second, and Arabic is my first (I'm Palestinian).
Though, ironically, some of my motivation for studying Japanese on the days I'd rather paint a wall, watch it dry, then add another coat is the fact that I want to learn Russian after.

It's kind of like a "finish your vegetables to get dessert mentality," except I'm the kind of person who adores vegetables (sometimes more than fruit) so it's a win-win thing I've worked out.

Have you decided which language you want to tackle yet?

(2015-11-16, 9:49 pm)Zeina Wrote: Have you decided which language you want to tackle yet?

I haven't really decided yet.  Right now I'm focusing on the upcoming N1 exam in a few weeks.  I'm still mainly considering the three languages listed above (Spanish, French, Mandarin).  My reasons would be different for each, and I'm wondering which would stick the best long-term, since that will probably determine long term success and motivation.  For Spanish, it would be travel & reading Spanish literature.  For French, it would be for learning about the wine, food, culture.  For Mandarin, it would be potential career opportunities and also travel, and the difficulty of speaking/listening to the different tones seems like a good challenge.  That said, I'm sure there are plenty of people on this board who started studying Japanese initially because of anime and manga but then found other motivations to continue their studies.

Part of me is also considering a completely different hobby, like rock climbing or hiking or something musical, since that would take me out of my comfort zone more and might be a nice change of pace from having different anki decks to power through.  There is still plenty of Japanese I need to learn as well.

L1: English - C1
L2: German - C1
L3: Japanese - N5 )

L0: Hungarian

(2015-11-18, 3:53 pm)harahachibu Wrote:   I'm still mainly considering the three languages listed above (Spanish, French, Mandarin). 

Wouldn't it be better to take a non character language first to avoid confusing the Kanji and the Hanzi unless your Japanese was pretty near proficient.

If I get pretty far in Japanese I am thinking at some point I'd want to try Mandarin but I think I'd want to throw something between the two like Hindi or even Old English to let the Japanese settle a bit more in my mind.

That or use the time to plow hard on Japanese post N1.

Is that even an issue or am I overthinking it a wee bit.

When you know more than 2 languages your understanding grows exponentially.

 I can speak 3 languages 
lithuanian
russian
english

however this also means that I can understand
ukrainian and other slavish languages
latvian, somewhat
polish, with big dificulty.

My Japanese is at very beginner level.

Well, I was born in Turkey to Kurdish parents, so I was already exposed to two languages from birth. Then, because of the political situation at the time, I ended up living in the Netherlands since the age of one. I have lots of family that lives in Germany, and I noticed that after a while I understood almost everything they said (I probably owe this to the similarity with Dutch and to classes I took in high school). I ended up watching mostly American tv programs and reading mostly English books from a very young age allowing for fluency before I started actively studying the language. Then I started studying Chinese at university, switched to Korean and eventually graduated in Koreastudies. Studied in Korea for a semester, worked there, and consider myself fluent in the language. (Having a Korean girlfriend who cannot speak English has helped tremendously.) Now, since a few months, I've started studying Japanese.

In short, after being exposed to many languages, I actively study four on a daily basis: English, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese.

1. portuguese
2. english
3. japanese

So let's see...

L1 Slovenian is my mother tongue.
L2 German I learned as a kid through TV and some classes.
L3 English I learned through school and PC games.
L4 Serbocroatian I just sort of absorbed through proximity. I don't consider myself fluent at all, but I can communicate and read most of it.
L5 Japanese... ugh. It's a long term hobby.

I can understand a bit of Italian, so I might try and learn it someday. I always found it disturbing that I can't speak any romanic languages and since I've got a few Italian friends, it might even have some practical value.

But in the end that's as far as I'll go. I think there's not much point in spending time learning more than 5 languages, except if it's important to your career. I'd much rather get better at reading musical notation (I can only really read drum sheets) and maybe learn some 柔道.

L1 English
L2 French, 8+ years
L3 Japanese, 2 years

After this JLPT I am starting something new. Probably Korean

I've always felt anyone doing really well with Japanese and looking for another language should pick a European one for several reasons. #1 you will get to see just how HARD Japanese is compared to other languages. #2 Since Japanese is your foreign language of choice, you probably won't end up investing the huge amount of time that you did with Japanese in another language, so pick one where you get results with less effort. #3 You actually learn a lot about your own language by studying the languages related to it - English borrows a lot from French, German, and Latin especially.

I think studying a European language close to English will give you a different foreign language experience that you're missing doing a super hard language like Japanese. For what it's worth, Japanese is my 4th language I guess. I didn't get advanced in French or Spanish but I spent some time studying them previously. I don't know if my German qualifies as advanced but I'm pretty proud of it. German is my other big foreign language besides Japanese - I took my time getting to Japanese unfortunately and spent my youth on other languages instead. I don't regret German at all though.