phauna Wrote:

Wally Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:One thing is that the older generation has this feeling that Japanese is impossible to learn.

I'll be 59 in June, so maybe I don't fit that mould.

Give it up, you're too old, and the rest of you are too young.

your too middle aged!

phauna Wrote:

Wally Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:One thing is that the older generation has this feeling that Japanese is impossible to learn.

I'll be 59 in June, so maybe I don't fit that mould.

Give it up, you're too old, and the rest of you are too young.

You're right. I couldn't possibly get past 380. I quit.

Oddly enough, my mum complains MORE if I'm learning Japanese than if I'm wasting time on Half-Life, because she then views me as 'abnormal'. Who thinks there's something wrong with her logic?

Hmm, a mum worrying about her son being abnormal may be thinking he won't be successful with the girls.... not good for giving her grandchildren. Thought experiment: If she thought you were learning Kanji because girls would think it was cool, what effect would that have on her attitude?

Probably no effect, because she won't believe it would work.

~J

What? Learning Kanji is much better than playing Half-Life! Your mom is being quite silly but perhaps you can compromise by playing Half-Life in Japanese.

My parents would have loved seeing me learn kanji instead of play halflife. Honestly - if I took 1/3 of the time I spend on computers during my teens on Japanese, I could say a lot more then just "kagebunshinnojutsu".

Quote:good luck for him.even Im japanese,Im totally in halfway about kanji

Just got this now, from a friend of a friend.
;D

ooh necro.. il join

everytime it comes up at work (ok it does it a lot.. i never tell anyone but the people who already know.. but someone always mentions it) i always get the same reaction.

"japanese?.... (blank stare) yh ... thats interesting. (looking for a way out cos they have nothing to add, they clearly think im an idiot) ... isn't that hard. they speak all in characters and stuff"

or "can you even write those". yes actually 2042 kanji and both hiragana and katakana which have 72 (not inc Dip) characters each..
(you should see the faces drop... +1 heisig)

the best i got the other day, "Why are you learning Japanese, what use is that here?".. cos i don't want to stay here the rest of my life perhaps?

the general ignorance far outweighs the negativity i find. Most people think your weird more than discourage you.

My "best" friend is really getting on my nerves now when it comes to my Japanese studies. After 9-10 months of studying every day he still thinks it is amusing to put on what he thinks is a Chinese accent (yeah I know) while saying stuff like "Ohh herrroo, shank you" every time the conversation drifts towards my language studies or he sees me studying and is with anyone else. I'll be studying away minding my own business and if he's with someone else (we are room mates btw) he'll almost always stop to make fun of me in front of them. Even worse is after I brought over a Japanese friend who is trying to learn English on University exchange, and is damn good all things considered, he started to mock him as well (not to his face of course, but to me).

I mean a good laugh about things from time to time is perfectly fine but I just don't get why some people think doing the EXACT same thing over and over again for months on end is amusing. Yes for the love of God I'm aware my Japanese friend said "Pool" like "Pooru" so you don't have to repeat it 10,000 times.

Im not sure if people do it on purpose but ppl keep asking me how my chinese studying is going..

me: im studying japanese.
them: its the same thing tho.
me. no it ######g well isnt.
them:...

them: ah so konnichiwa !

and yes they pronounce it wrong too. (i may seem aggressive, but when u get asked every other day if your studying it because i want a "slanty eyed chinky girlfriend" it gets on your nerves rather quickly. The random racism you come across when you mention something asian is rather phenomenal.

@aero Kick your best friend's butt for me.

Whenever I tell people I'm learning Japanese I invariably get a negative or sarcastic response. There are two reasons:

1) Learning a second language in an English-speaking country is considered a waste of time by most people.

2) Lots of native English speakers will say they're "pretty fluent" in a language (usually French, German or Spanish) despite only knowing 100 words and having no idea about grammar & punctuation. This has created a lot of contempt for language learners where I live (UK) because most people who say they "speak" a language are usually liars, or at least deluded, and I'm automatically associated that group. Personally I'd never say I'm "fluent" in a language until I actually was, but that doesn't seem to apply to most people!

harhol Wrote:2) Lots of native English speakers will say they're "pretty fluent" in a language (usually French, German or Spanish) despite only knowing 100 words and having no idea about grammar & punctuation. This has created a lot of contempt for language learners where I live (UK) because most people who say they "speak" a language are usually liars, or at least deluded, and I'm automatically associated that group. Personally I'd never say I'm "fluent" in a language until I actually was, but that doesn't seem to apply to most people!

This is true, to a lesser extent of course, in the U.S. as well.

I live in the most monolingual/xenophobic place on the planet (southern Alabama) but low and behold if you get talking about languages every person and their brother "use" to be "pretty fluent" in language X. And by "pretty fluent" they mean that they were able to order food at a Mexican restaurant because they took Spanish in high school and that they can "understand" it as long as they "don't speak fast". Of course their idea of "fast" is still about 1/2 of normal speed.

Even more hilarious is that one of my professors was bragging to the class that he is "sort of a linguist" so he ran through some completely generic phrases in Spanish and French. He then stopped and said "Let's see if anyone knows this one" and to my surprise he counted 1-5 in Japanese (a true sign of one's language ability lol). For a split second I thought about not calling his bluff......but I couldn't hold back so I shouted out a generic "Hai, wakarimashita!".

I wish I could have taken a picture to capture the split second of horror that came over his face lol. Of course after I responded that I understood his "Japanese" he magically decided to only respond to me in English while quizzing me to see if I knew what a "Sawkuurrrraaaah tree" was. The kicker was after class he stopped to tell me that I was "pretty good" lol.

hehe i liked that story activeaero i've met people who have lived in Japan before at my college and we throw a generic phrase or two back at each other and then everybody's jaw drops... it really doesn't take much to impress people that have no idea what you are saying...

activeaero Wrote:

harhol Wrote:2) Lots of native English speakers will say they're "pretty fluent" in a language (usually French, German or Spanish) despite only knowing 100 words and having no idea about grammar & punctuation. This has created a lot of contempt for language learners where I live (UK) because most people who say they "speak" a language are usually liars, or at least deluded, and I'm automatically associated that group. Personally I'd never say I'm "fluent" in a language until I actually was, but that doesn't seem to apply to most people!

This is true, to a lesser extent of course, in the U.S. as well.

I live in the most monolingual/xenophobic place on the planet (southern Alabama) but low and behold if you get talking about languages every person and their brother "use" to be "pretty fluent" in language X. And by "pretty fluent" they mean that they were able to order food at a Mexican restaurant because they took Spanish in high school and that they can "understand" it as long as they "don't speak fast". Of course their idea of "fast" is still about 1/2 of normal speed.

Even more hilarious is that one of my professors was bragging to the class that he is "sort of a linguist" so he ran through some completely generic phrases in Spanish and French. He then stopped and said "Let's see if anyone knows this one" and to my surprise he counted 1-5 in Japanese (a true sign of one's language ability lol). For a split second I thought about not calling his bluff......but I couldn't hold back so I shouted out a generic "Hai, wakarimashita!".

I wish I could have taken a picture to capture the split second of horror that came over his face lol. Of course after I responded that I understood his "Japanese" he magically decided to only respond to me in English while quizzing me to see if I knew what a "Sawkuurrrraaaah tree" was. The kicker was after class he stopped to tell me that I was "pretty good" lol.

One of the very oldest jokes ...

What do you call someone who speaks two languages? (Bilingual, of course.) What do you call someone who speaks three languages? (Trilingual, naturally.) What do you call someone who only speaks one language?

American.

activeaero Wrote:I wish I could have taken a picture to capture the split second of horror that came over his face lol. Of course after I responded that I understood his "Japanese" he magically decided to only respond to me in English while quizzing me to see if I knew what a "Sawkuurrrraaaah tree" was. The kicker was after class he stopped to tell me that I was "pretty good" lol.

You deserve every moment of your friend's torture for that one. LOL. I'd have probably done the same thing too, though. You elitist you.

Well, I'm happy to say I haven't gotten a lot of discouragement yet. My younger brother likes to tell me how terrible he thinks Japanese and kanji, and especially my learning them, are... but that's mostly in fun. I do the same thing with his hardcore and Robbie Williams music at times.

I do recognize a lot of this list:

Virtua_Leaf Wrote:- seeing other foreigners typing etc. at a higher level
- the fact that most Japanese people seem to know English to some extent
- seeing Japanese themes in mainstream media. Causes 'get off my turf!' kinda crap
- everytime I see a '^_^' I feel physically sick.
- when one day I can read a block of text just fine. The next day I don't understand a frickin' word
- seeing romaji's annoying
- putting an exhaustive amount of work into Japanese one day, and STILL not being able to understand that game to a suitable extent
- all work and no play makes Virtua_Leaf a dull boy
- I keeeel weaboo
- the weaboo mocks
- all work and no play makes Virtua_Leaf a dull boy
- all work and no play makes Virtua_Leaf a dull boy

Especially the first three points, and (a variation of) the seventh. But as mentioned before, that sort of thing is mostly personal discouragement.

Btw, I really liked your story too, activeaero

Virtua_Leaf Wrote:- seeing Japanese themes in mainstream media. Causes 'get off my turf!' kinda crap

This seems to be generic to most people interested in Asia and has been described as 'Marco Polo syndrom' by some China-based bloggers (Sinosplice, I think).

Here's what I find discouraging: I've been studying Japanese with some seriousness for five years, including taking classes at uni, paying for tutors for conversation practice, and watching a lot of anime and Jdrama. But I can STILL understand conversational Spanish better than I can understand conversational Japanese. For Spanish, my total study includes one year in high school, one 6-week summer class, and a total of maybe 6 weeks spent in Spain a week or so at a time.

If my husband (who speaks good Spanish) has the TV on a Spanish channel, I can understand probably 70% of what is said. If I watch Japanese TV on the internet, I wander between 40-60%, with occasional crashes to 10% if the conversation gets technical. Sigh.

The silver lining: Japanese has created such severe interference with Spanish production that I have lost all ability to say things in Spanish -- it comes out in Japanese instead. The net effect is that I can speak Japanese about 10x better than Spanish now.

Harrow, I'm curious: do you know/have studied any other languages? I've noticed that for many would-be polyglots I've met they have trouble picking up a third language while retaining the second, but the same problem is not encountered with a fourth or fifth language.

For me it was German. I started learning German in college, after studying Spanish all through high school. By the end of the first quarter, German had entirely replaced my Spanish. When I tried to think of something in Spanish, the German word and phrase structure always jumped to mind first. But when I started Japanese I had no trouble and was able to retain all my German without any trouble.

mafried Wrote:Harrow, I'm curious: do you know/have studied any other languages? I've noticed that for many would-be polyglots I've met they have trouble picking up a third language while retaining the second, but the same problem is not encountered with a fourth or fifth language.

For me it was German. I started learning German in college, after studying Spanish all through high school. By the end of the first quarter, German had entirely replaced my Spanish. When I tried to think of something in Spanish, the German word and phrase structure always jumped to mind first. But when I started Japanese I had no trouble and was able to retain all my German without any trouble.

Hrmm that's an interesting thought. I did 5 years of Indonesian in highschool (wish I had heard of AJATT back then...or rather AIATT. It is such an easy language I would be well and truly fluent by now If I had actually immersed myself in native media. but I digress..). Anyway, when I first started Japanese I was always accidentally saying Indonesian things to my teacher. Indonesian had become associated with learning a 2nd language in my brain. It isn't so much of a problem now, but it has been almost a year since I did anything in Indonesian. I wonder how much I would remember if I started again, how much interference Japanese has had and how difficult it would be to pick up Indonesian again after I am satisfied with my Japanese ability?

mafried Wrote:Harrow, I'm curious: do you know/have studied any other languages? I've noticed that for many would-be polyglots I've met they have trouble picking up a third language while retaining the second, but the same problem is not encountered with a fourth or fifth language.

I learned Dutch through complete immersion at age 11 (went to a Dutch school, lived in the Netherlands for 7 years, spoke Dutch at home, too). I have no interference with any other language, probably because Dutch was completely consolidated as a language at a fairly young age and also because I never actually studied it, I learned by ear via immersion.

French and Spanish I studied in high school. French seems to maintain its integrity as well, I got further along with it (three years of HS, traveled in France, can read French reasonably well).

Then I studied Italian, and I have serious Italian/Spanish interference as well.

I suspect the Japanese / Spanish interference is due to
1. Both are "unconsolidated" languages
2. Japanese/Spanish have lots of similarity in word sounds, while German and French have quite different sounds, don't seem similar to Japanese at all (at least that's what my language learning brain modules think!)

I think it's a uniquely monolingual thing. blackmacros hit the nail on the head with his description. When I learned Spanish as a monolingual teen, Spanish became associated with "2nd language." So when German came along my brain had trouble reconciling the two and the German ended up replacing the Spanish rather than existing side-by-side. It's not something I've ever heard people who've been bilingual since childhood complain about however.

I think mixing languages up is pretty normal until you've reached a certain level of fluency. I speak English as a 1st language, French fluently, Japanese so-so, and Tahitian less than so-so. Studying Japanese hasn't affected my French or English much at all, but a lot of Tahitian has a consonant-verb-(repeat) structure similar to how Japanese sounds and I have found myself mixin' those 2 languages up a lot more than the ones I'm fluent in. I'd assume that people who spoke any of the latin based languages would have similar problems until they attained a certain level of fluency. I think I've had this problem playing different first person shooters before that I don't play often enough. I'll get use to the button layout of one game and then play another and run up behind someone for a 1 hit kill only to hit the jump button and like land right in front of them. The key I think is just to push on til' it becomes subconscious.