kind of agree with you. However as long as individuals are shouldering the costs involved in their obscure pursuits, I don't really see the problem in it.

[Zgarbas]

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that learning a language for a productive reason is wrong, I just couldn't fathom learning a language purely because of its usefulness/monetary advantage.

And there are quite a few people who study certain languages purely out of monetary interest, since they show up often on job listings(Chinese especially around here, which is really not the kind of language that you want to approach without a bit of passion imho).

And hey, the interest thing does matter, me thinks. Sure, programming is profitable(random example) but one should have a basic interest in it before pursuing it, no?

(but what do I know, I'm just pursuing my interests which apparently makes me a failure in life? o.O)

I don't see where you got the idea that people would learn a language for purely monetary reasons. That sounds like something you made up. Is it because it seems to be an useful language to learn around where you live? That's an incentive like any other and tells nothing about people's interests as a whole....

Your apparent ridiculing of people who learn a language with its usefulness for their lives as a whole in mind is why this conversation is taking place.

I'm sorry for seemingly getting the wrong idea. Although it may be due to you leaving out the word "purely" out of your previous post for some reason which completely changes the meaning of it....

[Zgarbas]

...I was sure I had the "purely" there. I'm sorry I couldn't get the point across in my first post >.<.

And yes, I did meet many people who started learning a language without having even basic interest for it aside from "the guys from that country pay well" or "I know a company that gives a 10% bonus if you speak it". The Chinese learning schools have quadrupled in size over the last year in my town, and news coverage is full of interviews with people who only joined for business purposes(unfortunately the coverage is all in Romanian). A teacher from my college was complaining that some students show up without knowing that Chinese doesn't use the Latin alphabet.

I've also gotten numerous calls from my sister asking about various languages. Companies are giving bonuses to employees who are fluent in a 3rd language so she and her coworkers are all taking up random languages which are "easy to learn" (most are taking French, Spanish or Italian...but a few are taking up stuff like Finnish because "it's Scandinavian and therefore easy to learn since they know English"...we're talking not knowing even basic aspects of the language here).

I'm not ridiculing, I just don't get them.
(and I don't think productivity and fun have to be mutually exclusive.)

That sounds quite crazy. Pardon my bias but Romania is quite a poor country from what I understand. One would figure that getting ahead in an environment like that would be even more crucial than in a country with proper welfare to back you up if you don't make it.

Sometimes I wish that my country (Finland) would be the same in that people would go to such lengths to make sure that what they do will help them in the future.. I agree that they seem to be looking at it from a wrong perspective though. There should be languages you could pick up that a) are useful for the bottom line and b) interest you. But what you are stating is that people run around like headless chickens picking up languages the job listings tell them to? sigh.

Finnish is arguably the hardest European language to become fluent at. What the hell were they thinking? Swedish is spoken by population quadruple in size and is basically English with a melodic accent.

I understand your point of view much better now. My condolences...

Quote:(and I don't think productivity and fun have to be mutually exclusive.)

Precisely!

[Zgarbas]

Come on, Swedish ain't that easy either! It's deceptive, when it lures you in with "all the verbs end in r" and then you get a "but it'll take YEARS before you learn how to make plurals" in the face.

It's not the poor Romanians who are doing this, actually, but the mostly upper-class ones. Once you get used to having a monthly salary that's 5 times medium wage you aim even higher, I guess. (hilariously enough thanks to these guys language schools have raised the prices so much that most people can't afford them). It's hilarious, what can I say?

Zgarbas Wrote:btw, haters gotta hate. There's no shallow or non-shallow reason to learn a language. I do think it's kind of silly to learn a language for monetary reasons(like the gajillion people who are studying Chinese right now because it's good for business) because I think such reasoning gets in the way of the fun of learning a language, but each with their own =).

When I think of shallow reasons for learning a language, I don't think of anime or video games.

The first thing that comes to mind would be, as you said, the gajillion amounts of people who are studying Chinese just because they perceive it to be good for their jobs, their careers, business, or the umbrella they all fall under, money.

Having said that, I'm not going to lower myself to their (the people saying you are shallow for learning a language) level by saying "all of you people learning Chinese for money are shallow". If that's your goal, fine. Plenty of us go to school or college, not to learn, but to increase our money-making capacity (if I can digress, it's unfortunate our world has lead to this).

But I have a few interesting observations:

1) China is just as likely to rise like a phoenix and become the world's superpower as it is to fall like a rock and implode back to 3rd world status (depends on who you ask). It is also just as likely (probably more likely) to simply have a slow and steady economic growth. So if you're learning Chinese for money reasons, then the actual outcome (eg. rolling around in a sea of money like Scrooge McDuck) might not be as good as you'd like it to be.

2) If you're learning something solely for money reasons, I'm sure you can learn something else that will give you more bang for your buck than to learn a language. If you're like most people, maybe you should just take a basic personal finance course instead (how to budget, how to save, how to keep track of outflows etc). That will probably give your more money in the long run than learning a language.

3) If you're learning something solely for money reasons, then that means you're learning it for money reasons, not for fun reasons. That's really got to put a damper and slow down your language learning progress. Basic equation: More fun = More learning (to an extent).

4) I could be wrong but I remember reading somewhere that the highest proportion of people who speak English are Chinese people. Even if that's not true, the Chinese people who matter (CEOs, professors etc) are the ones who probably speak English. And they probably speak English better than you speak Chinese.

Just a few things that I think is worth considering.

I study Japanese because... well, it started when I was nine years old. I was informed that Japan was highly involved with robotics. When I was 11 I asked my mum if I could learn Japanese - probably so that I could eventually live there and build robots. She refused to pay for classes, saying, 'if you can't even learn German in school, how the hell do you expect to learn Japanese?'

I maintained a fascination in Japan though the love of robotics dwindled and was replaced by a fondness for Japanese culture in general (not pop culture so much, more traditional) and an interest in computer programming. I finally started studying Japanese whilst I was taking my computer science degree aged 18.

I took my mum to Japan in 2009 and she loved it, and although I'm nowhere near proficient in the language even after almost six more years (I turn 24 in a few days), I'm still trudging along and my long term goal is still to be fluent, even if I'm working as a programmer in an office in the UK instead of at a robotics company in Japan. I am going to Japan again later this year, but going somewhat off the beaten track this time (northern Japan) to see what fascinating things I can discover.

I study Japanese because...

I was fascinated by Antonio Inoki as a child and I am interested in Zen.

lol to be honest japanese people can't even understand antonio inoki at times.
I rememeber savanna's takahashi 高橋 was like oh I talked to antonio inoki on the phone for the radio show. takahashi said "I couldn't understand anything he was saying so I just kept saying "honma desuka" everytime after antonio inonki finished speaking. then antonio inoki told him "wow, this is the best conversation i've ever had/you really get me" or something along those lines because people don't understand him.

The reason he said this was.. I tthink it was the episode on ame talk where it's about the kouhai that are really good at sucking up to the senpai. He was saying how he would have to go drinking with the senpai and they just keep talking and at some point it gets hard to understand whta they or they just keep say the same thing over and over. so he realized that by saying honma desuka.... they think he's listening.

honma desuka means "really" in the kansai-ben

I want to get MEXT scholarship and go to study in Tokyo University... SOOOOOO BADLYYYYY!!!

qwertyytrewq Wrote:4) I could be wrong but I remember reading somewhere that the highest proportion of people who speak English are Chinese people. Even if that's not true, the Chinese people who matter (CEOs, professors etc) are the ones who probably speak English. And they probably speak English better than you speak Chinese.

I know this was ages ago, but I know very few foreign speakers who can translate into fluent English. People like Joseph Conrad are a real exception so if you can translate from Chinese into English I think you have a job 4 life...

No lofty goals for me, I purely started studying it to be able to consume more entertainment. It has actually sparked an interest in me for languages in general, but that was never my starting point. I will probably get it certified some day, just so that I can put it on my resume.

In my country(Poland), when a talk comes down to languages, almost every person tells me that someone from his family, or his acquaintance, is learning chinese. I dont really believe they're doing it with any other motivation than: because it help me to get a good job and alike. I wouldn't be able to learn anything this way. The same way i could just open an encyclopedia and try to learn it's contents, because that would help me to impress other people. That would just be going against myself and it's impossible in a long run. If there is no fun/interest in learning something, it's better to look somewhere else.

I guess my interest started with the anime. Not at first, but a little later(unlike everyone i know, who still does watch it) i began to care more about the voices, than what was the video itself about. I hardly ever watch any anime or read manga anymore, since there are more important things to do;p I've began learning just out of boredom, something like "it sounds interesting, let's take a look at japanese language". Right now, i only think "when i will learn it?" and never even had a thought like "will i be able to learn it?". Probably the biggest motivation for me to learn the actual japanese, were people who have learned hiragana and katakana, without going any further(most of the people just give up when they see some kanji). That made me build my motivation at the beggining, to not stop at the same point. I was actually trying by the grinding method, and i may have given up at some point. Im lucky that i have discovered Heisig's method, that made all my worries gone and turned "i will try" into "i will". Everytime i slack off with learning, im getting angry at myself, especially because it's already a little late to learn a language, and i can't afford to waste time anymore. I just made my target clear, both learning japanese and going to university began at the same time, and i want to become good enough(fluent?) at it, when i graduate(3,5 years). Too bad that learning one language to some extent, makes you interested in other ones. It's like opening the eyes after a long time, just to find out that most of it could've been used in a much better way. I can clearly say now, that im interested in the language itself and it's fun for me to spend my time on learning it.

I want to become an artist with animation and be fluent with a language where it could be useful for my future career. I hope to work in Japan or North America but to be able to use my Japanese to my advantage.

I started because I really really wanted to play otome games without any translation needed. But i continued because i fell in love with the culture, the people, fashion and the language itself, it's just so...beautiful sometimes when i get tired of studying or while i'm studying i look at something in Japanese and i just get this inexplicable feeling in me of i don't know maybe content or wonder at how awesome it is to be able to not only understand another language but one so different from my own. Because i started learning Japanese in grade 10, (grade 12 right now) I've fallen in love with language and just find them so fascinating. Making me want to learn Korean or Chinese next once i'm comfortable in Japanese. Oh and also I wanna go to Japan soooo badd. Everyone around me knows this, lol they even joke that I'll probably marry a Japanese man and have the wedding in Japan.

I study Nihongo because... I occasionally get enraged that Japanese people know so much more Japanese than me.

partner55083777 Wrote:I study Nihongo because... I occasionally get enraged that Japanese people know so much more Japanese than me.

This

Chillin' with the homies! Drink some beer, smoke a joint and go skate through Shibuya and Harajuku or just chill, lol. Can't imagine it'd be even half as fun if I didn't speak Japanese.
I mean, if you do it because you like Anime or want to make money off the shit, it's all good though. Personally I couldn't learn a language and not use it to communicate with, I'd get bored so J-Drama and all that ain't for me. But then again neither is playing the violin. Doesn't mean I don't respect those who can play--it certainly beats those who learn nothing at all.

And where does one get these joints...? :p

callmedodge Wrote:And where does one get these joints...? :p

Where does one go to jail afterward?

Japan is not the best country for potheads.

Japan's not a good country on drugs, period.

callmedodge Wrote:And where does one get these joints...? :p

Just find the nearest yakuza and ask for medicine.

Just don't get caught by the police because thats a perma-ban.

Nah, I was just curious. It`s definitely not something I`d ever do in Japan. Far too risky.

I wonder though. Is it actually that dangerous or is there just so much hype about it nobody`s ever really risked it?

I honestly wouldn`t be surprised if the risk was exagerated through propaganda and that`s how they curb it as opposed to their actually being a high street risk.

Not sure of your risk of getting caught, but as a foreigner in Japan it's something that's not worth getting caught doing. Penalties are harsh, and as a foreigner it's very likely you'll not get much leniency from the legal system.