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I have an admission. A couple months ago, probably after watching too much anime, I set myself a challenge: learn Japanese.
Considering my years of high school Spanish that came to naught, my expectations are atypically low. However, I deeply believe that anyone can learn anything, given enough time and will. Indeed, I once considered writing a "How to teach yourself anything" book and realized that if I were to be truly honest I'd have to teach myself something I considered challenging; a language.
So, I started to gather the materials I'd need. Along the way a funny thing happened. A friend admitted that they really, really wanted to learn French and it's a shame we'd be working along different paths. Also, my Chinese coworker started offering daily lesson in her language.
French. I don't know why, but I never really caught the whole je ne sais quoi of romantic Paris. Perhaps I'm just bothered that there's an entire country that spells worse than I do. As a Medieval history enthusiast and cook, I should be more intrigued by learning French than I am. It was the only language I didn't even consider in my high school offerings.
Chinese, Mandarin specifically, is another matter. Verb conjugation, that bugbear of all Romantic languages, doesn't exist. The grammar is simple. However, there's one big draw back; you sing it wrong and you miss it entirely. Nothing is so picky to pronounce as a tonal language. As such, books are basically useless to a beginner. Example, "ma ma ma ma" means "mother is scolding the horse", depending on the tone. And the written language? Every one of those ma's has a different character. Total of about 50,000, though only 7,000 is considered literate.
Japanese is fun. It has about 50 sounds that are very consistent, as well as a standard rhythm. They have four ways of spelling stuff, two syllabaries, about 2000 of those Chinese character, and the English alphabet. They have more ways of saying please and being generally polite than an Eskimo has for cold and snow. I actually found it the easiest of the three on first glance. Ok, maybe not. There are a staggering amount of special cases and conditionals, but it still looks entertaining.
So, after about a month of playing with Japanese we start talking Mandarin at work. Just hello, goodbye, that sort of thing. But, there is a human I see every day who's willing to answer questions about it and other's who are also trying to capture a few phrases. I'm now sorely tempted to seriously look and Mandarin. Oh, and I feel guilty as hell about not learning French.
I feel like a cartoon character offered a numerous appealing choices. His head is whipping madly between all options, but he's frozen in indecision. Guilt is a crappy motivator, so I have to leave French for now. I really like Japanese and just once want to watch a Kurosawa movie without subtitles.
After much internal debate, I've finally bought some Mandarin materials. No more waffling between choices. Time to study.
Considering my years of high school Spanish that came to naught, my expectations are atypically low. However, I deeply believe that anyone can learn anything, given enough time and will. Indeed, I once considered writing a "How to teach yourself anything" book and realized that if I were to be truly honest I'd have to teach myself something I considered challenging; a language.
So, I started to gather the materials I'd need. Along the way a funny thing happened. A friend admitted that they really, really wanted to learn French and it's a shame we'd be working along different paths. Also, my Chinese coworker started offering daily lesson in her language.
French. I don't know why, but I never really caught the whole je ne sais quoi of romantic Paris. Perhaps I'm just bothered that there's an entire country that spells worse than I do. As a Medieval history enthusiast and cook, I should be more intrigued by learning French than I am. It was the only language I didn't even consider in my high school offerings.
Chinese, Mandarin specifically, is another matter. Verb conjugation, that bugbear of all Romantic languages, doesn't exist. The grammar is simple. However, there's one big draw back; you sing it wrong and you miss it entirely. Nothing is so picky to pronounce as a tonal language. As such, books are basically useless to a beginner. Example, "ma ma ma ma" means "mother is scolding the horse", depending on the tone. And the written language? Every one of those ma's has a different character. Total of about 50,000, though only 7,000 is considered literate.
Japanese is fun. It has about 50 sounds that are very consistent, as well as a standard rhythm. They have four ways of spelling stuff, two syllabaries, about 2000 of those Chinese character, and the English alphabet. They have more ways of saying please and being generally polite than an Eskimo has for cold and snow. I actually found it the easiest of the three on first glance. Ok, maybe not. There are a staggering amount of special cases and conditionals, but it still looks entertaining.
So, after about a month of playing with Japanese we start talking Mandarin at work. Just hello, goodbye, that sort of thing. But, there is a human I see every day who's willing to answer questions about it and other's who are also trying to capture a few phrases. I'm now sorely tempted to seriously look and Mandarin. Oh, and I feel guilty as hell about not learning French.
I feel like a cartoon character offered a numerous appealing choices. His head is whipping madly between all options, but he's frozen in indecision. Guilt is a crappy motivator, so I have to leave French for now. I really like Japanese and just once want to watch a Kurosawa movie without subtitles.
After much internal debate, I've finally bought some Mandarin materials. No more waffling between choices. Time to study.