Learning New Languages!

[cacheborn]

I had great experience learning Italian. Since I was staying in Italy, it helped me to penetrate the culture so to speak. Amazing experience!
I also had a brief encounter with Japanese during my short stay in Japan. I would have liked to continue. Japanese is a completely different animal. I had great fun during the short period.

I am learning French now but c'est tres dificile.

[cacheborn]

Originally Posted by aelle

Very close Kanjis are the Chinese ideograms that the Japanese adopted ; they are used along with 2 other entirely phonetical (and therefore much easier) writing systems. Japanese school children must know just under 2000 of them by the time they graduate from high school, but college-educated people may know several thousands more.

They are Hiragana/Katakana, right? I tried to learn them but there was just not enough time. So I learnt what infinitesimal amount I could by reading it in English. Like 'Watashi wa casheborn desu'.

[Rose of Cairo]

Originally Posted by cacheborn

They are Hiragana/Katakana, right? I tried to learn them but there was just not enough time. So I learnt what infinitesimal amount I could by reading it in English. Like 'Watashi wa casheborn desu'.

Yes, it's hiragana/katakana. Much easier than kanji! I learned a tiny little bit of Japanese in rōmaji (= in latin letters) last summer too. Like "Kono heya ni kodomo ga imasu". It was so much fun! Then I learned hiragana and katakana but forgot them again and never got farther than that. Too bad, actually.

[cacheborn]

Originally Posted by Rose of Cairo

Yes, it's hiragana/katakana. Much easier than kanji! I learned a tiny little bit of Japanese in rōmaji (= in latin letters) last summer too. Like "Kono heya ni kodomo ga imasu". It was so much fun! Then I learned hiragana and katakana but forgot them again and never got farther than that. Too bad, actually.

You need to be in constant touch in order to remember the alphabets. I agree, it's much easier that Kanji. Obviously, it's much easier to remember 30+ characters as compared to 20000+ . It seems in Chinese each alphabet is a kind of pictorial representation of the word. That's why they have so many of them.

[Rose of Cairo]

Originally Posted by cacheborn

It seems in Chinese each alphabet is a kind of pictorial representation of the word. That's why they have so many of them.

It's not alphabets, it's ideograms. As far as I know, each one of them represents an idea, an object, etc. Words consist of one or several ideograms. It's fascinating. In that sense, Chinese has no alphabet at all, unless you consider all possible single strokes to be forming some kind of alphabet. Someone speaking Chinese here?

@Angelique: hey thanks! How cool. I'm keeping it in the back of my head!

[cacheborn]

Originally Posted by Rose of Cairo

It's not alphabets, it's ideograms. As far as I know, each one of them represents an idea, an object, etc. Words consist of one or several ideograms. It's fascinating. In that sense, Chinese has no alphabet at all, unless you consider all possible single strokes to be forming some kind of alphabet. Someone speaking Chinese here?

One of my (french) friends was learning Chinese and everyday I used to ask him about it. Chinese is also a tonal language. So a slight difference in tone (which is very difficult for a foreigner to notice) can change the meaning of the word entirely. The word 'Ma' can mean five different things with a slight variation in tone!

I am sure there are persons from China here. Hope they notice this.

[Rose of Cairo]

Yes, there are five different tones in Chinese: up, down, constant high, down-and-up, and "no tone". I didn't find it difficult to notice though. But then again, I learned Chinese for only three months and the teacher was speaking slowly.

[cacheborn]

For me even the French pronunciation is difficult to understand. They combine so many vowels together! Tres dificile.

Once a Chinese friend of mine said Ma in five different tones and they all sounded the same to me.

[openeyes]

One interesting benefit to learning a tonal language such as Chinese is that it greatly increases the likelihood of a child developing perfect pitch musically, since they learn to have identify more tones:

Tonal languages are the key to perfect pitch - life - 06 April 2009 - New Scientist

[cylon]

I've been teaching myself Spanish for about a month, it's proving to be quite fun. I'm still learning words, hope to learn actual sentences soon.

[cacheborn]

Originally Posted by openeyes

One interesting benefit to learning a tonal language such as Chinese is that it greatly increases the likelihood of a child developing perfect pitch musically, since they learn to have identify more tones:

Tonal languages are the key to perfect pitch - life - 06 April 2009 - New Scientist

Nice article. Also amazing is how quickly childern grasp new languages.

learning new languages also changes the way you think. Different languages force you to alter your usual mode of thinking.

Edge: HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? By Lera Boroditsky

[Ximen]

Originally Posted by cacheborn

once a chinese friend of mine said ma in five different tones and they all sounded the same to me.

lol

[Ximen]

Originally Posted by cylon

I've been teaching myself Spanish for about a month, it's proving to be quite fun. I'm still learning words, hope to learn actual sentences soon.

Hola Cylon! Espero que aprender español tan pronto como sea posible!

Dunno whether I made sense or not but I want to learn Spanish too.

[openeyes]

Originally Posted by cacheborn

Once a Chinese friend of mine said Ma in five different tones and they all sounded the same to me.

So they may have been offering you a horse, their mother, hemp, scolding, or asking a question

[CoolBee]

Yes, it's interesting how language shapes thinking. I learnt just a couple of weeks ago that in colloquial Egyptian arabic (can't speak for formal or any other dialect of arabic as I don't know) if you lose something, say your purse: In English we say "I lost my purse" (responsibility = I (me)). In Egyptian they say "My purse went from me" (responsibility = the purse). That could surely shape some attitudes!

Also, when I was a doctoral student, we had a lecture on languages and wave-particle duality. wave-particle double-slit experiment Ie light beams seem to behave like particles when moving and then like waves upon passing through slits and 'landing' on a piece of film or other detector.

Now, apparently, this 'paradoxical' nature of bodies could be explained as a semantic construct because apparently in native American and Basque languages there is NO paradox because in those languages there is no presumption that a moving object is the same as a stationary object so they have no problems at all (apparently) in something behaving one way when it's moving and another way when it's not. Sorry I have no references for this and don't have time to crunch the googlemonster right now.

[CoolBee]

Ah yes and a cautionary tale. One of my mother's friends studied Classical Greek at university and went to Greece on holiday (way back when). She wanted to hire a donkey to go up a mountain and asked in her best classical Greek. Apparently in modern Greek she had actually asked for an old man to take her up the mountain

[openeyes]

Originally Posted by CoolBee

She wanted to hire a donkey to go up a mountain and asked in her best classical Greek. Apparently in modern Greek she had actually asked for an old man to take her up the mountain

A high school spanish teacher was in Costa Rica and meant to say "I'm hungry and want some cocoa", but it was understood as "I'm pregnant and want some cocaine". ...

[CoolBee]

LOL - So dangerous this pronunciation lark!!

Here:
hamam = pigeon but hammam (linger longer on the mm) = bathroom
haram = pyramid and - I think - Haram (heavier H) = 'forbidden' (as by the religion rather than the law).
No wonder they look quizzical when I ask 'hamam feyn' (where is the pigeon or "microbus Haram feyn" - where is a forbidden microbus)

[Weena]

I speak only two languages fluently, and try languages of the countries i visit but it's always very superficial, I'd need total immersion for a few months to pick up a language perfectly. I know i'd love to learn spanish (quite attracted by Peru so it'd help to know the local language) and Thai (but a different alphabet and so many ways to pronounce one word make it a hard language to learn) and improve greatly my Dutch (lovely language, methinks). Sign language sounds pretty cool too. After all, that is what we all use when trying to communicate with someone talking an other language and it seems to work fantastic (oh, once again not with Thai people, some innocent gestures from the west are highly offensive in the east ).

[Rose of Cairo]

Originally Posted by Weena

Sign language sounds pretty cool too.

Yes! I've been wanting to learn it for a long time now. As well as braille. I learned morse in the past, but forgot about it again. That was cool.

(oh, once again not with Thai people, some innocent gestures from the west are highly offensive in the east ).

Interesting! Can you give us examples?

[Joshuaa]

I bet I'm the only person here who can speak Gaelic ;D
I also know a tiny bit of German

I've wanted to learn another for a while but self-teaching is so difficult and the cash for a tutor isn't possible right now

[Weena]

[QUOTE=Rose of Cairo;494707
Interesting! Can you give us examples?[/QUOTE]

If you move your finger as if saying "come here" it's the same as giving the middle finger, you never ever should touch someone on their head (grown up and kids alike), and never point your foot towards someone. You 'wai' (salute with hands joined and bow of your head) older people but not younger ones etc... I must say first time i went there i was VERY happy to read a "guide du routard" explaining all these things before doing any faux-pas. There are other things but those are the main ones i remember...how i used to try to find a way to sit in a taxi bus without my feet pointing at the person in front of me and in temples, making sure to have my feet under my bottom (sacrilegious to let them point towards Buddha) yet making sure they weren't pointing at someone behind me ). I have to precise that I loved Thailand with all my heart, this is just fond memories i describe!

[Weena]

Originally Posted by Joshuaa

I bet I'm the only person here who can speak Gaelic ;D

Slante! Hmmm, i remember a few words and how to pronounce them but forgot the spelling . I remember my boss tried to teach me how to swear in Gaelic but i forgot, i just remember "welcome" "cheers" "thank you" and "goodbye" (cheers being my favourite, can you tell i drank a fair bit whilst living in Eire?)

[cacheborn]

Originally Posted by openeyes

So they may have been offering you a horse, their mother, hemp, scolding, or asking a question

Coool! I had no idea the meanings were so different.

[Snorkledorf]

My desire to study a language always gets an extra boost if it's a language that uses a non-roman writing system. Japanese of course, but Weena's mention of Thai reminded me that I recently downloaded some iTunes U PDFs for studying Thai too...for no particular reason other than it has a nifty curlicue script.

My brief study of Korean was mostly fueled by the neatness factor of the Hangul script itself, which I can still (slowly) "decode," even though I don't actually remember what much of the vocabulary means once I've decyphered it.

Has anybody else used the Pimsleur audio sets? I have Korean, Chinese, and Spanish I (Paul Pimsleur is like a minor deity to me... ). I just wish their Spanish was "Spain Spanish" because when I visited some friends in Madrid and tried to use what I learned from Pimsleur they indulgently shook their heads at me and were like, "No no no, that's Miami Spanish." Whatever that means...

[cellardoor]

I'm about to start Japanese. I failed big time at Swedish when living there, and French/German at school. This time things are going to be different...