If you could completely learn one language instantly, which one would it be and why? It can be fictional or not.
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If you could completely learn one language instantly, which one would it be and why? It can be fictional or not.
Instantaneous knowledge? Thats a hard one.
I've got a bit of a background in German. I've tried learning both Irish Gaelic and Chinese Mandarin before. The military wants me to learn Urdu.
I'd probably go with Urdu out of ease. Or maybe Spanish, that would me much more useful to me. Mmmm, tacos.
Either Japanese or Russian. Japanese because I already know a bit and would like to finally be communicative in it, and Russian because the similarities between that language and mine are not big enough to make it easy to learn, but are just enough in the right places to cause incredible confusion. And I think it might come in handy one day. It also doesn't help that all the older generations here speak at least a bit of Russian. I don't like to be the person who doesn't know a language.
Spanish to help with jobs and such
Japanese for sure. I'm learning it, but the idea of knowing the ins and outs of it instantly is an offer too tempting to let go. Even just the idea of reading Subarashiki Hibi right now is intoxicating.
私も！！！Quote:
Originally Posted by Karifean
I spend a minimum of an hour a day learning Japanese. Been at it for about 20 months now and... it's getting there. My listening still needs a lot of work. If I could learn it instantly, that would be a hell of a lot of extra time to play video games. Or maybe get a social life? Maybe make some Japanese friends given my new found language skills!
Mmm I've learnt Japanese before (though it's so rusty now, my talent could fall apart if I tried to use it) and I really enjoy the language but being honest the language I'm currently interested in learning and which seems hard as smurf for me to get my pronunciation right in is Norwegian. My reasons for learning this language is because having visited the country, I'd love to go back more and more. Although many are fluent in English, it'd be nice to go there and understand all the things I see and hear and people I meet without having to inconvenience them by asking "Sorry, could you please repeat that in English?" to them.
Elvish.
Doesn't matter which Elvish because I know there's several (Tolkien, Warcraft, Dragon Age...)
I would love to master Japanese.
I know some of that language already - enough to understand spoken dialogues in old-school RPGs without too much problems - but it would be really awesome to truly be proficient in that language.
Guess I will just have to keep studying.
When I try to learn a new language, I just familiarise myself a bit with the grammar and then jump right in and start reading books and simpler texts, and look up any words that I don't understand.
Norwegian. I've been trying to learn but it's been a slow and painful process and sometimes I just fall out of habit of learning it and I forget everything I learned. It's quite discouraging tbh.
I've also tried to learn French but tbh I've found it much, much harder than Japanese.
It's a point of shame for me having grown up in Guernsey. I mean I could see Cherbourg from the end of my road.
Fox, Peter, Steve, and Karifean are weeaboos.
Modern Greek cuz of my boyfriend.
German, so I can finally talk to my in-laws without sounding like a toddler.
Tolkien Elvish would be awesome too.
You know you can become one yourself if you want. :p ^^Quote:
Originally Posted by Depression Moon
Actually, Japanese is a highly satisfying language to learn;
I always found that "Tae Kim Japanese Grammar" site to be highly valuable for that purpose. :choc2:
Japanese grammar is almost insultingly simple compared to the utter incomprehensibility of the writing system.
I wouldn't call it "insultingly simple", it is actually very different from English grammar.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fynn
Yes, you can probably understand the idea that an entire sentence can work as an adjective for a topic and such things (for example, the sentence "people who don't drink coffee prefer tea" would look kind of like "concerning not-drink-coffee-persons, the way of tea is good"), however this is clearly a very different kind of sentence structure that might take some time to get used to.
Relatively speaking. The writing system is incredibly broken with the amount of readings of each kanji and kanji combination (each reading borrowed from a different part of China at a different point in time, making it seriously messy). Really, compared to that, the grammar is really simple. I'm saying it as a speaker of a language with eight functioning grammatical cases, grammatical gender and God knows how many declensions, so that may be what makes me consider Japanese grammar really simple.
No additional language. I am fine with German, English and Japanese. French would be cool I guess but no must. Of course I will always be improving my English and Japanese and even my native language but those are my mains and that's enough for me.
Maybe the language of love?
I am not saying that Japanese grammar is necessarily difficult, I am just saying that it is very different and that some people might have some mild difficulties to get used to how sentences are written - especially casual speech.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fynn
But yes, a lot of languages are significantly more complicated - I started looking at Finnish grammar some time ago, and that language seems to have a lot of suffixes such as "-ssa", "-lla", "-lle" and so on.
Russian seems even more complicated and has a huge number of endings for all kinds of things, but that's relatively trivial since it isn't really a huge grammatical obstacle - you can often just look up the endings while reading a text and piece things together from context.
Fynn's Polish was a bitch to try to learn. I gave up on that fairly quickly.
Right now i'm a bit obsessed with Korean stuff so I'll go with that for instant learning.
I have found a book at the university library that apparently calls itself "Finnish for beginners".
I hope it has a lot of example texts, since I think that's one of the best ways to start learning a language while also building up your vocabulary, at least in the very beginning.
There are a couple Finnish lecturers and students there though, including at the library itself, so I might practise on them after a while.
Binary
Either Japanese, French or Portuguese.
I would love to learn German, French or Portuguese.
Or something cool like one of those languages they speak alllll the way up in Northern Canada
As someone who took Ancient Greek and Japanese in university (as well as having French as a second language), I can say that Japanese grammar is way easier, especially given the flexibility of the sentence structure. Grammatically the largest hurdle are particles. Also, linguist have no clue where to put the Japonic languages relative to other language families.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fynn
Grammatical gender, declensions and conjugation are a bitch. Ancient Greek had 3 grammatical genders, 5 declensions, and I forget how many verb tenses and modes. Plus when you get into like Homer and other poets where POETIC STRUCTURE IS PARAMOUNT, then spelling kinda dies. I am surprised I actually passed (barely). Hell, the prof taught Latin too and told us she marked us kinder because it was a harder language. (SIDENOTE: Oh, and Fynn she was Polish and told us to call her by her first name because she wouldn't force us to butcher her last name!)
Oh, can I add that I always found Latin to be interesting though never bothered to study it.
Yeah, I can see why she'd say that XD My first name is pretty straightforward for English speakers, but I'm sure you'd butcher my last name if I didn't tell you how it's pronounced (hint: Cz is pronounced like the English Ch as in cheese, and the stress doesn't lie where you think it does :p)
German. I already know a little - enough to get by as a tourist - but I'd love to be able to speak it fluently, mainly because my Dad lives in Switzerland, my step-mother is German and my sister (who lives with my Dad) speaks German better than she does English.
Quenya.
Japanese, because it's the hardest out of the languages I'd like to know.
German and Spanish I can learn the old fashioned way much more easily than I could learn Japanese.
Check out "Tae Kim Japanese Grammar" if you want to learn Japanese in a way that makes intuitive sense.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirage
That guide is great because it truly starts with the foundations, so you always know exactly what you are doing.
It uses tons of example phrases to really show how things work in actual writing, and it takes one step at a time at a pleasant pace.
Actually, I might as well link you to that site:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar
I think "Table Of Contents" has all the information you will ever need.
It might look like a lot, but each section gets you closer and closer to understanding the language.
Just focus on one topic at a time and it will feel much more manageable.
It's still not going to be easier to learn than German :p