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nnozomiI’ve been talking about languages with trobadora, laireshi, tinny and others for a while, and decided it was time to make a post about language learning/use. On reflection, a lot of my f-list people use one language in RL and another online/for fandom, or otherwise regularly function in more than one language, or just have a thing about language study… . Talk to me about the hardest things for you in studying your second (third, fourth, nth) language; the things you’re especially pleased with yourself for having mastered; why it’s easier (or harder) to write fic in a second language; what languages you would like to study if given the chance…and so on and so forth.
A native English speaker, I started foreign languages with French, which I have mostly lost, although I can still read Tintin and Patapoufs et Filifers with enjoyment. Bits of others in high school, mostly Japanese from college on: I think there must have been a precisely Japanese-shaped space in my brain, just waiting for it to fall in there at age 18. (I tried a couple of Ancient Greek classes for fun in my senior year and have never had such a hard time with a language class in my life; more foreign than Japanese, exponentially more complex than Latin or Russian, and don’t even start with me on the mi-verbs.) A bit of Portuguese for my senior thesis, with the result that any Portuguese text, even tractor manuals, now looks like song lyrics to me; some Korean later for work. Chinese right now, as a way to cope with 2020 and because (if things ever get back to normal) it’s genuinely useful here, and with not inconsiderable motivation courtesy of ZYL.
The list of “languages I’d like to study” is still long. I don’t think I can face another writing system at this age, but if anyone has ever heard of a romanized textbook for Hebrew, Arabic, or Farsi, I’m curious. Also, my plan for staying mentally sharp in my old age is to settle down one day on that Art Nouveau island outside Helsinki (I should be so lucky) and tackle Finnish and its fifteen cases.
I’ve thought for a long time that one key ability for language learning is the ability to make connections early and often—relating word forms and concepts both within the new language and to existing language knowledge. On the macro level, Chinese and Korean have both been infinitely easier for me to tackle thanks to Japanese (related writing system and grammar/syntax, respectively), the Romance languages all link up, and so on. Also, these connections can be not just useful but actually exhilarating when you realize how something works.
In Japanese, after twenty years of regular personal and professional use I’ve gotten to the point where I can choose to speak in dialect or in standard usage, read the nuances in pronouns and sentence-ending particles, handle prewar (although not pre-modern) texts and so on; I will never be a native speaker, though. I still say 緑 midori instead of 青 ao for traffic lights, for instance, because my brain sorts “green” and “blue” differently. Sometimes I suspect that, should I live old, I’ll end up able to speak only a champon (mixed noodle soup, ie mixture or garble) of Japanese and English, no longer able/willing to handle just one or the other…a personal pidgin (rather than creole), I suppose.
Never written fic in Japanese that I can remember, because my fannish life is mostly in English, but for Japanese canons like Nodame or Oofuri it might be easier? I've kept a diary at irregular intervals for many years, and there was a period when it was all in Japanese, because basically my whole emotional life was taking place in Japanese; since then it has gone back to English, with occasional exceptions.
I also have a whole bunch of related things to say about translation, personal and professional; let’s make that another day’s post.
Be safe and well.
A native English speaker, I started foreign languages with French, which I have mostly lost, although I can still read Tintin and Patapoufs et Filifers with enjoyment. Bits of others in high school, mostly Japanese from college on: I think there must have been a precisely Japanese-shaped space in my brain, just waiting for it to fall in there at age 18. (I tried a couple of Ancient Greek classes for fun in my senior year and have never had such a hard time with a language class in my life; more foreign than Japanese, exponentially more complex than Latin or Russian, and don’t even start with me on the mi-verbs.) A bit of Portuguese for my senior thesis, with the result that any Portuguese text, even tractor manuals, now looks like song lyrics to me; some Korean later for work. Chinese right now, as a way to cope with 2020 and because (if things ever get back to normal) it’s genuinely useful here, and with not inconsiderable motivation courtesy of ZYL.
The list of “languages I’d like to study” is still long. I don’t think I can face another writing system at this age, but if anyone has ever heard of a romanized textbook for Hebrew, Arabic, or Farsi, I’m curious. Also, my plan for staying mentally sharp in my old age is to settle down one day on that Art Nouveau island outside Helsinki (I should be so lucky) and tackle Finnish and its fifteen cases.
I’ve thought for a long time that one key ability for language learning is the ability to make connections early and often—relating word forms and concepts both within the new language and to existing language knowledge. On the macro level, Chinese and Korean have both been infinitely easier for me to tackle thanks to Japanese (related writing system and grammar/syntax, respectively), the Romance languages all link up, and so on. Also, these connections can be not just useful but actually exhilarating when you realize how something works.
In Japanese, after twenty years of regular personal and professional use I’ve gotten to the point where I can choose to speak in dialect or in standard usage, read the nuances in pronouns and sentence-ending particles, handle prewar (although not pre-modern) texts and so on; I will never be a native speaker, though. I still say 緑 midori instead of 青 ao for traffic lights, for instance, because my brain sorts “green” and “blue” differently. Sometimes I suspect that, should I live old, I’ll end up able to speak only a champon (mixed noodle soup, ie mixture or garble) of Japanese and English, no longer able/willing to handle just one or the other…a personal pidgin (rather than creole), I suppose.
Never written fic in Japanese that I can remember, because my fannish life is mostly in English, but for Japanese canons like Nodame or Oofuri it might be easier? I've kept a diary at irregular intervals for many years, and there was a period when it was all in Japanese, because basically my whole emotional life was taking place in Japanese; since then it has gone back to English, with occasional exceptions.
I also have a whole bunch of related things to say about translation, personal and professional; let’s make that another day’s post.
Be safe and well.
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Date: 2020-09-21 03:35 pm (UTC)I love this concept: the ability to make connections early and often—relating word forms and concepts both within the new language and to existing language knowledge, although the fact that I can't really wrap my brain around applying it to me is perhaps indicative of how I struggle with more "natural" learning techniques. Seriously, just give me a vocab list and some flash cards, please. It makes me wonder what my childhood language development was like.
Thank you for posting this! I look forward to hearing your other thoughts.
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Date: 2020-09-22 11:59 am (UTC)I do think that there actually is an overlap between rote memorization and making connections in language learning--short of, like, eidetics, anyone who's good at rote memory is, to some extent, making connections like that, I think, just not necessarily consciously. (wow there are too many commas in that sentence) Interesting to relate it to first-language development too; I bet a lot of us around here are the type to have learned huge swathes of vocabulary from books, and I wonder if that skews the sample!
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Date: 2020-09-22 02:25 pm (UTC)I wonder if my mom wired my brain for language learning or if it was just a lucky dice roll that my abilities intersected so well with her method. (probably a combo)
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Date: 2020-09-23 02:52 am (UTC)nurture + nature for the win. And your mom sounds lovely.
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Date: 2020-09-21 03:43 pm (UTC)I started learning foreign languages with Russian when I was 12. It was mandatory at Polish schools then. I learned it extensively for 7 years at school and knew it well enough to watch Russian TV or read books. From what I remember it wasn't really hard to learn. The alphabet is different, but it is a Slavic language and a bit similar to Polish. But I rarely used Russian for the last 20 years and now I'm barely able to read something in that language.
I started to learn English at school, too, when I was 14. I had a great teacher, so I didn’t really found it hard. And later I tried to practice it as often as I could through watching British and American movies without Polish subtitles and reading books. And practicing became much easier when I discovered fandom, because everything that interested me then was in English. So I had an opportunity to use it often. At that time I also had to use English quite often for work, so it all added up and now I think I know it quite well. :)
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Date: 2020-09-22 12:03 pm (UTC)Movies and books and fandom in general really seem to be the thing that works for language learning motivation, more than anything else, definitely for me with regard to Chinese. It's too bad schools can't teach that way.
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Date: 2020-09-28 02:07 pm (UTC)Slavic languages are very close. I’m the mainly knowledgably about Russian language, because that’s what I learned at school. But I catch sometimes Lithuanian or Ukrainian program on our local cable channel and I still can understand some of it even though those languages are a bit different. But a lot of words are similar and sound similar, for instance the phrase “I went” in Polish is “Ja poszłam”, and in Russian it’s almost identical if I write it in Latin script: “Ja paszła”.
Movies and books and fandom in general really seem to be the thing that works for language learning motivation, more than anything else, definitely for me with regard to Chinese.
Yeah, for me, too. I want to learn Chinese right now because of my new interest in Chinese dramas. In hope that maybe in a few years I won’t have to wait for English subtitles. 😊 I learned English so well, because I wanted to watch and read things that didn’t have Polish translation.
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Date: 2020-09-28 10:39 pm (UTC)I want to learn Chinese right now because of my new interest in Chinese dramas.
Yes, exactly ;) So much more interesting when you have the dramas to think about. (I actually do recommend Chinese Duolingo, if you want to play with it a bit--it can be frustrating and I'm sure from a native-speaker perspective it's not perfect, but it's nice, bite-size lessons, free of charge and easy to follow.)
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Date: 2020-09-27 03:05 pm (UTC)I don't mind the different alphabets, I can still read Russsian fine (without understanding anything of course).
The grammar is very similar, indeed, which - to me - makes both of them equally hard to learn. The two kinds of verbs (complete and incomplete, i forgot the linguistic terms) were the toughest thing for me. :D I didn't mind the cases so much, since both German and Latin have them, so I already understood how they work.
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Date: 2020-09-28 01:59 pm (UTC)That’s very useful. 😊
Fwiw, I really like how Polish sounds. It's the French of the Slavic languages. <3
Aww, thanks. I think it sounds nice, too, but I’m biased of course. 😉
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Date: 2020-09-21 04:17 pm (UTC)My native language is Polish, so I have the cases system and a perfectly acceptable number of consonants down, thank you very much; I honestly do think it’s helped me with Korean pronunciation to a certain degree (ㅈ, ㅉ, ㅊ, final ㅇall seemed easier to me than to my classmates—but for all that Polish has similar sounds and I am able to pronounce those clearly during pronunciation practice, I still struggle with them in actual words and with understanding Korean speakers, so…).
I started learning English and German at about the same age; I’m fluent in English and can perhaps introduce myself in German now. I think that’s due to two main factors: the first is that I only studied German in school, and a room of 30 kids with an average of a low-to-zero interest in learning was really not the best way to do it, and English in a language school with way better conditions. The second is the advantage that English has over most, if not all, languages, especially in the Western culture sphere—everything is in English. Baby Laire wanted to read more about Tolkien than we ever got in Polish; wanted to read Harry Potter before it was translated (I know how it sounds now, I know, but it was one of the first things I read in English…); finally discovered LJ and ff.net. So here I am now, living my online life almost exclusively in English because it honestly feels like my native language when it comes to fandom. (When I speak to my Polish friends, I use an unholy mix of both.)
And then of course I live in Spain, so I’m fluent in Spanish, although I’m still better at English. The thing with Spanish is that I’m basically bilingual when it comes to understanding, but I still need to improve my own usage of it. It’s okay for everyday life and easy entertainment, but I’m not all that comfortable writing longer forms etc.
Korean. Korean is hard. It’s my first non-European language, and first language with a different writing system (thank god for hangul though), and I think I’m getting better at it, but it’s a very slow process full of forgetting and re-learning and forgetting again. Being in Korea obviously helped; being back . . . Well. I do hope that, once I attempt either Chinese or Japanese after this, which is my long-term plan for the future, it’ll be easier. (ETA: it's not even grammar that's the problem, although of course it's a challenge. But it's the vocab, because obviously there are no common roots and nothing to help me guess a meaning of a new word. I had a one semester long hanja course, and while I don't remember the actual hanja, it actually helped me with understanding some vocab at least!)
tackle Finnish and its fifteen cases
Funny thing about cases: Polish has seven, German has four. Polish brain cannot deal with it. I don’t have any issue with languages that have none, but trying to map 7 cases to 4 is for some reason impossible to me. That said, I am extremely annoyed at myself for not speaking German, and at some point, I might return to it.
I still say 緑 midori instead of 青 ao for traffic lights, for instance, because my brain sorts “green” and “blue” differently.
Oh! That’s something I’ve heard about Korean and Chinese as well, the blue/green thing.
I prefer to use English when talking about my emotions—I feel myself fumbling, grasping at the words in Polish; everything is too awkward and raw and too difficult to articulate.
I study in Spanish, so even if I’m more comfortable with English overall, there are things that I learnt in Spanish and it remains the language in which I think of them.
I like being in multilingual situations and talking to people who share at least two of my languages and we can exchange ideas the way they come to us, without worrying about translation. It’s fun, it’s freeing, it makes me feel like the world is more open. Speaking of translation:
I also have a whole bunch of related things to say about translation, personal and professional; let’s make that another day’s post.
I’ll be very interested in what you have to say about that! I used to think about translation, but… I wouldn’t make a very good translator, I think, because I understand things but I’m not good at trying to express them in another language, if that makes sense? Even if it’s something that I could say in any language, the moment I have it said/written in one and try to translate, it just doesn’t work. Translators and interpreters are magical.
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Date: 2020-09-22 12:49 pm (UTC)Why are you sorry, this is EXACTLY the kind of thing I want to read. I'm still impressed by you and your fluency in four languages in completely different language families.
I have the cases system and a perfectly acceptable number of consonants down, thank you very much
I started Latin young enough to not be terrified by cases, and found the idea of cases surprisingly helpful when I started Japanese--you know in Korean too, you can think of -ga/i as nominative, -eul/reul as accusative, -eui as genitive and so on? They don't match up perfectly but it was a good way to cope with grammatical particles when just starting.
You're lucky to have the extra consonants available ;) Japanese is so much simpler than Korean that way, just one edition of each consonant and vowel.
I do hope that, once I attempt either Chinese or Japanese after this, which is my long-term plan for the future, it’ll be easier.
I would bet that it will ABSOLUTELY be easier; Korean and Chinese aren't that close but still share a lot of vocabulary, and Korean and Japanese have extremely similar syntax. Knowing any one helps with the other two, in my limited experience.
I don’t have any issue with languages that have none, but trying to map 7 cases to 4 is for some reason impossible to me
Fascinating, I wonder why it works that way! I wonder if anyone's done psycholinguistics/sociolinguistics type work on this.
I prefer to use English when talking about my emotions—I feel myself fumbling, grasping at the words in Polish; everything is too awkward and raw and too difficult to articulate.
Maybe there's a necessary distance? I don’t have different emotions per se in Japanese and English, but trying to put the same feeling into words often comes up with two completely different results, neither of them actually wrong; or sometimes I can only express what I’m feeling in one language but not the other, not always the same one.
I like being in multilingual situations and talking to people who share at least two of my languages and we can exchange ideas the way they come to us, without worrying about translation.
Oh yes. It doesn't happen to me that often, but I love multilingual conversations and the way people can play with language in that situation; I wish there were more novels, fics etc. featuring this kind of thing.
Even if it’s something that I could say in any language, the moment I have it said/written in one and try to translate, it just doesn’t work. Translators and interpreters are magical.
Good translation is an art and it's one I'm not often very good at, sadly, but it's fun to try. (You reminded me of a time when I had to translate my own Japanese conversation into English—for an anniversary event at the company I used to work for, there was a kind of round-table discussion I took part in which was later transcribed as part of a booklet that I then had to translate, and it was so hard because I kept thinking, but if I was speaking English I would have said something different!)
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Date: 2020-09-22 08:29 pm (UTC)This is the true curse of being fluent in more than one language, LOL.
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Date: 2020-09-23 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-24 07:33 pm (UTC)Fascinating, I wonder why it works that way! I wonder if anyone's done psycholinguistics/sociolinguistics type work on this.
To be fair, both my brother and dad are fluent in German, so maybe that's just me. (One day I'll defeat German, too >.> Possibly once I'm old and retired, but.)
or sometimes I can only express what I’m feeling in one language but not the other, not always the same one.
That's a good point!
I wish there were more novels, fics etc. featuring this kind of thing.
I feel like it's hard to relay in writing for the obvious reasons (using more languages limits your audience; it's also a spoken, informal thing--not sure how to convey it in writing?), but I'd love to see it, if done well!
I've been thinking some more about your post, and how I use my actual native language and English. Because no matter my thoughts on the topic (what a useless native language, honestly--I say, as someone with friends who were ESL teachers in Japan/Korea while I will never have that opportunity), I can't change the fact that I grew up Polish, but also . . . I don't dislike Polish, as a language? It's very beautiful. Polish poetry courses through my veins. For the first decade of my life, I read exclusively in Polish, and there's a certain kind of thrill to finding exquisite Polish prose (it's also extremely rare, but there are some books I've read not even for the content, just because of how pretty the language was). I enjoy pretty English prose, obviously I do, but I'm not sure it's at the same deep level. But I use English way more often, these days, and it just comes first to me most of the time; it doesn't feel like a foreign language anymore, you know?
Oh, also! English, at least, makes it very easy to be inclusive of different genders and gender-neutral language; Polish makes it all but impossible (honestly, our past tense is gendered, and that's just the tip of the iceberg). I like that Spanish sometimes uses the @ instead of a/o to be inclusive, even in semi-formal contexts, but to this day I have no idea how to pronounce it.
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Date: 2020-09-25 03:21 am (UTC)One good thing about being obsessed with languages--there are always more to learn, and it's something to look forward to in retirement, etc.!
I feel like it's hard to relay in writing for the obvious reasons (using more languages limits your audience; it's also a spoken, informal thing--not sure how to convey it in writing?), but I'd love to see it, if done well!
I've seen some good books set among Spanish-speakers in the US that do this; also one reason I love Zen Cho's short stories is that her characters use a Malaysian-(Chinese-)English which is a joy to read, and she's very good at using just the right degree of translation and context clues to make it understandable even to an outsider. But we need more!
I like reading your thoughts on Polish; more any time, please. I guess there's an inevitable...division of labor among the languages?...of sorts, which is both useful and sometimes sad.
I remember the gendered past tense from my short time studying Russian! Another issue for a translation discussion :)
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Date: 2020-09-27 03:08 pm (UTC)SO, SO TRUE.
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Date: 2020-10-03 10:24 am (UTC)Oh, do you have any particular rec? I couldn't really get into Sorcerer to the Crown but I haven't tried her short stories. The first time I was in Korea, there were a bunch of Malaysian students in my course, and I was really jealous of how multilingual they all were.
I guess there's an inevitable...division of labor among the languages?...of sorts, which is both useful and sometimes sad.
Yeah! It's really fun to think of how the brain deals with it :) It also reminded me of something from Shades of Magic--one character is trying to determine the other's native language and finally learns it when the other character swears; the justification is that you automatically swear in your native language... But here I am, fully unable to swear in Polish, at least aloud ;)
Another issue for a translation discussion
Almost forgot--I was at a translation panel on a con once and the translators explained how they dealt with problems such as the author not revealing the gender of the character. Sometimes they asked the author and sometimes they just had to pick something, from what I remember. Polish really is hard in that respect (although there's a drive now to use new gender-neutral pronouns, but that might just be my bubble).
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Date: 2020-10-03 11:02 pm (UTC)You can find some online here! "House of Aunts" is a novella which can be dark in places but is a great read; my overall favorites are "Prudence and the Dragon" and its semi-sequel "The Persistence of Angela's Past Life," both on that page. Let me know if you enjoy them. (I felt the same way about Sorceror to the Crown, which I read after I'd read these stories; I kept thinking, but where's the language fun?).
But here I am, fully unable to swear in Polish, at least aloud ;)
Huh! Interesting! What language do you say "ow" in when you stub your toe? (I am inclined to say "itaiii" in Japanese and then "fuck" in English, more often than not....). I remember reading a novel which included some juicy Polish swearing, all blood and cholera, but that may be very old-fashioned.
the translators explained how they dealt with problems such as the author not revealing the gender of the character. Sometimes they asked the author and sometimes they just had to pick something, from what I remember. Polish really is hard in that respect
I wish somebody would put together a collection of essays on translation and linguistic/social gender issues, there has to be a lot to say. Japanese has somewhat gendered first-person pronouns (can I say socially gendered rather than linguistically gendered? what are the proper terms? like, there's no grammatical difference, but "ore" is almost exclusively used by men, "atashi" is strongly female-coded, and so on), and I've read a couple of novels where the author deliberately uses this to mislead the reader about the gender of the characters. Hell to translate. It's about time I put up that post for us all to talk about translation....
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Date: 2020-10-04 04:03 pm (UTC)Awesome, thank you!
What language do you say "ow" in when you stub your toe? (I am inclined to say "itaiii" in Japanese and then "fuck" in English, more often than not....).
Just 'auć', usually, so pretty much only 'ow' ;) I really can't use the, ah, heavier Polish swears in speaking, and only occasionally in writing.
I wish somebody would put together a collection of essays on translation and linguistic/social gender issues, there has to be a lot to say. Japanese has somewhat gendered first-person pronouns (can I say socially gendered rather than linguistically gendered? what are the proper terms? like, there's no grammatical difference, but "ore" is almost exclusively used by men, "atashi" is strongly female-coded, and so on), and I've read a couple of novels where the author deliberately uses this to mislead the reader about the gender of the characters. Hell to translate.
Oh, this is fascinating! I can't even try to imagine how you could translate that.
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Date: 2020-09-21 05:06 pm (UTC)why it’s easier (or harder) to write fic in a second language
In general I find it easiest to write fic in the same language I consumed the canon in. So, English for English-language fandoms, German for German-language fandoms - character voices will always sound slightly off if the languages don't match. Which is a thing I'm still struggling with a bit, for Chinese dramas, since I don't in fact speak it and therefore can't write it, but I'm still hearing the characters' voices in Chinese ...
Back when I was regularly writing in both German and English I found them both equally easy (or hard). Then I only wrote English fic for a while, and the next time I tackled something in German suddenly every sentence I tried came out stilted and awkward. In conclusion: practice, practice, practice ... *g*
I’ve thought for a long time that one key ability for language learning is the ability to make connections early and often—relating word forms and concepts both within the new language and to existing language knowledge.
Yes! That's so true. And it feels so good when you make a connection for the first time, even if it's probably blindingly obvious to everyone else. *g*
I also have a whole bunch of related things to say about translation, personal and professional; let’s make that another day’s post.
Looking forward to it! :D
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Date: 2020-09-22 12:28 pm (UTC)Chinese was never on my radar ... until Guardian. *g*
I blame (thank) Guardian, not to mention the gentleman in your icon, for a LOT. As I was saying in another comment, I used to work tangentially with Chinese-language materials and had Chinese co-workers I was close to, but I never felt moved to study the language until, well, ZYL and company.
And it feels so good when you make a connection for the first time, even if it's probably blindingly obvious to everyone else.
Yes! So satisfying, like this huge exciting network gradually becoming visible.
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Date: 2020-09-22 08:28 pm (UTC)(For English, the three things that really helped me get beyond "I can totally write essays in this language but oh god don't ask me to talk to someone outside a school setting" were a) living in England for a year, and b) consuming non-written canons in English (not something that was very available when I was younger), and c) getting involved in English-speaking fandom. With Chinese, at least I'm ahead on point b? *g*)
And I suspect Professor Shen will be happy to be blamed for our sudden Chinese motivation!
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Date: 2020-09-23 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-27 03:12 pm (UTC)In fact, that is true for me for more than language alone. I don't like to read non-fiction, so basically I use fiction to learn things. I learn things from fanfic and from fantasy novels, and from fannish twitters and from my dw friends. Give me a non-fiction book and I balk. Which is weird, because I love learning new stuff (including languages), but it's just not happening without the right (=fannish) motivation.
The brain is weird.
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Date: 2020-09-29 08:20 pm (UTC)I can read nonfiction just fine, but I retain information about ten million times better if it relates to a fandom I care about. *g*
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Date: 2020-09-21 05:33 pm (UTC)I studied Spanish in high school and could read okay, but was never able to hold a decent conversation outside of class.
Did a little Welsh on my own in high school. Did a few hours of independent study Japanese senior year in high school at the local university.
Did a year of Welsh when I studied overseas at a Welsh university. That was my goal. Did a semester of Attic Greek senior year of college. I think that was triggered by reading Mary Renault while in Wales.
Got serious about Japanese and did the summer intensive course at Ohio State. Continued with year 2 classes, but had kinda hit a plateau and struggled a bit. This was in the late 80s.
Got serious again about Japanese and did the equivalent of another 2 years at a local community college (mid-00s) in time to go to Japan for the first time. Since then, I've gotten into stints where I review kana and some kanji and simpler forms and vocabulary for a few weeks than quit again.
I do okay at learning languages---I think because I have a good memory. I learn better visually than aurally though so I find speaking/listening sessions stressful.
The OSU courses start out romaji-based which I now hate and try to use kana-based books when reviewing. HOWEVER, I find the early all kana-based books difficult because the use of kanji/kana helps structure the sentence. When a sentence is all kana, no spaces, I find it harder to read because I need to figure out where the breaks are.
One nice thing about the OSU romaji books (Jorden) is that they included pitch markers so I think it helped my accent a little. It also had exercises that would build from very simple sentences to very complex ones. Showing how the pitch would change through those was quite useful.
Remember when I said I'd hit a plateau during year 2 Japanese at Ohio State? Partially it was brain-was-full and I wasn't doing enough work to really solidly learn the material. Partially is because my brain was now tossing out Spanish and occasionally Welsh words when I wanted Japanese words. During the summer when so focused on Japanese, I had no problem with my other languages interfering. After the summer when I was now working part-time, and doing other things, then my brain began mixing them up. It wasn't like my brain was trying to substitute in words that I didn't know or couldn't remember in Japanese. It was words like 'dog' and 'book'.
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Date: 2020-09-22 12:17 pm (UTC)I remember the Jorden romaji books--we used them when I spent a summer at Middlebury. They drove me right up the wall sometimes, but I did get something out of them in the end. (I used to think, why do we need kanji when we've got kana; then later I studied Korean and thought, why can't they use kanji/hanja!).
Partially is because my brain was now tossing out Spanish and occasionally Welsh words when I wanted Japanese words.
Brain foreign language settings are really weird this way, it's like anything that's not "native language" gets all mixed up together. I wonder why.
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Date: 2020-09-24 04:40 pm (UTC)When I arrived in Bangor the first time, it was the weirdest thing--I stepped off the train and looked at the mountains and was sure I must have lived there before in a past life. Which is odd because I don't believe in reincarnation.
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Date: 2020-09-25 03:14 am (UTC)Oh hey, me too! There's a whole lesson on Welsh pronunciation in there, isn't there? Such a good book.
When I arrived in Bangor the first time, it was the weirdest thing--I stepped off the train and looked at the mountains and was sure I must have lived there before in a past life.
That's a lovely thing to have happen.
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Date: 2020-09-21 08:30 pm (UTC)Language studies: I did a bunch in school and discovered I am very bad at learning languages from textbooks and teachers. I don't actually like the studying part, but I love unlocking new levels of understanding. It's weird and tied up with how speaking is the hardest part of language learning for me and teachers sometimes get impatient and then I feel stupid and it's a whole anxiety spiral. But I can still understand quite a bit of German and Spanish (it helps that they're both from language families I know). I have lost all my Latin and Classic Greek.
I didn't start Japanese until I was at university and that...the teachers were terrible (as in after I left there was a whole report on why the department was so poorly run and had such terrible student retention), but I loved the challenge of having a language that was nothing like any of the ones I already spoke. And because I'm a nerd I had plenty of practice material in the form of anime, which - again, exposure has always been how I've picked up most of my language. So when I got a chance to do an exchange year in Japan I went for it, even though I was doing my master's degree at the time. I went to Kyodai that have a hilariously loosely cobbled-together "international exchange program" (my impression was that any prof willing to come give a lecture in English was welcome and they'd fit it under one very broad category "course"). I also had nine hours of Japanese each week which, together with living in Japan, was excellent for me. I managed to test out of the beginner's course and into the intermediate for spring term (we followed the international academic year rather than the Japanese), and I feel it gave me a decent foundation. That and living in Japan got rid of that shame and anxiety I had in the classroom - the relief I faced when I spoke bad Japanese rather than English was amazing. And having to deal with banks and Ward offices and everything else necessary I learned how far you can get in real life if you apologize a lot and try your best! Nobody will interrupt you and scold you for your poor grammar! It's fantastic.
Sadly even going back to language school in Japan for six months and living there for another two and a half years never cemented the language for me. Not enough effort, not enough exposure...I didn't have much of a social life because I'm an introvert, and while I managed to pass the N2 I'm still at the annoying stage of knowing how much further I have to go. So! I study a little bit of Japanese every day. I have for years. Just kanji practice, mostly, and a bit of Duolingo, and a few exchanges on Twitter - enough so that I don't lose everything I've worked for, but not enough to make progress.
And Mandarin I kind of sort of started with a little bit after I started dating someone whose parents spoke it at home, but it wasn't until I fell deep into the C-drama pit that I had something to use for exposure. At this point I have managed to gain enough of a vocabulary that I can make out simple topics of conversation (瑞典人都说英国 level information) and I can recognizes words and phrases when I hear them used. I am nowhere near being able to say anything to anyone except my very patient wife (they had occasion to help me cobble together the sentence 这个饭馆的饭难吃) who will sometimes accidentally laugh at what what I do with tones (to be fair to them "the tea here isn't ghost" is a hilarious statement). And I am constantly grateful that I've spent so much time learning kanji because I have much higher reading comprehension than I do anything else. Being intimately familiar with all the building blocks with hanzi means the meaning of the characters at least stick, even when I forget exactly how to pronounce them.
I still don't like studying, I'm still very glad I don't have to sit in a class and practice dialogue - but I'm loving the feeling of mental boxes coming unlocked as I learn more and more and find that things I didn't use to understand are starting to make sense and fit together.
Vague future goals include learning Hangul because it's cool. But so far I've avoided all South Korean temptations, so the exposure isn't there yet. When that happens we'll see. :D
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Date: 2020-09-22 12:35 pm (UTC)I've been lucky enough to have a LOT of immersion with Japanese, both in the States and here, and I think it does make a difference, but a little bit at a time is a great way to hang onto it. As you say, it also makes the Chinese hanzi MUCH easier to learn.
I envy you having a Mandarin speaker around to practice with! My best friend in Taiwan is wonderfully patient with my terrible Chinese, but all our conversations are via text...I've pretty much given up on the tones in despair. Listening I feel like I could manage one day, more or less, but speaking... .
I'm loving the feeling of mental boxes coming unlocked as I learn more and more and find that things I didn't use to understand are starting to make sense and fit together.
Yes, absolutely, this is a great way to put it, and one of the big motivations for language learning in itself. (My other motivation for learning Chinese is of course Zhu Yilong and his face, but that's another story. :) )
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Date: 2020-09-23 12:12 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, absolutely. I picked up German vocabulary (though not the grammar) very easily, and because Spanish is so close to French I got to a decent conversational level in just three years of taking it in high school.
As you say, it also makes the Chinese hanzi MUCH easier to learn.
I can't even imagine how daunting it is to start Chinese as an adult learner without it! Japanese at least has hiragana and katakana to get you through, but with Chinese there are no training wheels, just hanzi.
I envy you having a Mandarin speaker around to practice with!
We really don't do it a lot, though we should...mostly because we both get distracted by all the things we have to talk about and halting language practice just isn't good enough for that. But it is extremely useful when I'm trying to learn to at least pronounce character names and such!
I've pretty much given up on the tones in despair. Listening I feel like I could manage one day, more or less, but speaking... .
Honestly same. And unlike with Japanese I don't feel like I'm ever going to spend a lot of time in China relying on Chinese alone so I have made my peace with that.
(My other motivation for learning Chinese is of course Zhu Yilong and his face, but that's another story. :) )
His face is a VERY good motivation!
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Date: 2020-09-24 05:45 am (UTC)So true. I feel like adult learners who start with Chinese must be much more right-brained than me and really receptive to visual information of that kind.
And unlike with Japanese I don't feel like I'm ever going to spend a lot of time in China relying on Chinese alone so I have made my peace with that.
Same here, although if the Current Situation ever recedes and I can go back to volunteering here, there are a lot of Chinese speakers and it would be useful. Still, one step at a time.
(HIS FACE.)
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Date: 2020-09-21 09:26 pm (UTC)That was it until 2016, when I signed up for a beginner's night course in Korean because I wanted to be able to tell if people where speaking to each other formally or informally in Kdramas. Learning Korean kind of became my fandom for a while: I was going to once-a-week classes, listening to TTMIK podcasts, watching dramas of course, and doing up to three or four language exchanges a week, plus a penpal in Seoul. I was also learning vocab for the first time in my life! But then my favourite language exchange partners left (they were all here on one-year work visas), and my Korean class was cancelled due to lack of interest, and I got swept up in Guardian... But I'm still at the point where, if I'm watching something in French, I keep expecting them to say 괜찮아요? Korean has taken over the "non-English language" part of my brain.
I'm hugely resistant to learning Mandarin because a) tones and b) writing (I'm not visual; I love hangeul!), so I haven't been watching any other Cdramas. Also because I'm trying to keep my Korean up, and Kdramas are pretty much my only exposure now.
And meanwhile, te reo Māori is having a resurgence, and obviously I should be learning that to know more about my home country and its values, but I'm still hung up on Korean. I have a little bit of language angst atm, is what I'm saying. It's so much easier to learn a fandom-adjacent language than a real world one.
(The other real-world adjacent language I could learn is Russian, because my sister-in-law is Russian, but they live in the US, and I don't actually communicate with them/her much at all, and of course she speaks English all the time, so it feels easy not to...)
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Date: 2020-09-22 12:13 pm (UTC)It's so much easier to learn a fandom-adjacent language than a real world one.
Yes! I mean, I've worked tangentially with Chinese in the past (on delightful fun things like measuring instrument manuals and backhoe guides) and had Chinese co-workers who were good friends, but never felt motivated to actually start studying it until I fell into Guardian. That drama has a lot to answer for. Still, I mean, languages are languages! The more you know the more you can learn.
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Date: 2020-09-23 06:45 am (UTC)That is an excellent point! Ha! Clearly I need to update my mental story of myself.
Another excellent point. Because I threw myself into learning Korean so wholeheartedly, it's easy to forget that it doesn't actually have to take over my whole life. ;-)
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Date: 2020-09-24 05:46 am (UTC)Yes! Needs to be done at regular intervals, like computers ;)
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Date: 2020-09-22 02:48 am (UTC)I am painfully monolingual, and my attempts at learning other languages haven't exactly been helped by the fact that I seem to have gotten through school without actually getting much formal education in grammar etc. >.< My grammar is excellent! But it nearly all comes from being such a voracious reader as a kid, so it feels like starting almost literally from the ground up when I've tried to branch out into other languages.
I'm in Canada, so French was mandatory up to grade 10, IIRC (starting in grade 1), and I kept it up until grade 12. And I got decent grades! How the hell I managed twelve years of decent/solid grades and yet came out of it not really feeling like I spoke any French at all, I do not know. (And this isn't a case of awkward "I have some knowledge but no confidence" or "I can fumble through basic conversation." There's just nothing there.)
Other than that I have one university credit each in German (barely passed, and my GPA never quite recovered; the professor was Not Good) and Modern Irish (respectable grade, but didn't retain anything) and multiple scattered attempts at learning Japanese over many, many years, none of which amounted to much of anything. Actually going to Japan for a few weeks in 2012 only convinced me that I was never going to learn enough for it to be really useful. :(
At this point I keep being tempted by Chinese for the obvious fannish reasons, but I find both hanzi and tones massively intimidating and kinda feel like if I'm going to put that much energy into a language, it should be another stab at Japanese, for work reasons. But I also periodically think maybe I should try French from scratch via some app or other (I very briefly tried Duolingo for Mandarin and didn't really like it much) and see if something can be unearthed from whatever part of my brain has some French info stashed away from those twelve years of studying it.
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Date: 2020-09-22 12:08 pm (UTC)Definitely, and thank you for joining in!
it nearly all comes from being such a voracious reader as a kid
Join the club ;) I think this applies to a lot of us around here, inadvertently self-taught grammar and vocabulary from devouring all the books in sight...
twelve years of decent/solid grades and yet came out of it not really feeling like I spoke any French at all, ...There's just nothing there.
Maybe it does depend a lot on the teachers and the curriculum, I don't know? As you may know, most everybody in Japan has at least six years of English classes from grades 7 through 12, and VERY FEW of them come out with any practical English ability at all, mostly because the curriculum design is so completely appalling. How not to teach languages. (On the other hand, this also very much describes my experience with math, and I think that's on me, sigh. A problem of interest too)
At this point I keep being tempted by Chinese for the obvious fannish reasons, but I find both hanzi and tones massively intimidating and kinda feel like if I'm going to put that much energy into a language, it should be another stab at Japanese, for work reasons.
I've been enjoying Duolingo Chinese, and finding that my Japanese background makes the hanzi much easier, so whichever order you choose to look at them in, they may be mutually helpful.
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Date: 2020-09-27 03:32 pm (UTC)I am not bilingual, my native language is German.
I started learning English in seventh grade. But I loved learning English, probably because my dad traveled to the US a lot when I was younger and brought me children's books from there. I don't know. Maybe just because it's everywhere these days (and already was back then, to some extent). I read all the English books our library had back then (=maybe a dozen), and I remember writing out vocabulary on sheets of paper and looking up the words later. I tried to watch movies and tv shows in English, everything I could get my hands on (which sadly wasn't much - but the motivation was there - and even back then, it was mostly of a fannish nature).
My English is pretty good, but it's nowhere near native level. I've never lived in an English speaking country for more than half a year at a time, either, so it could be better than it is. But I am happy with my English fluency anyway. Fandom keeps it fresh. (There were times, when I was living in the US, that I was dreaming in English. Good enough for me. :) )
Funny aside: I read a great German fanfic a few years ago and couldn't for the life of me manage to leave a comment. All of my fannish vocabulary is English. All of it.
I also learned the following languages in school or uni: French, Russian, Latin, Chinese, Japanese, and Polish. The only one I can really speak well of those is French. I had a French penfriend whom I visited every year during the Summer holidays (and she visited me), so that built up quite a good knowledge. But I do learn well in school environments, and French is the language (except Chinese) that I learned the longest, so it might just be school knowledge that built the foundation for that, too.
I started learning Chinese because I love the characters, from a purely artistic standpoint. I am a very visual (and kind of artsy) person in general, so the characters just appealed to me. I love (and at the same time boggle at the sheer impracticability) of a language built from little pictures. I do think that Chinese people think more in pictures than we do, having grown up on phonetically based languages, and that fascinates me.
Falling into cdrama fandom only revived my motivation to pick it up again. I had been learning it for over ten years, but only weekly evening classes in which you don't get very far. And then I stopped for over ten years, and picked it up again with my descent into Guardian fandom. I am still trying to keep that up, but - as usual - I am having more fun with the structural things like creating anki decks and making vocab lists than with the actual vocab acquisition. My ten years of evening classes got me the complete Chinese grammar, and I like grammar in general, because I like structure. But vocab? Uuuuugh no please no. So I still can't understand very much, because I'm simply missing the words. It is getting better, (after two years in the fandom I can see some slight progress) but it would be getting better faster if I could make myself study regularly. Ah, well.
I think I wanted to say more, but I forgot where I was going. :D
Ah, yes, I remembered one more thing: I watched a great gay romcom movie a few years ago, and it was in Swedish. I immediately started learning Swedish on Duolingo, solely because I loved that movie. (Still can't understand much, I only stuck with it for half a year, but, the impossibility of learning a new language doesn't stop me, apparently.)
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Date: 2020-09-28 10:43 pm (UTC)I think by the time you're writing coherent fanfic in your second language, you get to count yourself as bilingual! Why is everyone around here so modest ;)
Funny aside: I read a great German fanfic a few years ago and couldn't for the life of me manage to leave a comment. All of my fannish vocabulary is English. All of it.
lol, it's funny how this happens. It reminds me of orchestra stuff--I started out doing music in English, in the US, but have spent long enough doing it here that all the musical terminology, orchestra slang, etc. has been reset to Japanese inside my brain and I have to think hard to remember any of the English words.
I started learning Chinese because I love the characters, from a purely artistic standpoint.
I admire this! I'm completely opposite--I have no visual sense at all, and the characters were the biggest hurdle for me when learning Japanese. (Easier now in Chinese because I have the Japanese background.) That has to be a help.
It is getting better, (after two years in the fandom I can see some slight progress) but it would be getting better faster if I could make myself study regularly. Ah, well.
Yes, but also, we do this for fun ;) No reason to do more than comes naturally at any given time.