Foreign Languages

[Michael]

For the last two weeks I have been in Japan (Okinawa) and hadn't until this point seriously looked at Kanji.  Clearly the Japanese have seen the advantage of the Western numerical system, and adopted that whole.  Although there is an economy of expression (one character words) I still think Kanji suffers from a lack of word attack possibilities inherent in a phoneme based language.  Once Westerners learn the Alphabet, and some basic phonics skills, we can take a stab at pronouncing any written word.  There IS a Kanji dictionary, but it is based up the number of brush strokes in the word... quite the penmanship based way to try to look something up!  I really think in the long run (a thousand years or so) a phoneme/alphabet based language will become dominant--it might still be Japanese, but words written like these, not pictographs. 

[eytanz]

I really think in the long run (a thousand years or so) a phoneme/alphabet based language will become dominant--it might still be Japanese, but words written like these, not pictographs. 

I understand the prediction of Kanji going away - though I don't know how well-founded it is, given that you've only spent two weeks in the country - but why would you predict a phoneme based language, as opposed to Kana, which is syllable based and has the advantage of already existing?

[wakela]

OK, now you've got me started.  I've been living in Japan for the last three years, and, since my goal is Japanese fluencey, I've spend an enormous amount of time studying kanji. 

Although there is an economy of expression (one character words) I still think Kanji suffers from a lack of word attack possibilities inherent in a phoneme based language.  Once Westerners learn the Alphabet, and some basic phonics skills, we can take a stab at pronouncing any written word.  There IS a Kanji dictionary, but it is based up the number of brush strokes in the word... quite the penmanship based way to try to look something up!  I really think in the long run (a thousand years or so) a phoneme/alphabet based language will become dominant--it might still be Japanese, but words written like these, not pictographs.

Who knows what's going to happen in a thousand years.  Look at the previous thousand.  But I don't think Japanese people feel they are at any kind of disadvantage with having to learn kanji.  I'm sure they hate it at the time (I know I do), but believe it or not, there are advantages.  One/two characters per word, as you mentioned.  Also, the meanings of those characters are very specific and allow for very specific words to be created or made up on the fly.  For example they have one word that means "visiting a grave" and "the first fruit of spring."   In my Japanese lesson I was confused by a sentence written all in kana until the teacher wrote the kanji for me.   Also, there are so many words that sound the same in Japanese, that Japanese TV shows often have Japanese subtitles!  When they read English they can't believe that we put up with so many strange spellings and have such ridiculously long words as "automobile."
 
I think the effect of computers will be interesting.  People no longer have to write the things out, so they forget all those little strokes.  They can read them, but writing ability is fading.  Like us with spellcheckers.

So how do you like Okinawa?  My wife and I honeymooned there.  Let me know if you get up Tokyo way!

[Michael]

Seriously, dude, when is the last time you said the word "automobile" is casual conversation?  About as often as Horseless Carriage, unless you are British, Brits do seem to love their antiquarian expressions.   

I noticed the subtitles!  I thought we were talking serious dialect problems, I didn't realize it was for the reasons you gave...  isn't that kind of a problem, to have a language be so imprecise as to require the subtitles for a native speaker to understand?  English is so robust and redundant you can garble it way up and still comprehend.  True, that reduces efficiency, but that is more than compensated for by increased fidelity.   Also, I don't really notice the Japanese take less time to say a similar concept--maybe they are expressing it more deeply?      

I got here for the worst Typhoon since 1951.   

Only staying a few more days.  Well, off to Lawson's Station for some more Orion Beer!   

[wakela]

I noticed the subtitles!  I thought we were talking serious dialect problems, I didn't realize it was for the reasons you gave...  isn't that kind of a problem, to have a language be so imprecise as to require the subtitles for a native speaker to understand?  English is so robust and redundant you can garble it way up and still comprehend.  True, that reduces efficiency, but that is more than compensated for by increased fidelity.   Also, I don't really notice the Japanese take less time to say a similar concept--maybe they are expressing it more deeply?

And yet they don't use the subtitles on the news.  I think they are mostly used on those loony variety shows where people are speaking more informally.  Japanese don't seem to have any problems using the phone, either.  Though it's funny to hear them "spell" an unusual last name.  They have to describe what the kanji looks like in terms of other kanji.  "It's like a wisteria without the tree over a moon and rice field."  I agree that Japanese seems to be less redundant.  An American friend of mine here who speaks very good Japanese says that if you miss the beginning of a conversation it's really hard to figure out what they are talking about.  You can leave the subject out of a sentence, plurals are rarely used, and there is no noun-verb agreement.

Though you may have a point with the dialects.  Usually, TV people speak Tokyo Japanese, which everyone in the country knows.  But for some reason comedians often hail from Osaka, and Tokyo people may not get all the jokes, so they write them out on the screen.  When we were in an Okinawa restaurant my wife asked the waiter why he wasn't speaking with an Okinawa dialect.  He said that he knew she was from Tokyo, and that the way Okinawans speak would make her angry.  It's too direct.  We've been to parts of Japan where she has no idea what people are saying.  I think it's like the UK in that regard. 

I got here for the worst Typhoon since 1951.

Yeah, you guys had some fun with that one.  We got some rain, but that's about it.

Only staying a few more days.  Well, off to Lawson's Station for some more Orion Beer!

Pick up some coconut Pocky and Calpis for me! 

Too bad you're not going to be here next month for World Con.

[Anarkey]

I thought this study, about the correlation between the size of Heschl's Gyrus in the brain and the ability for adults to learn a second language was fascinating: http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2007/07/neuroscience.html

[Planish]

I had a few dozen words and phrases in Inuvialuktun, but I was not very good at stringing them together. Also, the difference between some of the phonemes was imperceptible to me, so that I would be causing hilarity by attempting to pronounce one word, and having it come out as something else, like "snot" instead of "caribou calf".
I at least had enough to get the gist of captions on drawings.

[stePH]

I want to learn Japanese.  Even after having read this. 

I don't know any Japanese-speakers to practice with, but I do have a lot of anime on DVD, and I listen to Japanese pop artists like Masami Okui and Ayumi Hamasaki all the time.

[edit]
oh, and I also have a couple of children's books in Japanese, and some untranslated manga of Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2 as well as all six Revolutionary Girl Utena volumes.

[Russell Nash]

Since someone did some threadromancy, I'll tell you about my current adventure.  I have the first Harry Potter in German on the top of my TBR pile.  I'm going to take a break from the Terry Pratchett and really try to improve my German.  Wish me luck.

[cuddlebug]

Russell, I am not sure you'll like that in German. The translation is rubbish and in German HP is much more of a children's book than in English, at least that is my impression. But if you do it to improve your German it is worth a try. But if you have read the English version, you might get really frustrated at the idiotic translations and the missing jokes/references you remember from the original.

Have fun with that, let us know how you liked it.

[wakela]

I want to learn Japanese.  Even after having read this. 

I don't know any Japanese-speakers to practice with, but I do have a lot of anime on DVD, and I listen to Japanese pop artists like Masami Okui and Ayumi Hamasaki all the time.

[edit]
oh, and I also have a couple of children's books in Japanese, and some untranslated manga of Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2 as well as all six Revolutionary Girl Utena volumes.

I checked out the link.  It's pretty funny, and written by a guy who knows what he's talking about.  I wouldn't say that Japanese is "hard."  I would say "it takes a long time."  There are just as many Japanese idiots as there are anywhere else, and they all speak excellent Japanese. 

An American friend was one of the interpreters for Worldcon in Yokohama last year, and he never took a Japanese class.  He got it all from manga and anime.  OF course he REALLY likes manga and anime. 

Well, as I mentioned in previous posts, I live in Japan and have spent a lot of time studying Japanese.  I have materials and have formed strategies that I think are useful.  But I don't think many people would be interested in them, so if you want to talk about Japanese study more, feel free to contact me directly.  In the meantime check out these sites.

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about/overview-page
http://forum.koohii.com/

The first one is a blog where the guy gives very specific details on how he achieved Japanese fluency in 18 months.  Apparently it involves working your ass off. 
The second one is the discussion forum on a kanji study website, but they talk about studying all aspects of Japanese.  It's very n00b friendly.

[wakela]

Since someone did some threadromancy, I'll tell you about my current adventure.  I have the first Harry Potter in German on the top of my TBR pile.  I'm going to take a break from the Terry Pratchett and really try to improve my German.  Wish me luck.

The trick with reading practice is finding good stuff to read.  The reading passages in text books try to be interesting, but we all know how that works out.  And after I spend an hour translating a single paragraph in a newspaper only to find out that the finance minister's plan to decrease steel import quotas a quarter of a percent will likely not be but up to a vote I want too burn myself alive. 

But Harry Potter is a pretty big bite.  It might be more encouraging to read short stories.   Then you could tell your self how many stories you have actually finished rather than what depressingly small percentage of Harry Potter and The 900 Pages you have put behind you.

[Boggled Coriander]

I've lived in Taiwan for over a year now.  As a result of my ability to force myself to sit down somewhere and study, combined with my relative laziness in speaking to strangers, now I can read and write Chinese far better than I can speak it.

I figure it's fairly common to be more adept at reading/writing a foreign language than speaking it.  But it takes a certain kind of dysfunctionality to achieve it in Chinese, of all languages.

[wherethewild]

Since someone did some threadromancy, I'll tell you about my current adventure.  I have the first Harry Potter in German on the top of my TBR pile.  I'm going to take a break from the Terry Pratchett and really try to improve my German.  Wish me luck.

Dude, that's been on your pile for ages. Glad you're getting around to it. It was the first book I'd ever read in German as well, although I had deliberately not read the English ones in order to force myself to knuckle down and do it. I started by reading it out loud to my husband, but then got quick enough that it was faster to read it to myself.

I read the last HP in English because I didn't want to wait 6 months for the translation. It just wasn't the same

[Chodon]

In 2005 I was lucky enough to visit Japan for a week.  I studied enough Japanese to be able to point and play charades and stammer through a few words to get my point accross.  Whenever I would stammer out a few poorly composed syllables native speakers would always comment on how fantastic my Japanese was (which was obviously just being polite).  I had to learn the phrase "thank you, but my Japanese is absolutely horrible", which only made them rave about my linguistic skills more and try to engage me in conversation, which I couldn't understand at all.

The point of this is if someone tried to speak English in the US as poorly as I spoke Japanese in Japan the most likely response would be "This is America!  Learn American or get out!"  I don't understand that mentality.  Odds are the person trying to speak English speaks it better than you could speak their native language.  It drives me nuts!  I wish Americans could be more accepting and encouraging like the Japanese.

[wintermute]

Hear, hear.

[birdless]

I want to learn Japanese.  Even after having read this. 

Hilarious! It's like reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy entry on the Japanese language.

[Darwinist]

The point of this is if someone tried to speak English in the US as poorly as I spoke Japanese in Japan the most likely response would be "This is America!  Learn American or get out!"  I don't understand that mentality.  Odds are the person trying to speak English speaks it better than you could speak their native language.  It drives me nuts!  I wish Americans could be more accepting and encouraging like the Japanese.

Yup. Less rednecks with confederate flag stickers on their pickups in Japan, too. 

[Chodon]

I want to learn Japanese.  Even after having read this. 

My work blocked the link as "Profanity".   

I guess I'll just have to wait until I get home.

[birdless]

I want to learn Japanese.  Even after having read this. 

My work blocked the link as "Profanity".   

I guess I'll just have to wait until I get home.

Weird... there isn't even so much as a mention of a shitake (intentional misspelling) mushroom in there...

[Russell Nash]

Since someone did some threadromancy, I'll tell you about my current adventure.  I have the first Harry Potter in German on the top of my TBR pile.  I'm going to take a break from the Terry Pratchett and really try to improve my German.  Wish me luck.

The trick with reading practice is finding good stuff to read.  The reading passages in text books try to be interesting, but we all know how that works out.  And after I spend an hour translating a single paragraph in a newspaper only to find out that the finance minister's plan to decrease steel import quotas a quarter of a percent will likely not be but up to a vote I want too burn myself alive. 

But Harry Potter is a pretty big bite.  It might be more encouraging to read short stories.   Then you could tell your self how many stories you have actually finished rather than what depressingly small percentage of Harry Potter and The 900 Pages you have put behind you.

It's only the first book which is 300 pages.  Also it's a fairly interesting book, but it's written for YA making it a bit easier.  Lastly I've already read it, so I don't have to worry getting lost.

Dude, that's been on your pile for ages. Glad you're getting around to it. It was the first book I'd ever read in German as well, although I had deliberately not read the English ones in order to force myself to knuckle down and do it. I started by reading it out loud to my husband, but then got quick enough that it was faster to read it to myself.

I read the last HP in English because I didn't want to wait 6 months for the translation. It just wasn't the same

I had your hardcover, but I can't write in that.  I picked up a paperback about 2 weeks ago.

[Windup]

I wish Americans could be more accepting and encouraging like the Japanese.

Careful what you wish for. James Fallows, editor of The Atlantic Monthly, lived in Japan and wrote extensively about the experience.  In one essay, he opines that the American race problem could be solved by forcing every Caucasian American to spend a few months in Japan every couple of years.  He says that's because it's one of the few places a Caucasian American can go where the first thing people notice about them is race, and it's not good. 

Also, the Koreans who have been living in Japan for serveral generations but still aren't considered "Japanese" might have a slightly different take on Japanese "acceptence." 

My point isn't that the Japanese are somehow uniquely evil, but rather that just like Americans and pretty much all other humans, they practice their exclusions and draw their lines between "in" and "out" groups. They just express it a bit differently.

[Chodon]

I wish Americans could be more accepting and encouraging like the Japanese.

Careful what you wish for. James Fallows, editor of The Atlantic Monthly, lived in Japan and wrote extensively about the experience.  In one essay, he opines that the American race problem could be solved by forcing every Caucasian American to spend a few months in Japan every couple of years.  He says that's because it's one of the few places a Caucasian American can go where the first thing people notice about them is race, and it's not good. 

Also, the Koreans who have been living in Japan for serveral generations but still aren't considered "Japanese" might have a slightly different take on Japanese "acceptence." 

My point isn't that the Japanese are somehow uniquely evil, but rather that just like Americans and pretty much all other humans, they practice their exclusions and draw their lines between "in" and "out" groups. They just express it a bit differently.

I did notice that I was being watched very, very closely when in stores.  We were in the sticks of Japan (about 2 hours from Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku), which may have had something to do with it.  The friend I was visiting (who had lived there for a year) said they didn't see many, if any westerners, and were very distrustful.  I saw the racism you are talking about first hand in an adult ed class my friend was teaching.  There were a lot of older people in the class and the topic of Koreans and Chinese came up.  One of the students said something in Japanese and everyone started laughing.  My friend later told me was a pretty racist remark about the Koreans and Chinese.  That night I also found out the topic of World War II is pretty taboo, especially with Gaijin.  Awkward....

The main point I was trying to make was the encouragement about me speaking their language.  Everyone was at least polite, and usually friendly.  I realized after a couple of days I was saying "thank you very much for nothing" instead of "thank you very much" when I made a purchase.  Nobody corrected me.  They just bowed and smiled.  There is a good chance someone making the same mistake with English in the US could get their ass kicked.

[Tango Alpha Delta]

To be fair, I don't *really* think an ass-kicking is likely to be visited upon your hypothetical foreigner in that store situation... but I've heard tales from "foreign looking" friends that would prevent me from ruling it out. 

I do know that when the guy at Wendy's can't get my order right until I say "el pollo" and point to the children, though, that I'm into that surreal territory where I feel warm and fuzzy that I can communicate with him, even though most U.S.icans would be more likely to get upset and start sending money to Tom Tancredo (link provided for information, not endorsement).

whew... that was a big sentence.  Did I load that down with enough qualifiers and other weasel-words?

[Boggled Coriander]

But Harry Potter is a pretty big bite.  It might be more encouraging to read short stories.   Then you could tell your self how many stories you have actually finished rather than what depressingly small percentage of Harry Potter and The 900 Pages you have put behind you.

Reminds me that right now I'm reading a copy of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age that I picked up in a used bookstore here in Taiwan.  I'm guessing that the previous owner was a Taiwanese who tackled it as challenging English reading material.  Each page has about a dozen difficult words underlined in pen, and I feel sorry for this unknown person because I doubt he (or she) was able to find "yuvree" or "phenomenoscope" in a dictionary.  It's evidence of admirable resolve.  I'm on page 188 and the underlining is still going strong!