Take Japanese!

English also has the exact same words with different meanings.

 

Take Japanese! good luck!

 

I've wanted to learn Japanese or Mandarin for a long while.

Before I pass judgement on which language is the hardest, I'd like to hear from an expert..

I speak english, macedonian, and enough french to find the bathroom

 

accents will get you though

 

I have tried learning Japanese and Cantonese and I can say, without a shadow of a doubt that Japanese is 100 times easier than Cantonese to learn ... I know many western expats that can speak very good Japanese, it is not particularly hard to learn if you want to. Written Japanese is difficult because of the Kanji, but since Cantonese uses the same characters, that isn't going to be any easier than Japanese.

 

My Japanese born wife is a language teacher (Japanese to English speakers and English to Japanese speakers) at both a secondary and tertiary level. In addition, she is a technical translator/interpreter in IT.

Her view is that is IMPOSSIBLE for someone to properly learn a language without thoroughly being immersed in the culture of the country (i.e living in the country and speaking only that language). As a result, she has refused to even attempt to teach our children (aged 14 and 17) Japanese as she believes they would be ridiculed if they ever went to Japan and tried to communicate ineffectively in that language.

Have you ever noticed how Japanese business executives will always use an interpreter even though they have been taught English as part of their secondary education? That is because in Japan you don't try to do something in public unless you can do it perfectly.

I worked for a Japanese company for 19 years (that is where we met) and regularly travelled to Japan. Whilst my hosts were always graceful to my face they would also be sniggering behind their backs at the crude attempts of gaijin trying to express themselves in Japanese at the level of a two year old. A key element of Japanese is contextual understanding of when to use one word versus another when both have apparently the same meaning. That is because Japan is a structured hierarchical society with many layers of hierarchy. How you speak to someone directly relates to your social standing - something that individuals from outside Japan find very difficult to understand and appreciate.

When my wife performs technical translations she has great difficulty in attempting to understand the precise meaning of many terms - that is because the social hierarchy, and consequently the Japanese language, is structured in a polite indirect manner. As such, the language does not have the vocabulary and grammar to describe technical concepts.

As a user of these translated computer manuals I can assure you it made my job much harder. As a result, the IT company in question made it a policy that all manuals would first be written in english and the translated into Japanese. In this way if the Japanese readers had problems understanding the text they always had the opportunity to refer to the English original for more precise instructions.

To sum up, even though my wife makes a living out of teaching languages, she is happy to take your money but also the first to tell you you are wasting it.

 

2kturkey: i hate to say this but i disagree with your wife's point of view. as a new parent, my son's language abilities is of great concern to me. even though i grew up in california, my family has always spoken chinese, as does my wife to me at home. i have plenty of ABC (American Born Chinese) friends whom speak fluent chinese - even if it was with an American accent or laid out like English grammar (in reverse order on some occassions). they're never ridiculed and always understood with a degree of pride by native Chinese when they visit places like China and Taiwan, that even though they are not born of that land, they still carry that blood and (minimally) the language.

if you're not asian then i will assume that your children are what my Japanese friends refer to as "halves". at least in my circle of Japanese friends they are considered to be best of both worlds, and if they can speak the language it's even better.

i can understand a Japanese executive's needs to use an interpreter for business negotiations - this is not only needed for the best possible translation that the businessman may not have the level for, it also allows for room to manuever in the negotiation process. yes, they may be ashamed that they cannot speak English as a native might, but i believe that stigma is going away especially for people my age (30 something business people).

my Japanese can sometimes be considered crude - since some of the sentences i know can only be expressed in Kansai-ben, something you don't use in formal business meetings. however, i'm not ashamed - in fact i'm quite proud to be able to sing like Fukuyama Masaharu in Karaoke bars if required, and carry X-Japan tunes.

some a-holes in Japan may snicker at you or your children for the attempts to learn their language, but at least you're actually speaking it whereas they're hiding behind their mask of old cultural uneasiness about not being able to properly speak English.

i was just at CES in Vegas, and i spoke with plenty of Japanese nationals who are heavily accented and not easily understood. but i respect those who are brave enough to test and improve their skills.

zanen deshou - i think knowing a different language gives you a new piece of soul a person who only speaks one language can never understand

 

If one thing can be taken from this thread its that you should teach your kids early differant languages.. look how fast it takes for a 2 year old to learn thier native language.. for me now over 30.. I still can't remember my phone number

 

I'm with Mingster here ...

Having lived in Japan for the best part of 5 years, whether some of the Japanese may have been sniggering behind my back does not concern me, the fact that I was able to get around in Japan, buy tickets, find places, eat the food that I wanted and direct taxi drivers to places that I wanted to go is FAR more important to me than the fact that a few people may have been laughing behind my back.

I don't have any children at the moment, but if I did, they would certainly be learning the local language wherever we were living at the time.

 

Even if you were in the U.S. at the time?