Writer's Block: Voulez-vous parler ...
Dec. 13th, 2009 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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I speak English (native speaker) and Japanese. I consider myself mostly fluent in Japanese. When it comes to survival skills (shopping, etc) and normal interpersonal interaction (small talk, etc), I don't have any problems. However, my specialized and professional vocabulary is still quite lacking-- and my literacy is probably equivalent to a 10th grader's. (But you would never say a 15-year--old Japanese kid isn't fluent in their own language, would you? But they still can't read every kanji character printed in the daily newspaper!). Still, I consider myself fluent because I know enough language that when I do encounter a word I don't know, I can *talk around* it and comprehend or express the meaning from context.
I can only learn one other language? That's annoying and limiting. I'm actually seriously considering beginning another language. The two choices I think would be most practical are Chinese or Spanish. Chinese is growing in demand as a second language and it has many written characters in common with Japanese, so my energies in learning them would count double. (Though considering I hate learning Japanese characters and know less than half of the 2000 necessary for literacy, do I really want to subject myself to studying 5000?). But outside of writing, Chinese is absolutely nothing like Japanese. From what I remember in 5th and 6th grade Chinese, the tonality of the language was very unintuitive to me. It would be a hard choice to commit to. As for Spanish-- well, there's no denying its practicality in the States, especially if I'm considering moving to SoCal. (Though, it'd be just as useful in Elkhart, frankly!). I liked the semester of Spanish I took in high school; the sound system is very straightforward, the grammar is comprehensible, and it's a pretty-sounding language-- and reading in the Roman alphabet feels so easy after a decade of Japanese! From a career perspective I guess it'd be kind weird to be a language teacher of both Japanese and Spanish, but I've seen worse (my cooperating teacher last semester was Japanese/French). And knowing Spanish would boost my skills as an ESL teacher, another path I've considered fusing with Japanese instruction.
I've also considered Korean, though there's less demand for it as a school foreign language. (Though that may change within a few years). The Korean writing system is allegedly one of the most advanced in the world (the way all the sounds/syllables are categorized and arranged), and its sound and grammar patterns resemble Japanese quite closely, much more closely than Chinese. (That's why so many Korean kids at WashU took Japanese; it's the *easy* language for them to take). *Shrug.* Frankly, I'd learn just about any language if given a good opportunity for study. It's like traveling the world; I'm cool to go just about anywhere.
I speak English (native speaker) and Japanese. I consider myself mostly fluent in Japanese. When it comes to survival skills (shopping, etc) and normal interpersonal interaction (small talk, etc), I don't have any problems. However, my specialized and professional vocabulary is still quite lacking-- and my literacy is probably equivalent to a 10th grader's. (But you would never say a 15-year--old Japanese kid isn't fluent in their own language, would you? But they still can't read every kanji character printed in the daily newspaper!). Still, I consider myself fluent because I know enough language that when I do encounter a word I don't know, I can *talk around* it and comprehend or express the meaning from context.
I can only learn one other language? That's annoying and limiting. I'm actually seriously considering beginning another language. The two choices I think would be most practical are Chinese or Spanish. Chinese is growing in demand as a second language and it has many written characters in common with Japanese, so my energies in learning them would count double. (Though considering I hate learning Japanese characters and know less than half of the 2000 necessary for literacy, do I really want to subject myself to studying 5000?). But outside of writing, Chinese is absolutely nothing like Japanese. From what I remember in 5th and 6th grade Chinese, the tonality of the language was very unintuitive to me. It would be a hard choice to commit to. As for Spanish-- well, there's no denying its practicality in the States, especially if I'm considering moving to SoCal. (Though, it'd be just as useful in Elkhart, frankly!). I liked the semester of Spanish I took in high school; the sound system is very straightforward, the grammar is comprehensible, and it's a pretty-sounding language-- and reading in the Roman alphabet feels so easy after a decade of Japanese! From a career perspective I guess it'd be kind weird to be a language teacher of both Japanese and Spanish, but I've seen worse (my cooperating teacher last semester was Japanese/French). And knowing Spanish would boost my skills as an ESL teacher, another path I've considered fusing with Japanese instruction.
I've also considered Korean, though there's less demand for it as a school foreign language. (Though that may change within a few years). The Korean writing system is allegedly one of the most advanced in the world (the way all the sounds/syllables are categorized and arranged), and its sound and grammar patterns resemble Japanese quite closely, much more closely than Chinese. (That's why so many Korean kids at WashU took Japanese; it's the *easy* language for them to take). *Shrug.* Frankly, I'd learn just about any language if given a good opportunity for study. It's like traveling the world; I'm cool to go just about anywhere.
