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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!gatech!seismo!harvard!h-sc1!breuel
From: breuel@h-sc1.UUCP (thomas breuel)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re:Learn Japanese or bust.
Message-ID: <842@h-sc1.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Dec-85 03:45:23 EST
Article-I.D.: h-sc1.842
Posted: Tue Dec 17 03:45:23 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Dec-85 05:52:55 EST
References: <1791@uwmacc.UUCP> <839@h-sc1.UUCP> <1809@uwmacc.UUCP>
Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center
Lines: 106

||I also disagree that Japanese is in any sense more 'difficult' than,
||say, French or German. Certainly, you can learn how to 'get by' in
||Germanic or Romance languages much more easily than in Japanese. 
||years, he could probably still be spotted easily as a foreigner in even
||the simplest dialogue, 
|
|You are spotted as a foreigner (if you are a caucasian) before you
|attempt to speak. On occassion, even if you are speaking Japanese to
|a native, the person will say "no speaking English", meaning that he
|thinks that because you are a foreigner you are speaking English !!!

That's a social problem. Most Americans are easy to spot just by their
appearance in almost any country of the world. Likewise, Americans
are generally considered not to be very good at foreign languages
(because they are not strictly required to learn them in school). It
is therefore reasonable for any foreigner either to try to speak with
you in English (since he is likely to speak English much better than you
speak the foreign language), or to communicate to you that he doesn't
speak English and that you should therefore ask someone else.

From an American point of view, this behaviour must look strange, of course,
since all tourists that Americans encounter in their country speak English,
and it is therefore usually not necessary (or even possible) to try to
communicate with a foreigner in his language. In addition to this, Americans
tend to be more tolerant of different accents and different ethnic
origins, simply because the American population itself is very inhomogenous.

|I never had any problem with the phonetic structure. The speed is no
|greater than any other language, it just sounds faster because you
|don't understand it. 

I guess that's more a matter of opinion. When learning English
or French, I had the impression that they were pronounced 'slowly' in
some sense, as opposed to Italian, Spanish, or Japanese.

|Homophones are difficult but mostly when you 
|read Japanese with out the Kanji (Chinese characters). If You are
|speaking it, usually there is some contextual clue that gives the
|correct interpretations of it.

Of course you disambiguate by context. That is not the point. The
point is that (I believe and feel that) homophones make it more
difficult to learn a language.

|This is the root of the problem in Japanese and why I say quit while
|you are ahead. KANJI is probably the reason that makes Japanese so
|hard to learn. 

This is the root of the problem in English and why I say quit while
you are ahead. Spelling and pronounciation is probably the reason that
makes English so hard to learn, even though its grammar is so simple.

Seriously. The English language, which is considered one of the easiest
languages in the world, has, in some sense, many of the same 'problems'
that Japanese has: its writing system is not strictly phonetic, spelling
is highly irregular, it is full of words borrowed from foreign languages,
and its vocabulary is huge (something English speaking people always seem
to be proud of). Nevertheless, you would not recommend me not to learn
English just because it is difficult to acquire the same vocabulary
that an educated native speaker of the language has.

|Thomas admits to being a 1st year student (1st year first semester ??).
|Typically the first year is the confidence builder. Especially the
|1st semester. The 3rd and the 4th year are what seperates the gung ho
|from the curious. Not many surive past the second year . Even fewer
|after the third year. 

Yes, I just finished my first semester. Our teachers announced in the
very first lecture that they did not plan on making the first semester
any easier than the ones to come, simply because they don't want students
to waste their time by just taking a single term or year of Japanese.

Yes, my Japanese language course is intense when I compare it to other
language courses that I have taken in the past. That doesn't mean that
Japanese is more difficult, it just means that I'm spending more time
on it to learn it faster. I cannot compare it personally to other college-level
language courses, but from what I hear, the same is true for, say,
German language courses.

Altogether, I think that your expectations are simply too high.
For any foreign language, 2 1/2 years of intensive study is a
pretty short time if your goal is to become fluent, to speak without
a major accent, and to be able to read every-day publications without
a dictionary. To be able to write in a foreign language takes
even longer.

Why am I saying all this? Well, I don't think it is good to recommend
someone not to learn a foreign language simply because you find it
difficult. The reasons why people want to learn foreign languages are
as diverse as the difficulties they encounter in doing so. Japanese
is no different in this respect. The most that you can say is: 'if
you want to learn Japanese to become a member of Japanese society,
don't try, it will probably not work'. You can also say that: 'some
Japanese don't understand that foreigners learn their language and
have a rather limited view of people from outside their country: they
think that all foreigners are Americans'. And, finally, you can point
out your personal problems with learning the language (e.g. Kanji),
but that doesn't mean that other people will have the same.

Altogether: I maintain: if you have a good reason for learning
Japanese (even if you are 'just' interested in the culture and
would like to read books in the original), go ahead an do it.
Like learning any foreign language, it will be a lot of work,
but it will also be very rewarding.

						Thomas.