Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!noao!asuvax!mcdphx!dover!leivian
From: leivian@dover.azsps.mot.com (Bob Leivian)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: foreign language requirements for PhDs
Message-ID: <937@dover.azsps.mot.com>
Date: 23 Mar 89 20:18:44 GMT
References: <00161@landru.UUCP>
Reply-To: leivian@dover.UUCP (Bob Leivian)
Organization: /etc/organization
Lines: 26

>>>I presume, Henry, that you know how f^&*#%$ hard Japanese is to learn...
>>
>>I've barely glanced at Japanese, so I can't really say I know.  (Russian
>>was enough of a hassle...)
>>
>>>... while Japanese may make sense, I think that its
>>>difficulty precludes making it a *requirement*.
>>

I am currently taking some Japanese classes and its not all that bad.

 If you learn an alphabet of 50 some chars (times 2, though unfortunatly
  not unlike our upper and lower case -- 'A' and 'a' are about as similiar
  as hiragana KI and katakana KI) you can 'spell' and pronounce all words

 There are only around 2 thousand KANJI (alot but not MANY thousands)

 There are only two tenses, no plural or 'gender' (however there is 'male'
  and 'female' speech -- but you can still get you point across but you
  run the risk of sounding 'sissy' or 'brazen' if you get it wrong)

 There is the honorific/humble stuff that is hard to get right, but not
  necessary to read tech. stuff.

 Alot of words are English, pronounced in Japanese syllabales -- this might
  cause problems if you are not English speaking.