Launguges

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Wow cool !

Im learning Japanese at the mo. I speak a little Cantonese and even less Mandarin.

nihongo ga wakarimasu ka ?
anata wa americajin desu ka ?

I'm interested in languages - mainly English at this time because I've invented a system for teaching it that I can't get a publisher for and contrary to myth I'm not very good with computers, although I've thought about publishing the ideas as E-Books (how do you do it? What is it? What software do I need etc?).

It would revolutionise literacy, remedial and second language learning but I'm just a geek (not a Greek) who can't sell his ideas to anyone, so that's that, so far: A few years back wrote up all 5 main volumes, plus two subsidiary ones and a junior volume for primary school kids.

How, then, will/does it work

I can read foreign languages and understand what's said than when people speak them. This was a big problem when I took Spanish classes in high school and college and the teacher gave exams that had a listening part in which I had to translate what was said.

If the language is on of the Romance languages based on Latin, I have a rudimentary understanding of what's said, even if I had no former training. But listening to someone speak it? Oh no!

Hablo un poquito de Espanol (pero entiendo mas cuando una persona habla conmigo), ich spreche ein kleiner Deutscher, but i am more a culture fan. i have learned japanese, chinese, latino (not spanish) and some native american cultures. i created my own alphabet when i was 13 and use it when people are looking over my shoulder. |[] is close to the character for the word you. The alphabet has evolved into a semi-language as there are words for which there are no english equivalent.

Hopefully you do really find Asian languages easier than Spanish, which I'm sure it is. (I'm being a devil's advocate here because I'm a native Chinese (more accurately Cantonese) speaker and so I'm really flattered to hear the "easiness" of Asian language which is contrary to what most Westerners think) Edit: I think I've overlooked the last sentence about you teaching these languages, I'm really sorry if I have offended you above, but as I said, I'm flattered, really.

I've said my formal language acquiring here so I'll digress it over. One note however, during my school career I often found Classical Chinese (pre-1919 style) fairly hard, but then after leaving school I start to appreciate it or even like it!?

I've also attempted to a few language obsession phases. It used to be Esperanto (its structured grammar and similar yet unfamiliar vocab left me a remarkable reading comprehension in it), then it is Icelandic/Old Norse (really fascinating), which brings me to Old English as well. After been to Wales which bombards with bi-lingual signs (thanks for Welsh Nationalists insistence), I'm facing myself trying to learn Welsh, but just like the other language fazes, I never really got hold of it.

As Ludwig Wittgenstein said, "the limits of my Language are the limits of my world." I truly favoured this statement, the laugauge you posses often determine the values and understanding you have on the world. Therefore, you need more than one language in order to minimise your own bias when understanding what is happening over the world. We are risked losing this sort of insight when globalization tries to promote one set of values over everyone.

Last edited by 28481k on 06 Dec 2005, 9:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think linguists are very important in industry and the arts, but - and this will make me sound like a philistine - I think that as an intellectual exercise or pastime, learning a language is just about the last thing I'd ever choose to do.
I'm interested in etymology, but, to me, learning languages has always seemed like just an exercise in rote memorisation. To me, there's none of the wonder or challenge or creativity involved with learning languages that you get from studying maths or science.
(That is unless you take it to the extreme and become another Michael Ventris. I once read a fascinating account of how Ventris went about deciphering Linear B.)

But people aren't supposed to admit to these sorts of things. Nowadays if you can speak two languages you're treated as some kind of intellectual, but if you're fluent in C++ and Java you're just a geek.