What is the ultimate difference between a native speaker and a non-native speaker outside language mastery?
I want to 'pass' as native in Japan, but I'm only just now beginning to study the language. Advice?
>>What is the ultimate difference between a native speaker and a non-native speaker outside language mastery?
This is a bizarre question. What distinguishes native speakers is having acquired speaking ability in a given language naturally, from birth, rather than primarily through formal instruction, ie being native speakers. It's too late for you on that front, so language mastery is your only option. My advice is to study hard and master as much grammar and vocabulary as you can in a classroom setting--drills, etc., are very good tools for basic language acquisition--and then supplement this with several years living in Japan, using only Japanese. This will enable you to acquire natural speech patterns, idiomatic expressions, and other stuff that makes natives sound like natives and can't really be gained in a classroom.
The combination of in-school cramming and real-world use will get you closer than anything else to native-level mastery of a language. For example, after five years of formal in-school study of Thai and two years of living in a part of Thailand where not much English was spoken, I was often mistaken for a Thai person on the phone.
If you're looking to be mistaken for a Japanese person face-to-face, my advice is to combine all of the above steps, and to also have Japanese parents. Parents from another part of Northeast Asia would be a distant second choice.
I have the Japanese 'look' covered. The issues, thankfully, are cultural and linguistic. What I effectively was asking about without any eloquence was what would I have to consider in terms of language idiosyncracies.
Living in Japan to acquire these is not ideal, but is the only answer I've turned up from multiple locations.
Thank you for your response.
You won't be able to pass for a Japanese person, unless you live in Japan, and are exposed to actual idiomatic Japanese every single day. Even then, it's unlikely you will sound like a native speaker to the Japanese.
Why in a classroom? Clearly you can do that by yourself, without cost, and in a fraction of the time.
>>Why in a classroom?
Several reasons. First, it worked for me. I've studied eight languages and can speak six of them well, and the ones I speak best are those I acquired through a combination of in-classroom cramming and real-world use.
Arguably most importantly, formal instruction provides a feedback loop that I'm not sure you can get without a trained teacher. Learning independently, from books, etc., can be useful, of course, but won't necessarily help you correct mistakes. Native speaker conversation partners often won't correct you if something you say sounds weird or wrong, either, so you can wind up reinforcing problems.
>>Clearly you can do that by yourself, without cost, and in a fraction of the time.
Not true, in my opinion, for the great majority of people. Most people simply aren't disciplined enough or well-organized enough in their independent studies to acquire everything they need in the right order and proportion without some external stimulus. Some can, and more power to them. But I don't think most people can do as much as well on their own as they could with a well-trained professional teaching them.
Immersion is not always the best teacher. It certainly helps, though.
You could always try http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/
Basically, simulate a Japanese environment as much as you can. I can attest to the input hypothesis as well. I find it a lot easier to make Japanese sounds and words just focusing on listening to it a fucktonne- Than I did with repetitive speaking and practice.
Learning Japanese... no, it's not easy. Sure, one may learn it, but that doesn't mean that you'll become ready to speak it in Japan. It's much more than that. Live in Japan, speak it in Japan, get used to it more.
As in any language, it's not enough to learn it through a website or lessons, but it's daily use that boosts it.
Plus: It's not a bad thing to "Pass-by" as someone who knows the language, but be sure to keep up with "today's Japanese" :P
你好, 這裡是中文板, 我們可以寫什麽都可, 只要是中文便可.
我喜欢土豆 > 3<～
>>55
Do us a favor and learn English first.
no. it's, like, so unbelievably easy. like, omg!
>>61
It's not very hard if you don't count the thousands of characters, odd grammar, the pronunciation, or the tones. Other than that, it's a piece of cake.
stfu faggots, use engrish!
could anyone possibly do me a favour and transcribe the chinese in this:
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/1386/c1058clg3.jpg
i know its a small and blurry image, i dont know how easy it would be to read for someone who's familiar with the language... but, yeah, all i need is the three characters in text form, so i can do stuff with them.
thanks!
这里真的没有什么中国人。。。
T_T
What a dead thread.
china ren 中国人 哇哈哈
中國萬萬歲！
除了語言，什麼是我們談論的這個時候？
Hi folks.
I can work or study a language. With my studies [none of the languages worth learning in my line of work are available at my university] I only have time for one of these. But I need both. So I'm thinking it'll be first one, then the other.
Are there immersion programs that allow you to start from square one, with no prior knowledge of the language? If so, my life is much simpler.
Yes, there are many such programs, depending on what you want to learn, assuming you want to spend a period of weeks or months in a country where the language is spoken. Google "Language School" and the country where they speak it, and you'll find something. Study-abroad language programs often combine a morning of intensive lessons with an afternoon of structured immersion activities. You'll learn a category of vocab in the morning (shopping words, for example,) and get a homework assignment of going to a market and asking how much something costs, etc. How much English is actually used in the classroom varies a lot from teacher to teacher and school to school, but many conversation classes are designed to use only the target language.
Which would it be?
(I know it depends on a lot of various factors, but fact remains: some languages are just easier than others, right?)
the navajo language is the hardest to learn i know that for sure
Aleut and some Papuan dialects are supposed to be miserably difficult.
I'm learning Russian (7th language up to now) and it's freakingly difficult. The writing more than the speaking though...
I think the easiest language to learn would be Hindi. I understand about 60% of the language, all learned watching Bollywood movies. Never picked up a book about it, seriously. And I don't even count this as a language I know, because i haven't learned to write it yet. Maybe next year.
Thai, I've been told, is remarkably simple.
There's not much to learn about Lojban, and if you're already at least a little familiar with modern programming languages (like Javascript), you can pick it up. There's a huge lack of learning materials for non-nerds, though.
As for understanding it; well, that's another matter. Take for example, the sentence:
.i lo broda cu me ko'a.o'onai co brode.pe'a ko'e
It takes some getting used to. Even after you've learned the grammar, you might want to tell the other speaker to
.i ko jabre lonu tavla
which means "Speak slower."
Keep in mind the method of teaching is most important.
My 8+ years of French in the Canadian school system taught me almost nothing. However, after one summer of self study and four months in Quebec, I could speak and understand French fluently and a friend told me that my French accent was indistinguishable from a native speaker's.
Also, some aspects of languages come easier for some.
For me, tonal languages are extremely difficult, but I have no problem with a new alphabet (Cyrillic fluency took one week). Also, memorizing noun genders comes easily, but I have some trouble with tenses and cases (Finnish rage).
>>Thai, I've been told, is remarkably simple
I don't know about "remarkably" simple, but it shares a lot of the characteristics that make it easy to pick up the basics of many Asian languages. It's an almost-entirely isolating language, so you don't need to change word forms to conjugate or decline words. And the syntax, once you get the patterns, is pretty straightforward. Also, like most Asian languages, there are no genders, no articles, etc.
With that said, it also has its challenging aspects. There are five tones--intone the word "five" wrong and it's an obscenity; intone the word "near" wrong and it means "far." Also, it has some vowels that European-language speakers have a hard time pronouncing correctly, as well as a few tricky consonants (syllable-initial /ng/, a crucial differentiation between voiceless aspirated and non-aspirated consonants--/k/ vs. /kh/ that a lot of people can't hear, etc.) My family lived in Thailand for a while when I was in high school, and my parents didn't have an ear for the language--they learned a lot of words and basic grammar, but nobody could understand them. I, on the other hand, picked it up quite readily.
>>Mandarin Chinese is an isolating language like English
I'm not sure where you got this definition, but English is in no way an isolating language--of course, definitions vary, but no language with prefixes or suffixes of any sort (including plural markers, and most compound words) is considered isolating. Sorry, I'm not trying to be a dick, it just sprung to mind since I was writing about isolating languages just one post ago.
>>75
It's also been demonstrated that babies learn signed languages more readily than spoken languages.
interesting!
I do, what do you think?
I am Canadian, and I have dated girls of three nationals: Koreans, Japanese, and Taiwanese. From my experience, I must say the sound of the language most depends on who it's spoken by and it also reflects the attitudes and zeitgeist of the country. Japanese are extremely polite; their language doesn't even have offensive or expletive words. They never raise their voice unless they have to. On the other end of spectrum, there's mainland chinese, who don't have regard for what others think in the public. So one might perceive them as annoying and rude, but it's just part of their culture. In the middle there's a mix of both: Korean. I've stayed in Japan for about half year, and when I first arrived in Korea, I couldn't really make out whether they were speaking Japanese or Korean. As far as Cantonese is concern, I used to hate it, but I like it better than mandarin.
ma po dou fu! away!!!
I LOVE KOREAN~ Japanese is cool too. Cantonese gets a bit weird at times but is rather interesting to some extent. ^^
At first I thought that japanese is very strange and complicated, after the first 6 months I started to vomit just thinking about japanese(not because it was complicated) but now I find japanese the best language ever existed.
cantonese is one of the ugliest languages i've ever heard.
wow I can't believe there's ppl that actually enjoy listening to Korean?? I don't know about you but to me Korean has the distinction of being both extremely rough and angry while at the same time being incredibly whiny. I don't even know how that's possible but it is.
Cantonese sounds awful to me as well.
Japanese sounds too femenine for my tastes. But overall I would say Japanese and Mandarin sound the most "elegant" however you want to put it.
And don't even get me started on those SE asian languages like tagalog, or Thai, Vietnamese etc.
Overall to be honest asian languages just aren't that nice sounding.
>>63
What? That doesn't seem to make any sense.
A fire broke out on a ship. The captain, wanting to make the passengers dive into the ocean with smoothness, said:
to the English, "A true gentleman would dive in a time like this"
to the German, "The rules say to jump overboard"
to the Italian, "The lady of fine proportions just went overboard"
to the American, "If you jump, you will be a hero"
to the Russian, "The bottle of vodka was swept away; it's still within reach"
to the French, "Please do not go overboard"
to the Japanese, "Everyone else has already made the jump"
to the South Korean, "The Japanese has already made the jump"
to the Chinese, "Those fish look pretty tasty"
to the North Korean, "Now is your chance to seek asylum"
Sailor: "Captain! The Korean still remains!"
Captain: "Leave him alone."
>>And don't even get me started on those SE asian languages like tagalog, or Thai, Vietnamese etc.
This kind of thing always surprises me. OK, you don't like the way any of them sound. That's fine. But I find it strange that it seems appropriate to you to group them together. Ignoring the fact that we're talking about three unrelated language families, they don't even have similar phonetic inventories... essentially, they sound nothing like one another! First and perhaps most obviously, Tagalog's got no tones. Thai and Vietnamese both have tones, but very little else in common. Viet's mostly monosyllabic, which makes the rhythm of speech completely distinct from that of Thai. The vowel systems are also completely distinct--Vietnamese has four vowels not found in Thai, and Thai has at least three, perhaps four, not found in Vietnamese.
I love Mandarin, especialy when it is pronounced by scholar officials in historical drama.
i'm not a english speaker, but i always feel strange when everybody write
'Fxxx' or 'PHACK' or like that. Why ? Everybody knows that hidden word
means 'FUCK', but why transform the word ? Just for fun ?
During the period of time that the Normans had control of the British Isles, the Normans, having established themselves as the ruling class, treated many customs of the Saxons as being inferior.
A French-speaking Norman king deemed French superior to the Anglo-Saxon language that existed at that time. In fact, many of the common words and phrases of the old language were deemed to be offensive just because they were common words among the Saxons at that time.
The use of those terms was actually banned.
Instead of them, he had people use the Norman terms and phrases.
The word "fuck" is an old Anglo-Saxon word that means, basically, "to enter", or "penetrate", and was used, very much as it is now-a-days, as a term for sex. The term that the Normans replaced "fuck" with was "fornicate", which is, to this day, considered a more appropriate term.
Some of the old Saxon words, like fuck, shit, piss, etc, managed to survive, and eventually entered into the English language.
I was wrong, the word "fuck" is actually derived from an Old English term, "fokken", which means "to beat against".
>>34
And iirc this word originates in germanic languages.
But all this fuss doesn't explain why people choose to write it and censor themselves, instead of simply not using it. I really don't get that. It's the intent that counts after all, isn't it?
>>1
the simple way to say it is just because it a more discreet words or what the adults always like to think it as "dirty"
If you see Kay,
Tell him he may.
See you in tea,
Tell him from me. ^^
If you see Kay,
Tell him he may.
See you in tea,
Tell him from me.
Eikä me tarvittu mitää sen jälkee <--- 'tis ain't rite
Emmekä me tarvinneet mitään sen jälkeen <-- this is right
And we did not need anything afterwards.
Ravittu [been fed]
Ravinto [food, in general]
Although both words have 'ra' in them, it in self doesn't mean anything, except for the Egyptian god Ra, but nevermind that. Finnish words or names usually consist on single entities just like English does: truck, firetruck. In Finnish truck would be rekka, but a firetruck would be paloauto. Paloauto consists of two words, palo [meaning as an uncontrolled fire - metsäpalo, forrest fire] and auto [car]. Logically firetruck would be palorekka, but that's not a 'real' Finnish word.
FUCKING SHIT
Reden wir deutsch und deutlich.
gefällt mir!
Und die Bilderfunktion ist jetzt auch deaktiviert… ist auch richtig so, dafür gibt es Imageboards…
>>46
Interessant, aber ich verschwende schon genug zeit hier.
>>49
Dann verschwende hier weniger Zeit und mehr dort ;)
Als Deutscher finde ich meine Muttersprache echt erbärmlich. Englisch, Japanisch, Spanisch und Latein lagen mir immer mehr.
Click click click click.
Click? Click click!
Click click click click click.
人
（＿_）
（＿＿）
（ ＿＿ ）
（ ・∀・） ＜ Click click click click click click!
（つ つ
｜ ｜ |
（_＿）＿）
chicken chicken chicken
>>2 Oh I love you.
Hello everyone!
I am italian and a Japanese friend has invited me to post on here. I think this chat look very interesting.. If anyone needs help with the italian language.. well, just drop me a line! And if you want to know something more about Italy just give me a shout!
C ya!
Ciao!
Mary
"habla espanola?"
i only know that haha
lol
I primi giorni sono stati un susseguirsi di sorprese. La sorpresa di scoprire un paese in cui si fuma in quasi tutti i locali pubblici e non si fuma per strada (ci abbiamo messo qualche settimana a capirne il senso!). La sorpresa delle mascherine sanitarie! La sorpresa di mangiare e dormire spendendo meno che in Italia!
http://allabout.co.jp/travel/travelitaly/closeup/CU20070226A/index.htm
http://allabout.co.jp/travel/travelitaly/closeup/CU20070226A/index2.htm
Axis Powers Hetalia Italian Forum
100get
ciao, italiani ed giaponesi
(scusati la pessima scrita)
stoi learning l'italiano e il giaponese.
io posso ledere troppo bene peró é troppo dificile per screvere
io non ricordo le parole od la grammatica. haha
qualcuno puó aiutare?
I'm learning italian (and a bit japanese too).
but so far I can only read. I understand pretty well when reading, but when its time to write (like now) I forget the words and grammar. haha
any help?
ciso!!
(^o^)
age
