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Rooster_2006
Joined: 24 Sep 2007
Posts: 984
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 Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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| markle wrote: |
| Rooster_2006 wrote: |
| markle wrote: |
| Rooster_2006 wrote: |
| It's still one of the four hardest languages on earth for non-native speakers! |
How do you figure that? |
Sorry, I meant "English speakers," not non-native speakers.
The four hardest languages on earth for ENGLISH speakers are Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic. Or you could divide that into more than four if you count dialects of those languages, like Cantonese, obscure Japonic languages, Jeju-do dialect, and the various vernacular Arabics spoken all across the Arab world.
They are classified in their own special category by the US military when it trains interpreters, etc. You need a DLAB (Defense Language Aptitude Battery) score of 100 to study any of those languages, supposedly. Otherwise it's not considered worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spend to train you.
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The flaw with that thinking is that the US military sets those levels partly on a needs basis not totally by a qualitative value of how difficult a particular language is. Take for instance the language of the Kalahari Bushmen- the one with the unusual clicks in it and I challenge you to find anything more difficult to master. However militarily, competence in this language is pretty much worthless and as you stated not "worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spend to train you" |
Ah, but is the language of the Kalahari Busmen really that hard? Maybe it's hard to pronounce, or the word roots are strange, but usually languages used by nomadic peoples only have a few thousand words in common use. When people in a given country spend 16 years in school, on average, their vocabularies are going to be many times the size of the vocabularies of nomads. Even if the nomads have large vocabularies, that will have been a recent development -- lots of loanwords, probably from either English or the language of the main regional power.
Since when would the US military need Japanese speakers more than Korean speakers, by the way? I don't get that. The US is allied with Japan. There is no need to monitor or spy on Japan nearly as much as with, say, North Korea, or to a lesser extent, the Joseonjok region of China. Plus, even if Japan were a rival superpower in need of monitoring, they'd have no problem finding eager young men and women rushing forward for free Japanese instruction. How many people are willing to endure a brutal military training regimen for Japanese? So wouldn't that mean that if the difficulties were equal, Korean's DLAB rating would be lower based on demand? Sorry, I'm going to have to say that the bar is set higher for Korean because it is harder. I'm not insulting the intellects of people who learn Japanese -- I really want to learn it. However, the ONLY thing in Japanese that can be argued as being harder is the writing system, and if you're learning the Korean hanja (necessary for anything dated, reading Korean literature, reading store signs, etc. and therefore taught at my school, Yonsei), I'm going to have to say that Korean is decisively harder. |
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Lyrajean
Joined: 19 Jul 2006
Posts: 109
Location: going to Okinawa
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| Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 4:38 pm Post subject: |
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The reason the US military needs Japanese speakers at least as much as it needs korean speakers is precisely because Japan is a close ally. That and the fact that There are at least a dozen US military installations on Japanese soil, and tens of thousands of US troops.
You need to talk to your neighbors to keep things civil, don't you think?
Anyways, I'm 3 blocks and one fence from close to 50,000 Americans here. |
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Hannibal Jim
Joined: 10 Dec 2007
Posts: 8
Location: Tokyo
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| Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 11:02 am Post subject: Tourist visa |
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Listen to Glenski.
Do not listen to G Cthulhu!
This is not Mexico, and you don't bribe Japanese officials -- especially with 3,000 yen!
Working in Japan on a tourist VISA is illegal. It is possible to find places that will pay you under the table, but why risk any future opportunities you may have by getting deported and blackballed?
Japan is very, very by-the-book. "urisai" is your new vocabulary word. It means noisy -- unpleasantly noisy -- and it perfectly describes the Japanese attitude about following all those rules. |
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Hannibal Jim
Joined: 10 Dec 2007
Posts: 8
Location: Tokyo
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| Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 11:03 am Post subject: Urusai |
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Sorry about that -- it's "urusai" not "urisai"
Fat fingers! |
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Rooster_2006
Joined: 24 Sep 2007
Posts: 984
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| Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 5:40 pm Post subject: Re: Tourist visa |
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| Hannibal Jim wrote: |
Listen to Glenski.
Do not listen to G Cthulhu!
This is not Mexico, and you don't bribe Japanese officials -- especially with 3,000 yen!
Working in Japan on a tourist VISA is illegal. It is possible to find places that will pay you under the table, but why risk any future opportunities you may have by getting deported and blackballed?
Japan is very, very by-the-book. "urisai" is your new vocabulary word. It means noisy -- unpleasantly noisy -- and it perfectly describes the Japanese attitude about following all those rules. |
Haha, yeah, if I believed that it was that lax, I'd be over there right now! However, I know that it isn't, so I'm staying in Korea until I know I can go to Japan and get through life without disobeying any (significant) laws. I guess no matter what country you're in, you're always violating some law, like jaywalking, but I'd rather reserve illegal work for the countries I don't care nearly as much about getting banned in. |
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Rooster_2006
Joined: 24 Sep 2007
Posts: 984
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| Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 5:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Lyrajean wrote: |
The reason the US military needs Japanese speakers at least as much as it needs korean speakers is precisely because Japan is a close ally. That and the fact that There are at least a dozen US military installations on Japanese soil, and tens of thousands of US troops.
You need to talk to your neighbors to keep things civil, don't you think?
Anyways, I'm 3 blocks and one fence from close to 50,000 Americans here. |
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-11-22-cia-recruit_x.htm
North Korea is the enemy of the United States and needs close monitoring (and keep in mind, there is a Korean population in China called the Joseonjok who have been used as proxy warriors). South Korea is a close ally. So by the logic of "You need to talk to your neighbors to keep things civil," Korean is just as important. When the US invaded Iraq, Korea sent the most troops of any nation, except for the US and England. I live a few minutes away from the Yongsan Military base, and also went near Osan Airforce Base today (and saw several US jet fighters flying overhead). Sorry, the argument that Japan is a close ally isn't really a very good one, because so is South Korea (at least their government is, even if some of the citizens hate Americans). Even if Japanese were in higher demand, it would also be easier to get military recruits to study it, because Japanese is FUN, because Japan has a huge pop culture easily enjoyed by non-Japanese. Unlike Korean, which has pop culture mainly considered appealing only by Asian housewives.
Anyways, what I'm saying, or maybe asking here, is this:
After you've learned hiragana, katakana, and <2000 kanji, is there any way in which Japanese is more difficult than Korean? I can't think of a single way. Here are ways that Korean is more difficult:
- Fewer English loanwords. More 漢字語.
- Final consonants make pronunciation harder, and listening MUCH harder, because they merge or morph depending on the words around them. Take "yuk," which means "six." In 666, it's pronounced "yuk-baek-yuk-shim-nyuk." Huh? It became "nyuk!" Oh, now how about 666 years? "Yuk-baek-yuk-shim-nyung-nyeon!" What the heck, it's the same darn word, but it's now "nyung!" In a phone number, due to these sound changes, "yuk" is pronounced "ryuk" if it comes after a vowel like 二 (i). So "yuk," "nyuk," "nyung," and "ryuk" are all represented by the 漢字 六, due to the sound changes.
- Korean has every single sound found in Japanese (except for ts- and z), and tons more, making pronunciation more difficult. It has 14 consonants and 10 SIMPLE vowels (probably about 20 vowels depending on how you count the dipthongs). That's versus five vowels for Japanese.
- Korean has more verb conjugations. The -te conjugation in Japanese translates to both -nikka and -eo(a, yeo)seo in Korean. Japanese sometimes have trouble with Korean grammar because whereas they just have one conjugation for something, Korean might have several.
- Korean has more formality levels than Japanese. There are three types of informal speech (two types of banmal, and the polite informal), in addition to jondaenmal (존댓말), and even a very sophisticated form mainly used in the Bible and talking to royalty (I am aware Japanese used to have this too). However, this is just talking about formality levels. There is a second axis as well, honorifics, which are different from formality levels. So if you are talking to a child about God, you use a different speech pattern than if you were talking to said child about his younger sister. If you are talking to the king about a child, you use a different speech pattern than if you were talking to a king about your sibling.
- Japanese uses kanji in just about everything, so once you know them, it helps disambiguate meanings. In Korean, you learn the characters (at least I did, as part of my Yonsei instruction), but then they aren't used commonly, so you can't disambiguate things nearly as often. So basically you do the same character-learning work at high levels of Korean, but it doesn't help you out much.
- Japanese has a better pop culture, unless you're a lonely Asian housewife and actually enjoy dramas. I mean, admit, it, you can watch Japanese television and play their video games until you're blue in the face, because the aforementioned is very addictive. It's pretty tough to sit through a Korean drama unless you like constant crying and "왜 그래?!" being shouted every 10 seconds. So because Japanese is more fun to practice with realia, it's easier to immerse yourself.
- There are actually a decent number of Japanese textbooks for foreign learners, and foreigners who speak Japanese to help you. With Korean, it's all for gyopos. |
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poohbear
Joined: 01 Mar 2005
Posts: 46
Location: Toronto & Tokyo
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| Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 3:11 am Post subject: |
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rofl bribing an official w/ 3000yen????? that's hilarious. you know that's like $28 right? what's he gonna do w/ that in japan?
anyways, the tohoku dialect and yamagata dialect (in the northeast of japan) are very hard to understand for anyone speaking japanese, even my japanese girlfriend sometimes doesnt understand it! sometimes young japanese people will actually start cracking up if they hear the tohoku accent, then apologize ofcourse. its very country, i guess their version of the alabama hill billy accent. |
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Apsara
Joined: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 2142
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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| Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 4:24 am Post subject: |
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Am I the only one who realised that G Cthulhu was joking? I thought it was pretty obvious. Some of you here have very low settings on your bullsh1t meters...  |
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timothypfox
Joined: 20 Feb 2008
Posts: 492
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| Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 5:49 am Post subject: |
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Rooster_2006 said:
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| Ah, but is the language of the Kalahari Busmen really that hard? Maybe it's hard to pronounce, or the word roots are strange, but usually languages used by nomadic peoples only have a few thousand words in common use. When people in a given country spend 16 years in school, on average, their vocabularies are going to be many times the size of the vocabularies of nomads. Even if the nomads have large vocabularies, that will have been a recent development -- lots of loanwords, probably from either English or the language of the main regional power. |
Sorry if I am a little off-topic for this post, but I think I disagree with your idea Rooster_2006. 3000 words is enough to create a pretty infinite number of combinations and meanings. I think you are making an ethnocentric assumption. Idioms can be formed from combining words in a different order, or using a particular phrase in a particular context. Don't forget learning a language and a culture generally happen together. I think the traditional Bushman way of life would have taken a life to learn. |
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Ryu Hayabusa
Joined: 08 Jan 2008
Posts: 182
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| Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 6:00 am Post subject: |
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I lived in Korea for a year and a few months. I used to think that Korean was much easier than Japanese because of the writing system. Now, it could be that it's just because I like Japanese more but, I'm having a much easier time learning it than I did Korean. The more I study Japanese, the more I realize that the writing system isn't as hard as I thought it was and that the spoken language is easier to speak and understand. With Korean and Japanese, the learning curve is different. Learning to read and write (but not comprehend) Korean was much easier for me. Whereas Japanese required a lot more practice and study to get the basics down.
Rooster_2006, you really know your stuff! I agree with you fully and think you've presented a very clear and concise argument. |
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Hannibal Jim
Joined: 10 Dec 2007
Posts: 8
Location: Tokyo
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| Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:59 am Post subject: Japanese expertise |
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Aspara . . . are you serious? G Cthulhu was NOT was joking.
After all, he said "Remember, we won the war so it's always legal." That's true. We did win the war. Read your history books.
And the Jomon school is a very good school. I did my undergrad work there before going to Yayoi for my master's.
You just don't know enough about Japan. |
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markle
Joined: 17 Jan 2003
Posts: 1316
Location: Out of Japan
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| Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:03 pm Post subject: |
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Oh dear Jimmy boy,
it is said that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit and yet you don't even seem to be any good at it. |
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Rooster_2006
Joined: 24 Sep 2007
Posts: 984
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| Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Okay, so I'm not really sure here, is Jomon School actually a real school? I'm guessing that was a joke. If it was a joke, where is a decent language school in Hokkaido? |
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markle
Joined: 17 Jan 2003
Posts: 1316
Location: Out of Japan
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| Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 3:16 pm Post subject: |
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Ignore those posts Rooster you got caught in a sarcasm war (BTW Jomon and Yayoi are eras of Japanese history)
I looked up the DLAB on Wikipedia and you are right that Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Arabic are rated higher than other languages based on their difficulty for native speaker. I would like to add a couple of caveats to using this a a measure of a language's comparative 'difficulty'. This is a test to determine a persons ability to aquire a language that the DLI actually teaches. The DLI doesn't teach any African languages, or native American languages so it is hardly a conclusive ranking of all languages. As far as the Marines and Air Force are concerned all languages have a ranking over 100. I'm still not totally convinced that there is not some supply and demand factors at work here, Arabic is high because there is a demand for quality linguists in that language, Japanese is high because maybe there is a glut of applicants in this language so they can afford to be picky. |
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G Cthulhu
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
Posts: 1373
Location: Way, way off course.
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| Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 3:43 am Post subject: |
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| Glenski wrote: |
I hope the "rolling eyes" emoticon at the bottom of your post was a sign that the whole post was tongue in cheek. I for one cannot see that, though. |
Then you need to seriously lighten up. Honestly, if you couldn't see that as a pisstake then you're wound up far too much. |
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