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cornishmuppet
Joined: 27 Mar 2004
Posts: 642
Location: Nagano, Japan
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 Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 5:24 am Post subject: |
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Bumped into a non-English speaking neighbour the other day while she was walking with her boyfriend. Never met him before, so by way of introduction she pointed to him and in shaky English she said, He ... is ... your ... boyfriend", to which point he nodded enthusiastically in agreement.
Sorry to change the subject, just amuses me. |
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GIR
Joined: 12 Apr 2007
Posts: 64
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| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Apsara wrote: |
I think you would find that if you could speak Japanese more fluently, and read kanji, you would also find that those skills would "come in useful all the time". Look how much being able to read katakana opened things up to you, and that is only the tip of the iceberg language-wise. |
I don't disagree, but it's a bit of a different situation. My kick in the butt to actually learn katakana was that I wanted to read food packaging - so I'd know what it was. I can also practice it by reading signs as I walk down the street or sit on the train.
Speaking is different in that I am rarely in a position where I want to do something that is thwarted by my low Japanese speaking ability. Additionally, I don't have many situations in which I can practice it.
Basically, I get by ok on my current Japanese ability. While I am (slowly) trying to improve, the fact is that learning Japanese isn't the best use of my time, based on what I will get from it. In fact, improving my Spanish is much more practical. When I go back to the States, being able to communicate in Spanish is a skill that will open up a number of job opportunities, whereas being able to communicate in Japanese is slightly more marketable than being good at FreeCell. |
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fat_chris
Joined: 10 Sep 2003
Posts: 3198
Location: Beijing
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| Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 10:56 am Post subject: |
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elkarlo,
I presume you are in Japan now, no? How is it turning out for you? How is it going with the Japanese study?
Regards,
fat_chris |
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Darashii
Joined: 16 Jan 2007
Posts: 5
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| Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 5:23 am Post subject: |
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I've lived in Korea for about 20 months now. My uncle (married to a Korean lady) asked me about my Korean. I admitted that I've only been studying Japanese. It cracked him up.
I agree. It's kinda pathetic to spend a significant amount of your life in a country and not be able to speak the primary language. When I lived in Japan, I, too, felt that niggling "disgust". That was towards people who didn't put forth effort due to laziness.
Now that I'm in Korea and studying Japanese and not Korean (although I've learned a bit of Korean - it's not any harder than Japanese for sure!), I can sympathize with people who simply aren't interested. I am a very busy, active person. I'm interested in a language, it just happens to not be Korean. I want to live in Japan, not Korea. I'm not interested in Korean culture or history, either, so that contributes to my ambivalence to my Korean proficiency. It's not laziness; it's priorities. |
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Vince
Joined: 05 May 2003
Posts: 559
Location: U.S.
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| Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 4:23 pm Post subject: |
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| GIR wrote: |
| In the end, it's hard to stay motivated for something without a payoff. |
That accounts for the periods when I was too lax about studying. They were my downhill phases on the gaijin rollercoaster, and I just didn't see the payoff of learning to communicate more deeply with people I typically wanted to keep at arm's length. When I came out of those phases and was more optimistic about extending myself to the Japanese, I felt bad about the time I had let slip by. For me, formal schooling would have worked best. |
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