Reading this as easily as if it had been in English made me feel really good about my current level of Cantonese! When visiting Japan last year, not barely knowing any Japanese, hearing Cantonese spoken by Hong Kong tourists was like sweet music to my ears. I realize that sometimes I have been unknowingly taking breaks using Japanese as L3.

I really wonder how Khatz’s Cantonese project turned out, since I’m also doing All Cantonese All The Time, but in Hong Kong (aiming for native level fluency!). I feel really spoiled by the choices of Cantonese language media here, and it really suits my tastes much more than Mandarin media did (I LOVE Cantonese style humor and sass – think Stephen Chow)!

But I feel that I still have to restrict my output a bit in my everyday life in Hong Kong, since I feel that if I know that what I’m trying to say still kind of sucks grammatically/pronunciation wise, I’ll be better off shutting up and getting more input. After days of intensive input I often have moments where near perfect Cantonese comes out of me in conversation, and I wonder where it all came from (but of course I know where). I really should remember to not force the speaking if I know my brain is not able to make it come out right, and only speak whenever I feel it’s pressing to come out.

It seems that the former is related to Japanese. (I believe that it was once classed as a “dialect”, for political reasons).

Unsurprisingly, it sounds different (at least to my ears), and deviates grammatically in various ways. That said, it’s usually written using Kana/Kanji – which should make it easier to leverage one’s knowledge of Japanese.

As for アイヌ語, I don’t know a great deal about it. However, it seems that it isn’t classed as a “Japonic” language, despite being indigenous to Japan.

Any thoughts?

Even though I’m not too interested in Korean, I figured out that even if I don’t take any Korean away from it, I could at least see what I can understand in Japanese whilst watching it – since there’s no English in it at all (barring two spoken Katakana loanword examples). (Some of the example sentences refer to milk; money; girlfriends, and boyfriends; and various social occasions, if I remember correctly).

Like most Japanese language-learning materials, they seem to make heavy use of “wrapping” the two languages together; rather going for total immersion for each lesson – but I guess that it might satisfy those curious about how such things are taught by the Japanese.

As someone who is actively learning Korean (not Japanese, I use this site more for methodology than language-specific advise), I find those quotes hilarious every time I read this article.

Jonathan: “Hangul DOES have a lot of circles, doesn’t it? What’s up with that?”

Oddly enough, only one character in the entire Hangul alphabet is a circle (ㅇ), but due to the rules for building syllable blocks that character is used very frequently. The symbol has two uses. Its “normal” use is as an “ng” sounding consonant when used at the end of a syllable block. The second use is as a “silent” consonant when used at the beginning of a syllable block. Why? Korean syllable blocks must start with a consonant by design, so if a syllable or word actually starts with a vowel sound, the “ㅇ” symbol is used as a placeholder consonant. In other words, one of the first things you pickup when learning to read Korean is ignore circles at the beginning of a syllable block, as they aren’t pronounced anyway.

Really made me think of what good advice this is. Keep up the good work, Khatz.

Cool!

Sorry my grammar’s so atrocious

for example, as a native english speaker, i found that practicing spanish as a 3rd language when i grew a bit too tired of practicing japanese did not do anything but show me how much easier spanish would have been to learn as my 2nd language than japanese. once you have at least a flimsy grasp of grammar, reading spanish is not difficult; the vocabulary is so similar i can generally read a wikipedia article with only looking up a few words here and there in my spanish/english dictionary. granted, i may be a bit ahead of the game because i have some experience with french, but irregardless, it’s best to pick something with many dissimilarities to your native language family if you really want to be slapped in the face with, “wow, i REALLY don’t know this at all.”

before i decided to learn spanish, i had a short-lived triste with korean and russian, and THAT was a real lesson in learning my absolute incompetence at picking up a new language totally unfamiliar to me. korean’s alphabet was probably the easiest alphabet to learn–maybe even easier than when i learned the english alphabet in preschool–but the length and pronunciation of words were an annoyance; when i started learning the russian alphabet, with pronunciation and characters that look exactly like an english character but sound completely different, i was ready to hang myself.

I am learning spanish (as the L2 in this) and i would also like to learn japanese. When i need to, i plan to take a break by doing something in japanese, but the only problem is that i have a drive to learn japanese as well. i’m not too sure what to do. i have many resources for learning both languages, but i’ve tried and i know that it’s much better to learn one language at a time and learn it well than just to kind-of-know a language. I have done this before, listening to japanese radio on the internet, and when i return to my spanish, i do feel like i know a ton. i’m just not too sure on what to do about my want to learn both languages at the same time. Does anyone ever feel like this/get these feelings as well?

ah anyway, a very good and inspiring article Khatz.

So, I’ve been doing research on the Krashen and the Input Hypothesis for a research paper, and recently I’ve been reading “The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom” by Krashen and Tracy Terrell. I was reading this part near the beginning where they’re talking about age differences in light of second language acquisition theory. Basically, they said that the reason children before puberty are more likely to be successful in acquiring a second language is because, after puberty, the “Affective Filter” becomes stronger for a variety of reasons. This really means that changes in our *attitude* after puberty seriously limit the effect that input has has on our language acquisition.

*ATTITUDE.* Wow. I was like, “Hmm…isn’t phase one about acquiring the right *attitude*?!?!” That’s totally what phase 0 is about, isn’t it? It’s all about “lowering the affective filter” so ALL JAPANESE ALL THE TIME has an effect on us. I feel like I’ve just gone behind the scenes at Disneyland and seen Mickey Mouse with his mask off and unlocked the secrets of everything!…not really…

Anyways, I was just excited to discover that the whole “mindset” phase really isn’t just for wusses, lol, but it’s actually a carefully crafted implementation of The Natural Approach.

Was this post totally out of place, lol? Sorry. Good Job, Khatz!

Korean makes a lot more sense to me now that I’m 準上級 in 日本語. (Will I ever claim native fluency? Doubt it!)

For anyone out there looking for Korean entertainment, MAN or WOMAN have I got a couple of suggestions for you.

1. For the drama addicts, try 대~한민국 변호사 (translated as Lawyers of Korea, although the pun in the title is much more than that)

2. If you want an entertaining variety show, hands down 미녀들의 수다 (Translated as a few variations of Talking Beauties, Beauties Chit Chat, or something else along those lines) is the best. It’s a panel-format talk show with an international group of “foreign beauties”. Enlist your Korean friends to find you episodes.

If you’re considering Korean after having studied Japanese, you’ll find it to be a walk in the cake, or a piece of park.

ということで、俺は、目指していることが変わってしまった！まあ、あきらめないけど、これから日本語を二の次にするかなと思う。（なんといっても日本語はとりあえず日常使用する言語だ！）Kats氏（これも韓国スタイル）、「いつもすべて日本語」といったら、俺は「いつもすべて韓国語」だけではなく、「いつもすべて言語でも食べ物でも韓国係」という生活をしているよ。キムチ万歳！

Harvey – I had Ogre Battle, too, for SNES, but the Japanese cartridge didn’t fit my system! I wonder what ever happened to it. I’d like to give it a shot now.