Musical Evening

[fiat_knox]

I'm sitting here in the flat, listening to these MP3 tracks I haven't played in ages. I really need to get new headphones for my MP3 player, so I can enjoy these tracks out in the field again.

Earlier today, I found myself watching Serenity yet again, and thinking of my brief flirtation with Mandarin Chinese - which led to reminiscences of my Japanese studies.

Sooner or later, it always comes back to studying languages. When it isn't studying mathematics or the elements of the periodic table.

I'm planning on another little jaunt to Manchester tomorrow. I think I'll take along a language book of my choice - just one - to give me something to brush up on during my journeys.

Comments

[gloomsan.livejournal.com]

I need to get my japanese better, especially as I want to travel to japan in the next 2 years

[fiat-knox.livejournal.com]

Gambatte, gloomsan.Have fun with that. :)

You should study a language for the joy of doing so, and preferably put out feelers to anyone who speaks the language, letting them know explicitly that you require their services to develop knowledge of their language, as well as of course to develop friendship with them.

A desire to understand another person's culture is still one of the highest expressions of praise for that culture you can demonstrate.

[gloomsan.livejournal.com]

I really enjoy the japanese language and I seem to pick it up easily enough I'm just lazy :P

[lemuria.livejournal.com]

Do you have a language (or family of languages) that you prefer? I just ask because I've always found the Germanic and Scandinavian languages more appealing than the Romance languages, and I'm not sure why: I find that I can express myself more accurately in German or Swedish (though my Swedish is extremely rusty!) than in, say, French or Spanish.
I started learning Welsh in my early 30s and found it quite difficult, although I was always OK at the pronunciation as I'd heard family members speaking it.
I've never attempted to learn anything with a non-western alphabet and am impressed that you've tackled Chinese and Japanese.

Linguistic Preferences

[fiat-knox.livejournal.com]

I have grown quite fond of Portuguese and Italian, both derivatives of the parent Latin. I study Welsh because I was born speaking it and English in my household, and because I feel that continued study of Cymraeg does honour to my ancestors.

As for the Eastern languages, I got involved with the study of Japanese when a businessman from Japan moved in a couple of houses down the street. His missus was the one who taught me the basics, and the rest I picked up from dictionaries, guide books and a couple of other sources available at the time.

The interest in Mandarin Chinese, of course, emerged when I first saw Firefly and Serenity on DVD. Unlike Japanese, which has two syllabaries - katakana and hiragana - Chinese has but a single, complex alphabet.

The good news is, since Japanese kanji is basically a version of the Chinese script that made its way across the water, I am already familiar with the Chinese script somewhat - even if I don't know the pronunciation for the sign for rain in Mandarin, for example, I'd recognise the symbol because I have seen it appear in Japanese in a sentence which reads "it is raining."