Re: Japanese learning, is anybody as frustrated as me?
From: Unforgiven (jaapd4000_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 11/24/04
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Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 23:58:47 +0100
"robert" <rverbeke@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3e185525.0411241423.6c78a729@posting.google.com...
> A typical Belgian 18 year-old can express him/herself in 3 languages
> (Dutch, French and English), some also German. Now, I admit that
> Japanese is more difficult for me than Dutch, English or French. But
> for me it's certainly easier than German.
>
> I'd like to hear other people's opinion on this.
I am Dutch, and I too have learned English, French and German in school (as
well as Latin and Ancient Greek). So far, I find Japanese to be
significantly easier than most of those. I can't really comment on English,
as I learned that by doing much more than from classes (and in fact, I was
already pretty proficient at English before we even got it at school), but
all other languages I just plain sucked at. I've never been able to get a
feeling for those languages. French was kind of okay, but was thoroughly
ruined for me by the French Teacher From Hell (tm), so after two years of
that I never even wanted to have much to do with French anymore. German was
more clearly just me. I just didn't get it. When we had to write texts I was
allowed to use a dictionary, which even contained an abbreviated section on
grammar in the back, and I still never managed to get higher grades than a
3. That I managed to pass is still a miracle.
Japanese somehow works for me. Sure, the vocabulary is difficult, as is the
writing, but the grammatical structure makes much more sense to me than that
of most western languages. Maybe that is because Japanese is more
structured; as a computer scientist, I like taking a structured approach to
things. I'm still too much of a novice to know if Japanese really is as
structured as I think it is, but it definitely seems that way to me. There
have been occasions where we'd have to translate Dutch to Japanese, and
there was a certain grammatical structure we hadn't previously seen, and
sometimes I'd be able to guess it correctly. That has *never* happened to me
with German or French.
Admittedly, I'm a much more dedicated learner nowadays than I was back then.
Perhaps, if given the same dedication, I'd be much more successful at French
and German as well. Still, the fact remains that with less than a year and a
half of Japanese classes I can safely say I'm better at it than French, even
though I did four years of that.
In the end what it comes down to I suspect is this: I am voluntarily
studying Japanese, where I hated doing French and German. I've never been
good at doing work when my hearts not in it. I guess we'll never know the
truth.
Was there a point to this post? I forgot. :-)
-- Unforgiven
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