Ooh Catalan! Love to see it
I grew up speaking Catalan and English at home, and I’m learning Spanish in school. I’ve tried picking up French before, but since I was already taking the Spanish course for school, the next place to learn it was on Duolingo which didn’t work all that well. I intend to pick up Portuguese too …eventually. Don’t know when I’ll get around to it, learning 2 languages at once right now is already difficult. Seems like Japanese is your first non-romance language as well! I’d love to hear more about your experience since I’m having a difficult time wrapping my head around it without the cognates and similar grammatical structure to fall back on like I did with all the others.
I just learn 1 language at a time haha. I had a friends who learnt two at the same time and he just ended giving up on Japanese. I think Japanese is hard in itself that you need to focus on it rather than to learn plenty of languages.
For me, I started soon a year ago. Not exactly, I started like in July 2020 with a book series at my own house as a self-learner. Then I started wanikani in August. I used to do 3 hours of grammar everyday after work. I did that for 6 months. Now I focus, more on using japanese instead of just learning grammar. (Watching shows/ not anime, listening radio, watching youtube channels idk like Hikakin lol, listening to japanese hip hop / they have more than anime music you know haha, reading stuffs, trying to write too, playing games on my switch in nihongo >> i read all the stuff outloud to practice my speaking ability)
I wanted to learn japanese for 3 reasons. I want to go in 2022 after all this covid mess end up, to do a Work Holiday Visa in Japan (and probably a Work Visa later, I have my diplomas, etc, I just don’t want to feel stuck for my first year in Japan if it happen in one corp that I may have chosen by mistake. I know tech corp have changed compared to the traditionnal japanese corporation. I heard that the 1 life 1 job culture is changing bit by bit especially in new technologies). I know I will need a strong foundation when I arrive. I used to do Italki too to be able to talk a bit. I try to write more and more in Japanese to be able to wisthand a direct conversation. I think writing help you in talking too.
I also just want to enjoy this japanese culture that I always perceived as far and strange for me, but interesting?
And it also a life challenge. I thought if I can learn the hardest language for an english speaker (although Im not a native english speaker), “I could learn any languages” maaaaaaybe haha.
I actually didn’t want to learn japanese at first. I was always interested a bit by the japenese culture and I used to be a HUGE weeb back in the days, but I never imagined I would go to that level.
I was actually hoping to go for Mandarin. But when I saw what the government there did with Honkong with the 2019 protests, I hesitated to learn Mandarin. Although, I thought of Taiwan, but what might happen between the Allies of the West vs China and its Allies, with the situation at the moment. And the experts that predict a conflict of scale in the decade to come. Im hesitant
I have a friend that lives in China and I wanted to go there as well at first.
Actually Japanese was my second choice, because of what I mentionned earlier.
I heard that Japan is rather a safe place and if I want to do a dive in East Asia/ South East Asia, I think I might not go too hardcore first haha. I have a friend who went to Sri Lanka for 6 months.
I am aware that Japan has plenty of default haha, but I dont know what feeling push me to keep going for that odd kingdom in the middle of the sea.
Technically Japenese is my 5 language after studing German, French, and English. But since here in Luxembourg those 3 languages are mandetory it’s no surprise. I think my English and german are quite a high level (I can read university papers and I only have to look up technical terms). My french in quite poor after 10 years of studies but I can watch French TV and read the newspaper.
I also know some phrases in Dutch but only because I have family there; we mostly communicate in German or English.
I think of Japanes as the first language for which I, myself put in some effort. In school languages were always my worst subjects so I know that I don’t have a talent for it. However my biggest weakness, spelling does not seem to be an issue in Japanese so we’ll see how it goes.
English is my native language, French is first foreign language, Japanese second. Thinking of picking up Korean or Spanish. ![]()
Second language for me. English being my first.
I’m Chinese but I forgot most words (I grew up outside of China). English is technically my first foreign language, making Japanese my second!
English is my first language and Creole is my second one and Japanese is my third. I can’t write, speak, and read Creole, but I know it understand it since my parents use it at home all the time. I think my Japanese is better than my Creole though lol ![]()
For me, it is my fourth foreign language. I am raised bilingual, since there were two languages spoken where I used to live (Dutch and Frisian). In grade school I started learning English and in high school I also learnt German and French. In college I learnt a little bit Spanish and Chinese but forgot almost all of it so I don’t count these two xD So Japanese is my sixth language ^^
That’s so cool, not many people know about, much less speak Catalan.
If you are -aving trouble with that, one thing that i would definitely suggest is that you watch anime in Japanese with subtitles in any language that you know well, that really helped me, so much in fact that I know how to say things in Japanese but I am not able to translate them to any other language. By watching it in Japanese, you get used to their way of speaking and even learn many many words and expressions, you start not having to depend on cognates anymore. And as gor the fact that it has a different grammatic sructure, don’t stress about it, while it is different, it is waaaay easier.
I would also suggest that you kind of learn Japanes from zero, not mixing knowledge of other languages looking for similarities.
Good luck!
がんば! ![]()
I speak Italian and German as a mothertongue, then through school I also learned English, although for the biggest part I learned through watching Videos, reading books and music.
Once I felt comfortable with my English, I started learning Japanese.
Same sequence parça!![]()
I learned a song over 25 years ago that I’ve never forgotten and I think you might know it:
rasa sayang, hay, rasa sayang sayang hay,
hay, lihut nona jayu rasa sayang sayang hay.
It was taught to me by a Malaysian on a long road trip in the middle of the night on the way back to college and it was so memorable. I believe it’s kind of a campfire, sing-a-long folk song and that “rasa sayong” means “to feel love,” but that’s all I know about that (as Forrest Gump would say)!
Used to worship at the temple of The Long Roadtrip… mostly because every one I’d made’s still vividly recollectible, even decades later. Something about the act of driving or moto riding seems to keep me in the present moment…
Hard to find things in life what imprint as well; only relationships and some dreams have had longer legs ![]()
My native language is french.
My order is: French > english > spanish > germain > quebecois signs language (still learning) > japanese.
First two in primary school;
Third one in secondairy school;
Fourth on in CEGEP (it correspond at the 2 first years of university in Québec);
And the last 2 ones by myself.
I may try arabic in some years after finishing japanese.
Does C+ and Java count?
ah we know that song, and yeah its basically some sort of chant we sing when we dont wanna feel bored. To be honest, the chant itself dont have proper grammatically correct meaning so even to us, we dont really understand what the chant meant lol
Thank you for that added context! I never knew that about the song and one of the reasons it is sung for generations now. ![]()
Japanese is the first none-constructed languge I’ve put any actual effort into learning, I tried to pick up Toki Pona before but it didn’t go well
This is a cool question!
Englis is my first foreign language, then it comes French learned at school and used at work. My third language is Chinese - thanks college! - and my fourth one is Korean! Japanese comes last but loved as all others ☆彡 My native language is Italian ^ ^