Poll - What professions do Planet Hanyu members work/study in?

[Kagme]

Yes, Japanese is like my number one goal too, but it's sooooo hard (and i have no time, and no stamina, and no patience :rofl2: ). But there are so many other interesting languages, one life wouldn't be enough!

 

omg i agree! i wanna learn different languages but it's like "omg i wish i had infinite time!!!"

 

and also, all you people who speak 10000000000000 languages! how do you do it? i envy people who can absorb languages like a sponge!

 

 

I was a middle-to-high school teacher for some years (teaching Math, so was among the most hated teachers back then :grin: ), but it was too exhausting. So, I changed a bit. Now I am studying applied mathematics. Specifically, multiscale modelling and simulations. Basically lots and lots of numerical programming. I am dying for the amount of work I have to tackle, and my glasses subscription got worse very fast.

 

I so envy people who understand literature and seem to have sponge-like absorption of languages aptitude (is that even how you say it? How do you English?). How do you do that???!

 

i know how important maths is but i have never had talent in it ... numbers are confusing for me...

i struggle with math, really struggle with it ... my struggles in math were LEGENDARY in high school :cry:

i drove all my math teachers crazy because no matter how many times they try to explain, i still have trouble understanding it

it made the people in my class annoyed because they wanted to move on quickly and they didn't like that the teacher took so much time explaining to me...

the people in my class used to laugh at me because every time we get test papers handed back i'm always the last one...

i had to hide my test papers and reports because people would wave it around and laugh :cry:

even now years later, i can do basic high school math and that's about it... *SIGH*

 

Wow... That is... on another scale of immature, young people together can really be the most kind of unnecessarily cruel

[OmNom]

 

Well I am still stuying and pretty much dedicate my life to it (when I am not watchin Yuzuru's program for the umpteenth time) because my class are very easy right know, so I don't have that much credit

Yeah I saw it was among the most difficult to learn but well, I am not one to back off in front of a challenge, and there is a certain form of elation in learning a new alphabet, just being able to read something in a different alphabet, even if don't really understand feels like a game, or cracking a code :yay:

 

EDIT : and since at a time most of the Russian aristocraty spoke French there are a lot of words that resemble french and I can understand more easily. As for Japanese, well there are only a certain amount of animes you can watch before begnining to unerstand the language and pick up some thing, so it made easier too

 

I aspire to possess that persevering mindset one day!

 

I do watch anime too (lol) and some phrases do stick in my head after a couple of times hearing them. They're mostly unusable irl though :rofl2:

[OmNom]

 

i know how important maths is but i have never had talent in it ... numbers are confusing for me...

i struggle with math, really struggle with it ... my struggles in math were LEGENDARY in high school :cry:

i drove all my math teachers crazy because no matter how many times they try to explain, i still have trouble understanding it

it made the people in my class annoyed because they wanted to move on quickly and they didn't like that the teacher took so much time explaining to me...

the people in my class used to laugh at me because every time we get test papers handed back i'm always the last one...

i had to hide my test papers and reports because people would wave it around and laugh :cry:

even now years later, i can do basic high school math and that's about it... *SIGH*

 

omg that sounds terrible - but not uncommon from my experience bc I come from an Asian background like you do too (I think :P) and unfortunately maths really is like a staple here. you can mess up sciences or humanities, but maths is treated entirely different.

[Kagme]

 

Well I am still stuying and pretty much dedicate my life to it (when I am not watchin Yuzuru's program for the umpteenth time) because my class are very easy right know, so I don't have that much credit

Yeah I saw it was among the most difficult to learn but well, I am not one to back off in front of a challenge, and there is a certain form of elation in learning a new alphabet, just being able to read something in a different alphabet, even if don't really understand feels like a game, or cracking a code :yay:

 

EDIT : and since at a time most of the Russian aristocraty spoke French there are a lot of words that resemble french and I can understand more easily. As for Japanese, well there are only a certain amount of animes you can watch before begnining to unerstand the language and pick up some thing, so it made easier too

 

I aspire to possess that persevering mindset one day!

 

I do watch anime too (lol) and some phrases do stick in my head after a couple of times hearing them. They're mostly unusable irl though :rofl2:

 

Oh, how I can relate :rofl2: before begining to be serious about it, except basic words, the only sentence I could say was akuma no shitsuji desu (Sorry, I don't have my japanese keyboard, so it will be romanji) from Kuroshitsuji, and when exactly in life do you have the opportunity of saying 'I am a butler of hell' :rofl2:

[Puniyo]

i had to hide my test papers and reports because people would wave it around and laugh :cry:

even now years later, i can do basic high school math and that's about it... *SIGH*

 

Ouch... sorry to hear that. High school kids can be really cruel.

I'm on the same boat when it comes to high school math... a calculator is still my best friend... haha! I guess I'll have to brush up a little since I'll be taking Psycholinguistics this coming Fall.

 

Just reading all the different majors here, I feel like those who are studying can always ask for help for papers :rofl2:

But really, it's so heart-warming to see that Yuzuru can bring together people of different backgrounds.

*offers cookies to everyone*

[yuzupon]

i know how important maths is but i have never had talent in it ... numbers are confusing for me...

i struggle with math, really struggle with it ... my struggles in math were LEGENDARY in high school :cry:

i drove all my math teachers crazy because no matter how many times they try to explain, i still have trouble understanding it

it made the people in my class annoyed because they wanted to move on quickly and they didn't like that the teacher took so much time explaining to me...

the people in my class used to laugh at me because every time we get test papers handed back i'm always the last one...

i had to hide my test papers and reports because people would wave it around and laugh :cry:

even now years later, i can do basic high school math and that's about it... *SIGH*

 

I am very sorry for your really bad experience with math class.

tbh, in the beginning, in elementary and middle schools, I was terrible at math, too. I can't count how many recesses were taken away from me because I wasn't able to do the before-recess quiz. I mean, there were other students with me, but on that year, I was the only one constantly missing recess for this. And one time in middle school, I was left standing for the entire period of math class (2x45 min), because I couldn't answer the opening quiz. Those were humiliating!

But my late father was very patient with me, and we found out I was so bad because the concepts were not properly explained in the way that I would understand. So, he costumised the explanation for me. I am lucky my father was who he was.

 

I hope, despite being among the most hated (by virtue of what subject I taught), I managed at least avoid humiliating my students in the class. I certainly did not air students' scores like that. Isn't that illegal in most countries anyway?

[ruigawu]

I am a bilingual student study both English and French in college. emm……Math is also very difficult to me so when I was at junior high I chose to take part in a special college entrance examination, because it didn't have math test. Sometimes I am regretful that I didn't choose Japanese as my major. In our school Japanese majors need to study math while bilingual students do not. em but most of yuzuru's videos are Japanese so I need to study Japanese by myself, it's a long way to go…… :hachimaki:

[OmNom]

 

I aspire to possess that persevering mindset one day!

 

I do watch anime too (lol) and some phrases do stick in my head after a couple of times hearing them. They're mostly unusable irl though :rofl2:

 

Oh, how I can relate :rofl2: before begining to be serious about it, except basic words, the only sentence I could say was akuma no shitsuji desu (Sorry, I don't have my japanese keyboard, so it will be romanji) from Kuroshitsuji, and when exactly in life do you have the opportunity of saying 'I am a butler of hell' :rofl2:

 

To tell the truth, I did learn a number of new vocab from anime. and at times I could find Japanese words for what I'm thinking about popping up in my head, which surprised me a lot lol. but grammar is an entirely different thing and there's no way to fully understand a language without learning it from the basics.

(though kanji is what tripped me up the most urghh) :ohno:

[Puniyo]

(though kanji is what tripped me up the most urghh)

 

Kanji is such a struggle for me.

I grew up speaking Cantonese (which is a variety of the Chinese Language) but I never had formal education in Chinese. These last two years I decided I need to stay true to my roots and I decided to learn Chinese writing (with the help of my mom). So far I can read restaurant menus, read short stories, read announcements, but no literary stuff.

 

And then I decided to learn Japanese. I thought it would help but not so much. Kanji can have different ways of reading and some of the strokes are not the same as in Chinese. Double headache now... :rofl2: :rofl2:

[Smultron]

So nice to hear what you all are up to! Great that so many are are interested in languages :goe:

As for me, I major in linguistics and study Swedish and English :D

I'm very passionate about Swedish and often get overexcited when I find nice and witty words or quotes :laugh:

[Puniyo]

(though kanji is what tripped me up the most urghh)

 

Kanji is such a struggle for me.

I grew up speaking Cantonese (which is a variety of the Chinese Language) but I never had formal education in Chinese. These last two years I decided I need to stay true to my roots and I decided to learn Chinese writing (with the help of my mom). So far I can read restaurant menus, read short stories, read announcements, but no literary stuff.

 

And then I decided to learn Japanese. I thought it would help but not so much. Kanji can have different ways of reading and some of the strokes are not the same as in Chinese. Double headache now... :rofl2: :rofl2:

 

if i remember this right, i think chinese and japanese kanji are quite different...? not only in the pronunciations, but the writing and in the meanings too?

 

A lot of the kanjis are the same but used in different situations while some have minor changes. Others are just plain different.

But it's also nice to practice writing (I always get the order wrong because I'm left-handed :rofl2: ). Like the old proverb, killing two languages with one stroke :rofl2: :rofl2:

[OmNom]

 

Kanji is such a struggle for me.

I grew up speaking Cantonese (which is a variety of the Chinese Language) but I never had formal education in Chinese. These last two years I decided I need to stay true to my roots and I decided to learn Chinese writing (with the help of my mom). So far I can read restaurant menus, read short stories, read announcements, but no literary stuff.

 

And then I decided to learn Japanese. I thought it would help but not so much. Kanji can have different ways of reading and some of the strokes are not the same as in Chinese. Double headache now... :rofl2: :rofl2:

 

Yeah I'd argue that having a Chinese background only messes up your Japanese learning process lol. Aside from Chinese characters and Kanji having the same roots (and maybe some words' pronunciation), there really isn't much in common between the two languages. There's the issue with different strokes and different readings like you mentioned, and then there's the fact that their grammars could not be more different from one another.

I've seen many Koreans much more successful at attempting to learn Japanese than Chinese who study the same thing, bc while the Korean and Japanese alphabets are different, their grammars are really similar and sometimes interchangeable. So.. yeah :space:

[Puniyo]

i remember a classmate who is korean and studied japanese - she also said she learned quickly because the grammar structures are similar, so i think you're right about similarities helping in learning new language.

 

Interestingly, one of my friends who is finishing her master's in Applied Linguistics (Language Acquisition) says that there are theories that argue that it is easier for one to learn a language that is completely different (either writing, pronunciation or grammar) from their native tongue because you'll get less to no interference from it.

[OmNom]

i remember a classmate who is korean and studied japanese - she also said she learned quickly because the grammar structures are similar, so i think you're right about similarities helping in learning new language.

 

Interestingly, one of my friends who is finishing her master's in Applied Linguistics (Language Acquisition) says that there are theories that argue that it is easier for one to learn a language that is completely different (either writing, pronunciation or grammar) from their native tongue because you'll get less to no interference from it.

 

Err, I can't say I quite get this theory, speaking from personal experience. My native country's language uses the latin alphabet (abc), while every other country in the same continent uses different writing systems. Yes, every single one of them. I dare say that English comes very smoothly for a lot of people having the same nationality as mine, partly bc it's so easy to recognise words/try to pronounce them based on prior knowledge of certain letters/consonants in the alphabet. Meanwhile, my personal observation seems to tell me that people from Korea, Japan, China and some Southeast Asian countries have considerably more difficulty learning English in comparison to people from my native country. They particularly struggle at writing.

So while I think that theory could be applied to some specific cases, it doesn't hold a lot of ground when I look at what I've experienced.

[PomeloPooh]

OmNom said:

Puniyo said:

 

Kanji is such a struggle for me.

I grew up speaking Cantonese (which is a variety of the Chinese Language) but I never had formal education in Chinese. These last two years I decided I need to stay true to my roots and I decided to learn Chinese writing (with the help of my mom). So far I can read restaurant menus, read short stories, read announcements, but no literary stuff.

 

And then I decided to learn Japanese. I thought it would help but not so much. Kanji can have different ways of reading and some of the strokes are not the same as in Chinese. Double headache now...

 

Yeah I'd argue that having a Chinese background only messes up your Japanese learning process lol. Aside from Chinese characters and Kanji having the same roots (and maybe some words' pronunciation), there really isn't much in common between the two languages. There's the issue with different strokes and different readings like you mentioned, and then there's the fact that their grammars could not be more different from one another.

I've seen many Koreans much more successful at attempting to learn Japanese than Chinese who study the same thing, bc while the Korean and Japanese alphabets are different, their grammars are really similar and sometimes interchangeable. So.. yeah

 

As a native Chinese speaker and a beginner Japanese learner, I'd say that while having learnt Chinese as a second language probably doesn't help with learning Japanese much, knowing Chinese as a mother tongue makes Japanese a lot easier. I guess it's because when one is your native language, you don't tend to mix things up. Kanji and Chinese character do have differences but those are minor, so that part basically doesn't need to be learnt. (I shudder at the thought of learning those anew... I always have so much respect for people learning Chinese or Japanese who knows neither as a native language:D) Meanings are usually very close if not exactly the same (hence why Chinese people who haven't learnt Japanese at all can read Japanese and get very roughly what it's talking about). Pronunciation is more difficult, for there're multiple pronunciations for each kanji and only one of them resembles Chinese. That's where confusion comes in for me. Grammar of course is a complete different matter:P But I feel it's not much harder than grabbing English grammar which is very different too. Though I'm probably being over optimistic here because I haven't reached the more difficult grammars yet... Need to work harder on my Japanese!

 

But I can say that learning Japanese with prior knowledge of Chinese is a lot more difficult than learning French with prior knowledge of English (even as a second language). Honestly, I don't feel the switch into French sometimes; it's just like continuation of English with some altered default settings.

 

I really love learning foreign languages! (that's why I'm writing a lengthy answer to a language post when I'm suppose to be writing my political science book report...)