codergeek42

I just briefly explained the etymology of the 言 (words, to say), 時 (time, hour), 間 (interval), 本 (book), and 森 (forest) Kanji to a visiting neighbor...in Spanish.

I'm quite proud of myself for being able to accomplish that. However, I'm a bit embarrassed that I needed to ask my mom about some Spanish vocabulary that I at the time forgot (especially "mouth" and "to ring a bell"). This is stuff I should know already.

I hope my Kanji-a-week study is not making me forget Spanish! Ack!

Eric Christensen asks, "What [new] language should I learn?" I’ll throw in my two cents...or in this case, my two foreign languages. :)

As a good half of my family (maternal side) are of Spanish descent, it was only practical that I [formally] studied it for four years of high school. Actually, Spanish was my first language; but then I started going to school for more than a a decade in English-only and the Spanish stuff apparently bitrotted into the back of my brain somewhere. I spent the first semester of high school basically remembering instead of learning new material, which started soon thereafter.

Then again, the simple fact that I did have so much available practice outside of school is certainly responsible, if at least indirectly, for why I was able to learn so much of it relatively quickly.

Now, though, I’m extremely comfortable with it and aside from some regional-/cultural-specific vocabulary quirks, I can (and do) happily hold verbal and written conversations with those for whom it is their native - or sometimes - only language.

Spanish is an extremely practical language to learn if you do a lot of international traveling, as well. According to Wikipedia’s entry, Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, the second most widely used language in the United States, and the third most common language worldwide (both on the Internet and by speaking population). Granted, there are a variety of dialects to it, as there are most (all?) other languages; but their differences tend to be minor, with the same essential grammar and phonetic usage, usually just differing in some specific vocabulary.

Thanks to its Latin-based etymological roots as a romance language, it becomes significantly simpler to learn to communicate in other similar languages (such as French, Italian, et al.) once you master the essentials of Spanish.

The writing system is all phonetic, too; and is not very difficult to learn since it is essentially a superset of the Latin/Roman alphabet: some vowels get the acute accent diacritic (´), and there is the ñ ("eñe") character. That’s about it. ;-)

(Okay, okay...technically there are also the "ch" and "ll" digraphs; but those are treated as letter pairs for collation and other purposes.)

If you’re wanting to learn a language just for the fun and interest of it, however, I recommend you stretch your mind of its comfort zone. Try Japanese! I’m currently taking an introductory course and while I can’t honestly say that it is easy, I can promise that I am enjoying it greatly. Its writing system (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji) and grammar (with which culture is intertwined quite heavily) are so vastly different from English and other Romance/European languages that it forces one to think more abstractly and not just translating words and grammar; but translating the raw intention or meaning of it.

The two sets of Kana (entirely phonetic) are rather simple, actually. It just takes a lot of patience and even more practice. The Kanji, on the other hand, often have complex stroke patterns and - more often than not - many possible pronunciations (so-called "readings"). Even these are not difficult with diligent study, however! (I find flash-cards for these to be INCREDIBLY helpful.) Normally these readings are based upon usage of the Kanji.

For example, the character 人 is pronounced ひと ("hito") when simply being used as “person;” but is read as じん ("jin") when being used to describe nationality, and as にん ("nin") when being used as a counter for numbers of people.

• あの人（ひと）…
  (Romaji: "ano hito...")
  That person...


• 私はアメリカ人（じん）です。
  (Romaji: "watashi wa amerika-jin desu.")
  I am an American.


• そこに三人（さんにん）がいます。
  (Romaji: "soko ni san-nin ga imasu.")
  Three people are there (lit., exist in that place).

Also, Japanese grammar is, as far as we’ve learned, extremely regular. One does not need to be concerned with gender- or subject-based conjugation as with other languages; and there are essentially three categories of verb conjugation: "-ru" （〜る）verbs, "-u"（〜う）verbs, and "-suru" （〜する）verbs. Then there is 来る ("kuru," to come [towards]) which is otherwise the only irregular verb in the entire language. Quite pragmatic.

It’s definitely a bit odd at first that there are specific conjugations and inflections for cultural aspects (e.g., polite/formal vs. plain form), and there are some exceptions to most things (for example, 二人 is read ふたり, "futari" instead of ににん, "ni-nin") but they tend to be few and far between, and all-in-all (from what I’ve learned so far) it’s quite an interesting language!

I suppose Mandarin Chinese, with its similar writing system and tone colors in pronunciation would also be an interesting venture; but I think Japanese is more practical because then one can watch anime and read manga more readily.

I now will retire to my email-checking. I bid you adieux...