<p>Hey guys, I'm a rising senior, and so I'll be applying to colleges this fall. I plan to major in Electrical Engineering and Communications Systems (I think that's the official name of the major.) Recently, I have developed an interest in the Japanese language, mainly because of anime/manga, like most other people. Besides, it would be great to know about their culture and language. However, I'm not sure whether to take Japanese in college, since I've heard that most language classes are time-consuming, therefore cutting my available time to focus on my major. So here is what I have to ask:
1] Is it worth taking Japanese in college? Or should I learn it at some other time, after I graduate from college?
2] Will the Engineering + Japanese combo help me in any way; that is, will learning Japanese be of any practical use in my field?</p>
<p>Japanese is one of those languages that require utter dedication to master and become completely fluent in, not really a good idea to try and tackle alongside an engineering degree. Often people spend 4 years studying plus living in Japan for years trying to become merely okay with the language as a whole. </p>
<p>I don’t know how much knowing Japanese would help you in engineering, at best you might fill some odd niche somewhere.</p>
<p>Learning Japanese will be much harder after college. If you’re interested in it I highly suggest you learn as much as possible while in college. Also, when you graduate you will have to make an effort to retain it and practice it occasionally or you WILL lose it.</p>
<p>It will help you a bit. A very small number of Japanese companies targeted my school to try to recruit Americans EEs for jobs in Japan. Knowledge of Japanese was not necessary but was, obviously, beneficial.</p>
<p>The problem is that the introduction to Japanese classes are extremely time consuming with reading and writing. The classes are usually fast paced and it is definitely difficult to do this on top of your engineering classes. It is possible but you might have many sleepless nights.</p>
<p>It’s a thousand times easier to learn a language like Spanish since they use the same alaphabet. I would not even attempt to learn Japanese. If you really want to, learn it AFTER you graduate. Take some classes, spend time in Japan, and get Rosetta Stone.</p>
<p>I’m a computer engineering undergrad and I took Japanese. I also took Chinese and Korean. If you want to do it then just do it. Japanese is fun to learn and it’ll give you a good break from tougher classes. Japanese class was always the highlight of my day.</p>
<p>It’s nowhere near a thousand times easier than Spanish, it’s really not that hard. You will start off learning hiragana (syllabic script) and romaji (English syllabic script, very very easy) and then katakana (for foreign words). Once you have those two down (romaji is a given if you can write in English) you can write anything in Japanese. This probably takes around a month or so in a classroom is my guess. Along the way you will also learn some very basic Japanese vocabulary and grammar.</p>
<p>After a while kanji will be introduced, the Chinese characters used by the Japanese language. This can become a bit harder as you are now getting into the phase where you are increasing the unique characters from ~50 to hundreds. Additionally, you will start to form more complex sentences and the sentence structure of Japanese is not like English. This might sound challenging but it’s really not that bad as long as you do the one thing that you need to do in all classes to do well - stay on top of it, study, and don’t fall behind.</p>
<p>When you graduate from college it will most likely be substantially harder to learn it. You will now have a full time job 40+ hours per week as well as other responsibilities and your entire life will no longer be centrally located around a single point, the school campus, so you will be driving or taking public transportation a lot more thus having less free time.</p>
<p>Ive taken a couple Japanese classes because I am also very interested in Japanese culture. It is no where near as difficult as many of the above posters make it seem. The only thing is you have to do a lot of memorization and when it comes to kanji, which is similar to Chinese characters, it can get a bit tricky. But hiragana and katakana are like alphabets and pretty easy. Grammar isn’t that hard to pickup either. I used to also make it a habit to carry around 10 new Japanese vocab flash cards every day and memorize the new vocab. Over time you can learn a lot of new vocab without much effort besides the vocab that you have to learn for class.</p>
<p>Although, unless you really want to learn Japanese the language isn’t going to be all that useful in engineering. It is not unreasonable to pursue a degree in engineering and learn Japanese.</p>
<p>Thanks for the feedback guys, I really appreciate it. I was asking because if there’s not going to be much of a benefit taking it in college, then I’d much rather take it at some other point in life. Besides, I’ll need most of my time to concentrate on my major. I’ll see what I’ll do once I get to college. Thanks once again everyone!</p>
<p>Becoming fluent in Japanese in a few years and trying to get a degree in engineering is unrealistic. But acquiring a base understanding of Japanese and being able to do some basic communication is very reasonable.</p>
<p>I think I’m probably going to study Japanese as a hobby, to at least gain enough proficiency to survive there. I also agree with Mr.Crashoverridelol, taking a few classes isn’t enough to achieve fluency. So the question basically becomes: Should I acquire a base understanding of the language in college, or after college?</p>
<p>There are a few questions derive from your question:
</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Do you pay by credits, or is it one tuition-plan? Having a Japanese class might eat up some credits, and sometime it can be hard to fit into your planned curriculum. So now…</p></li>
<li><p>If you have exceed some credits, how much would it cause? In our school 2 credits over 18 credits charges $100…</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I’d say give a try for a basic class in college, and watch Japanese drama or listen to some Japanese songs on your own if you have the time.</p>