<p>Soo.. I love foreign langauges.
I have been learning French for four years and I am pretty fluent in Portuguese, but would love to improve my skills.
Should I study foreign language at UNC? Is the program good? The programs at my HS are really bad and I often feel like I learn the classes. Would it be insane to take two foreign language classes each semester ? Is it even possible (I am thinking doing 21 hours and considering it an extracurricular to mantain sanity - if I didnt take the classes I would learn on my own through reading/talking/movies)?
Can I audit those classes to take away pressure?
Btw, I am going to come in basically as a sophomore due to the amount of credits and plan to double major in Psychology and Business. I also hope to do a study abroad to Portugal or Brazil and France. Am I expecting TOO much?</p>
<p>You're like me. I love foreign language.</p>
<p>Our school foreign language dept. is by far the worst. They only offer Spanish, and there weren't sufficient prerequisite classes leading up to AP Spanish, so as a result very few people ever passed the test. They've now done away with AP Spanish.</p>
<p>I've heard the foreign language dept. is excellent at Carolina. One of the admissions officers said they have well over 30 languages... african, native american, mandarin, middle eastern, and others. I'm not even sure which ones I'd like to take! I'd like to continue Spanish, while picking up French and/or German. An exotic language like an african one would be cool to learn also. I'm partial to portuguese as well since it's one of the most heavily spoken ones.</p>
<p>like you, I'd consider it an EC. Learning languages is fun to me. You're probably expecting a bit much. One major concern I would have is, how are you going to double major in Psychology and Business, but study abroad for a foreign language? If you're not planning on majoring in it, can you even get the money for it? If you could, how would you be able to fulfill your other major requirements? (i'm really uncertain on the study abroad program, but i'd like to do it also).</p>
<p>I like our schools foreign language department radish! :)</p>
<p>considering UNC is ranked #1 out of public schools for study abroad, im assuming its language department is excellent..although im disappointed that they dont offer more asian languages</p>
<p>I audited one of the more esoteric languages at UNC (Hittite) and enjoyed it. UNC has excellent language offerings, and I've heard mostly good reviews about them. Duke and UNC are planning to combine German departments, but I don't know when (or if) that will take effect.</p>
<p>margsala: My daughter came in as a freshman having studied Japanese for many years, but she became interested in learning Chinese, so she did continue to take Japanese, as well as beginning Chinese, as back-to-back courses. Since they're both tonal languages, she felt her background in Japanese really helped her with learning the Chinese. So keeping up with/learning 2 languages is doable. That said, I think 21 hours (a semester?) might border on insanity--or, you know--might make you go insane. :eek:</p>
<p>misstinax3: I think UNC offers Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese; however, if there's an Asian language that you're interested in learning, that UNC doesn't offer (like Korean?), you can enroll in whatever that is at Duke (if they offer it and UNC doesn't), and it wouldn't cost you any extra to do so.</p>
<p>A friend of mine is taking Korean at UNC, I think the program is new.</p>
<p>cloying: Thanks! Yeah, it looks like they started offering Korean this past fall. Here's the link with all the other Asian languages they offer: <a href="http://www.unc.edu/depts/asia/program.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.unc.edu/depts/asia/program.html</a> Doesn't look like they actually offer Vietnamese, though.</p>
<p>hey thanks jack for the info! yeah i was referring to korean. im chinese, but im basically obsessed with korean culture/language haha. i knew unc offered korean but not many courses since it's brand new..hopefully it'll expand within the next yr or 2</p>
<p>jack - Thanks for the link! Your daughter's situation sounds pretty similar to mine! I will have taken two courses in Japanese at a college nearby by the time I enter UNC. It's weird, I wanted to take German but I couldn't take Calc II and that at the same time. Wound up in Japanese and now am having this totally new educational experience that I didn't think I'd stumble upon, and have recently started thinking about also picking up Chinese. It seems like these days it might be more useful, too.</p>
<p>How is your daughter liking the Chinese program at UNC? Do you know what the classes are like and what sorts of language labs they do outside of class? A friend of mine is taking French at the college I take Japanese and she uses this really neat program with a microphone and headset that gives her instant feedback on her speaking skills. It seems like it's harder to find those sorts of resources for Asian languages, although that's just from my limited experience! Ah, this is one of the reasons why I'm so excited to go to a larger University. There have to be a reasonable amount of kids interested in what I am, and to deal with that, they have to deal with our demands! :)</p>
<p>Random note:</p>
<p>Japanese isn't a tonal language, I'm on my second year of Japanese at my highschool right now and our teacher is a native Japanese speaker. Soooo, Japanese doesn't have tones, it doesn't even have stressed sylables... Just thought I'd say that.</p>
<p>As far as the foreign languages at UNC, I'm thinking about continuing Japanese <em>I'd probably test out of the first year of the course</em> and possibly taking Russian at the same time to go along with my Psychology/ International Studies double major with a concentration on Cultures..... annnnnways, the exchange program at UNC is great and you can get credits for the classes you take in foreign countries so it's definately an option <em>I've been to a lot of things on UNC campus and currently live 20 min away not to mention the marjority of my schools graduating class goes to UNC every year...</em></p>
<p>cloying: She likes the Chinese program very much. I don't know much about the classes/labs, but I'll ask her. I know the class she's in currently is fairly small. </p>
<p>RLAJen: While Japanese may not be <em>technically</em> categorized as a tonal language, it does have certain pitches and sounds--which convey meaning--just as the Chinese language does. In that way, she found that having taken Japanese for so many years, that it certainly helped her better understand/speak and appreciate the tonal sounds of Chinese.</p>
<p>cloying: My daughter is home now on spring break, so I asked her about the Chinese program. She says it's "fantastic" and "very supportive." She really loves it, and thinks the professors are really excellent (and all seem really happy to be there). In fact, the professor who taught her beginning Chinese is also the head of the department; she also teaches 400 level courses. My daughter also mentioned that there's a huge Chinese graduate student population at UNC, as well as a relatively large Chinese population in the Triangle area, so that she feels there are lots of ways to extend your learning of the language outside the classroom--lots of cultural events going on, too. Also, the Chinese graduate students are excellent TAs, she says. The first 2 years, the Chinese language classes meet 5 days a week; that includes 2 days of recitations. She's in her third year of Chinese, so her classes now meet only 3 days a week. There's also a Chinese conversation club at UNC, but you can also get partnered with a Chinese student (who is usually a graduate student or, more often, a spouse of a graduate student) who will help you with your conversation; you, in turn, help them with English. So it's a great way for each person to help out the other with his/her foreign language skills. She did do a study abroad in China, which really helped with her language skills, too, and placed her a year ahead when she returned.</p>
<p>Hope that helps!</p>
<p>That DID help! I really like the Chinese conversation club idea a lot.</p>
<p>To add to the tonal/not tonal conversation: I asked my Japanese prof just now whether or not it's a tonal language. Her answer was basically this: It is not tonal in the same sense that Chinese is, in the sense that the pitch you use changes the meaning of the word entirely. In Japan, there's a sort of high vs. low tonality to words, which can help differentiate them, but vary regionally (although I know this happens in China, too). I guess the main difference is the high-low tones of Japan are merely a way of differentiating, but don't have to be used for one to be understood, which is different than in China.</p>
<p>Thanks, cloying! That makes sense. Of course, I can't imagine trying to learn either language(!), which has to be really difficult, but I know she just found the 7+ years she'd studied Japanese a real asset in learning Chinese. Anyway, if you decide to take Chinese, it sounds like the program there is great.</p>
<p>I think taking Japanese that long before taking Chinese is also helpful with the written language because Kanji is very similar (if not identical for some words) to Chinese characters. Japanese is fun though, it feels kind of cool when you know 4 diffrent systems of writing in a foreign language not ot mention your own. Though I do have to say the grammar is a bit confusing because Japanese is not a straightfoward language, its more like meandering through ten extra words to get to the point. For example, the word for didn't in Japanese is dewaarimasende****a which is basically "it did not happen in the past"</p>
<p>Yeah. I actually kind of like the particles and the fact that you can move around the order of things, as long as the verb is at the end. Haha I think that if you're into making outlines and being organized that Japanese is the kind of language for you! :)</p>
<p>Ok, so randomly it starred out part of my word but that's ok, I didn't really think they'd get rid of part of a foreign word because it shows up as a US swear word. I'm just kind of wondering how Japanese relates to making outlines? We just did an activity on particles today and they're pretty useful but the way someone them have multiple meanings depending on the context of the sentence can be rather difficult at times.</p>
<p>Hmm, when we started learning ni and de, our professor would always circle them and box what they were modifying or referring to. It always reminded me of some kind of outline, where ni replaced 'I' or 'a.' I know that's a little crazy, but this is the first time I've articulate that.</p>