<p>BIGTWIX,</p>
<p>The katakana loanwords can actually be quite difficult at times, because many of them are used differently in Japanese than the language they're borrowed from.</p>
<p>"manshon" (pronounced "mansion") refers to a studio apartment. "rifoomu" (reform) usually refers to home remodeling.</p>
<p>Ugh.</p>
<p>As far as difficulty, the Dept. of State says this:</p>
<p>Level 1: French, Spanish, German
Level 2: Bulgarian
Level 3: Russian
Level 4: Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Arabic</p>
<p>ahh man i love languages :)</p>
<p>why is it that americans hardly ever know 2+ languages</p>
<p>when i have kids, im gonna speak multiple languages areound them so they learn 2 or 3 by like the age of 5 (that is assuming that my future wife will be bilingual/trilingual in languages i speak too)</p>
<p>UCLAri</p>
<p>have u ever heard/ heard of Japanese pod 101...
what are ur oppinions</p>
<p>
why is it that americans hardly ever know 2+ languages
</p>
<p>Third time I've posted this, but: </p>
<p>It's because no one needs to know any language other than English to get by in the world.</p>
<p>Also, this joke sums it up:</p>
<p>A Swiss man is looking for directions, and he pulls up at a bus stop where two Americans are waiting.</p>
<p>“Entschuldigung, konenn Sie Deutsch sprechen?" he asks. The two Americans stare at him.</p>
<p>“Excusez-moi, parlez vous Francais?” he tries. They continue to stare.</p>
<p>“Praat julle Afrikaans?” The Americans just look at each other.</p>
<p>“Parlare Italiano?” No response.</p>
<p>“Hablan ustedes Espanol?” Still nothing.</p>
<p>Disgusted, the Swiss guy drives off.</p>
<p>One American guy turns to other and says, “Y’know, maybe we should learn a foreign language.”</p>
<p>“Why?” says the other. “That guy knew five languages and it didn’t do him no good either.”</p>
<p>funny joke,
but can u be so arrogant to think that learning languages is stupid.</p>
<p>without learning foreign languages, the US wouldnt have it's economy of today.</p>
<p>Import/export cant be done without foreign languages</p>
<p>BIGTWIX,</p>
<p>The weakness to your argument is that most of the people we're trading with already speak English! English is, without a doubt, the lingua franca of trade.</p>
<p>"but can u be so arrogant to think that learning languages is stupid."</p>
<p>I agree. The whole comment that no other language is needed is very, very arrogant. There are plenty--and I mean plenty--of instances in the world where English will get you nowhere. Further, consider that there have been quite a few languages that were the "lingua franca" at some time or another, yet aren't anymore (French, German, Latin, etc.).</p>
<p>Then again, Ecliptica may not be endorsing the idea that one shouldn't learn any language except English, just saying English will get you far in America.</p>
<p>And I'd say cultural ignorance like that is what perpetuates human stupidity, even more noticeable in America these days.</p>
<p>kyledavid80,</p>
<p>Yes, there were other languages that were the lingua franca, but none were ever as pervasive as English.</p>
<p>I'm not arguing against language learning-- on the contrary, I believe that it's absolutely necessary. However, to say that people don't learn second languages purely out of ignorance is a bit stretched. For one, most Americans will have little opportunity to use a second language other than Spanish for a variety of reasons (northern neighbors speak English, southern neighbors speak Spanish.) A German speaking French and English will be much more likely to have opportunities to use both on a regular basis.</p>
<p>I speak Japanese at a decent clip, having studied it for almost 4 years. But I find that it degrades extremely quickly when I'm in the US. Is this my fault? Is this my being ignorant? Not really. I never get to use it. And let's face it...trips to Japan ain't cheap.</p>
<p>And I never said that other languages are never needed, but that you're unlikely to find that trade will be done in a variety of languages. The point of having a lingua franca is to simply things as much as possible. Unfortunately for non-Anglophones, English is that language in most circles these days.</p>
<p>Really, though, I think you guys are reading waaaaay too deeply into a bloody joke.</p>
<p>When the hell were French and German the de facto languages?</p>
<p>i don't know about german, french used to be spoken by most of european upper class.</p>
<p>i wouldn't classify korean as difficult as some have done above. it has no article (which means no gender), no conjugations, simple subject-object-verb word order. perhaps its true for japanese also, but many altaic languages like turkish (i don't know about finnish or mongolian) seem so easy because of the lack of some of the components familiar in indo-european languages.</p>
<p>it's a realy pity mongolian adopted russian script. if it retained its arabic-influenced script, i'd have tried to learn it.
also pity that trukish adopted the latin script.</p>
<p>
[quote]
When the hell were French and German the de facto languages?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>lingua franca should at least imply something. French was the language of diplomacy in Europe from the 17th century until about the 18th century or so. German played the same role in the sciences from the 19th to about 20th century.</p>
<p>sauronvoldemort,</p>
<p>I think it's the lack of articles and conjugation and different word order that makes Korean difficult to an English speaker. The biggest hump I had to overcome in learning Japanese was the SOV order. It's not easy to do that when your brain is trained to think SVO.</p>
<p>ooh good a thread on languages. I want to learn a language that will be useful in world politics. The only problem is ive had a lot of trouble with verb conjugatiosn when trying to speak (im in spanish in high school). What are the useful languages that have simple verb forms? i know some exist but i dont know enough about language to know which. also, in those what then makes them difficult to learn</p>
<p>Andrassy: Learn Chinese. Grammar is very simple. The writing system, however, more than makes up for it for most people though.</p>
<p>i was considering attempting to. the thing that really daunts me regarding chinese is the tones. The tones seems to make it possibly even harder than conjugating verbs! hmmm</p>
<p>It really depends, i moved to holland at the age of 7 and was fluent within 2 years. My neighbour moved here 20 years ago at the age of 34 and still can't speak it properly. Age is a definite factor, right next to the will to learn and to set other things aside to study and learn it the best you can.
It also helps to have the same alphabet
(Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Mandarin, Armenian, Greek etc are given an extra difficulty factor) btw latin grammar sucks, the words come in handy but the grammar just makes you go AAAAH.
There is no answer to this thread, it's different for each person**(well aren't I smart).
Cheers</p>
<p>Yes...it is a shame that people living in America who are fond of foreign languages sometimes have to go out of their way for foreign exposure.</p>
<p>I regret not taking advantage of the numerous foreign languages offered at my High School...Now I have to take more classes at college to catch up. Unfortunately my current college doesn't have all the classes I want. No Arabic or Itallian for instance...yet!</p>
<p>On a different topic, Sign Language seems useless doesn't it? Besides, North American Sign Language isn't the same as sign language in other countries like Japan, African Countries and Europe. Sorta stupid, I mean you'd <em>hope</em> that sign language could free from the regional differences and dialects that plague the spoken/written world!</p>
<p>well just like spoken/written languages, sign languages developed from within specific communities and grew outwards. Of course their is going to be more than one sign language. Someone didn't go and invent sign language before their were deaf people. Deaf communities developed their own means of communication.</p>
<p>I take American Sign Language, and it was nothing like learning any other langauge (Korean and English I learned naturally, Spanish and Japanese I learned formally). THe thing with Sign Langauge is that concept and creativity over power vocabulary and grammar rules. In our school, a lot of kids who failed out of lagnauges like French, Italian, and Spanish, take Sign Langauge for their langauge requirements and pass with flying colors.</p>
<p>Okay, now here's my input:</p>
<p>Korean is NOT an easy language. Sure, it seems easy at first: reading it is almost purely phonetic, no verb conjugations, simple SOV sentence structure, etc. </p>
<p>But there's a lot of different things you have to know to master the langauge. The nuances in the dipthongs (like ㅐ and ㅔ) are ridiculous and most native-speakers acutally tell me they just memorize them through constant use. </p>
<p>Also, many words have Chinese roots. Koreans are taught over 1000 Hanjas (Chinese characters) in school with their respective meaning and Korean pronounciation). To be able to read a Korean newspaper fluently, one must recognize at least 1000 of these hanjas.</p>
<p>Another HUGE obstacle is honorifics. If you use a different mode of speech, you could offend someone. The difference between a formal and polite, and informal and polite speech could have one percieved differently by a native Korean.</p>