UKC

I have the opportunity to try learning the basics in a new language on a Spring term community college course. It's more for "something to do", and to see if my brain still works, than from any desire to learn a PARTICULAR language.

With that in mind, I have an arbitrary choice to make:
Mandarin
Japanese
Russian

I daresay 10 2-hour lessons won't get me terribly far in Mandarin or Japanese, so the Russian may be a bit more satisfying. However...I ask the great unwashed masses of UKC to form a consensus
Which of the three should I try out?

In reply to Blue Straggler: Russian sounds pretty cool!

Well, that's my input. :¬)

In reply to Blue Straggler:

What about Anglo-Saxon or Norman French?

Y.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I'd do Japanese (if you've got sky) purely to be able to understand a bit of what they are saying on NHK World (chan.516)! ..and of course, even better, on Takeshi's Castle and Ninja Warrior

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeshis_castle

In reply to Yrmenlaf:

They are not options. The languages listed in the OP are the three options that I have (well there's Italian as well but I fancy using a different alphabet system).

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I say russian. I believe DougG from on 'ere can speak Russian.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I would go for Russian, but thats because i got a book lying around in Russian that i would like to read (no there isnt any English translations as far as im aware of)

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I live in Japan and have been learning properly for a few months now and have barely scratched the surface. 20 hours will get you nowhere I'm afraid because you need to learn Kanji to learn seriously. I've heard Mandarin is hard. A friend is conversational fluent in Mandarin after 1 year of fulltime study but can't read or write.
Out of the 3 Mandarin is likely to be most useful. I also think it's a very attractive language to listen to (from beautiful Chinese women that is).

Japanese is not tonal which makes picking up the basics a little easier though.
SARS

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Japanese. Japanese and Japanese.

I've been to Japan twice. If I can pick up even limited basics (even after I've not had a wash!) then anyone can. I reckon you would probably get more out of the Japanese sessions.

Anecdotal reasons for dismissing the others.

I had a go at Cantonese once and found it mind boggling.
I had a friend who was learning to speak Russian having already mastered Spanish and French. He said it was 'nails'.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Having been involved in teaching languages and managing an adult language centre for many years I'd say don't waste your time... Even for a relatively "easy" language such as Spanish 20 hours will hardly get you beyond the tourist minimum survival level, let alone tackling a language for which you also have to learn a different alphabet.

If you are going to visit a country where one of these languages is required it would be better than nothing, just, in which case this would make the choice for you, otherwise forget it.

This suggestion reminds me of companies who asked for a program to teach their sales staff to "get by" in English on French autoroutes in 30 hours, or the Ecole de Gendarmerie who asked for a plan to teach their motorcyclists "essential English for police duties" in 50 hours! All to students with a fairly low academic level and zero English... needless to say neither projects ever took place.

To learn a language a good student should be thinking in terms of 600 hours of lessons.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I'm with Bruce on this. Don't waste your time.

I now speak good (ie. able to stand and present on technical subjects) Russian. I got an A at O Level, which I had a chance to do, and could barely string a sentence together. Then I met some Russians and had a wild time which I found rewarding enough to put some more effort in, got to the point where the language was professionally useful to me and have spent something over ten fun and interesting years kicking around the region relying on it.

That's my point: if you're going to do it in any worthwhile way, you are going to need some sort of passion and commitment to it, and meet and get on with some locals.

Having said which... If you focus the effort purely on menu/tourist language, you can get to a useful level. Engineers and family/friends I've taken out to the region I always advise that if you can learn to read the alphabet totally fluently (and that means all the clever graphics and typography) and learn the accent/pronunciation you will find that suprisingly helpful and rewarding. A lot of the Russian vocabulary that you will see has German or French roots, so if you put on your thickest Russian accent and use some imagination and good knowledge of other languages, you'll puzzle them out. Now, if you can then spend your twenty hours focussing purely on menus, you'll have a useful skill.

For myself, if I had a trip coming up to look forward to, I might do it. Otherwise, I know I'd never find the motivation. Go and do a Private Pilot's Licence instead; you only need sixty hours to get one of them

Y

In reply to tommyzero:

I did French to sub-A-level (ie. reading heavy literature) Latin, some Greek and a little German.

When asked, I used to say that Russian was just like any of them. I've changed my point of view: I now say that Russian is harder.

Russian has a grammatical structure with endings that change substantially and noticeably in speech. I get by by swallowing them to some extent, as you can do totally in French and almost totally in German. It's not pretty, but the meaning gets across. In Russian, for numerous sentences, if you don't get the grammar right, the meaning frequently doesn't get across, even in context: partly because there is no set word order.

The tenses don't work quite like ours do, either, and verbs of motion - well, the Russians themselves have jokes about them.

Y

In reply to Blue Straggler: i don't think beginners courses are a waste of time. I did Spanish that way, never done anything more than a saturday course but still seem to know more spanish than french which i studied for 5 years. Out of the 3 i'd go for russian, but that's because it's the only one i've had experience with. Like someone else said, i found just learning the alphabet meant i could understand some stuff once i knew how it was pronounced. Danish has special letters rather than a whole alphabet and it's still a mystery to me

In reply to Removed User:


I can speak a bit of Russian. Fluent French. Russian is much harder than French, IMO. Mainly for the reason that Yanchik mentions - the case endings are critical.

In reply to Bruce Hooker and Yanchik:

Didn't the OP state that this exercise was not to learn a language but was more cerebral? As such, your reasons for not studying Russian, become reasons to do so!

In reply to The Bantam:

Yes, from that point of view having a go can't do any harm. I sounded a bit negative but this was just to give my honest opinion about the probably chances of learning much language in 20 hours.

So going back to his question, it would help to know his age, profession and so on... If he is young and in work that could take him there then I would have no doubt in suggesting Mandarin... China is clearly heading towards being the next super power and one of the most interesting places during the 21st century professionally. If he is more interested from a cultural point of view and for travelling, Russian would be a good idea as it is also useful in much of Central Asia and the old Soviet zone... If the world of art, fashion and generally wild and wonderful trends is his thing then why not Japanese?

Not much help really

Learning a foreign language is always worthwhile, but not to be underestimated!

Interesting replies, thanks all.

One clarification/re-emphasis - I am aware that 20 hours will not scratch the surface of these complex languages, and I don't expect to come out and watch a load of (say) Tarkovsky with no subtitles. But it's 20 hours that are unlikely to be spent in any other useful endeavour, and will give me something to look forward to (!) each week I don't know how much "homework" we'll get either - I need to ring the college and suss it all out.

Bruce asked for a bit of background. I did GCSE French, Spanish and German, and A-Level French and a couple of further French courses - generally have kept up the French reasonably (rusty now though). I speak a little bit of Greek having lived in Greece for 6 months, so I have experience of a different alphabet (bit of a cheat though seeing as the Greek alphabet is used a lot in maths and science )

Consensus so far seems to be "not Mandarin"

In reply to Blue Straggler:
>

Although work-wise, it may be the more useful one...

In reply to Bruce Hooker:

Absolutely! Have been trying to teach myself SPanish for years and failing miserably! You have to commit to constant exposure, and try and get around native speakers as much as possible - not something I've ever got close to managing!

In reply to The Bantam:

Yes, and I thought about that.

My experience is that language lessons (sorry to the teachers, particularly mine) are rarely cerebral, certainly in the first six months.
They're more about rote learning, vocabulary and "Isn't it a funny culture ?" and "Do they really wear fur hats and drink a lot of vodka ?" anecdotes.

I know the OP's no fool, and thinks for themselves (there are other people I'd have taken a different tack with.) I didn't think they'd be put off by my comments, but that they'd appreciate a level of realism and some specifics on the stuff I can comment on.

So my analysis: if the OP thinks there's any chance of them actually using any of the languages, it might be just about worthwhile having a go at "menu-level" language, and I've confirmed that it is for Russian. If not, then take your pick for fun of which culture you might want to learn a bit about.

If you want "cerebral" "about" a language, I can only guess you might find it on a linguistics course. I think I was hoping for that when I did some of my languages. I never found it on a language course. Seriously, twenty hours study would get you further with avalanches, or the weather, or Islamic architecture...

Y

In reply to Blue Straggler:

"not Mandarin" - that's about as good a reason as any to do it !

The French/Greek/German will stand you in good stead for Russian. You clearly don't have Van Gogh's ear for languages. Enjoy, whatever you choose, and let us know !

Y

In reply to Blue Straggler: the only slightly negative thing about my course was i was the youngest by at least 30 years (not a problem on it's own) but coupled with the fact that most people had never learned any language at all meant i often felt like the class swot and was not allowed to answer questions sometimes.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Japanese! so you can watch Kill Bill vol 1 without sub-titles!

That was my plan, any...

In reply to ebygomm:

That is something to be aware of. I think it's pretty well established that the older one gets the harder it is to learn a new language (usual caveats about sweeping generalisations etc. etc.) When I had a go at learning a bit of mandarin the class were mostly much older than me and it was sometimes pretty frustrating to learn e.g. the numbers one to ten in one lesson only to discover that the next week most of the class had already forgotten most of that so weren't ready to move on to counting real objects.

However, I think in approaching a language in the way the OP mentions that won't be such a problem as it's more a matter of getting a feel. For what it's worth I found mandarin interesting and although the tonal aspect is quite challenging I wouldn't guess the language to actually be any harder than say Japanese, which as I understand it has complications of it's own. My guess would be you're right that Russian would be the simplest but for a quick dip in the waters IMHO that's not really the most important thing. I'd say that just take a punt on whichever appeals most on general interest level.

In reply to ebygomm:

Mmm I've experienced similar, in a French evening class and in another course at a community college.

Maybe I'll do something that's not a language. I see they have "Waxing for Women", "Hip Hop Body Jam" and a 3-week (3 2 hour sessions) course called "What is eBay?"

In reply to Blue Straggler:

If you were going to study one language properly out of those three I would go with Mandarin. Simply, Mandarin is used in so many more places than Japanese. Out of the three, Japanese is probably the most useless unless you live in Japan.

One thing I've read (and I don't know how true this is so it could be complete rubbish) is that Mandarin is hard to pick up the basics, relatively easy to master whereas Japanese is easy at the basic level but hard to master.

As I said above, I've recently started to learn Japanese a bit more seriously over the past few months. When I first came out to Tokyo I really couldn't be bothered but then I started hanging out with Japanese climbers and decided that being able to communicate might make it more fun! Although Kanji is hard, it's not "that" hard. I learned to recognise 200 new Kanji in one week when I started out.

To be honest, most of learning a new language is about immersion, as others have said. I have 1-1 Japanese lessons every week and they are useful for direction but, as my teacher noted, she can teach the grammer etc but you need to spend personal time memorising vocab.

For this I recommend using an SRS (spaced repetition software) such as Anki or Memosyne, or building your own as I did, and also using podcasts.

Apologies to all for conradictory/misleading thread title which conflicts with my repeated assertions that I do not expect to actually "learn" a whole language!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

If you're going to do something, you may as well do it properly...

In reply to Blue Straggler:

If I were you, I'd use that same money to take a mate out for a drink once a week and invite a chinese, albanian or someone along too. I'm sure that would be useful as you'd get to know a person, culture, slang and realistic practice all at the same time, rather than just a bit of language.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Japanese is a beautiful language to learn, I've been casually learning it for a while. I can't say much about the others, but I enjoyed starting Japanese.

In reply to Mike Hartley:

I would agree with that, Japanese is a nice language to learn. It sounds great and looks nice to read. Grammatically it's quite straight forward as well.

I prefer women talking in Mandarin though, which I guess is lucky as my wife is Chinese. Mandarin sounds great, even though I have no idea what's being said...

Cantonese on the other hand is one of the most coarse languages to listen to that I know. Which is a pity as my wife is from Hong Kong. Get two Cantonese women in the same room, or on the phone for that matter, and the volume rises by quite a few decibels. Cantonese is forbidden in our house .

In reply to SARS:

Reminds me of my last job. International Sales Office. Up until about lunchtime, I would be bawling at my Russians on the phone. After lunch, my lot would quieten down, and Pedro would start bawling at his Latin Americans (which is why I know that "PERO" is Spanish for "BUT !" (or dog))

A fun experience in this life is watching Russians and Italians negotiate. There's a lot of arm-waving and passion, and decisions get taken, both sides are happy. Brits and Russians frequently do well together, but the mechanism somehow isn't as exciting...

Y

In reply to Blue Straggler:

A Tuesday evening bump...

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Wednesday morning bump (and at the moment, Mandarin is in the lead!)

In reply to SARS:


I was gonna say something similar, I use supermemo for learning Greek vocab and it works very well. The problem for me is that there are no available Greek databases for supermemo whereas there are for lots of other languages (including Japanese, Mandarin, etc.). Any idea if Anki and Memosyne have dbs for Greek....? Don't suppose you know if they have similar functionality to supermemo as well?

In reply to Matt Vigg:

I don't know I'm afraid.

Actually, I make my own word sets because I find it useful to learn in context. By this I mean learning words I'm using during everyday life or in my lessons. I use an electronic dictionary to store new words as I use them, and then add these to a set for later revision. I also found using sets created by other people problematic - they tend to have errors such as wrong definitions or spelling mistakes.

In reply to SARS:

I know what you mean it does help to create your own sets, as stuff you need to know appears immediately to be learnt and you add something to the process by looking into the different forms of verbs, etc as you create the set. The only problem is it's bloody time consuming, having two sets on the go at once would probably be useful so you can do a general one and your own more specific one. I find my database of words changes sporadically because of this, my approach is to add stuff as needed and alongside that I'm going through a dictionary page by page, picking out the most useful vocab!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Herein lies the flawed assumption in the OP.

Nobody else has shown any interest so unless at least five more people sign up for Russian, Japanese or Mandarin by Monday morning, none of the courses will go ahead. Thought it was a bit ambitious of my local somewhat provincial college to offer these, but good on them for trying. I've provisionally enrolled on the Mandarin course to show a bit of support and so that it's logged on their system that there may be some interest at a later date; I'll get a refund when it gets cancelled.

Thanks everyone for contributing to the thread. I'll spend the time and money on trips to the climbing wall

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Good effort, good luck.

Yes, that is one of the other problems: there's a limit to how many beginner's courses a man can stand doing, because for sure few institutions find enough people to do a second or third year course...

Y