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Reasons to learn Chinese, Jap, Turkish or Farsi?

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Universal Traveler
 
Reply Mon 24 Jul, 2006 06:55 am
Hi! This is my first post here!
I just finished school this year Smile and the first thing I want to do is study a new language and culture...
(I know my nickname sounds a bit overly ambitious and does not reflect my current "status" but the name of a song I like)

Most of all, I would love to learn the following languages, but I'm not sure with which one I should start, and which one I would be able to realistically use in practical life, too.
The problem is that I don't feel that I was exposed enough to the different worlds in order to know exactly what I'm heading towards, so I'm asking you to find new pro and contra arguments Smile

Farsi/Persian
- would be a good way to learn more about arabic world, without learning standard arabic which is anyway used only in official places;
- high literature and cinema even in todays world;
- "the language of the poets";

Turkish
- actually, many of the same reasons I would learn Farsi, but
- Turkey is much more common in the so-called "western world", since its music and popular culture is highly appreciated even by us younger people;
- possible future EU member; (I'm from the EU, so I might meet more turkish people)
- CONTRA: our same writing system; I would like to learn something new.

Japanese
- well, my entire childhood existed only thanks to Japan! Playstation, Nintendo, Roleplaying Games, Anime, Manga, etc.; it would be a good headstart to read all those things again in original language.
- it has a wonderful pop-culture which is accessible also to us (J-Pop, Rock, etc.);
- many Japanese tourists in the EU Smile
- very interesting writing system, I actually started learning some Katakana long time ago, but didn't have much time to dedicate myself properly.

Chinese
Now, this is the most problematic of my 4 choices, and this is probably where I'm needing most of your help.
Everyone is telling me that Chinese "will be one of the most important languages in the world", etc. but so far I have not seen anything from China apart from our local Chinatown and Made-in-China low quality toys.
I admire the writing system a lot, and find the multitonal speech very interesting and challenging to learn, but I don't know whether studying Chinese would be useful for me... (I don't want to live in Chinatown Very Happy )
So far I have seen virtually nothing about chinese pop-culture, as opposed to Japanese.
No chinese tourists, no chinese modern culture.
Only Ghengis Khan and all those martial arts, meditation, etc. stuff
Maybe I'm simply ignorant Smile but I really don't understand why so many people say that chinese is important for the future business world. Are people hoping to find employment in China one day?
Okay, it's the most spoken language in the world, but most native speakers live in their home country...
So... could you suggest me a little bit more about the actual practicality of studying Chinese language?
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Type: Discussion • Score: 3 • Views: 5,737 • Replies: 15
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yitwail
 
  1  
Reply Mon 24 Jul, 2006 07:14 am
i'm only qualified to speak of japanese. it's tough to learn; since i grew up with it, i speak it fine, but can't read it very well. writing it isn't so hard, believe it or not, if you have a computer with Japanese Windows--you just type things phonetically with the english alphabet, and the result shows up in Kanji. Cool

in case no one brings this up, many overseas Chinese speak Cantonese, which is quite distinct from Mandarin. your typical martial arts movie, for example, is in Cantonese i would guess, because it's the spoken language of Hong Kong & southern China.
0 Replies
 
Ellinas
 
  1  
Reply Mon 24 Jul, 2006 07:25 am
Re: Reasons to learn Chinese, Jap, Turkish or Farsi?
Universal Traveler wrote:


Farsi/Persian
- would be a good way to learn more about arabic world, without learning standard arabic which is anyway used only in official places;
- high literature and cinema even in todays world;
- "the language of the poets";



Persian and Arabian are two completely different languages. They don't even belong to the same family. Their only similarity is that they use the same script.
0 Replies
 
Universal Traveler
 
  1  
Reply Mon 24 Jul, 2006 11:16 pm
Thank you for your replies!

What I was trying to understand is: why do so many people suddenly start studying Mandarin (both Standard or Classical) these days?
What is their motivation? What is the source of this trend?
The mere "China will be the next world power" story?

Thank you for pointing out that Arabic and Farsi are different Smile However, I was in fact referring to the writing system which I somehow find very "mysterious" and interesting.
I'm also incentivated by the rich artistic/literary culture which other arabian countries seem to lack of.
Apart from this, Persia obviously shares a similar geopolitical culture with the remaining arabic world.
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yitwail
 
  1  
Reply Tue 25 Jul, 2006 12:22 am
i'm only repeating what i read in wikipedia: that many cantonese speakers speak mandarin as a second language, that there's no standard written cantonese, and that many mainland chinese, who speak mandarin, now live abroad. spoken mandarin might also be *easier* than cantonese, with only 4 tones instead of 9!
0 Replies
 
Ellinas
 
  1  
Reply Tue 25 Jul, 2006 03:04 am
Universal Traveler wrote:

Thank you for pointing out that Arabic and Farsi are different Smile However, I was in fact referring to the writing system which I somehow find very "mysterious" and interesting.
I'm also incentivated by the rich artistic/literary culture which other arabian countries seem to lack of.
Apart from this, Persia obviously shares a similar geopolitical culture with the remaining arabic world.


Except Persian and Arabian, Kurdish and Urdu are used to be written with the Arabic script. These are in fact different languages, but they adopted Arabic script when the Arabs conquered these areas.

Turkish language used to be written with Arabic script too, but Mustafa Kemal changed it to Latin to make Turkey more likeable to Western Europe. All the Ottoman texts and epigraphies are written with Arabic script.
0 Replies
 
heizuji
 
  2  
Reply Wed 26 Jul, 2006 09:16 pm
More and more people go to China to establish company
Actually,now more and more people would like to go to China to establish company or find a job. Without China,without World.
0 Replies
 
blownfang
 
  1  
Reply Mon 25 Sep, 2006 06:01 am
go ahead !you don't know much about china !
you are full of curiosity about china . I am chinese ,if you really want to know more about china ,i suggest you should look chinese history of tang dynasty and ,which is good for you to understand modern chinese culture
chinese is a important language,i think it is difficult to learn quickly,including me -chinese man
if you select to learn chinese ,i want to say that you are level-headed;
you will have more good opportunities in this world

sincerely a chinese man
0 Replies
 
tsjlqydlts
 
  1  
Reply Tue 26 Sep, 2006 08:02 am
reply:
I am a chinese too. in China neally everyone are learning english. we are the person who want to know the world. our country also is a big company. and commercial potential is also large beyond your expectation. Japanese is also very important. we are also east country. Japanese will be the second foreign language of mine. of course english is my first. so what is your opinion ? may be is really up to you. they are just tools with communication. in our company my boss is from france. so maybe i will learn french too. good luck!
0 Replies
 
NickFun
 
  1  
Reply Tue 26 Sep, 2006 08:03 am
The written language is even harder than the almost impossible spoken language. Good luck!
JGoldman10
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 01:51 pm
Re: reply:
tsjlqydlts wrote:
I am a chinese too. in China neally everyone are learning english. we are the person who want to know the world. our country also is a big company. and commercial potential is also large beyond your expectation. Japanese is also very important. we are also east country. Japanese will be the second foreign language of mine. of course english is my first. so what is your opinion ? may be is really up to you. they are just tools with communication. in our company my boss is from france. so maybe i will learn french too. good luck!


Hello tsjlqydlts. I know this is off-topic, but I got your your response to my Chinese slang help question. I'm sorry I didn't get to you sooner. I am interested in learning Chinese. Did you get the e-mail I sent you a few weeks ago? Please let me know. Very Happy
Here is my e-mail address:
[email protected]
0 Replies
 
NickFun
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Nov, 2006 02:23 pm
A friend of mine has been living in China for over a year. He is now able to ask "where is the bathroom" and "how much does this cost". He still can't read a word.
0 Replies
 
Universal Traveler
 
  1  
Reply Sun 10 Dec, 2006 11:26 am
Hi everyone!

Lot of time has passed ever since I first asked the question.

I decided to learn Mandarin (Chinese) and actually learned things I didn't know about. It's always like that. You can never really judge something until you know it Smile I love the writing system!

I started studying in August (basic stuff, around 40-50 characters) but interrupted in mid September since I started university, now, during holidays, I'm starting again...

To my own surprise, (and contrarily to what chinese-learning websites usually say about the difficulty of Mandarin), Chinese natives themselves have already congratulated me for my very good pronunciation Razz which really encouraged me.

Yet, I am once again unsure about proceeding with Mandarin.

Some of my skeptic friends recently told me that studying Mandarin won't help me getting better job opportunities since "all Chinese people already speak English and other languages anyway", thus reducing the demand of foreign Mandarin-speakers.

They told me that Japanese, instead, might be more useful, since Japanese people rarely learn foreign languages... thus making it necessary to learn their language if you want to communicate with them.

What do you think about my friends' comments?
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sun 10 Dec, 2006 11:51 am
It'll be somewhat easier for the Chinese to learn Japanese, because the writing and their meaning are similar. In the reverse, it's possible for the Japanese without any learning of Chinese to understand the written words and their general meanings. It became necessary for the Japanese to create two alphabet forms, because the Chinese written language was too restrictive for the Japanese language.

About ten years ago, I got our family history from Hiroshima, Japan, that is written mostly in Chinese caligarphy. Not many Japanese of today can understand or translate it, but my brother had a professor friend from Japan, and he translated over 90 percent of it into English for us.

The spoken Japanese language also differs from regions of Japan. It's different between, say, Tokyo and Osaka, as it is different between Cantonese and Mandarin.

My Japanese is no longer proficient, because I've not used it for so long after our mother passed away. Even then, we used to mix English into our conversations for words we didn't know in Japanese.
0 Replies
 
Faye Hercout
 
  1  
Reply Tue 10 Apr, 2012 02:46 am
@Universal Traveler,
most for the business,because china is a big market
0 Replies
 
space007
 
  1  
Reply Wed 13 Jun, 2012 04:04 am
@NickFun,
Definitely agree
0 Replies
 
 

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