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#21
08-13-2005, 07:33 PM
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Re: New Language: Chinese or Japanese
[ QUOTE ]
Luzion's post is VERY biased, since he is a already a native chinese speaker, so take his advice with a grain of salt. The fact of the matter is that Chinese is much harder to learn than Japanese. When it comes to pronunciation, there are a lot more subtleties that you wouldn't be able to pick up as an adult because it's past your critical period for language development. An incorrect pronunciation of a syllable could change a word's entire meaning. And not to mention the written language is nuts. [/ QUOTE ] Whoa whoa... I never said Chinese was easy; in fact mentioned that Chinese WAS harder then Japanese as I said here... [ QUOTE ] I dont know how you can say Japanese is an easy language at all. Its one of the hardest imo, though definintely not as hard as Chinese. [/ QUOTE ] My post was to refute the point that people said Japanese is "easy." It is not easy, but definitely not as hard as Chinese of course. Just remember that no one has countered my point about the differing levels of "politeness" that native Japanese use. You'll probably be learning how to speak overly polite Japanese and might not understand when someone speaks to you in other "styles" of Japanese...  j/k [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] 
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#22
08-13-2005, 07:57 PM
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Re: New Language: Chinese or Japanese
I constantly hear about how last century was accurately described by the phrase, "The American Century," but that "The Chinese Century" will more accurately describe the next one.
The income there is only a few hundred dollars a year, but with over a billion people, that's still an enormous market that pretty much no one can afford to be left out of. We give them most favored nation status despite the fact that they use prison labor to make goods, etc. - it doesn't really matter what they do, we're all bowing down because of the gargantuan amounts of money already tied up in the country and that will continue to flood in there. Like Taiwan, it is already losing some of its cachet as the place to go to get cheap high quality labor, but it's still cheap enough and workable enough to keep the money flooding in. And as the nation upgrades the training, wealth, and general education of its citizens, it will have to rely less and less on being a repository of cheap labor. When you have a billion people, even pretty incremental changes for the better add up to a lot more power and wealth over time. And in many places, the changes are far from pretty incremental. I'd do Chinese without hesitation. China's a monster.
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#23
08-13-2005, 09:04 PM
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Re: New Language: Chinese or Japanese
Alright listen puto.
Mandarin Chinese aka 'Putonghua' is the next biggest thing. China is rapidly becoming part of the world market and Yankees who speak "the common language" (putonghua) will be treated like <font color="yellow">GOLD</font>. Japan's GNP is off the hook but Japanese is only really useful in Japan, wheras Chinese spreads far and wide. ("Chinatowns everywhere!") Anyway, despite all this, I say you should ditch the plans to learn a difficult language in college. Trust me, college is going to [censored] you up more than you can anticipate and learning one of the hardest languages and complex writing systems will just put an extra burden on you. Choose Spanish, it's fun, easy, and in 10 years Latinos will make up I think 40% of the US population. (read that somewhere while drunk) So yeah, choose Spanish, trust me. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]
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#24
08-13-2005, 10:57 PM
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Re: New Language: Chinese or Japanese
Du sollst Deutsch lernen. Die Sprache ist einer der größte der Welt, und du immer betrunken zu sein scheinen kannst. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
Being serious though...I'd definitely like to learn Japanese, but I think Chinese is your best bet. As far as programs go, I'd definitely do something along the lines of Pimsleur. I've used Rosetta Stone before, and it progressed far too slowly for my tastes. I am now, however, very fluent in expressing thoughts about kids jumping over tables. A far less costly option than Pimsleur is the Barron's "Mastering" series. I'm using that right now, and it's great for learning how to speak a language. I got the full set at Barnes and Noble for $90. I'd look into it before dumping a grand for a full Pimsleur course.
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#27
08-14-2005, 02:05 AM
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Re: New Language: Chinese or Japanese
Say I learn Chinese. Will this help in learning Japanese in the future? Will Japanese after Chinese be so minorly useful to the point that it'd be far better to learn Chinese very well than to try to learn both?
My reasoning is that as far as I can tell, and as far as many are saying, Chinese is going to be GREAT to know in a few years. Economically and for business this makes Chinese the clear choice. However, from what I can tell, China is no where near as clean or technological as Japan. It seems shady and run down, while it would seem really cool to be a part of the Japanese culture. Even so, I don't really like travelling very much and I do like money a lot, so I think this should be more of an economic decision than one for enjoyability.
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#28
08-14-2005, 02:18 AM
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Re: New Language: Chinese or Japanese
This is why you should learn Chinese..
 Lawrence
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#30
08-14-2005, 03:18 AM
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Re: New Language: Chinese or Japanese
Goddamn you LawrenceNg. I was sure you would defend learning the Chinese language vehemently... and then mentioning how awesome the chinese food is in Toronto...
 Anyway as for Zhang ZiYi...she doesnt look that great without her makeup... Thats for sure... 
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