I like languages and there's a whole bunch of foreign heads here so it'd be cool to just spew some random stuff or answer questions or whatever...


I am only fluent in English. I have conversational Cantonese and Japanese, basic Mandarin and Spanish, and know bare bones grammar of Korean and Vietnamese.

I've barely touched upon Hebrew, Italian, Greek, Romanian, German, Finnish, French, Tagalog, Thai, Hmong, Russian, Serbian, and a few others but I can't remember now... When I say touched upon, that means I've done at least an hour of research and learned a few words before I moved on to something else. Well, with the exception of French cause I actually took classes in that but I never use it so it's just as good as gone.

I talk Dutch and English fluently, and I can talk/understand Frisian, French and German a bit.

french, english, mandarin

then japanese and spanish.

Sadly, I'm not bilingual. My primary language is English, and I plan on learning Japanese so I can visit there someday soon.

I speak fluently Slovenian and English, I know quite alot of Italian (been learning it in school for 7 years already). I understand quite alot of croatian but i dont speak it. I would really like to know some asian language.

Hmm, I would suggest either Chinese, Korean, or Japanese if you want to learn Asian languages. Chinese would probably be the easiest since it has grammar closest to English and other Western languages. Unfortunately, Chinese is tonal which is nonexistant in Western languages and there is no alphabet.

no. Easiest is korean, even easier than English to learn. Easy system, alphabet, it's really cool. Then you just need to know what each prononciation corresponds to what word.

learn korean so you can join pds!
I speak/write fluently in Thai and English

fluent -
english

to some degree (in order of higher ability to lower)-
spanish
japanese
korean

im full japanese but i can only understand/talk. can't write for crap...reading is a little bit better though...weird.

for korean, i can read/write/speak, but i don't understand much.

spanish...i can read, write, speak, and understand :D (to some extent)

i'm fluent in english, learning mandarin chinese, suck at everything there is in chinese... but i'm sorta getting better

As far as reading and writing, yeah it's pretty darn easy. However, actually speaking it is a whole nother thing. But I could be wrong~ :ph43r: I still have trouble between the constanants with 3 versions such as p, p', pp or j, j', jj...

You still have to learn grammar, not just pronunciation and Korean grammar is more difficult than Japanese grammar.

I can English, Chinese, Malay pretty well.

So does anyone have an idea wwhere could a I learn Korean?

well Chinese is not better, you need to memorize every single word. In alphabetized languages you can pronounce all the words, even though you might not know what it means. In Chinese, you either know it or you don't. You can't just pronounce it correctly and not know the meaning.

Japanese is a pain just cause it's so mixed up.

You're right on that. Well, if you take those 3 major areas, Korean wins.

I still think it all depends on who you ask. Japanese is supposedly a hard language to learn, but it's not all that bad for me. But then again, I understand languages faster than most people around me... So I guess my answers would be somewhat biased.

i have to agree, its alot easier to speak korean that u dont understand, but if u cant actually understand it then it dont matter... and i doubt u can figure out the meaning by knowing what it sounds like

in chinese, u can kinda figure out the meaning of a new word by looking at its parts or shape, and its also good that chinese has the most intuitive grammar ever... since forever, conversation riting reading are considered 3 completely different things, u dont rite the same way as u would talk, nor do u read the same way u listen, and u dont read the same way u rite, so knowing conversation is completely different from being able to rite... thats y imo alphabet is bad, ideogram is good... or maybe im too old skool

and alphabet does exist, by romanization, and its widely used... inside and outside national borders, in any game u'll see the chinese using the alphabet, not chinese words (v is a vowel in chinese, and y and w are like useless letters, so actually, chinese alphabet is kinda messed up, but its better than some, but i wouldnt think its better than the official korean romanization)

but the thing b/w CJK is, korean is brand new (500yrs), scholars made it up, so its as good as it gets in w.e area they were concentrating on, when theres not that many influences its likely somethings get missed (i know for fact that chinese romanisation definately missed some things)... chinese is the opposite, it came from an eternity of use by all kinds of ppl and thats y grammar is perfect, its literally the grammar of a baby :BRAIN:... japanese was a mix cuz they took it from the chinese but either didnt like the fact that its from the chinese or just didnt like the language so alot of different dynasties and even normal ppl changed it... chinese dynasties and new culture changed chinese too but not nearly as dramatically as the japanese did it

well actually, i dont know much about korean or japanese... i only read rite speak chinese and chinglish...

tried spanish class in skool and like it a little but language teachers dont like it when u mix languages ;)... having different sounds and spellings for tenses and stuff is really bad, i mean, when ur 3 yrs old and u wanna talk to ur parents, how do u know which sound to end on? how do u teach ur 2 yr old what is subjuntive? do most parents even know what that is?

but yea, for penspinning, korean is probably the most useful language, cuz u want to get comssas (and read PDS but u have to be korean citizen w/ id# to get an account?)

I don't know what you're talking about... Although you may speak Chinese, that doesn't necessarily mean Chinese has perfect grammar.

On a side note, Chinese is an umbrella term. There are many different dialects, so differently spoken from each other that some linguists consider them different languages. Therefore, it is not a single entity and it's not the "grammar of a baby." :huh: :mellow:


As for Japanese, it's not like they didn't like the Chinese or anything that came from it. After all, they modeled their society after the Chinese. The language just evolved a lot and took a good bit of Chinese characters and integrated them into their language and made kanji.

Could anyone give me the names of any books (in english) that could help me learn Korean or Japanese? I want to learn both, but have nowhere to start.

Japanese oral is pretty easy... the hard part is when you start writing :(

Check the internet, there's so many ressouces for learning Japanese

Mmmm... you can check Soompi.com forums for some links to Japanese learning aides. Go to General Discussion > Japanese Discussion thread


Or you could buy some books online. Yookoso is a good textbook.

Here's a great website: Timwerx

languages spoken fluently : English and Swedish
languages spoken a little : Spanish and Portuguese
languages i understand but not speak : Norweigan and Danish
languages that i understand parts of : French, Italian and German
:rolleyes:

swedish don't understand suomi?