languages (2 Viewers)

[nunasdream]

I need to decide on a language for International Studies next year and I can't decide between Mandarin, Korean or Japanese.

I think Mandarin would be the most useful and perhaps the most interesting to learn but it's probably the hardest.

Japanese i'd like to do, but I am worried that the whole class will be full of Wapanese.

Korean has no real practical usage but Korean food is delicious so if I ever travelled there it could be an advantage to getting om nom nom food.

Can anyone tell me their personal experiences for the languages? and if they found one better than the other (if doing multiple)

 

[MooshyMoosh]

I need to decide on a language for International Studies next year and I can't decide between Mandarin, Korean or Japanese.

I think Mandarin would be the most useful and perhaps the most interesting to learn but it's probably the hardest.

Japanese i'd like to do, but I am worried that the whole class will be full of Wapanese.

Korean has no real practical usage but Korean food is delicious so if I ever travelled there it could be an advantage to getting om nom nom food.

Can anyone tell me their personal experiences for the languages? and if they found one better than the other (if doing multiple)

Though I don't have language experience at university level, I did do Japanese beginners in the hsc, and I thought it was a great language to learn. The writing sytem and the culture was so interesting, and made me wish I started studying it in earlier years. The only problem with learning Japanese is the grammatical structure os their sentences, and particles [gah....] Here's what I'm talking about; Particles in Japanese - Wikiversity
Confusing, but once you get the hang of it, Japanese is fun to learn , and the pronunciation is much easier than Mandarin and Korean, where pronunciation is very important.

I can't really help you with Korean, but I did dabble in it a couple of years ago, the pronunciation was hard but quite interesting, and so was the alphabet. The sentence structures were the same as for Japanese, but I found that once you get the grasp in one of either, you'll find it easier to learn the other. Oh, and yes, Korean food is great ^^.

As for Mandarin, pronunciation is key. I find it harder to learn than Korean and Japanese because of the pronunciation, but it is interesting to learn, and learning to write all those characters is fun. I don't have much experience for Mandarin, so hopefully someone else here could be able to fill you in on that.

 

[MooshyMoosh]

While I'm here, I'm going to study French next year, and was wondering if anyone here could tell me about their experiences?

 

[shoxgeneration]

While I'm here, I'm going to study French next year, and was wondering if anyone here could tell me about their experiences?

Hey, so I've been doing french since 1st yr so (2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, 4a) - personally i've found it to be great, except for 4a - so redundant and boring... although better than doing no french. reason being as i was going on exchange soon and it wasn't really helping that much how we were being assessed and what we were studying (ie the topics) etc.

but asides from that, i personally have had a great run of really good teachers, asides from one but that's just because he's a bit disorganised etc, but as long as you ask questions etc he's heaps nice + funny and you ultimately get the answer out of him.

have you done french before? if not, you'd start from 1a which i've heard is quite easy so it should be sweet.

if you have any questions, let me know!

 

[MooshyMoosh]

Hey, so I've been doing french since 1st yr so (2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, 4a) - personally i've found it to be great, except for 4a - so redundant and boring... although better than doing no french. reason being as i was going on exchange soon and it wasn't really helping that much how we were being assessed and what we were studying (ie the topics) etc.

but asides from that, i personally have had a great run of really good teachers, asides from one but that's just because he's a bit disorganised etc, but as long as you ask questions etc he's heaps nice + funny and you ultimately get the answer out of him.

have you done french before? if not, you'd start from 1a which i've heard is quite easy so it should be sweet.

if you have any questions, let me know!

Ooh thanku! I did do French in yr 7, but I've pretty much forgotten everything except comment cava, cava tres bien etc etc. Lol