Saturday, November 26, 2005

A dumb quiz and an actual post




You Should Learn Japanese



You're cutting edge, and you are ready to delve into wacky Japanese culture.

From Engrish to eating contests, you're born to be a crazy gaijin. Saiko!



This was one quiz that I just couldn't resist. As much as I enjoy dabbling in new tongues, why not get a little advice on which to pick next? And Japanese is a fine pick... But I'd have said that about almost any result I could have gotten. I'm a language slut.

Lately I have been finding my inability to read Korean or Arabic particularly annoying. All I can say is that being illiterate must truly suck, since my little taste of it has been aggravating. So those two are pretty high on my list of languages to at least get a basic grasp of.

I am also interested in learning a couple of Celtic languages. I have been hacking away at Irish (Gaeilge) on the Goidelic side and have taken an interest in Cornish on the Brythonic side as well. Of course, it would seem that Irish and Welsh would be a more sensible pair, both being living languages, or Manx and Cornish, if I wanted to go for the languages that have fallen out of common usage. And now that I think of it, the latter pair has some charm in my mind. Of course, resources are far more easily found for the former.

I already have a pretty decent background in Romance languages. Wouldn't Catalan be interesting? Or perhaps I could rekindle the passionate love affair I once had with Italian...

Oh, I could go on like this for days! Bahasa Indonesia! Cherokee! Swahili! Nepali! Tamil! Greek! Czech! and on and on and on...

In reality, I can't hope to get even a good, solid conversational grasp of all these languages. Obviously, choices have to be made. Learning any language to even basic proficiency takes work and some commitment to see it through.

Two semesters of Spanish are required for my degree, and while I could, in theory, have my existing credits applied to that, I think I want to take those classes to brush up, and to help me get a tighter grasp on what has been slipping through my fingers all these years. Beyond that initial choice, I will have to weigh the contenders for my attention.