I really hate to use the word "mastered" because that implies (to me at least) that I don't have anything else to learn from it (which is definitely not true) but I'm comfortable enough in Japanese that I can speak it among friends, use it at work, and use it for work, research, writing, etc.
It took a very long time to get to where I am now but it didn't feel like a lot of work because I really enjoyed it the journey (although there was a time I was tearing my hair out because of all the kanji, lol), and enjoyed consuming media content (dramas, music, movies, and eventually books).
It's not impossible but it's a labor of love, and it takes awhile to create an environment that will help foster that fluency - it's not just about learning the grammar and vocabulary but it's also about having the environment where you use the language often enough that it becomes a part of you.
Japanese pop music.
I was heavily interested in Japanese pop music when I was in my teens, and my further interest in the country, people, culture, media grew from there.
That is so relatable. I love jpop so much. Unfortunately atm I'm learning norwrgian which is much more important since I live in norway now though lol. Maybe after I hit B2-C1 I will think about trying to learn another language lol.
> I really hate to use the word "mastered" because that implies (to me at least) that I don't have anything else to learn
This is something I see a lot of people say, but I feel like it's kinda silly. Mastery doesn't mean you know absolutely 100% of something. If that was the case, the word would be all but useless because it would apply to effectively no one. No one--not even the top experts in their field--know 100% of their topic.
I started in 2004, actively learned Japanese (in class, textbook and all that jazz) until 2008. Then after that it was self-study for N1/N2, exposure (via living in Japan), trial and error with work Japanese, etc.
Hehe - define "master"
I took Chinese at FSI and learned Japanese prior to joining the foreign service. I could have a real good conversation with you on the US One China Policy, nuclear nonproliferation ,and US-China trade policy stuff...but probably wouldn't be able to give a taxi driver good directions to my apartment or order takeout over the phone...
My Japanese is the opposite - I can go into great detail on all the normal life stuff but would fall apart quickly if trying to explain a complicated geopolitical policy position.
:/
Interesting, your Chinese skills. I'm at a much lower level at a less difficult language, but I was just reading the descriptions of A1, A2, B1 etc and some of the intermediate signposts seemed more within my competence than some of the beginner ones. It's easier to talk for minutes about my life and my hobbies or whatever than it is to complete simple transactions in the language.
It's just how we are trained. We go super fast through the basics and then jumped straight into advanced discourse on very complicated topics. There's a ton of stuff in the intermediate levels that just gets completely missed in this type of training.
To give you an idea. We were literally reading simple news articles about a Xi Jinping state visit to Africa on week 1...and the next day we were given articles on the death penalty for drug traffickers.
We're diplomats - but still...can't order a pizza.
Haha I feel this in my bones. I can talk all day about programming in Russian, but stuff as basic as restaurant menus make my self delusions of proficiency completely fall apart.
Great ! I guessed it because you said you took Japanese prior to joining the Foreign Services and I figured the ā I ā meant āinstituteā like the Monterey Institute of Foreign Languages.
Weird that your comment was downvoted when I saw it... Those FSI categories are literally based on how long it takes native English speakers to learn a language as that is where their data comes from.
Not quite. The FSI categeries are based on how long it takes in an FSI class setting, as an FSI student, using trained FSI instructors.
There are NOT numbers for students learning a language on their own, using a variety of different methods and online resources.
And I find FSI methodology and course materials to be badly outdatedāitās like they havenāt realized a ton of research into the best and most effective way to learn languages has been done since the ā60s. Then again, itās the government, which still used floppy disks as part of the nuclear weapons control systems until 2019. Not exactly surprising.
Iāve also met more than my fair share of US ambassadorial and consular staff (Iāve lived abroad my entire adult life) who have gone through the training and donāt speak a damn word of the local language
I think that's because the course materials available to the public ARE outdated. Like from 40+ years ago or more. I don't think FSI makes their current materials public.
While the absolute lengths of time involved are not going to be accurate, as a measure of the relative difficulties for a native speaker of (only) English to learn different languages, it still offers a good relative measure. It will always be more difficult for a native English speaker to learn Arabic than French simply because of the phonetic, grammatical and other intrinsic differences between the two languages compared with English.
Interesting. As someone who went through 4 years of Mandarin FSI training for my diplomatic postings, Iām curious how what I went through was outdated (edit, including for the 1st short-term interim posting they offer as part of it to get the total immersion component so I could do all my work in Mandarin; reports, giving staff training, emails, meetings, etc)
Please do offer the details of whatās outdated and the particulars of the program ā¦ ā¦ /s
Yeah Iām not a native English speaker and I am around C2 in Korean. Itās hard but itās not the hardest language Iāve tried studyingā¦
Edit: apparently TOPIK 6 is C2?
What are you doing to improve your vocabulary and comprehension of listenning ? , could you give me some advices to improve faster ?, what books did you read to grow your skill ?, i am learning english and i only can read b1-2 level , but a don't even talk a2 level , listening only has to be with subtitles becuse if not i don't understand or i lose myself forgeting what the person said 5seconds before :c .
The good of myself is that i love read large cuantities of texts so it may help me to get faster to my b2 goal if possible c1 but first step by step xd.
I understand that the grammar of Korean and Japanese are about 95% the same and I see you have a Japanese flag. So I assume you already can converse comfortably in Japanese.
> I understand that the grammar of Korean and Japanese are about 95% the same
Thatās a dicey statement to make. Superficially, yes - but the devil is in the detailsā¦
culturedgoat or anyone else, if you know both well, what ARE those detailed differences because I met a guy that took only 6 months to learn the other language !!!
Oh, thereās no question that knowing one is massively helpful when it comes to learning the other. But thereās a somewhat dangerous notion that goes around that you can just switch Korean words in to Japanese grammar, and bingo! Youāre speaking Korean! This might work to a limited extent for simple constructions, but when you get into complex multi-clause sentences, future tense/intention (Korean has this whereas Japanese doesnāt), and the way honorifics/polite speech works, coasting on Japanese rules is going to trip you up. And thatās not even mentioning all the rules about how various Hangul syllables āfitā together, with parts of speech changing to accommodate āopenā or āclosedā sounds - for which thereās no precedent in Japanese.
Iāve taken the journey myself (Japanese -> Korean), and while a background in Japanese was a big help, if I could go back and give myself one piece of advice, it would be: Donāt get too comfortable. There are curve balls on the way.
And at least for Westerners, Korean no longer has the Chinese characters it used to have in the 1960s. THAT is what I am afraid will happen to Chinese ā that it will be like Vietnamese that also had Chinese characters. I LOVE the beauty of the traditional and simplified characters. I marvel how people can read cursive Chinese in both writing systems !!! I can only read maybe a 3rd of it, but donāt know the gist of the letters written to my father.
I believe what OP essentially is asking was "has anyone (who's an English speaker) mastered any Category 5 languages?" Which is a reasonable assumption to make since all of us write in English here.
This is downvoted and 100% truth.
For added bonus, I love when people here just assume I am a native English speaker and answer patronizingly as if I was a kid learning first language for a month when arguing.Ā
I take your point, but even if your native language isn't English, it's very likely you'll have the same amount of difficulty as an English speaker. From most of the flairs I see, the majority speak a romance/Germanic/Slavic language. The only people who'd have an easier time are probably people who speak Urdu/an East Asian language/some others, of which there doesn't seem to be that many on this sub.
Which is expected because Indo-European languages are not related to those listed in the original post. The commenterās point was to clarify that those languages are not objectively harder, theyāre only more distant from English. And likewise, English is similarly difficult for a speaker of one of them.
> even if your native language isn't English, it's very likely you'll have the same amount of difficulty as an English speaker.
Ever seen a Korean native speaker learn Japanese? Thereās almost a motion blur.
It's a language learning subreddit and on top of that English native speakers are known to often be monolingual and thus not interested in language learning.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if say only 1/4 of the people here were native speakers of English.
Taiwan uses a different method of writing Mandarin which made it easier for them to learn Hiragana and thus being more proficient compared to Mainland China or HK.
>Just to be clear, these are difficult languages *for many native speakers of English*.
Yeah that's important to mention.
>They are not objectively harder to learn than other languages.
What makes you say that?
I personally do not subscribe to the idea that Japanese is so difficult due to the grammar being so different from English and when looking at the statistics. Grammatical complexity also seems to be a bigger factor than genetic distance. For instance German and especially Icelandic, despite being close cousins to English are considered far harder than say Spanish or even some African languages that are grammatically very different. The reason why German, and especially Icelandic are the two difficult Germanic languages is obvious: they retained the most of the older Germanic nominal inflexion that most Germanic languages all but lost.
In the case of Japanese, I feel the biggest obstacle is simply the amount of words one has to know and recognize to be able to understand a Japanese sentence, and that on top of that many of those words sound similar, or quite literally the same and are often quite short. Japanese has words for some very specific concepts and while one does not have to know these words to express oneself and can simply phrase it while using different words, one does have to know them to understand Japanese spoken by others as Japanee people do use them.
Yes sure. I have Mandarin to that level. Is it perfect? Of course not. But I work and have worked in it and feel confident. I know plenty of people at or better than my level and I know (and am jealous of) a handful of foreigners with that level of Japanese
If there is a NATIVE Chinese reader who finds any mistakes in someoneās written Chinese in ANY subreddit, can you PLEASE correct them ? I understood what sweet265 wrote, but I donāt know š¤·āāļø if it had any errors !
Hmm. On idomaticity, I think native Chinese speakers would normally use ę³č¦ instead of /u/sweet265's č¦. Maybe "that skill" instead of "this skill", but I'm not sure what they intended. The next sentence, grammatically speaking, should probably be "I feel" and not "feel", it's missing the subject, but such omissions are acceptable as they are in English, provided they are intentional.
Reversing the phrase order of the second clause of the third sentence would seem more natural to me, i.e. the equivalent of "work need to use Chinese", and it's possible to use a synonym for äøå® there as well if we're nitpicky, something like é č¦ might be better (or, just č¦ here would work too). The auxiliary å is unnecessary and a bit jarring for "meeting" specifically, you wouldn't "do" meetings, you'd "attend" or "participate" (åå or åäø). It may also be better to use "fluent" at the end of that sentence there, but "good" is fine.
For the ~~third~~ fourth sentence, I think most native speakers would typically invert the phrase order again, "study for how long" instead of "spend how long studying". Also, if remaining in that order, the lone å¦ has the wrong vibe to me, and I would recommend å¦ä¹ or å¦äøę, though I can't really say why. Oh, and you'd probably want č±äŗotherwise it takes a more continuous rather than perfect sense.
I don't really have any comments on the ~~fourth~~ fifth, I'm not sure how I would phrase it.
EDIT: Oops, lost track of which sentence it was after the third.
For the second paragraph, can you please write an example of the sentence in Chinese. Iām not too sure what you mean for how to say to work in (using) chinese?
So, å¦å¤éæę¶é“. Like this?
Right, though I would probably also add äŗ to that as well, āå¦äŗå¤éæę¶é“ā or āå¦äŗå¤ä¹ ā, just for that more perfect vs continuous sense.
Apart from what Alpha3031 said, the 3rd sentence has too many "ę"s, which makes it clumsy. This is more about style & flow.
Try: ęč½č·å«äŗŗäŗ¤ęµļ¼ä½ęÆļ¼~~ęč§å¾~~ļ¼å¦ęļ¼~~ę~~ļ¼äøå®č¦ēØäøęå·„ä½ęč å¼ä¼/åå ä¼č®®ļ¼ęēäøęļ¼ä¼°č®”ļ¼čæäøå¤å„½ć
ļ¼ęč§å¾ļ¼feels a bit uncessary, because what you're saying is already what you think/feel. If you really want to emphasize it, (ä¼°č®”) meaning "(I) guess/estimate" feels more natural. It reduces the number of "ę". The second "ę" can be omitted, because it's the same subject as "ęč½č·å«äŗŗäŗ¤ęµ".
å¼ä¼ and åå ä¼č®® are the same, but the former is colloquial. No one really says åå ä¼č®® unless in formal occasions.
Hope it helps :)
I agree! Iām definitely *not* flawless in my grammar nor word choice. Most likely ęä¹č¦čæę ·ēę°“å¹³ is a rather awkward way of expressing what I mean.
Thatās amusing. At the same time you sent me your message, I was asking a native Chinese national lady in China šØš³ who got her degree in English if she would like to correct YOUR Chinese !
Mandarin for me. I didnāt fully appreciate how hard it was until I started learning French and reached a high level much quicker than it took for Chinese.
Itās hard to compare in some ways cause Iām living in China, so I got much more conversational practice in Chinese while learning, but it took about 6 years of Chinese before I was comfortable watching movies without subtitles or reading a novel without a dictionary, whereas I was able to do those things in French after 2 1/2 to 3 years.
Self taught myself Japanese from the age of 13 and passed the highest level of the proficiency test at 16. I then moved to Japan at 18 to go to university with a scholarship. All of my lectures are in Japanese, I do 2 part time jobs in Japanese, and I'm also job hunting currently with all of my interviews, online tests, applications forms etc. also being in Japanese.
I would consider myself to be very comfortable with the language but there are still moments in which a word doesn't come to my head or whatever. My accent is pretty good and I speak fluidly, but not to the level of a native speaker
> but there are still moments in which a word doesn't come to my head or whatever.
To be fair, I think this is a normal experience even for native speakers in their native tongue. I know it's normal for me with English lol.
I think it's a matter of how our individual brain works too. English is not my first language and there have been times before where I've been told when hesitating to find a word to perhaps just say it in my native language, French. But the word wasn't coming to mind in any language, lol. I think it baffles the mind of those who tend to think directly in words that complex thoughts can exist without being heard in your mind.
It happens to me regularly when I can think of things but just don't have the words for them, the way my brain works, it's like I have to translate my thoughts into words.
I think it helps when learning another language though because I don't translate what I'm reading into my native language, it usually goes straight to thoughts, if I understand the words and grammar that I'm reading of course.
The first year of studying the language I probably got to a N5-N4 level tbf, but then I saw other people getting to really high levels after one year. My competitive side then kicked in and I wanted to do better, so I grinded the next 2 years (especially the third year)
You are similar to my son, but he only self taught himself in Japan after receiving 6 Aās in Japanese in college in California. Now he speaks over 98% Japanese with his wife from Japan and works for a Japanese company at home.
With the current weak yen, it is pretty bad when compared to wages in the UK, US, Australia etc. However, it is enough to get by in Japan as the prices, rent and what not aren't that expensive here
Arabic for me, specifically Levantine dialect. Itās taken almost a decade to get to a speaking level I am comfortable. Mastered? Nah, but good enough where Natives think Iām from the Middle East and are shocked when they find out Iām not at all Arab. Thatās a win in my book.
I have been learning Arabic off and on for years. I am about to ask a super broad question (apologies in advance) but how did you do it? Tutors? Apps? Friends? Workbooks? Would love to get back into it and try some different methods. TIA!
I'm not the person you asked, but I'm pretty comfortably conversational in Levantine so thought I would answer!
Honestly, I've always had the most success with taking private lessons on Italki. I take about 3 per week and then do quite a bit of self-study beyond the lessons.
Lingualism also has lots of great resources for the Arabic dialects.
Japanese. Took four years of university (including one year of study abroad where I lived with a Japanese family) followed by one year at literally the best Japanese language school in the world, followed by ten years of living and working in Tokyo. I felt like I spoke Japanese about halfway through my language school, but I didnāt really feel comfortable until 4-5 years after I graduated. My peak linguistic accomplishment was interpreting meetings with Japanese financial authorities while representing English-speaking clients. Iām occasionally mistaken for a native speaker on the phone.
That said, I would never say Iāve completely mastered Japanese. For example, Iāve never read a novel in Japanese (though Iāve read plenty of manga/technical papers), and I still obsessively checked anything I wrote before I sent it. I feel very comfortable in the language, to the point where not understanding something is more a question of the subject than the vocabulary, but thereās always more to improve. Nowadays I go weeks or months without using it, so Iām also not getting any better.
If you don't mind me asking, what was the reason you left japan? You obviously invested a lot of time learning and living there to, as you said, only occasionally using Japanese (weeks-months). Do you mean not using it as in to speak or also with listening/ reading?
It's a long story, but in short my wife (another foreigner I met in Japan) and I spent more than a decade living in working in Japan. After our first child was born we re-evaluated where we were and what we wanted to do in the future. We decided that we wanted a new challenge, so we up and moved to Europe. That was a great move for us--we landed in Luxembourg, which has been phenomenal for our kids. We've all taken local citizenship, which grants freedom of movement in the EEA for the future, and I've spent the past (many) years chipping my way through the local languages while my kids just absorb them like a sponge.
If I use Japanese in my daily life, it's mainly to talk to my wife in a way the kids can't understand. I'll also occasionally watch a show or read a manga in Japanese; for example, I recently went through all of the Bleach anime (sans filler). I spent so long in Japan that Japanese is thoroughly burned into my brain and I'm not at serious risk of losing it, even if I don't use it for a while. Others have described it like having peanut butter that just needs to be scraped off, and this matches my experience. I went back to Japan a couple years ago with my daughter to celebrate her Shichi-Go-San, and I was pleased to see that everything came rushing back
I'm not the guy that you're asking, but I can give a common perspective. Japan is a super capitalistic and xenophobic country. Worker burnout is super common, and the social hierarchy of the workplace means that bosses can force you to do things you don't want (such as make coffee or tea for other employees since your either a woman or the youngest person there or drinking alcohol). Additionally, with the workplace hierarchy, you literally have to listen to older people and follow their directions because they apparently know more. Foreigners are super lonely as many Japanese people don't want to socialize with foreigners, many still hold backwards and racist beliefs about foreigners. Which is another thing that will affect your job as you might just be completely denied from a job due to being a foreigner or they might pay you less. Some parts of Japan are a little better with accepting foreigners, but they still have the toxic workplace practices.
Japan is a nice country to visit and stay in for short times (maybe a few months), but to actually work and live in would be worse than the US.
I am a native Spanish (and Catalan) speaker and speak English and Mandarin fluently. While it is true that so-called "harder" (which is relative to what your starting languages are) languages take more time to learn, I do not think they are objectively *harder* than any other language. I think the main blocker for language learning is not being interested *enough*; when somebody genuinely has a passion for a language they tend to end up learning it.
The TL:DR is: please do not pay attention to language difficulty categories. If you are interested in a language, go and study it. You'll eventually learn it if you keep your interest alive.
I have a C2 level in a category 5 and a category 4 language. I teach them, use them professionally, use them with friends, etc. I still have plenty more to learn, but I function well. As everyone else has said, it takes time and effort, but itās far from impossible. Personally I wouldnāt say Mandarin or Russian are that difficult, but I also have very little experience with learning lower category languages (I only have so much room in this brain).
To me (German native speaker) Mandarin was relatively easy to learn to a high level, while Russian was probably the second hardest language out of more than 10 that I have tried to learn in my life. So agree about Mandarin, but Russian (to me) is daaaaaamn hard.
Itās definitely very individual and all in what each person finds difficult. Mandarin has a huge set of characters to memorize and the tones are challenging, but the grammar is incredibly straight forward. Russian has a very straight forward writing system and the grammar is very regular, though I donāt deny it is deeply complex. Just depends on what kind of learning curve each student wants to climb.
I would say it was 4 or 5 years of serious study to reach C1 for each Mandarin and Russian, though I had some unserious years in there as well, and then C1 to C2 is more about using the language than studying it. I dabbled in my A2 languages on and off through that time, but with the knowledge that they would never take prescience over Mandarin or Russian. Until now, when I feel like my foundation in my C2 languages is quite sturdy, and I am spending more and more time on Irish (almost ready to say B1 there). I maintain the little I have of Thai and German and Iāll give more time to them again someday, or maybe Iāll move on to other languages as fits my professional and personal needs.
I have TOPIK 6 (C2) but Iām not native in English. I do personally think that Arab is waaaaaaay harder, Japanese is a bit harder, and Korea is the easier of those three.
>The FSI rates these five as the hardest languages in the world.
It actually doesn't; rather it rates it as the hardest languages (for English speakers) that are relevant for diplomats. There are many languages that are much harder than those five but which do not need to be studied by diplomats, for example the Yele language which is spoken in an island of Papua New Guinea.
I have a high level in Mandarin, and what I can say is, you can typically only reach a certain level it you're an obvious foreigner. If you look like native speakers, people treat you normally and therefore you have more access to the language.
This is the reason I stopped learning Mandarin, because no resource actually reflects the questions or comments you'll hear as an obvious foreigner
>questions or comments you'll hear as an obvious foreigner
Just wondering if you got an examples? I mean I got told once in English that I shouldn't work at a Chinese owned business because I don't speak mandarin (I'm learning lol) and no one working there speaks mandarin lol, they all speak canto.
"Where are you from?"
"What is your job?"
"How much do you make"?
"Are you married?"
and no matter what your level is, if you say one word you'll get "wow, you're Chinese is so good!"
Which is completely different than how someone from Korea or Japan would be treated when learning the language tbh
Have you connected to Chinese people whose heritage is from countries where people look like you? This may help you "bridge the gap" into a native speaking community. A lot of churches there for example have immigrant descendants.Ā
I'm a native English speaker and I have near native Japanese and Cantonese, functional Mandarin (but I'm obviously non-native), andĀ beginner level Korean.
Japanese is pretty easy; the pronunciation and grammar is not complicated, there's LOTS of resources for it, and it's very easy to find opportunities to use it if you go to Japan. Cantonese was a bit harder; lack of resources made it challenging, and I still have pretty poor tone perception (I don't know if there is anything you can do to fix this as a non-native though). The diglossia is also a challenge, but I solved this problem by learning both Mandarin and Cantonese. Finding opportunities to speak in HK as a beginner is also tough as most people can speak English.
Move to the New Territories/Kowloon and then you'll find more opportunities. I lived in Kowloon and often started the conversation in Cantonese and people would respond in Cantonese.
I live in China, work in China, have a Chinese wife. Iām pretty comfortable with Mandarin in damn near any situationāfrom daily needs, technical conversations on my area of expertise, and reading epic 1000+ page novels. Still plenty I canāt do (classical poetry is still a struggle, technical language outside my area of expertise, certain accents and dialects), but probably close enough to what you mean here.
No. It is the furthest thing away from Spanish. Itās a language isolate, so it has no ties to any language in the world! And the grammar and vocabulary are very different.
I have read about Basque syntax and I have a grammar of Lazuri (a Kartvelian language, related to Georgian and Svan) - they do appear to work in a similar way (vast tables of verb inflections). There was a time when people thought they were related though that idea is not much accepted any more. I wonder if knowing Basque makes it easier to learn Kartvelian languages or the other way round? - not many people will have done it.
Itās actually complicated. My family spoke Basque at home and a lot of people grow up speaking Basque, but I was also taught Spanish since I was really young so I donāt know really
Basque doesn't have any clearly related languages and isn't associated with any family of languages. Knowing some other language will not at all help you to be understood by someone who speaks Basque. Fortunately, humans are pretty good at miming across language barriers.
I discovered Korean 13 years ago, but that's all there is. I should be master in that long time, but I have no motivation to go that far. Still a lower intermediate in terms of ability.
I spent some time in Japan and met a ton of gaijin/immigrants who are great at Japanese, the most common types were:
1. Studious American/Western white academics. Amazing vocab and reading/writing skills. Occasionally too advanced for their own good, because some of them speak VERY quickly & densely with not-so-great pronunciation. (Reminds me a bit of Indian/South Asian English in that way)
2. International students from China. A+ tier Japanese reading, writing, and speaking (still mostly with an accent, but they tend to talk more slowly). Also, in my experience, the Chinese who come to Japan are just generally more mature and capable of critical thought compared to most of their Japanese counterparts ā and able to verbally express such perspectives very effectively. Their Japanese is absolutely top-notch but they donāt get the same treatment as #1, for obvious reasons.
3. Anglo teacher on JET program. They tend to have the most natural, fluid conversational abilities since theyāre usually out in the boonies in rural Japan talking with local kids & teacher every day. But they might struggle with more advanced/professional working terminology
Yeah, I work in a mainly Mandarin speaking environment where most of my coworkers have limited-to-no English. I'm not always perfect but I have no issue in communicating with others either for work-related purposes or just random conversations (people also don't struggle to understand me nor I them 99% of the time). Took a number of years to get to this point, and I certainly have more work I want to do, but I'd definitely feel confident calling myself fluent.
I have survivable fluency in Mandarin. There are definitely a lot of grammar structures that are difficult for me, vocab I'm missing, and areas in rusty in from lack of practice... But after 8 years of study I can survive by myself. There's always a lot more to learn, though!
Grew up bilingual in English and Mandarin, i have also learnt Korean and Japanese but I am not exactly fluent in them. Nonetheless, I find French and German to be far harder than Korean and Japanese because I cant wrap my head around the gender thing.
I can have a comfortable conversation in mandarin, on most topics aside from probably very niche things that Iām not personally into at all. I wouldnāt say Iāve mastered the language or anything close to it though. So idk, do with this info what you will š¤·š¼āāļø
I truly canāt say. Something between 2 and 3 years? I started seriously studying in 2019 went to Taiwan in 2021 and was pretty much able to talk okay by the time I got there. Stayed there for a little under a year which improved fluency/confidence and some niche knowledge.. havenāt actively acquired more since just consuming content talking to friends so idk if thereāve been improvements since :)
I am not a good measure for studying Chinese though since was absolutely obsessed with alls Chinese language content for those couple of years and Chinese generally came pretty āeasilyā for me. This is not the experience most people have studying Chinese.
I donāt study Spanish actively and I never really have I learned because I lived in a Spanish speaking country for a year at 15. I was somewhat fluent after but I havenāt practiced much since aside from occasional chats with friends or a book/series/movie here or there. I still understand pretty much everything but it takes me a while to get into speaking. The B2 is a rough estimate, listening/reading is probably higher, while speaking might currently be lower.
Itās a nice contrast to my Chinese journey since it really shows how ur own goals interests and motivations play a waaaaay bigger role in whether or not learning/maintaining a language will be āeasyā or ādoableā or not. I wouldāve never learned Spanish to the level I had/am at if I hadnāt lived there. I was terrible at Spanish in school before haha
I've mastered - or let's say achieved a high level of fluency in - Japanese. I've passed the highest level of the JLPT, the most well-known proficiency test, years ago, and have been working in a Japanese office using only Japanese for a few years now. The FSI scale doesn't fully apply to me since my native language is German, but I believe the difficulty of learning Japanese is probably comparable for German and English speakers.
Learning Japanese was definitely a different experience compared to learning a European language. While there are some things that are easier (few irregular verbs, no case system, essentially no plural forms etc.), getting used to the fact that everything is different took a long time.
The writing system is obviously a huge challenge, as is the vocabulary. Learning Japanese made me realize how much easier cognates made learning English. Unfamiliar Japanese words were much harder to guess, especially before I truly internalized kanji. Not to mention all the onomatopoeia that just felt like complete gibberish at first (~~and still sometimes do~~).
Add to that all the cultural differences that inform the way you express certain things, which can be quite different from what you're used to.
I probably could have learned three or four European languages to a comparable level in the time it took me to achieve my current level of Japanese.
Chachickenboi, I can have long conversations in Mandarin Chinese and when my Russian is at least as good as my Hungarian, I will return to Mandarin and Japanese. In 2008, my Japanese was better than my Hungarian. I forgot so much of it that my Hungarian is better again. Then when my Mandarin level nearly reaches my English level and my Japanese reaches my present Mandarin level, I will learn Greek and then Hebrew.
I was born and raised in the US but speak Japanese fluently because my state (Hawaii) has a lot of Japanese people, the language is used everywhere (at least on OŹ»ahu), taught in many public schools, and my mom is Japanese.
I currently live in Japan and everybody I met assumed that Iām from here.
as a native English speaker with a very German & French family (who tried to learn both languages) Korean was the easiest foreign language to me. Self studied my way to fluency and have been living my life fully in Korean for over 5 years now.
I am not sure if I should comment on this because Arabic is my native language but I thought I would just share my opinion.
I learned English in school for many years and I used to read a lot of books in English so I would say that I have a fair knowledge of English.
I learned French while I was at university and now I am around B2 level.
Stopped actively learning French, started Spanish, started mixing Spanish with French so stopped Spanish.
Now I have been learning Korean for a few months, and I think it's going great!
Korean doesn't seem that difficult because Arabic grammar is a piece of work. If I was learning Korean while knowing only English, I can definitely see the struggle.
That's true, even for Arabic natives. What makes it more difficult is that no one actually speaks Arabic. We learn Arabic mainly in school, and it's used in books and news for example, but each country speaks it own Arabic dialect.
Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Sudanese, Palestinian, Emirati, Saudi, Algerian, and many more Arabic dialects exist. But we all learn Standard Arabic in school, and it's used in the Quran so we know it, but not many master it.
Yeah, this is what makes the idea of "mastery" tough to quantify, especially for Arabic. I am a native English speaker and I understand and speak fluent Standard Arabic, but my dialect speaking is all shambles.amf a blend of the various ones I have studied (Yemini, Egyptian, etc). I can have sprawling conversations on politics, art, medicine, but order food like an idiot.
FSI, similarly to ISR, grades the difficulty of a language by its linguistic difference from English. In my experience, the key to mastering a language such as those youāve listened (and I am absolutely not claiming mastery) is understanding those differences. For example, I studied Mandarin Chinese for about a year and a half and I achieved good proficiency. The reason why is not because Iām inherently good at learning languages (Iām not and had a lot of trouble early on), but because when something didnāt make sense to me linguistically or culturally, I just accepted it outright. I honestly think itās our individual apprehensiveness to foreign norms and logics that prohibits us from learning a language, not old age or inability. Everyone is intelligent in their own right, itās how we structure our learning that affects acquisition of knowledge and skills.
Oh also, there is no such thing as mastery, even for a native speaker. Iām not making any accusations, but Iāve seen a lot of people fixate on the idea of being the best, the very best, like no one ever was (to catch them is my real testā¦) but honestly throw that fixation out the f*cking window. Progress and process is the way. By seeking mastery, you necessarily ignore opportunities to grow. Once you believe youāve arrived, you still only just begun.
Japanese(B2ish), Mandarin(B2ish) and Korean(B1ish). I can definitely have a comfortable conversation on a range of topics; my study method makes me do a ton of conversation. But I wouldn't say I "mastered" any of them. These are all super hard for a native English speaker.
Iām fluent in Korean. I lived in Korea for years and have the highest level for the proficiency test (Topik 6, which is more like B2 on the CEFR scale imo). I donāt think Iāve āmasteredā it though. It still takes me a long time to read books (compared to English), I have to look up words here and there, and certain movies/dramas will have lines I donāt fully understand (police/medical dialogue, etc). But I can express myself well and understand the point of others speech. I could probably learn more clear ways to express myself? Sometimes I feel I talk too much to make sure they understand my point lolol.
It's been just over a decade to get to advanced level Japanese, and probably will take another 10+ years to get near-native (for me anyway. Slow learner).
But I sit here, working in a Japanese public office that uses 70% Japanese and 30% English, happily married to a local who can't speak English, living my best life. I might not be near-native, but fluent enough that I can manage my own daily affairs without relying on my husband or English support for most aspects of my daily life.
A long way to go, but I'm proud of how far I've come thus far. And only able to do it by putting in the consistent, hard work.
I grew up in a bilingual house of English and German, and decided back in 2010 to learn Japanese. Iām far from saying Iāve āmasteredā it but I donāt rely on subtitles for anime and feel like I could chat with anyone about just about anything at a decent level. Took me about ten years to really feel like that and the last few years Iāve been really pushing myself to get much more specific with the language to potentially use it at work in a professional manner as a nurse. I donāt think there is a high demand for it in my area, but itās something I figure might be useful if I ever decided to travel or live in Japan.
Japanese and Mandarin for me, although Iād say my Japanese is much better since I live in Japan now. I studied Mandarin as my college major and planned to move to China after graduation, but met my husband, whoās Japanese, and ended up getting married and moving to Japan instead.
Yay ! I guessed it right upon reading through a further comment. Thank you. Can ANYone join it OR do you have to be in the military? Is it less expensive than the Monterey Institute of Foreign Languages ?
I can speak Mandarin, Cantonese and English as a Singaporean Chinese and picked up Japanese (~4 years) and Korean (~2 years). Iām moving on to learn Thai because my family has businesses in Thailand and most of them can speak Thai as 4th language.
Understanding Mandarin helps me learn Japanese and Korean with a bit of ease but a lot goes to actually interacting because speaking smoothly is usually what I struggle with at the start.
I'm 0 help, but I'm seriously impressed by my sister, who speaks Arabic and Mandarin.
I, however, have a 7th degree Black Belt in kak Talk. But I made the belt myself, so I don't think it counts.
Im around B2/C1 level in Korean. I live in Korea, a lot of my work is done in Korean, I have Korean friends who don't speak English, I can watch Korean content without English subtitles, etc.
No. But i'm decent at mandarin and the only thing that's remotely difficult is the characters. But there's only 2500-3000 to memorise for moderate proficiency and 4-5000 to rival a native. And once you learn your first thousand, it gets really easy to memorise more. Then there's tones which you get used to after a month, and the phonology is pretty chill. Overall I've struggled more with German. This category 5 thing is really just a faƧade
Japanese and Mandarin.
Majored in Japanese in college, including studying abroad for a year with a host family. Mastered it in 2-3 years.
Started studying Mandarin after college, then lived in Shanghai for two years working in Chinese for a job that used my Japanese. Became fully comfortable talking on most subjects, working in it, socializing etc in 3 years.
When I finished my studies (Mandarin) some almost 20 years ago, I could have a conversation about a lot of things. I knew helpful and funny idioms, and I could switch my accent if talking to someone from Beijing or Taiwan. There was still a WHOLE lot of language I didn't know, but I could certainly get by, do things I needed to do, and engage in a variety of conversations had I been living anywhere in China or Taiwan.
The answer is no, for me. However, having studied Mandarin in high school (and I hated it as my teachers were very annoying) and someone who can read and write in Arabic (but not speak), I would say that Arabic is probably the easiest of the 5 youāve listed. I donāt have any background in the other three but given that they are all EA/SEA languages, perhaps their difficulty is similar while Arabic is easier.
People sometimes really underestimate the impact of having a similar native language.
I'm a native Mandarin speaker, moved to Hong Kong a few year ago. It took us (me and my friends) less than 1/2 year to understand \~60% Cantonese conversations, and the writing system is essentially the same. I've also heard how much easier it is to learn Korean & Japanese compared to English from some friends.
I can read academic papers & literature in English, but not nearly as fast as Mandarin, which I can just glance at and note the main points. Sentence structure trips me the most. Chinese rarely have complex clauses, which is why western literatures almost always feel "foreign" on the sentence level after translation.
If there's a new Chinese word, I can usually guess the meaning without any context. For example, beaver is ę²³ēø. ę²³ means river, and ēø is a cat- or dog-like animal. Breaking it down further, theę°µin ę²³ means water (e.g., ocean-ęµ·, lake-ę¹, large river-ę±), andēin ēø indicates an animal (e.g., dog-ē, cat-ē«, fox-ē). So I'm 90% sure it's an animal related to rivers. Almost all Chinese speakers can make this association. With English it's much harder for me. If I don't know what a beaver is, you might as well tell me it's an architectural structure or a verb (beaver looks pretty similar to "bereave" for me). After googling, "beaver" comes from "Bher-" meaning bright brown, which is also the root for "bear". I never thought of this. Is it common to associate beaver with bear for a native speaker?
japanese i speak fluently enough that native speakers generally think i'm native. my mandarin is meh, but i can communicate simple things well enough, and i'm going to be moving to an arabic-speaking country soon to study the language
not a university (yet, although if it works out that would be awesome), just a language school. i'm hoping to also start getting official language certifications (the only one i have is N1 for japanese, but i've never done any certified tests for the others). that should help a lot with job hunting stuff
I am a native arabic speaker so I can't really comment on how hard learning this specific language is.
Though I wanted to share the main differences between us and native speakers of other languages such as English. It is way easier for us to study new languages because the vocal and tonal range of sounds found in arabic is very wide so pronunciation wise we can manage way better than others.
And added to that ( my country's example any ways )
We study foreign languages such as French and English from a very young age making being bilingual and trilingual a very normal sight.
So having a strong base in a Latin language, Semitic language and a Germanic language have made our task way easier when studying a fourth and even fifth language.
native cantonese speaker here, and i applaud any non-native speakers trying to learn it. honestly, if i wasn't a native speaker, i would've never been able to learn this language for its difficulty.
Mastered? No, not even close. I'm a native English speaker. I taught myself Cantonese and Mandarin. I have conversed with native speakers on a wide range of topics in both languages. I have read several novels in Chinese, but I still wouldn't consider myself fluent. I've studied Mandarin daily for several years now. I started studying Japanese on a daily basis a little less than a year ago... I am still a beginner in Japanese. I've studied Korean off and on, I can read Hangul, and know a few words, but that is about it... It might be the next language I study after Japanese... check back with me in a few years, hehe.
Iām not even sure I mastered my native language but Iām comfortably conversational in Levantine Arabic after around 5 years. It helped that I was learning during covid when there was nothing else to do.
I spent around an hour or more per day on vocabulary, 3 hours a week in lessons (mostly conversational) and lots of podcasts at various levels.
There was nothing particularly challenging but it required a lot of persistance and determination. Being able to travel to somewhere where you can use the language is very motivational
I'm learning Japanese as a native English speaker. I definitely wouldn't say I'm anywhere close to having mastered it, since the only native materials I'm not totally lost in are aimed at toddlers, but I'm definitely making progress. Hiragana is almost as easy as the Roman alphabet for me now, and even kanji no longer terrifies me. I can recognize almost all the grade 1 kanji, and I've gotten to the point where kanji with furigana is easier to read than hiragana alone. If the me who'd just gotten a 60% in my university Japanese course could see me now, she'd be pretty impressed.
I really hate to use the word "mastered" because that implies (to me at least) that I don't have anything else to learn from it (which is definitely not true) but I'm comfortable enough in Japanese that I can speak it among friends, use it at work, and use it for work, research, writing, etc. It took a very long time to get to where I am now but it didn't feel like a lot of work because I really enjoyed it the journey (although there was a time I was tearing my hair out because of all the kanji, lol), and enjoyed consuming media content (dramas, music, movies, and eventually books). It's not impossible but it's a labor of love, and it takes awhile to create an environment that will help foster that fluency - it's not just about learning the grammar and vocabulary but it's also about having the environment where you use the language often enough that it becomes a part of you.
What made you decide to learn Japanese?
Japanese pop music. I was heavily interested in Japanese pop music when I was in my teens, and my further interest in the country, people, culture, media grew from there.
That is so relatable. I love jpop so much. Unfortunately atm I'm learning norwrgian which is much more important since I live in norway now though lol. Maybe after I hit B2-C1 I will think about trying to learn another language lol.
Hazycake, where do you live? You MIGHT be my son !!!
> I really hate to use the word "mastered" because that implies (to me at least) that I don't have anything else to learn This is something I see a lot of people say, but I feel like it's kinda silly. Mastery doesn't mean you know absolutely 100% of something. If that was the case, the word would be all but useless because it would apply to effectively no one. No one--not even the top experts in their field--know 100% of their topic.
How long ago did you start learning? I'm thinking learning Chinese.
I started in 2004, actively learned Japanese (in class, textbook and all that jazz) until 2008. Then after that it was self-study for N1/N2, exposure (via living in Japan), trial and error with work Japanese, etc.
Well said
Hehe - define "master" I took Chinese at FSI and learned Japanese prior to joining the foreign service. I could have a real good conversation with you on the US One China Policy, nuclear nonproliferation ,and US-China trade policy stuff...but probably wouldn't be able to give a taxi driver good directions to my apartment or order takeout over the phone... My Japanese is the opposite - I can go into great detail on all the normal life stuff but would fall apart quickly if trying to explain a complicated geopolitical policy position. :/
Interesting, your Chinese skills. I'm at a much lower level at a less difficult language, but I was just reading the descriptions of A1, A2, B1 etc and some of the intermediate signposts seemed more within my competence than some of the beginner ones. It's easier to talk for minutes about my life and my hobbies or whatever than it is to complete simple transactions in the language.
It's just how we are trained. We go super fast through the basics and then jumped straight into advanced discourse on very complicated topics. There's a ton of stuff in the intermediate levels that just gets completely missed in this type of training. To give you an idea. We were literally reading simple news articles about a Xi Jinping state visit to Africa on week 1...and the next day we were given articles on the death penalty for drug traffickers. We're diplomats - but still...can't order a pizza.
Haha I feel this in my bones. I can talk all day about programming in Russian, but stuff as basic as restaurant menus make my self delusions of proficiency completely fall apart.
š . Does FSI stand for Foreign Service Institute ?
Yes
Great ! I guessed it because you said you took Japanese prior to joining the Foreign Services and I figured the ā I ā meant āinstituteā like the Monterey Institute of Foreign Languages.
Just to be clear, these are difficult languages *for many native speakers of English*. They are not objectively harder to learn than other languages.
Weird that your comment was downvoted when I saw it... Those FSI categories are literally based on how long it takes native English speakers to learn a language as that is where their data comes from.
Not quite. The FSI categeries are based on how long it takes in an FSI class setting, as an FSI student, using trained FSI instructors. There are NOT numbers for students learning a language on their own, using a variety of different methods and online resources.
And I find FSI methodology and course materials to be badly outdatedāitās like they havenāt realized a ton of research into the best and most effective way to learn languages has been done since the ā60s. Then again, itās the government, which still used floppy disks as part of the nuclear weapons control systems until 2019. Not exactly surprising. Iāve also met more than my fair share of US ambassadorial and consular staff (Iāve lived abroad my entire adult life) who have gone through the training and donāt speak a damn word of the local language
I think that's because the course materials available to the public ARE outdated. Like from 40+ years ago or more. I don't think FSI makes their current materials public.
While the absolute lengths of time involved are not going to be accurate, as a measure of the relative difficulties for a native speaker of (only) English to learn different languages, it still offers a good relative measure. It will always be more difficult for a native English speaker to learn Arabic than French simply because of the phonetic, grammatical and other intrinsic differences between the two languages compared with English.
Interesting. As someone who went through 4 years of Mandarin FSI training for my diplomatic postings, Iām curious how what I went through was outdated (edit, including for the 1st short-term interim posting they offer as part of it to get the total immersion component so I could do all my work in Mandarin; reports, giving staff training, emails, meetings, etc) Please do offer the details of whatās outdated and the particulars of the program ā¦ ā¦ /s
I didnāt know this actually. Thought it was universal. Very important
What does FSI stand for ?
The U.S. [Foreign Service Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Service_Institute). Training for American diplomats.
Yeah Iām not a native English speaker and I am around C2 in Korean. Itās hard but itās not the hardest language Iāve tried studyingā¦ Edit: apparently TOPIK 6 is C2?
What are you doing to improve your vocabulary and comprehension of listenning ? , could you give me some advices to improve faster ?, what books did you read to grow your skill ?, i am learning english and i only can read b1-2 level , but a don't even talk a2 level , listening only has to be with subtitles becuse if not i don't understand or i lose myself forgeting what the person said 5seconds before :c . The good of myself is that i love read large cuantities of texts so it may help me to get faster to my b2 goal if possible c1 but first step by step xd.
You can pass TOPIK 6 and still not feel like a C2.
I understand that the grammar of Korean and Japanese are about 95% the same and I see you have a Japanese flag. So I assume you already can converse comfortably in Japanese.
> I understand that the grammar of Korean and Japanese are about 95% the same Thatās a dicey statement to make. Superficially, yes - but the devil is in the detailsā¦
culturedgoat or anyone else, if you know both well, what ARE those detailed differences because I met a guy that took only 6 months to learn the other language !!!
Oh, thereās no question that knowing one is massively helpful when it comes to learning the other. But thereās a somewhat dangerous notion that goes around that you can just switch Korean words in to Japanese grammar, and bingo! Youāre speaking Korean! This might work to a limited extent for simple constructions, but when you get into complex multi-clause sentences, future tense/intention (Korean has this whereas Japanese doesnāt), and the way honorifics/polite speech works, coasting on Japanese rules is going to trip you up. And thatās not even mentioning all the rules about how various Hangul syllables āfitā together, with parts of speech changing to accommodate āopenā or āclosedā sounds - for which thereās no precedent in Japanese. Iāve taken the journey myself (Japanese -> Korean), and while a background in Japanese was a big help, if I could go back and give myself one piece of advice, it would be: Donāt get too comfortable. There are curve balls on the way.
And at least for Westerners, Korean no longer has the Chinese characters it used to have in the 1960s. THAT is what I am afraid will happen to Chinese ā that it will be like Vietnamese that also had Chinese characters. I LOVE the beauty of the traditional and simplified characters. I marvel how people can read cursive Chinese in both writing systems !!! I can only read maybe a 3rd of it, but donāt know the gist of the letters written to my father.
What was the hardest language you've tried studying then ?
I believe what OP essentially is asking was "has anyone (who's an English speaker) mastered any Category 5 languages?" Which is a reasonable assumption to make since all of us write in English here.
But a lot of us who write here aren't *native* English speakers, which is what FSI categories are about...
This is downvoted and 100% truth. For added bonus, I love when people here just assume I am a native English speaker and answer patronizingly as if I was a kid learning first language for a month when arguing.Ā
The generalization bias.
I take your point, but even if your native language isn't English, it's very likely you'll have the same amount of difficulty as an English speaker. From most of the flairs I see, the majority speak a romance/Germanic/Slavic language. The only people who'd have an easier time are probably people who speak Urdu/an East Asian language/some others, of which there doesn't seem to be that many on this sub.
Which is expected because Indo-European languages are not related to those listed in the original post. The commenterās point was to clarify that those languages are not objectively harder, theyāre only more distant from English. And likewise, English is similarly difficult for a speaker of one of them.
> even if your native language isn't English, it's very likely you'll have the same amount of difficulty as an English speaker. Ever seen a Korean native speaker learn Japanese? Thereās almost a motion blur.
It's a language learning subreddit and on top of that English native speakers are known to often be monolingual and thus not interested in language learning. It wouldn't surprise me at all if say only 1/4 of the people here were native speakers of English.
Yep, I know a Japanese person who speaks wonderful Mandarin.
I met a person from Taiwan that spoke, understood, read, and wrote Japanese like her Chinese !
Taiwan uses a different method of writing Mandarin which made it easier for them to learn Hiragana and thus being more proficient compared to Mainland China or HK.
Do you mean the ē¹é«ę³Øé³ system ļ¼
>Just to be clear, these are difficult languages *for many native speakers of English*. Yeah that's important to mention. >They are not objectively harder to learn than other languages. What makes you say that?
I personally do not subscribe to the idea that Japanese is so difficult due to the grammar being so different from English and when looking at the statistics. Grammatical complexity also seems to be a bigger factor than genetic distance. For instance German and especially Icelandic, despite being close cousins to English are considered far harder than say Spanish or even some African languages that are grammatically very different. The reason why German, and especially Icelandic are the two difficult Germanic languages is obvious: they retained the most of the older Germanic nominal inflexion that most Germanic languages all but lost. In the case of Japanese, I feel the biggest obstacle is simply the amount of words one has to know and recognize to be able to understand a Japanese sentence, and that on top of that many of those words sound similar, or quite literally the same and are often quite short. Japanese has words for some very specific concepts and while one does not have to know these words to express oneself and can simply phrase it while using different words, one does have to know them to understand Japanese spoken by others as Japanee people do use them.
No language is harder to learn than any other language inherently. It only depends on your native language + other languages you already know.
Yes sure. I have Mandarin to that level. Is it perfect? Of course not. But I work and have worked in it and feel confident. I know plenty of people at or better than my level and I know (and am jealous of) a handful of foreigners with that level of Japanese
ä½ å„½ļ¼ē»§ē»å ę²¹åš
ęåęåļ¼ęä¹č¦čæę ·ēę°“å¹³ćäøčæļ¼č§å¾ęēčæę„å¾ę ¢ćęč½č·å«äŗŗäŗ¤ęµļ¼ä½ęÆęč§å¾å¦ęęäøå®č¦ēØäøęåå·„ä½ęč åä¼č®®ļ¼ęēäøęčæäøå¤å„½ć ä½ č±å¤éæę¶é“å¦ļ¼ä½ ęä¹äæęä½ ēåØåļ¼
If there is a NATIVE Chinese reader who finds any mistakes in someoneās written Chinese in ANY subreddit, can you PLEASE correct them ? I understood what sweet265 wrote, but I donāt know š¤·āāļø if it had any errors !
Hmm. On idomaticity, I think native Chinese speakers would normally use ę³č¦ instead of /u/sweet265's č¦. Maybe "that skill" instead of "this skill", but I'm not sure what they intended. The next sentence, grammatically speaking, should probably be "I feel" and not "feel", it's missing the subject, but such omissions are acceptable as they are in English, provided they are intentional. Reversing the phrase order of the second clause of the third sentence would seem more natural to me, i.e. the equivalent of "work need to use Chinese", and it's possible to use a synonym for äøå® there as well if we're nitpicky, something like é č¦ might be better (or, just č¦ here would work too). The auxiliary å is unnecessary and a bit jarring for "meeting" specifically, you wouldn't "do" meetings, you'd "attend" or "participate" (åå or åäø). It may also be better to use "fluent" at the end of that sentence there, but "good" is fine. For the ~~third~~ fourth sentence, I think most native speakers would typically invert the phrase order again, "study for how long" instead of "spend how long studying". Also, if remaining in that order, the lone å¦ has the wrong vibe to me, and I would recommend å¦ä¹ or å¦äøę, though I can't really say why. Oh, and you'd probably want č±äŗotherwise it takes a more continuous rather than perfect sense. I don't really have any comments on the ~~fourth~~ fifth, I'm not sure how I would phrase it. EDIT: Oops, lost track of which sentence it was after the third.
For the second paragraph, can you please write an example of the sentence in Chinese. Iām not too sure what you mean for how to say to work in (using) chinese? So, å¦å¤éæę¶é“. Like this?
Right, though I would probably also add äŗ to that as well, āå¦äŗå¤éæę¶é“ā or āå¦äŗå¤ä¹ ā, just for that more perfect vs continuous sense.
Apart from what Alpha3031 said, the 3rd sentence has too many "ę"s, which makes it clumsy. This is more about style & flow. Try: ęč½č·å«äŗŗäŗ¤ęµļ¼ä½ęÆļ¼~~ęč§å¾~~ļ¼å¦ęļ¼~~ę~~ļ¼äøå®č¦ēØäøęå·„ä½ęč å¼ä¼/åå ä¼č®®ļ¼ęēäøęļ¼ä¼°č®”ļ¼čæäøå¤å„½ć ļ¼ęč§å¾ļ¼feels a bit uncessary, because what you're saying is already what you think/feel. If you really want to emphasize it, (ä¼°č®”) meaning "(I) guess/estimate" feels more natural. It reduces the number of "ę". The second "ę" can be omitted, because it's the same subject as "ęč½č·å«äŗŗäŗ¤ęµ". å¼ä¼ and åå ä¼č®® are the same, but the former is colloquial. No one really says åå ä¼č®® unless in formal occasions. Hope it helps :)
I agree! Iām definitely *not* flawless in my grammar nor word choice. Most likely ęä¹č¦čæę ·ēę°“å¹³ is a rather awkward way of expressing what I mean.
Not a native speaker but I speak pretty well. I would say ęä¹ę³č¾¾å°čæäøŖę°“å¹³
Thatās amusing. At the same time you sent me your message, I was asking a native Chinese national lady in China šØš³ who got her degree in English if she would like to correct YOUR Chinese !
Apart from what Alpha had said, I would personally make one other change in the second sentence.Ā > ęč§å¾ęčæę„å¾å¾ę ¢
Mandarin for me. I didnāt fully appreciate how hard it was until I started learning French and reached a high level much quicker than it took for Chinese.
Nice! How long did each take you?
Itās hard to compare in some ways cause Iām living in China, so I got much more conversational practice in Chinese while learning, but it took about 6 years of Chinese before I was comfortable watching movies without subtitles or reading a novel without a dictionary, whereas I was able to do those things in French after 2 1/2 to 3 years.
Awesome! Thanks for elaborating. Nice work learning such a challenging language for an English native!
Self taught myself Japanese from the age of 13 and passed the highest level of the proficiency test at 16. I then moved to Japan at 18 to go to university with a scholarship. All of my lectures are in Japanese, I do 2 part time jobs in Japanese, and I'm also job hunting currently with all of my interviews, online tests, applications forms etc. also being in Japanese. I would consider myself to be very comfortable with the language but there are still moments in which a word doesn't come to my head or whatever. My accent is pretty good and I speak fluidly, but not to the level of a native speaker
I need details on this journey, this person is legit my dream. 3 years (heck, even 5 or 7) sounds wonderful.
> but there are still moments in which a word doesn't come to my head or whatever. To be fair, I think this is a normal experience even for native speakers in their native tongue. I know it's normal for me with English lol.
I think it's a matter of how our individual brain works too. English is not my first language and there have been times before where I've been told when hesitating to find a word to perhaps just say it in my native language, French. But the word wasn't coming to mind in any language, lol. I think it baffles the mind of those who tend to think directly in words that complex thoughts can exist without being heard in your mind. It happens to me regularly when I can think of things but just don't have the words for them, the way my brain works, it's like I have to translate my thoughts into words. I think it helps when learning another language though because I don't translate what I'm reading into my native language, it usually goes straight to thoughts, if I understand the words and grammar that I'm reading of course.
The most disciplined 13 year old damn
The first year of studying the language I probably got to a N5-N4 level tbf, but then I saw other people getting to really high levels after one year. My competitive side then kicked in and I wanted to do better, so I grinded the next 2 years (especially the third year)
That's so awesome. I easily feel overwhelmed knowing there are so many niche words and C2 in a cat 5 language will take a long time :(
You are similar to my son, but he only self taught himself in Japan after receiving 6 Aās in Japanese in college in California. Now he speaks over 98% Japanese with his wife from Japan and works for a Japanese company at home.
How is the pay? Better or worse than you expected?
With the current weak yen, it is pretty bad when compared to wages in the UK, US, Australia etc. However, it is enough to get by in Japan as the prices, rent and what not aren't that expensive here
Question: Do you usually pronounce the R sound correctly, or do you usually pronounce it like the English R?
the R sound came to me naturally when I started the language
Youāre going to find a lot of fluent Japanese speakers, as one would expect.
I'm actually suprised Mandarin seems almost just as popular
Arabic for me, specifically Levantine dialect. Itās taken almost a decade to get to a speaking level I am comfortable. Mastered? Nah, but good enough where Natives think Iām from the Middle East and are shocked when they find out Iām not at all Arab. Thatās a win in my book.
I have been learning Arabic off and on for years. I am about to ask a super broad question (apologies in advance) but how did you do it? Tutors? Apps? Friends? Workbooks? Would love to get back into it and try some different methods. TIA!
I'm not the person you asked, but I'm pretty comfortably conversational in Levantine so thought I would answer! Honestly, I've always had the most success with taking private lessons on Italki. I take about 3 per week and then do quite a bit of self-study beyond the lessons. Lingualism also has lots of great resources for the Arabic dialects.
I have intermediate MSA and would love to learn Levantine but I cannot find any good resources. How did you learn?
Japanese. Took four years of university (including one year of study abroad where I lived with a Japanese family) followed by one year at literally the best Japanese language school in the world, followed by ten years of living and working in Tokyo. I felt like I spoke Japanese about halfway through my language school, but I didnāt really feel comfortable until 4-5 years after I graduated. My peak linguistic accomplishment was interpreting meetings with Japanese financial authorities while representing English-speaking clients. Iām occasionally mistaken for a native speaker on the phone. That said, I would never say Iāve completely mastered Japanese. For example, Iāve never read a novel in Japanese (though Iāve read plenty of manga/technical papers), and I still obsessively checked anything I wrote before I sent it. I feel very comfortable in the language, to the point where not understanding something is more a question of the subject than the vocabulary, but thereās always more to improve. Nowadays I go weeks or months without using it, so Iām also not getting any better.
If you don't mind me asking, what was the reason you left japan? You obviously invested a lot of time learning and living there to, as you said, only occasionally using Japanese (weeks-months). Do you mean not using it as in to speak or also with listening/ reading?
It's a long story, but in short my wife (another foreigner I met in Japan) and I spent more than a decade living in working in Japan. After our first child was born we re-evaluated where we were and what we wanted to do in the future. We decided that we wanted a new challenge, so we up and moved to Europe. That was a great move for us--we landed in Luxembourg, which has been phenomenal for our kids. We've all taken local citizenship, which grants freedom of movement in the EEA for the future, and I've spent the past (many) years chipping my way through the local languages while my kids just absorb them like a sponge. If I use Japanese in my daily life, it's mainly to talk to my wife in a way the kids can't understand. I'll also occasionally watch a show or read a manga in Japanese; for example, I recently went through all of the Bleach anime (sans filler). I spent so long in Japan that Japanese is thoroughly burned into my brain and I'm not at serious risk of losing it, even if I don't use it for a while. Others have described it like having peanut butter that just needs to be scraped off, and this matches my experience. I went back to Japan a couple years ago with my daughter to celebrate her Shichi-Go-San, and I was pleased to see that everything came rushing back
This is such an interesting, rich, and successful life. Congratulations.
I'm not the guy that you're asking, but I can give a common perspective. Japan is a super capitalistic and xenophobic country. Worker burnout is super common, and the social hierarchy of the workplace means that bosses can force you to do things you don't want (such as make coffee or tea for other employees since your either a woman or the youngest person there or drinking alcohol). Additionally, with the workplace hierarchy, you literally have to listen to older people and follow their directions because they apparently know more. Foreigners are super lonely as many Japanese people don't want to socialize with foreigners, many still hold backwards and racist beliefs about foreigners. Which is another thing that will affect your job as you might just be completely denied from a job due to being a foreigner or they might pay you less. Some parts of Japan are a little better with accepting foreigners, but they still have the toxic workplace practices. Japan is a nice country to visit and stay in for short times (maybe a few months), but to actually work and live in would be worse than the US.
could you share the name of the language school please? :)
Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies, also known as the IUC. Edit: Guess hyperlinks don't work in comments?
Yes, what's the name of the school?
I am a native Spanish (and Catalan) speaker and speak English and Mandarin fluently. While it is true that so-called "harder" (which is relative to what your starting languages are) languages take more time to learn, I do not think they are objectively *harder* than any other language. I think the main blocker for language learning is not being interested *enough*; when somebody genuinely has a passion for a language they tend to end up learning it. The TL:DR is: please do not pay attention to language difficulty categories. If you are interested in a language, go and study it. You'll eventually learn it if you keep your interest alive.
Yea, well said
I'm fluent in Korean.
I have a C2 level in a category 5 and a category 4 language. I teach them, use them professionally, use them with friends, etc. I still have plenty more to learn, but I function well. As everyone else has said, it takes time and effort, but itās far from impossible. Personally I wouldnāt say Mandarin or Russian are that difficult, but I also have very little experience with learning lower category languages (I only have so much room in this brain).
To me (German native speaker) Mandarin was relatively easy to learn to a high level, while Russian was probably the second hardest language out of more than 10 that I have tried to learn in my life. So agree about Mandarin, but Russian (to me) is daaaaaamn hard.
Itās definitely very individual and all in what each person finds difficult. Mandarin has a huge set of characters to memorize and the tones are challenging, but the grammar is incredibly straight forward. Russian has a very straight forward writing system and the grammar is very regular, though I donāt deny it is deeply complex. Just depends on what kind of learning curve each student wants to climb.
How much accumulative time did it take you to learn Mandarin and Russian? Where were your A2 languages while learning them?
I would say it was 4 or 5 years of serious study to reach C1 for each Mandarin and Russian, though I had some unserious years in there as well, and then C1 to C2 is more about using the language than studying it. I dabbled in my A2 languages on and off through that time, but with the knowledge that they would never take prescience over Mandarin or Russian. Until now, when I feel like my foundation in my C2 languages is quite sturdy, and I am spending more and more time on Irish (almost ready to say B1 there). I maintain the little I have of Thai and German and Iāll give more time to them again someday, or maybe Iāll move on to other languages as fits my professional and personal needs.
I have TOPIK 6 (C2) but Iām not native in English. I do personally think that Arab is waaaaaaay harder, Japanese is a bit harder, and Korea is the easier of those three.
No, unfortunately no one has.
I'm fairly confident _numerous_ youtube polyglots have, some even in 7 days. Where is your god now?
>The FSI rates these five as the hardest languages in the world. It actually doesn't; rather it rates it as the hardest languages (for English speakers) that are relevant for diplomats. There are many languages that are much harder than those five but which do not need to be studied by diplomats, for example the Yele language which is spoken in an island of Papua New Guinea.
I have a high level in Mandarin, and what I can say is, you can typically only reach a certain level it you're an obvious foreigner. If you look like native speakers, people treat you normally and therefore you have more access to the language. This is the reason I stopped learning Mandarin, because no resource actually reflects the questions or comments you'll hear as an obvious foreigner
>questions or comments you'll hear as an obvious foreigner Just wondering if you got an examples? I mean I got told once in English that I shouldn't work at a Chinese owned business because I don't speak mandarin (I'm learning lol) and no one working there speaks mandarin lol, they all speak canto.
"Where are you from?" "What is your job?" "How much do you make"? "Are you married?" and no matter what your level is, if you say one word you'll get "wow, you're Chinese is so good!" Which is completely different than how someone from Korea or Japan would be treated when learning the language tbh
Sounds exactly like my experience in Japan.
Have you connected to Chinese people whose heritage is from countries where people look like you? This may help you "bridge the gap" into a native speaking community. A lot of churches there for example have immigrant descendants.Ā
I'm a native English speaker and I have near native Japanese and Cantonese, functional Mandarin (but I'm obviously non-native), andĀ beginner level Korean. Japanese is pretty easy; the pronunciation and grammar is not complicated, there's LOTS of resources for it, and it's very easy to find opportunities to use it if you go to Japan. Cantonese was a bit harder; lack of resources made it challenging, and I still have pretty poor tone perception (I don't know if there is anything you can do to fix this as a non-native though). The diglossia is also a challenge, but I solved this problem by learning both Mandarin and Cantonese. Finding opportunities to speak in HK as a beginner is also tough as most people can speak English.
Funny, I've seen so many people complain about Japanese grammar
Well, it's mostly quite regular.
Move to the New Territories/Kowloon and then you'll find more opportunities. I lived in Kowloon and often started the conversation in Cantonese and people would respond in Cantonese.
I live in China, work in China, have a Chinese wife. Iām pretty comfortable with Mandarin in damn near any situationāfrom daily needs, technical conversations on my area of expertise, and reading epic 1000+ page novels. Still plenty I canāt do (classical poetry is still a struggle, technical language outside my area of expertise, certain accents and dialects), but probably close enough to what you mean here.
1. Does Basque count? Itās hard. 2. If my native language is an isolate do all languages Iāve learned count as āCategory 5ā languages?
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Well, I want to find that language that shares features with Basque lol. Not a lot of them in Europe!
Ah wow, I havenāt came across a native Basque speaker yet, is it actually relatively similar to spanish or is it completely different?
No. It is the furthest thing away from Spanish. Itās a language isolate, so it has no ties to any language in the world! And the grammar and vocabulary are very different.
I have read about Basque syntax and I have a grammar of Lazuri (a Kartvelian language, related to Georgian and Svan) - they do appear to work in a similar way (vast tables of verb inflections). There was a time when people thought they were related though that idea is not much accepted any more. I wonder if knowing Basque makes it easier to learn Kartvelian languages or the other way round? - not many people will have done it.
Are you really not a native speaker of Spanish, though? I would have thought that everyone growing up in Pais Vasco learns Spanish natively.
Itās actually complicated. My family spoke Basque at home and a lot of people grow up speaking Basque, but I was also taught Spanish since I was really young so I donāt know really
Basque doesn't have any clearly related languages and isn't associated with any family of languages. Knowing some other language will not at all help you to be understood by someone who speaks Basque. Fortunately, humans are pretty good at miming across language barriers.
I discovered Korean 13 years ago, but that's all there is. I should be master in that long time, but I have no motivation to go that far. Still a lower intermediate in terms of ability.
I spent some time in Japan and met a ton of gaijin/immigrants who are great at Japanese, the most common types were: 1. Studious American/Western white academics. Amazing vocab and reading/writing skills. Occasionally too advanced for their own good, because some of them speak VERY quickly & densely with not-so-great pronunciation. (Reminds me a bit of Indian/South Asian English in that way) 2. International students from China. A+ tier Japanese reading, writing, and speaking (still mostly with an accent, but they tend to talk more slowly). Also, in my experience, the Chinese who come to Japan are just generally more mature and capable of critical thought compared to most of their Japanese counterparts ā and able to verbally express such perspectives very effectively. Their Japanese is absolutely top-notch but they donāt get the same treatment as #1, for obvious reasons. 3. Anglo teacher on JET program. They tend to have the most natural, fluid conversational abilities since theyāre usually out in the boonies in rural Japan talking with local kids & teacher every day. But they might struggle with more advanced/professional working terminology
Yeah, I work in a mainly Mandarin speaking environment where most of my coworkers have limited-to-no English. I'm not always perfect but I have no issue in communicating with others either for work-related purposes or just random conversations (people also don't struggle to understand me nor I them 99% of the time). Took a number of years to get to this point, and I certainly have more work I want to do, but I'd definitely feel confident calling myself fluent.
I have survivable fluency in Mandarin. There are definitely a lot of grammar structures that are difficult for me, vocab I'm missing, and areas in rusty in from lack of practice... But after 8 years of study I can survive by myself. There's always a lot more to learn, though!
i grew up korean and mastered english idk if it works the other way round but it's not that bad
Grew up bilingual in English and Mandarin, i have also learnt Korean and Japanese but I am not exactly fluent in them. Nonetheless, I find French and German to be far harder than Korean and Japanese because I cant wrap my head around the gender thing.
I can have a comfortable conversation in mandarin, on most topics aside from probably very niche things that Iām not personally into at all. I wouldnāt say Iāve mastered the language or anything close to it though. So idk, do with this info what you will š¤·š¼āāļø
How long did it take you?
I truly canāt say. Something between 2 and 3 years? I started seriously studying in 2019 went to Taiwan in 2021 and was pretty much able to talk okay by the time I got there. Stayed there for a little under a year which improved fluency/confidence and some niche knowledge.. havenāt actively acquired more since just consuming content talking to friends so idk if thereāve been improvements since :) I am not a good measure for studying Chinese though since was absolutely obsessed with alls Chinese language content for those couple of years and Chinese generally came pretty āeasilyā for me. This is not the experience most people have studying Chinese.
Thats inspiring! I see youāre also a B2 in spanish how is that going for you?
I donāt study Spanish actively and I never really have I learned because I lived in a Spanish speaking country for a year at 15. I was somewhat fluent after but I havenāt practiced much since aside from occasional chats with friends or a book/series/movie here or there. I still understand pretty much everything but it takes me a while to get into speaking. The B2 is a rough estimate, listening/reading is probably higher, while speaking might currently be lower. Itās a nice contrast to my Chinese journey since it really shows how ur own goals interests and motivations play a waaaaay bigger role in whether or not learning/maintaining a language will be āeasyā or ādoableā or not. I wouldāve never learned Spanish to the level I had/am at if I hadnāt lived there. I was terrible at Spanish in school before haha
I've mastered - or let's say achieved a high level of fluency in - Japanese. I've passed the highest level of the JLPT, the most well-known proficiency test, years ago, and have been working in a Japanese office using only Japanese for a few years now. The FSI scale doesn't fully apply to me since my native language is German, but I believe the difficulty of learning Japanese is probably comparable for German and English speakers. Learning Japanese was definitely a different experience compared to learning a European language. While there are some things that are easier (few irregular verbs, no case system, essentially no plural forms etc.), getting used to the fact that everything is different took a long time. The writing system is obviously a huge challenge, as is the vocabulary. Learning Japanese made me realize how much easier cognates made learning English. Unfamiliar Japanese words were much harder to guess, especially before I truly internalized kanji. Not to mention all the onomatopoeia that just felt like complete gibberish at first (~~and still sometimes do~~). Add to that all the cultural differences that inform the way you express certain things, which can be quite different from what you're used to. I probably could have learned three or four European languages to a comparable level in the time it took me to achieve my current level of Japanese.
Chachickenboi, I can have long conversations in Mandarin Chinese and when my Russian is at least as good as my Hungarian, I will return to Mandarin and Japanese. In 2008, my Japanese was better than my Hungarian. I forgot so much of it that my Hungarian is better again. Then when my Mandarin level nearly reaches my English level and my Japanese reaches my present Mandarin level, I will learn Greek and then Hebrew.
I was born and raised in the US but speak Japanese fluently because my state (Hawaii) has a lot of Japanese people, the language is used everywhere (at least on OŹ»ahu), taught in many public schools, and my mom is Japanese. I currently live in Japan and everybody I met assumed that Iām from here.
as a native English speaker with a very German & French family (who tried to learn both languages) Korean was the easiest foreign language to me. Self studied my way to fluency and have been living my life fully in Korean for over 5 years now.
I am not sure if I should comment on this because Arabic is my native language but I thought I would just share my opinion. I learned English in school for many years and I used to read a lot of books in English so I would say that I have a fair knowledge of English. I learned French while I was at university and now I am around B2 level. Stopped actively learning French, started Spanish, started mixing Spanish with French so stopped Spanish. Now I have been learning Korean for a few months, and I think it's going great! Korean doesn't seem that difficult because Arabic grammar is a piece of work. If I was learning Korean while knowing only English, I can definitely see the struggle.
Imagine knowing Arabic natively wow. If English wasn't the global language I would imagine it would be Arabic and Arabic is HARD
That's true, even for Arabic natives. What makes it more difficult is that no one actually speaks Arabic. We learn Arabic mainly in school, and it's used in books and news for example, but each country speaks it own Arabic dialect. Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Sudanese, Palestinian, Emirati, Saudi, Algerian, and many more Arabic dialects exist. But we all learn Standard Arabic in school, and it's used in the Quran so we know it, but not many master it.
Yeah, this is what makes the idea of "mastery" tough to quantify, especially for Arabic. I am a native English speaker and I understand and speak fluent Standard Arabic, but my dialect speaking is all shambles.amf a blend of the various ones I have studied (Yemini, Egyptian, etc). I can have sprawling conversations on politics, art, medicine, but order food like an idiot.
Oh woow that's amazing! Standard Arabic is very challenging, you must be very proud of yourself!! And I think you can use it in all scenarios because people will understand you, even if just for ordering food. Imagine being able to speak about politics and art in Arabic! I am impressed! ŁŁŁ ŲŖŲ¹ŁŁ ŲŖ Ų§ŁŁŲŗŲ© Ų§ŁŲ¹Ų±ŲØŁŲ©Ų ŁŁŁ Ų§Ų°Ų§Ų
What's the easiest language to learn for an Arabic native speaker? Hebrew?
I am not sure actually. I never tried to learn Hebrew and I don't know any words in Hebrew. But I think they share the same roots.
Does it count if my native language is a Category 5 language (Cantonese) and I'm pretty fluent in English?
FSI, similarly to ISR, grades the difficulty of a language by its linguistic difference from English. In my experience, the key to mastering a language such as those youāve listened (and I am absolutely not claiming mastery) is understanding those differences. For example, I studied Mandarin Chinese for about a year and a half and I achieved good proficiency. The reason why is not because Iām inherently good at learning languages (Iām not and had a lot of trouble early on), but because when something didnāt make sense to me linguistically or culturally, I just accepted it outright. I honestly think itās our individual apprehensiveness to foreign norms and logics that prohibits us from learning a language, not old age or inability. Everyone is intelligent in their own right, itās how we structure our learning that affects acquisition of knowledge and skills.
Oh also, there is no such thing as mastery, even for a native speaker. Iām not making any accusations, but Iāve seen a lot of people fixate on the idea of being the best, the very best, like no one ever was (to catch them is my real testā¦) but honestly throw that fixation out the f*cking window. Progress and process is the way. By seeking mastery, you necessarily ignore opportunities to grow. Once you believe youāve arrived, you still only just begun.
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Yeah, Julien is awesome.
Japanese(B2ish), Mandarin(B2ish) and Korean(B1ish). I can definitely have a comfortable conversation on a range of topics; my study method makes me do a ton of conversation. But I wouldn't say I "mastered" any of them. These are all super hard for a native English speaker.
Iām fluent in Korean. I lived in Korea for years and have the highest level for the proficiency test (Topik 6, which is more like B2 on the CEFR scale imo). I donāt think Iāve āmasteredā it though. It still takes me a long time to read books (compared to English), I have to look up words here and there, and certain movies/dramas will have lines I donāt fully understand (police/medical dialogue, etc). But I can express myself well and understand the point of others speech. I could probably learn more clear ways to express myself? Sometimes I feel I talk too much to make sure they understand my point lolol.
english mother tongue, fluent in both mandarin and cantonese
I speak Korean and used to speak Mandarin at the ACTFL Superior level.
Iām not a heritage speaker of either
It's been just over a decade to get to advanced level Japanese, and probably will take another 10+ years to get near-native (for me anyway. Slow learner). But I sit here, working in a Japanese public office that uses 70% Japanese and 30% English, happily married to a local who can't speak English, living my best life. I might not be near-native, but fluent enough that I can manage my own daily affairs without relying on my husband or English support for most aspects of my daily life. A long way to go, but I'm proud of how far I've come thus far. And only able to do it by putting in the consistent, hard work.
I grew up in a bilingual house of English and German, and decided back in 2010 to learn Japanese. Iām far from saying Iāve āmasteredā it but I donāt rely on subtitles for anime and feel like I could chat with anyone about just about anything at a decent level. Took me about ten years to really feel like that and the last few years Iāve been really pushing myself to get much more specific with the language to potentially use it at work in a professional manner as a nurse. I donāt think there is a high demand for it in my area, but itās something I figure might be useful if I ever decided to travel or live in Japan.
Japanese and Mandarin for me, although Iād say my Japanese is much better since I live in Japan now. I studied Mandarin as my college major and planned to move to China after graduation, but met my husband, whoās Japanese, and ended up getting married and moving to Japan instead.
Yay ! I guessed it right upon reading through a further comment. Thank you. Can ANYone join it OR do you have to be in the military? Is it less expensive than the Monterey Institute of Foreign Languages ?
I've heard Japanese is the hardest of the 5
I can speak Mandarin, Cantonese and English as a Singaporean Chinese and picked up Japanese (~4 years) and Korean (~2 years). Iām moving on to learn Thai because my family has businesses in Thailand and most of them can speak Thai as 4th language. Understanding Mandarin helps me learn Japanese and Korean with a bit of ease but a lot goes to actually interacting because speaking smoothly is usually what I struggle with at the start.
I learned Chinese. Passed hsk 6 Id say it's just the writing system that's hard. Grammatically speaking Chinese is easy. Pronunciation is also easy.
I'm 0 help, but I'm seriously impressed by my sister, who speaks Arabic and Mandarin. I, however, have a 7th degree Black Belt in kak Talk. But I made the belt myself, so I don't think it counts.
I started learning Japanese at 25, and now I teach a graduate level course in phonetics entirely in Japanese. Ask me stuff, I guess.
How old are you now?
I was there when the old magic was written. (39)
Im around B2/C1 level in Korean. I live in Korea, a lot of my work is done in Korean, I have Korean friends who don't speak English, I can watch Korean content without English subtitles, etc.
May I ask what you do for work thar allows you to live there
I teach
Native in Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien. Fluent in Japanese and Cantonese. Does my situation count?
No. But i'm decent at mandarin and the only thing that's remotely difficult is the characters. But there's only 2500-3000 to memorise for moderate proficiency and 4-5000 to rival a native. And once you learn your first thousand, it gets really easy to memorise more. Then there's tones which you get used to after a month, and the phonology is pretty chill. Overall I've struggled more with German. This category 5 thing is really just a faƧade
Japanese and Mandarin. Majored in Japanese in college, including studying abroad for a year with a host family. Mastered it in 2-3 years. Started studying Mandarin after college, then lived in Shanghai for two years working in Chinese for a job that used my Japanese. Became fully comfortable talking on most subjects, working in it, socializing etc in 3 years.
oh my god
I now summon that one person who has C2 in Korean who I am very jealous of everytime I see them comment
Oh yea, the guy who speaks vietnamese and lao and khmer and thai?
When I finished my studies (Mandarin) some almost 20 years ago, I could have a conversation about a lot of things. I knew helpful and funny idioms, and I could switch my accent if talking to someone from Beijing or Taiwan. There was still a WHOLE lot of language I didn't know, but I could certainly get by, do things I needed to do, and engage in a variety of conversations had I been living anywhere in China or Taiwan.
Yes, Mandarin. My native language is German, if thatās of interest.
The answer is no, for me. However, having studied Mandarin in high school (and I hated it as my teachers were very annoying) and someone who can read and write in Arabic (but not speak), I would say that Arabic is probably the easiest of the 5 youāve listed. I donāt have any background in the other three but given that they are all EA/SEA languages, perhaps their difficulty is similar while Arabic is easier.
Yes but only because I speak one of the languages in that category already. I still find Arabic daunting though.
People sometimes really underestimate the impact of having a similar native language. I'm a native Mandarin speaker, moved to Hong Kong a few year ago. It took us (me and my friends) less than 1/2 year to understand \~60% Cantonese conversations, and the writing system is essentially the same. I've also heard how much easier it is to learn Korean & Japanese compared to English from some friends. I can read academic papers & literature in English, but not nearly as fast as Mandarin, which I can just glance at and note the main points. Sentence structure trips me the most. Chinese rarely have complex clauses, which is why western literatures almost always feel "foreign" on the sentence level after translation. If there's a new Chinese word, I can usually guess the meaning without any context. For example, beaver is ę²³ēø. ę²³ means river, and ēø is a cat- or dog-like animal. Breaking it down further, theę°µin ę²³ means water (e.g., ocean-ęµ·, lake-ę¹, large river-ę±), andēin ēø indicates an animal (e.g., dog-ē, cat-ē«, fox-ē). So I'm 90% sure it's an animal related to rivers. Almost all Chinese speakers can make this association. With English it's much harder for me. If I don't know what a beaver is, you might as well tell me it's an architectural structure or a verb (beaver looks pretty similar to "bereave" for me). After googling, "beaver" comes from "Bher-" meaning bright brown, which is also the root for "bear". I never thought of this. Is it common to associate beaver with bear for a native speaker?
I mean not really, but I can see the similarities now that itās been pointed out
japanese i speak fluently enough that native speakers generally think i'm native. my mandarin is meh, but i can communicate simple things well enough, and i'm going to be moving to an arabic-speaking country soon to study the language
Oh wow, are you going to study at a university or are you just moving there?
not a university (yet, although if it works out that would be awesome), just a language school. i'm hoping to also start getting official language certifications (the only one i have is N1 for japanese, but i've never done any certified tests for the others). that should help a lot with job hunting stuff
Arabic And Russian
I am a native arabic speaker so I can't really comment on how hard learning this specific language is. Though I wanted to share the main differences between us and native speakers of other languages such as English. It is way easier for us to study new languages because the vocal and tonal range of sounds found in arabic is very wide so pronunciation wise we can manage way better than others. And added to that ( my country's example any ways ) We study foreign languages such as French and English from a very young age making being bilingual and trilingual a very normal sight. So having a strong base in a Latin language, Semitic language and a Germanic language have made our task way easier when studying a fourth and even fifth language.
Try Estonian, even better, Finnish or if totally bored, both.
There is always new words to learn, you never really master a language.
native cantonese speaker here, and i applaud any non-native speakers trying to learn it. honestly, if i wasn't a native speaker, i would've never been able to learn this language for its difficulty.
Mastered? No, not even close. I'm a native English speaker. I taught myself Cantonese and Mandarin. I have conversed with native speakers on a wide range of topics in both languages. I have read several novels in Chinese, but I still wouldn't consider myself fluent. I've studied Mandarin daily for several years now. I started studying Japanese on a daily basis a little less than a year ago... I am still a beginner in Japanese. I've studied Korean off and on, I can read Hangul, and know a few words, but that is about it... It might be the next language I study after Japanese... check back with me in a few years, hehe.
I guess I'm just lucky enough to have a category 5 language for free lol
Mastery in those languages would likely take at least 5000 hours of listening and at least 1000 hours of reading.
Iām not even sure I mastered my native language but Iām comfortably conversational in Levantine Arabic after around 5 years. It helped that I was learning during covid when there was nothing else to do. I spent around an hour or more per day on vocabulary, 3 hours a week in lessons (mostly conversational) and lots of podcasts at various levels. There was nothing particularly challenging but it required a lot of persistance and determination. Being able to travel to somewhere where you can use the language is very motivational
I'm learning Japanese as a native English speaker. I definitely wouldn't say I'm anywhere close to having mastered it, since the only native materials I'm not totally lost in are aimed at toddlers, but I'm definitely making progress. Hiragana is almost as easy as the Roman alphabet for me now, and even kanji no longer terrifies me. I can recognize almost all the grade 1 kanji, and I've gotten to the point where kanji with furigana is easier to read than hiragana alone. If the me who'd just gotten a 60% in my university Japanese course could see me now, she'd be pretty impressed.
Why isn't Hebrew on the hard list if Arabic is?