Looking for friends! ...and trying to learn japanese! ^^

[Kagemaru]

Dehitay wrote:
For any bilingual people or people with bilingual spouses, I highly encourage you to raise your children bilingual. When they're still in that language learning phase, not only is it easier to teach them 2 languages, they put up less resistance.

This not consistent with everyone, although if I may recount.

I was raised and grew up in Greece within a bilingual family. From birth when speaking to me, my mother using English(native), my father Greek(native).

By the average age of a child when beginning to speak, I was late. My parents persisted with the English/Greek combination and by about the age of four to five, I was mixing languages when I spoke. Moreover the standard vocabulary levels of a mono lingual child for that age was behind on both languages.

I would make associations with speaking to my mother in English, to my father in Greek, and when my parents switched languages, I became horribly confused.

By elementary school although I had ceased mixing languages, my Greek level was behind that of other natives and children being children, I was teased as a consequence.

It wasn't until my early twenties when I was accepted and graduated from an Australian University, my once thought native level English was certainly not that at all, primarily due to my mother being the only source of English I was subjected to in Greece. Furthermore, English was not generally part of a schools curriculum at that time. (If I recall, French was more widely spoken/popular to speak in Europe about 25-30 years ago)

I had a difficult time understanding and comprehending lectures however, eventually I managed to bring my English up to scratch. (one hopes anyway)

The long and the short of this being;

On paper, it presumably seems natural and logical for a child from multi lingual parentage to eventually have the ability to be native in both, but by no means easy and by no means granted.

Moreover, being a parent within a multi-lingual relationship/marriage etc means that whichever parent is not living in their native country, the role for this parent(s) now becomes parent/school/friends/media and all other sources that shape a natives language that does not derive from merely the communication of a parent(s)

On the contrary, and as from some of the responses here, I have found a large part of children from multi lingual parents are mono lingual, or one of the languages severely lacks.

I personally believe, even though my mother fortunately gave me a great start, I often wonder had I not lived in Australia for a number of years, would my English level be that of what it is currently, as the largest of learning curves was that in fact of variety and not that of single repetition.

To finally tie this in with the OP, variety is something screamed here over and over. Why limit your Japanese studies to only manga, music, movies, video games? etc

I raise the same question when deciding to limit yourself to an age bracket.

[Algoze]

Kagemaru wrote:

Dehitay wrote:
For any bilingual people or people with bilingual spouses, I highly encourage you to raise your children bilingual. When they're still in that language learning phase, not only is it easier to teach them 2 languages, they put up less resistance.

This not consistent with everyone, although if I may recount.

I was raised and grew up in Greece within a bilingual family. From birth when speaking to me, my mother using English(native), my father Greek(native).

By the average age of a child when beginning to speak, I was late. My parents persisted with the English/Greek combination and by about the age of four to five, I was mixing languages when I spoke. Moreover the standard vocabulary levels of a mono lingual child for that age was behind on both languages.

I would make associations with speaking to my mother in English, to my father in Greek, and when my parents switched languages, I became horribly confused.

By elementary school although I had ceased mixing languages, my Greek level was behind that of other natives and children being children, I was teased as a consequence.

It wasn't until my early twenties when I was accepted and graduated from an Australian University, my once thought native level English was certainly not that at all, primarily due to my mother being the only source of English I was subjected to in Greece. Furthermore, English was not generally part of a schools curriculum at that time. (If I recall, French was more widely spoken/popular to speak in Europe about 25-30 years ago)

I had a difficult time understanding and comprehending lectures however, eventually I managed to bring my English up to scratch. (one hopes anyway)

The long and the short of this being;

On paper, it presumably seems natural and logical for a child from multi lingual parentage to eventually have the ability to be native in both, but by no means easy and by no means granted.

Moreover, being a parent within a multi-lingual relationship/marriage etc means that whichever parent is not living in their native country, the role for this parent(s) now becomes parent/school/friends/media and all other sources that shape a natives language that does not derive from merely the communication of a parent(s)

On the contrary, and as from some of the responses here, I have found a large part of children from multi lingual parents are mono lingual, or one of the languages severely lacks.

I personally believe, even though my mother fortunately gave me a great start, I often wonder had I not lived in Australia for a number of years, would my English level be that of what it is currently, as the largest of learning curves was that in fact of variety and not that of single repetition.

To finally tie this in with the OP, variety is something screamed here over and over. Why limit your Japanese studies to only manga, music, movies, video games? etc

I raise the same question when deciding to limit yourself to an age bracket.

Hmm something like that happened to me One time i couldnt speak one of the languages when i was 4 or 5. Bit scary XD though i remembered it shortly after.

[MarioGeek92]

I believe a child should start learning the second or his/her choice at the age of 12-14. But, hey. Different strokes for different folks.

Feba was the only one to add me on msn

C'mon people you could at least send me a pm, I don't bite.


And by the way, I did use to be quite a 'n00b' and used '1337' a good bit. But, that was like two years ago, things change.



Any questions about me or for me please feel free to pm or email me.

[Infidel]

it's not "different strokes" it's a scientific fact that the earlier you learn a second language the greater your ultimate proficiency and speaking without an accent.

[MarioGeek92]

Infidel wrote:
it's not "different strokes" it's a scientific fact that the earlier you learn a second language the greater your ultimate proficiency and speaking without an accent.

On the contrary, it IS "different strokes".

As a member stated above trying to learn a language at too young of an age for some people isn't helpful. And can fail.

Maybe that is a 'fact' for some youths but definitely not me.

I know I tried learning French, Spanish, German, and MANY others. It took a while me a long time before I realized that I just wasn't interested in the others, and that my true talent was in Japanese.

The point I'm making here is: Sometimes you're just not interested in learning a new language or a certian language, and it doesn't matter how old you are, I'm actaully finding it easier to learn more Japanese as I mature and grow older.

I'm not saying being younger hurts or just doesn't help, all I'm saying is that IT IS different for different people.

I know you haven't met all the people in the world and you CERTIANLY haven't ever met me. So how would you even know it wasn't different for each person?

See my point?

[Hatori]

I'm fourteen and I joined this website when I was ten! Gaspu! How much ruder could you have been if I were still ten?!??! :p
Anyway, good luck! Just start learning kana and you'll be off to a good start.

[SirFirestorm]

by scientific fact he meant biologically human brains have the capacity to learn languages better when you are younger.

Your interest or passion in learning languages are a whole different story.

[xx-GaCkT-xx]

I'm 14 and English. So I've learnt english (obviously =]) and started french in high school. Now in my second to last year in high school, I've been told that I'll be fluent by the end of this year. And then I decided to teach myself Japanese, and it's going pretty well =] I'm also helping my mum with italian and doing a bit of spanish...
I personally think it's definately easier to learn languages when you're younger, but if you really want to learn then nothing's going to stop you =P

Plus I'd like to meet friends who can help me with my japanese, so if you'd like to add me on MSN or email me my email is xxoblivionxx@hotmail.co.uk

Terri~

[Xurma]

I prefer the TJP chatrooms in Pandion. I can't find the link now, but people speak japanese pretty much in there. If someone can post the Pandion download link then please post.

[Shinigami]

I'm also 14. Wow, there are quite a lot of us.
I study Spanish and Latin (not that Latin really counts as a spoken language) in school. I would, however, like to become fluent in Japanese and at least one other language. Oh well, plenty of time yet.
A few of my friends are bilingual, and I sometimes wish I was, it'd be so nice to be able to speak another language properly.
Anyway, I think if you have enough motivation and time (which is my problem), then you can learn a language to a very high standard irrespective of your age.

[Miyu-rin]

Feba wrote:

I'm 13 and an American who lives GA, USA.

Sweet Zombie Jesus, a 13 year old American with decent English skills? On the internet?

I think I just felt a pang of hope for humanity.

I'm a 13 year old American with decent English skills.

Hi. *waves*

[xsilentxtearsx]

Ello people!!! I have a natural talent for studying and learning languages, but that's just me. I want whatever kids I ahve to be at the least bi or tri lingual, but if they aren't, as long as we can communicate, I'm happy. Anyway, I know quite a bit of Spanish, thanks to living in good 'ol Cali for 6 years, and I've taken two years of it. I have also been studying Jpanese for about 6 years now, and I can read it (save most of the Kanji), and speak it a bit. But I suggest for the Japanese writing, you make yourself some flash cards. That helped me, anyway. Well, good luck!