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KikueShino In reply to Ying-Juan [2013-12-02 07:51:43 +0000 UTC]

thank you! <3

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Ying-Juan In reply to KikueShino [2013-12-02 12:57:05 +0000 UTC]

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KikueShino In reply to ghorahn [2013-11-01 15:54:42 +0000 UTC]

OH YEAH SCENIC I forgot the word /__\ Sorry for the horrible english I'm always writing in since English is one of my worst subjects Q_Q (I have no idea why...) My Chinese is better though XXX

Yeah the wind on that day was really strong and my umbrella kept shaking hahaha! 

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ghorahn In reply to KikueShino [2013-11-01 23:25:41 +0000 UTC]

If you ask me, forgetting one word every now and then doesn't make you bad at a language. ^ ^

I'd like to speak to you in Chinese! There's one problem, though: I don't speak a word of it.  (Well, I suppose I could say 'ni hao' in a terrible accent. Does that count as 'speaking a word of Chinese?' ^ ^; )

A little over a year ago, I decided to get serious about studying Japanese, but I'm still pretty bad. I can read it pretty well (assuming I have Rikaikun, a browser plug-in to read all the unfamiliar kanji for me ^ ^; ), but if I had to speak it, I think it would be excruciating for everyone involved.

Anyhow, the reason I mention this is that, when the day comes that I feel comfortable speaking Japanese, I want to start learning other languages from that part of the world. I hear Korean is grammatically really similar to Japanese so it's not too hard to learn one of those languages once you know the other...but I don't really have any reason to learn Korean. ^ ^; So Chinese seems like a good choice to study next!

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KikueShino In reply to ghorahn [2013-11-04 08:05:05 +0000 UTC]

Nah its not about forgetting one word or anything, I think my grammar is horrible (though I'm a grammar nazi????
HAHAHAAH uhh I have a bit of Malaysian Chinese accent so I sound kinda weirdddd and not as fluent as Chinese (referring to Chinese in China) Ni Hao counts I guess! Its okay, since most people I know who can't speak Chinese always say it with a weird accent 8D

I can read Japanese (prolly intermediate level A.K.A I can play games in Japanese) but I can't really write... (still stuck at basic level hahaha) well at least that's enough to survive in Japan 8) 
AND NO KOREAN IS LIKE SLDHGLSHSFS I tried to learn a bit but I gave up hahahaha, CHINESE IS REALLY HARD IMO actually, but Chinese helps you to better learn Japanese! 

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ghorahn In reply to KikueShino [2013-11-05 00:46:10 +0000 UTC]

Sadly, I wouldn't know one type of Chinese accent from another, unless maybe I heard them spoken one after another so I could listen for a difference.  There was a group of guys from Singapore that I used to play World of Warcraft with, years back; we talked over voice chat sometimes, and that's about as much experience I have with actually speaking (orally, that is) to anyone from Singapore. ^ ^;

One of the things that makes Japanese fairly easy for me to keep studying is that I can find tons of Japanese language stuff that I'm interested in watching or listening to. (Anime, tv/radio shows featuring j-pop groups, all that.) It's my attempt at immersing myself in the language, and I find it hugely helpful. (My progress at Japanese was way, way slow before I started making sure I always had Japanese stuff to read or watch or listen to, even after I first took a couple semesters of Japanese, years back.)

But with Chinese, I don't know if I'd be able to find stuff like that. (More importantly, I'm not sure if I'd find stuff I was actually interested in enough to watch or listen to every day. ^ ^;  ) Still, I'll probably start studying it once I reach a point with Japanese where textbooks are no longer teaching me anything new. But really, I think that if I ever become fluent in Chinese, it will be because I wind up living in an area where it's spoken, or perhaps if I find myself in the company of someone who speaks the language and is willing to help me learn. (The same probably goes for any language, I suppose.)

And while I don't currently have any concrete plans to live in an area where Chinese is spoken, I'm certainly open to the possibility. Japan, on the other hand, I have sort of an informal goal to live there at some point. The real catalyst for me starting to study Japanese much harder, a year or so ago, was that I started thinking seriously about either doing graduate school in Japan, or trying to get a post-doc position there. And if I don't even get into grad school, then I might try to work as an ALC for a year or something.

But 'informal goal,' for me, just means that it's the goal I want to work toward until something pulls me in a different direction. ^ ^; (I'm big on 'keeping my options open.')

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KikueShino In reply to ghorahn [2013-11-05 06:23:32 +0000 UTC]

IMO, I think it wouldn't be a good choice to settle down in Japan because life is really tough there, and unless you have been scouted, it will probably be hard to find a job there because I ~heard~ that they are not particularly interested in hiring foreigners. And the pace of life (esp in Tokyo) is really hard to keep up with @_@ cultural differences are also a big factor I guess, that's why I think I don't have plans to migrate haha. 

Hmm for Chinese it really boils down to interest I guess, its a really tough language to pick up. For me, its because its needed as a compulsory language (also my mother tongue) and I try to gain interest by watching anime in Chinese subtitles, reading Chinese fanfics (they have a lot of good ones out there!) and reading manga in Chinese (because they translate real quick). But it'd be a good choice to learn it cause the Chinese market has expanded a lot and it'd be really good if you can converse in Chinese I guess. 

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ghorahn In reply to KikueShino [2013-11-10 03:31:29 +0000 UTC]

I definitely agree that I wouldn't want to try to relocate to another country unless I had a job (or grad school) waiting for me.  (Or maybe if I had enough money to live off of for months or -- better yet -- years...but that's something I don't have nowadays. ^ ^; ) 

I like the thought of doing something that's short-term but potentially renewable, the first time I try to live in a different country. The ALC job is pretty appealing for that reason; lots of people that do it describe it as "a year abroad, after college," after which they go back home. (Although some stay in Japan and keep doing it, of course.) But the biggest drawback to that job is that I'm going to school to do math, and I want to do graduate school in math....and it would be pretty dumb to get a PhD but then get a job that doesn't make use of it at all. ^ ^; So trying to get a job as an ALC is mostly a backup plan in case grad school completely falls through, for whatever reason.

But with graduate school, foreign student are pretty commonplace; a big portion of my roommate's fellow graduate students in physics are from Asian countries, and most apparently speak very little English, but they still manage. (Hopefully I wouldn't have the problem of not speaking the language, if I went to grad school in Japan!) Plus, my roommate's doctoral advisor went to University of Nagoya for graduate school, and he's originally from Russia and says that he hardly speaks of work of Japanese, and he got through it just fine. And University of Nagoya is one of the schools I'm particularly interested in going to....so maybe there's hope. ^ ^

Don't get me wrong, though...the thought of relocating to a foreign country to do grad school is pretty terrifying. ^ ^;

(Btw, sorry about just talking about myself non-stop for the past few paragraphs. ><; But this comment's getting pretty long, so I'll stop writing, for now!)

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