Foreign language learning
As a foreign language teacher and part time linguist for many years I love teaching and learning languages. I speak three fluently and my newest acquisition being Mandarin Chinese. As a speaker of three languages and going on four, I have done interpreting for the 2002 FIFA World Cup Soccer in Japan in Japanese, French and English and I often get friends asking me if I get languages confused. Two I have no problem with since I get both sides of my brain working but three or more tends to stretch those “muscles” more and yes I get confused. Today I was about to call my dentist and as I normally do I would go over in my head what I am about to say in Chinese because Chinese is my newest and weakest language. Well I was adding Japanese words to the endings of Chinese words to try and make things more polite. Then it struck me, why did I do that? There is English I consider it the long way to say things, then there is Japanese still long but shorter due to the use of kanji but very polite, which can be even longer in some cases. Lastly Chinese, talk about a direct and down to earth language that gets right to the point; like English the sentence order for Chinese is the same with much fewer grammar rules. Of course like any language Mandarin has its polite words but I am thinking Japanese and I feel I need to add an extra touch of politeness so why not just use Japanese. Moreover, I did not learn Mandarin from English; I learned it from Japanese books in order to associate similarities in kanji, which proves useful if you have studied classical Japanese. Ancient Japanese poetry was in fact Chinese (Kanbun) but when it comes to grammatical structure its enough to drive one insane.
