When I was a lad, I’ve never thought that learning other language would someday come in handy especially when communicating with non-english speakers (though some or most can speak in english fluently but just in case). I studied and graduated at a local chinese school ever since I started schooling (I am free from chinese language after graduating high school, btw). Some of our chinese teachers were from China or Taiwan so, expect to hear/speak lotsa mandarin this and that (though they can also speak in Fukien which I am fluent at). But I took it all for granted. I thought that this language/dialect is pretty useless and as a student, I’m uber lazy with complicated things. I rarely or never exert effort in everything I do especially in projects or homeworks just as long as I can pass the subject. Well.. as a student from that school, most of those who know where I come from would expect that I am now fluent at mandarin.. wrong. Basically, I speak few of our native dialects like cebuano and tagalog, other than that, I can speak fukien fluently cuz it’s the chinese dialect which I grew speaking of for almost 23 years now.
The time that I tasted the humility of neglecting the language was the month during my On-the-Job-Training (as a webdesigner) at a relative’s shop two years ago. A frequent client/customer which was a chinese businessman came and asked me “Do you know how to speak chinese?” in mandarin dialect before stating his business with the shop. There, I couldn’t think of anything in response to the question since there’s no way I understood what these colourless words coming out from his mouth. Yes I am a chinese but cannot speak fluently in mandarin dialect. Good thing he knows how to speak english so there, we had a bit of conversation before my mandarin-enabled-aunt came and entertained the customer, that’s a good thing. Saved and impressed with my aunt’s communication skills.
Now, I am currently trying to learn other language which is Japanese. Chose this language since I already had quite an interest in Japanese culture since just high school. I often listen to japanese songs just before I became addicted to animation. I’ve never had any huge interest in anime during that period.. and those Japanese animes were dubbed with frckin tagalog which kills the mood on watching anime.
Anyway, I can understand japanese now since I’ve been watching anime and jdorama in subs and sometimes in raws for quite a long time now but there are looooooooots of things that I have yet to learn. And not to mention, writing in japanese.. I guess kanji is not really a biggie for me as I know how to write chinese characters already. The japanese accent is killing me though. Any suggestions on how to learn japanese the quickest way possible?
PS. This is just another one of those “I-don’t-have-anything-to-post” articles.
It’s 12:19am now.. started writing this article at 10pm-ish.
Forgive my poor english. Orz
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