This topic contains 7 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by 
-
Posts
-
I’m currently a college student studying both Japanese and Spanish, going to do free-lance translating (hopefully) after college. And while I don’t want to start anything until I’m at least advanced in both, I was wondering what would be another good foreign language to learn with Japanese? Like, would French be good if Japan and France have big business going on, or Swedish, or anything? Thanks!
I would say Mandarin. The Kanji system is very similar and apparently the grammar is pretty easy compared to Japanese.
I dunno. A lot of the kanji is different enough that it could just wind up confusing you…
The best language to learn is the one you want to learn. They don’t have to be related at all. You don’t have to learn a language just because it “goes with” another one.
So, forgetting for a minute that you’re learning Japanese at all or know anything about it, which language would you want to learn? If there aren’t any, then just focus on Japanese until there is one.
If you *are* wanting to learn another language just for the sake of it (rather than because you really want to), it might be worth considering that languages with similarities might *not* be best learned together. For example, if two languages share some grammatical structures or vocabulary, you’re probably going to get the two mixed up a lot. Steve Kaufman – a polyglot who makes YouTube videos – is learning Korean right now and he says that he often unintentionally starts thinking in terms of Japanese when speaking Korean because they have similar grammar in some instances (he lived in Japan for 9 years, I think, so I’m pretty sure he’s what you’d call “fluent”). Same thing goes for languages like Spanish and French, which share lots of vocabulary, or so I’m told.
I picked Mandarin for my suggestion as it will allow you to conquer Asia in terms of business. If you know Japanese and Mandarin, you’d have your bases covered pretty well in any Asian business transactions.
And yeah I wouldn’t suggest learning them at the same time. But you did mention you’d want to achieve fluency first.
And though Kanji confusion could occur with retroactive interference, ultimately I believe that the skills you pick up in identifying Kanji and its components from Japanese would make them much easier to learn than starting fresh. But it would depend on how you go with it. If you try it out and your brain melts, move onto something else.
I would certainly support MM in saying that you should pick one you want to learn though. Even with experience behind you, learning a language takes massive motivation, and if you don’t want to learn it, you’ll likely fail, or at least take a lot more time learning it.
“If you know Japanese and Mandarin, you’d have your bases covered pretty well in any Asian business transactions.”
So you’d be able to conduct business in India and Kazakhstan too? Sweet!
They’re fake Asians. :P
Fine, East Asia.
Nitpickers. -_-
Japan has kind of a special relationship with Brazil and Portugal. So Portuguese might not be a bad idea.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.