h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Chinese always seems just so complicated to me - I have enough problem when my Korean teacher introduces the simplified characters that the Koreans use from time to time

I wondered if you had thought about learning Korean. It's certainly a language I'd want to learn if I was working with Koreans, if only to be able to eavesdrop!

Rosetta Stone starts you off with Pinyin Chinese. Once you've got to grips with that you can choose between Simplified characters or Traditional. The Simplified characters are used in Mainland China, Traditional characters are used in Hong Kong. It all depends on what you want to use the language for.

I can't do the accents for intonation, but I have memorised Nihao, Zaijian, Xiexie and, most important, Cha. So I can say Hello, Goodbye, Thank you and Tea.

Oh, one more thing. In Chinese there are no plurals, they pluralise the article, which is great once you get used to it. So "the man" is "ze ge nanren", and "the men" is "ze xie nanren" (I think). They also don't seem to have verb conjugations, another good thing. Is Korean the same?

Korean is completely different, I think. They don't use the definite article, and append different words to plurals - there is a method to it but i can never remember.

So if you have cups of tea, you'll say "three tea + plural word" and so on.

Also the alphabet is easy to learn, the pronunciation not so much, but since I've been learning languages all my life it's not bad, because if there's a sound I don't know from English I can usually find it in French, German or Russian.

I did about 18 months of lessons, but then stopped when my degree started taking over all my free time. But they have a new beginner's course so I've started again. Amazingly I hadn't forgotten everything. Also managed to astound a few people in Korea last month by being able to order my own food, ask for receipts, tell taxis where to go and so on.

Plus, of course, I can talk to real Koreans every day, so if I need a bit of help, or practice I can usually find someone to oblige. And as you know, even hearing a language spoken very often, even if you only understand 0.5% of what they say, is very helpful.

For anyone interested in languages, there's a highly regarded, free alternative to Rosetta Stone called Duolingo. (They monetize it by having students translate online documents back into their native languages.) Duolingo doesn't have many Asian languages yet. They're working on Vietnamese.

I've been studying Spanish (again, my high school lessons really faded quickly) for the better part of a year. I think it's really helped my reading skills. If I practiced it more off-line with Spanish speakers, I'm sure I'd have more success, but I'm happy just doing a few short lessons each day. The biggest problem I have is the European Spanish accent differs so much from the local Latino accents I know. But other than that, I like it.

http://www.duolingo.com/courses

One problem with Rosetta Stone is that the Portuguese language course is Brazilian Portuguese, not European Portuguese. If I wanted to learn the language I'd want the European version as I'm less likely to visit Brazil.

My problem with any language is conversation practice. I have no access to native speakers of French, Italian or Chinese (unless I pay regular visits to the local restaurants/takeaways). Even German is problematic. It's my mother's native language, but she has lived in England for over 60 years and the language has changed in that time. I'm not sure how to tackle this issue.

Regarding plural articles, BTW, they aren't always used in Chinese, from what I've seen in translation programmes. I think Rosetta Stone uses them so learners can differentiate between "the man" and "the men", for example. Otherwise "the man is eating" would be the same as "the men are eating".

Heh... that reminds me of a something that happened when I was taking Spanish in High School. All the language classes (just 3 languages, Spanish, French and German) were in one wing at our school. The year 3 German class hosted a class of German foreign exchange students. After about a week, our school's German teacher, Mrs. McDermott, had to step out of the class. She left the German sponsor in charge. As soon as she stepped around the corner he broke the bad news to the class.

"I understand you are planning a trip to Germany this Summer. I suggest when you get there to find the grand parents. Mrs. McDermott is teaching you High German and the only ones who you will understand are the older people."

which is really a load of rubbish, and a teacher he should know that.

When you learn German as a foreigner you have to learn High German because that is the official language of the country, and now matter how local the dialects get, it's what they all learn at school and what all exams etc are in.

Of course, idiomatic language is a bit different - but that's normal when learning a language. What you learn in the country and what you learn in the classroom are two entirely different things.

Interesting.

Quite possibly, he was just warning them about this aspect, that they would have difficulty understanding local dialects, and the folks from that class that told us about it were just in a panic and didn't quite understand what he was saying.


I never heard how well their trip went as I think that Summer was after I either graduated or stopped taking Spanish.


But then again, Mrs. McDermott did seem a bit out of touch. In the mid '80s she was still wearing double knit polyester and buckled shoes.

It is always amusing and quite nice to hear interviews with Danish-Americans and other Danes who migrated many years ago. Those who still master their native language speak just as they do on the old black and white films. Very charming. Especially because they all have very warm feelings about the country they left so long ago.

a Dutch friend of mine said similar things after we'd spent the evening with some Afrikaans speakers. And I love to listen to Indian people speaking English, especially the older generations, because it's a similar thing - they speak a type of English that was common in the first half of the 20th century and it's lovely to hear.

oh and - yaaayyy. I have reached the final section of my course. Political philosophy. THIS is what I expected from the course. I it.

Congrats, that's good to hear!

That would have been disappointing, to have dropped out just before it got interesting.

Is there any opportunity to supply feedback on the class/teacher? An evaluation, maybe?

there will be the chance to give feedback when the module is finished, as usual.

I will be telling them that although the course is probably interesting as either a standalone or part of a philosophy or general arts degree, for PPE it's not much cop.

Still, only 2 months to go and I can get back to politics which is what I really love, and reading philosophy for fun.

In the meantime I'm sticking pins in my picture of Robert Nozick and getting to grips with political obligation