the lingua franca
My uncle - who lives in Paris - speaks English, Mandarin, French, Italian, Spanish, German and of course Teochew. That makes 6 languages and one dialect.
My dad speaks English, Mandarin, Malay, Teochew, Catonese and Hokkien. So it's 3 languages and 3 dialects for you.
Me? Hah. I only know English, 'O' Level Mother Tongue and highly broken Hokkien. Sign Language doesn't count, because that's just English with hands.
Now you know. I SUCK big time.
Thus, after my conversion to the religion of otakurism (and possibly Haruhism), it dawned upon me that I had to punish my mind and body to master nihon-go or 日本語. Yes for the sake of my ancestors and all things good, Joel Gn had to live up to the family name of being multi-lingual.
So here I was, aiueo-ing away for my first lesson. My sensei at class is an amazing linguist who speaks Chinese, Korean, Japanese, English, French, Spanish and Italian! He told us that 'grammar' enhances the sophistication of a language only to complicate it at the end.
For example, the French have male and female connotations to everything, even chairs and tables.
La Chair = female
Le Table = male
Yeah la cunt she came, and she came la cunt...
And Chinese, with its approximately 50,000 characters is actually the easiest language to learn, simply because it lacks any grammar. It's like all meaning has retreated into the symbolic, so you're just reading a collection of neat-looking pictures.
The funniest thing of course was the question of racial identity administered to me.
Sensei : Are you chinese?
Me: Er..yah (yes that moment of doubt which strikes me everytime)
Sensei: Oh ok, because you don't look like one. If you were not, it will be very hard for you to learn Japanese because you're not familiar with kanji (汉字)
Me: Hai!
My uncle - who lives in Paris - speaks English, Mandarin, French, Italian, Spanish, German and of course Teochew. That makes 6 languages and one dialect.
My dad speaks English, Mandarin, Malay, Teochew, Catonese and Hokkien. So it's 3 languages and 3 dialects for you.
Me? Hah. I only know English, 'O' Level Mother Tongue and highly broken Hokkien. Sign Language doesn't count, because that's just English with hands.
Now you know. I SUCK big time.
Thus, after my conversion to the religion of otakurism (and possibly Haruhism), it dawned upon me that I had to punish my mind and body to master nihon-go or 日本語. Yes for the sake of my ancestors and all things good, Joel Gn had to live up to the family name of being multi-lingual.
So here I was, aiueo-ing away for my first lesson. My sensei at class is an amazing linguist who speaks Chinese, Korean, Japanese, English, French, Spanish and Italian! He told us that 'grammar' enhances the sophistication of a language only to complicate it at the end.
For example, the French have male and female connotations to everything, even chairs and tables.
La Chair = female
Le Table = male
Yeah la cunt she came, and she came la cunt...
And Chinese, with its approximately 50,000 characters is actually the easiest language to learn, simply because it lacks any grammar. It's like all meaning has retreated into the symbolic, so you're just reading a collection of neat-looking pictures.
The funniest thing of course was the question of racial identity administered to me.
Sensei : Are you chinese?
Me: Er..yah (yes that moment of doubt which strikes me everytime)
Sensei: Oh ok, because you don't look like one. If you were not, it will be very hard for you to learn Japanese because you're not familiar with kanji (汉字)
Me: Hai!
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