IT and Linguistics

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Sorry yes your correct.

I knew a girl at University who was doing it as she was training to be an interpreter, it seemed very complex so I suppose 'mathematical' is a good analogy for it.

 

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You misunderstand me. The language is very logical. They have only two tenses, There is no differense between single or plural. The verb is always at the end. There are just two groups of verbs and no exceptions (AFAIK). They have an audible questionmark. Small explanation for the latter: A question just has the word 'ka' in the end. There is no raising of the voice.
A negative of a verb is that verb followed by 'sen'.
So:
"I understand Japanese" is in Japanese
Watashi wa Nihongo ga wakarimasu.
Literly it says: I Japanese language understand.
Watashi = I
wa = particle for the subject (more or less)
Nihongo = Japanese language
ga = particle for the object (more or less)
wakarimasu = to understand

Do I understand Japanese?
Watashi wa Nihongo ga wakarimasu ka.

I do not understand Japanese.
Watashi wa Nihongo ga wakarimasen.

I take lessons Japanese.
Watashi wa Nihongo ga naraimasu.

(The u in the end is mostly not pronounced, so you hear wakarimas and naraimas).
Sometimes written Japanese in Romaji can be a bit strange, but if you know the u if often not pronounced, what would you make of 'supein'?
They don't have letters, but syllabels. No way to write Amsterdam. That becomes Amusuterudamu. Lieve out the u and what do you have?

 

Thats pretty cool.

Maybe I will learn one day

 

An other 'trick':
Nihon is Japan.
Nihongo = Japanese language
Nihonjin = Japanese people.

This is true for most countries! Eilas, England is an exception. I have to look that one up in my dictionary, don't have it in my head.

 

Should she have spoken in your language (brn n hl) to make you feel more welcome? heeheee!

 

English is my first language. I took 2 years of Spanish in high school and a year of French in college. Although I can listen to them and understand them, I can no longer speak them. My brain has two modes, English and Other, which allows me to think in another language, not just translate the words. And currently, the "Other" slot is occupied by Mandarin Chinese, which I learned about 17 years ago while in the Army. Unfortunately, the fluency has turned into rustiness. I'm hoping to brush up on my language skills and take a trip there in the next year or two.

 

Our company has recently taken on some business in France, so for the middle part of this year I was going back and forth to various areas of Northern France to implement our IT infrastructure.

Now prior to these travels I had only had 1 and half years French education. I took German as my main GCSE language (and was quite good at it) but due to my parents moving across the country, the school that I went to mid GCSE's didn't teach German. So I had to learn 5 years of French in the space of about 15 months! I didn't really understand it or get very good because I missed out on all the basic structure of the language.

Fast forward to now, and because I have been going to France I got hold of some French audio lessons by a chap called Michel Thomas. I have to say that the way this guy teaches languages (not just French) is superb.

It's not based on your standard secondary school curriculum of learning to count to 10, or how to buy a baguette! But on the emphasis of undertsanding how the language is assembled. You only learn vocabulary as and when it is necessary and even then it is done in a way that you don't even realise you're learning.

The similarities between French words and English are also immense. Something I never knew before I took these audio lessons. For example, in English we would say words like; generally, or exactly. In French the word is the same but it ends in 'ement', so you get Generallement, exactement. Now how many words do you know that end in aly? You probably know them in French now as well.

There are loads of little similarities like this between French and English that as you get taught them, your vocabulary increase 10 fold. All you need to learn now is how the sentences are structured and this bit is taught very simply as well.

I'm far from fluent in French, but after only 5 hours of this guy my understanding of French went up by 1000 times more than what I learnt at school.

If anyone is serious about learning a langauge then I would definitely recommend Michel to you.