Kippur's dumb question of the day.

[kippurbird]

If I want to get an English PhD, why do I need to learn another language?

Also, since I do, apparently, have to learn another language which one should I do? Cause I suck at it.

Comments

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Pick Esperanto, just to screw with their brains. :) Or barring that, Spanish, which is as simple a foreign language as you're likely to study.

I feel your pain though. I sucked at languages all through college until I squeaked by with a D- in German.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I managed to do pretty good in Hebrew, but I only had to take two semesters in beginning Hebrew. I don't know how well I would have done in the higher levels. And now I don't remember the vocabulary.

I remember the grammar rules, but they started to get confusing with את which is sort of but not like "the" or something. And... stuff.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

I'd say stick with Hebrew. It's fairly simple and you did the beginning already.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

That would be my inclination. I just don't know if they'd accept it.

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

I personally foudn Japanese easier than Spanish. But, I'm just weird that way. *G*

Seriously, though, Japanese is a lot more self-consistent than a lot of other languages, and the basic grammar is quite simple. Of course, there's lots of politeness stuff messing things up, and the vocabulary doesn't have much in common with English, unlike Spanish which, thanks to the Normans, we've got lots of cognates with.

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

(And even without the Normans, there's a lot of basic Indo-European stuff with the Romance languages)

[hungryblackmage.livejournal.com]

Japanese is easy as pie once you get the syllables down. Things are written as they're spoken - no tomfoolery with superfluous 'u's or words like 'knight'. The grammar takes a little getting used to, however, since Japanese uses a completely different structure than English.

English = Subject verb object
Japanese = Subject object verb

But, if you can wrap your brain around that, Japanese is really fun. :D

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

Yep. ^_^ Very different, but once you get past that, quite easy.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Japanese looks fun to write.

[indongcho.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and pronunciation is easy. There are five vowels, and no other ways to pronounce them. It also has a truly phonetic writing system. Learning to read iiragana and katakana is really easy, though kanji is pure torture. I've often hated the Chinese for coming up with that ***ing system.

[madamsnape.livejournal.com]

You have to learn another language??? ^!^

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yes. Which scares the dickens out of me. But every PhD program I've looked at require it.

[spoofmaster]

I'd say either Hebrew, since you have a background in it, or Spanish, because it's relatively simple and has enough cognates with English that you can start getting the gist of things fairly quickly.

Just don't learn Russian. They conjugate EVERTHING, and it's making my brain fizzle.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I don't want to learn Russian. That'd be another Alphabet to figure out. XD

[spoofmaster]

Да, русский алфавит.

The alphabet itself isn't so bad, apart from the letters that look like letters in English and aren't. It's more the ridiculous grammar.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Ridiculous grammar?

[spoofmaster]

When I say that they conjugate everything, I mean everything. Verbs, sure, but also nouns, adjectives, possessives...if it's a word, chances are they'll figure out some way to conjugate it.

[prototypical]

Spanish! Easy pronunciation, grammar similar to English, minimal accent marks, no real new letters, and it's useful when you live in California.

It was too easy for me, which is why I'm currently killing my brain cells in handfuls with Japanese.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Lots of people seem to be doing that.

[albijuli]

Spanish is the easy way out ;D But, obviously, it'll be more useful in the long run, maybe.

Maybe Esperanto.

Third choice would be Japanese, but...

No, wait, how about FRENCH!?

8D

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

actually, now that I think about it, I don't think Japanese was one of the options...

[thelittlebudgie.livejournal.com]

I'm toying with the idea of learning Norwegian. It's quite fun, and it is Germanic in nature, which means that it's somewhat familiar.

Spanish would be easier, though.

[the-norseman.livejournal.com]

If I could learn English there's no reason that you couldn't learn Norwegian!

Seriously though Norwegian is a deceptively simple language. There's lots of little things in there that can trick the unwary foreigner, much to our amusement.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Having talked to the_norseman, I've been toying with that idea too. XD

[the-norseman.livejournal.com]

It's so easy I assure you!

A car - en bil
Cars - biler
The car - bilen
That car - den bilen
Driving (in) a car - kjøre bil

What could be simpler! 0:-)

On that note a Russian who had studied Norwegian for years said that it was nearly impossible to learn how to speak Norwegian flawlessly. Make of that what you will.

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

Aw. You suck at it, otherwise, I'd say go for latin or greek, to give you an edge on those english root words, I suppose?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I thought about Latin too. I got lovely confused when trying to do my medical terms however.

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

Either way, you could go around saying, "It's all greek to me."

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I can do that anyway. XD

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

ASL could be cool. I'd like to study ASL some day myself. Partly as a backup in case I ever lose my hearing, or when I meet a Deaf person, and partly just cause it'd be cool to learn a non-auditory language.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately that doesn't count, because you can't read books in ASL or write in it.

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

Not yet anyways ... there's actually work going on to create a written form of ASL. Which is actually easier than it sounds. Like spoken languages, ASL is based on a small number of basic units, somewhere around 50 elements, such as hand orientation, basic movements, etc., that are combined to form signs, in much the same way that spoken languages combine a small number of basic sounds into words. The only difference being that the elements of signs are done simultaneously instead of linearly.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

However, I don't think there'll be major works of literature written in ASL by the time I go to get my Phd.

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

True enough. ^_^

[millenium-king.livejournal.com]

Since you are an studying English, you should certainly pick German as a second language. English is a germanic language, it is good to know your roots. Fuck those stupid romance languages inspired from latin like Spanish and Italian. German is a robust, strong language that makes sense to the English speaker far more than Spanish or any of that other crap. Besides it spawns from the same linguisitc roots! It is part of the anglo-saxon heritage that created English! How can you even study English without studying German?!?!

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

Well, English is really the bastard child of Germanic and Romance. The whorish bastard child, at that.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I tried German once in high school. It gave me a nervous break down. I'm a bit leery of trying it again.

[the-norseman.livejournal.com]

Like my old teacher used to say "You can't learn German on fingerspitzgefuhl, for German you must study and learn by rote!" Which is probably why I don't speak it so well.