Foreign Tongue

Are you fascinated by
the code of the
Samurai? Or a huge fan
of flamenco? Or maybe
you’re Nicholas Cage
and you just got married
to a nineteen-year-old
Korean-American
waitress. Whatever the
reason, you’ve got the
hankering to learn a
foreign language. The
question is, which one?
Hmm… Over 6,000
spoken worldwide. So
how to decide?
Mandarin, Korean, or
Japanese could only
increase your viability in
the global marketplace
as East Asia is the hot
frontier for international
business now; and
Spanish is the third most
widely spoken in the
world and easily picked
up by native English
speakers because a lot
of words are similar.
Thus, we highlight these
four.
It goes without saying
you should learn the
language of the culture
you are interested in.
But if you have to study
for school or business,
and you’re uncertain
which one to choose,
here are some other
things to consider.

MANDARIN

This Chinese dialect, with
around 885 million
speakers, is far and away
the most widely spoken
language on the planet.
Its grammar is relatively
simple compared to
Japanese and Korean.
There are no verb tenses
in Chinese -- verbs are
indicated only by time!
And the word order,
subject + verb + object, is
similar to English. Wǒ (s)
bu xǐhuan (v) tiáncài (o).
“I don’t like beets.”
It helps to have a good
ear because Mandarin is
a tonal language. A word
can mean two completely
different things
depending on its tone.
Mispronounce the word
“māma” (“mother”) in
Mandarin you could be
calling your mom a horse.
Chinese, like other
ancient script, comes
from picture writing, or
ideographs. There were
originally several
hundred of these for
common words like man,
water, and grain. They
were expanded to form
compound ideographs
and new words.
But that didn’t cut it. A lot
of abstract words could
not be represented by a
picture drawing, so other
characters had to be
created that
corresponded to the
sound of the word.
Today, written Chinese is
a word-by-word system of
ideographs that is both
symbolic and phonetic.
And there are lots and
lots. “Thousands of
them,” says Asian
language expert Mickey
Hong, a professor of
Korean Studies at Los
Angeles Community
College and a PhD
candidate in East Asian
Languages and Cultures
at UCLA. “And you have
to learn at least 3,000
just to read a Chinese
newspaper.”

KOREAN

T'aekwŏndo comes from
Korea, but one of the
things you won’t have to
fight with is the alphabet.
“Compared to Chinese,
Korean writing is
relatively easy,” says
Professor Hong. “There
are only 24 letters (14
consonants and 10
vowels) and it is easy to
master in a short time.”
But don’t expect a wok in
the park. Korean
vocabulary can be a
problem for native
English speakers. “[It] is
harder to remember
because of unfamiliarity
with sound,” says
Professor Hong. “For
both Chinese and
Japanese, when you are
memorizing the
vocabulary, you are
using visual[s] to
memorize the
ideographs.” Korean, on
the other hand, is best
learned aurally. "The
Japanese alphabet
consists of 99 sounds
formed with 5 vowels and
14 consonants while
Mandarin has 408
possible pronunciations
within each of 4 tones.
Compared to this, the 24
letters of Hangul (Korean
alphabet) can produce
an almost unlimited
combination of sounds."
Korean is not tonal like
Chinese, but the
pronunciation can be
crazy because of the
seemingly endless
variety of vowel and
consonant combinations,
which is summed up in
the word “difficult.” in
Japanese it’s muzukashii
(pronounced moo-ska-
she) and in Mandarin it’s
nán. In Korean, it’s
ŏryŏpta, and verbalizing
it is akin to rolling hot
food around in your
mouth.
  Koreans use a lot of
slang, and that too can
be ŏryŏpta. “Slang
changes about every
month in Korea,” says
Professor Hong. “It’s
seasonal, almost.

Whereas it takes quite a
while for slang to
circulate from one coast
to another here in the
United States, in Korea,
it's almost instantaneous.
A comedian will come up
with a catch phrase and
the next day everybody
is using it, and the next
week it could be
something else. It grows
so quickly that it doesn’t
even have time to make
it into the dictionary
before its time is gone.”
Korean is in demand as
a business language by
companies that wish to
mine its enormous
potential, but very few
non-natives speak it.
One of the world’s
economic superpowers,
the country is a trading
partner with both
industrialized and
developing nations and
has factories and sales
networks set up
worldwide.

JAPANESE

Their economy, one of
the largest in the world,
has been struggling for
a number of years now,
but this island nation of
125 million is still a major
player in business and
diplomatic circles and
the only Asian member
of the G8.
Linguistically, Japanese
grammar is very similar
to Korean and both are
tricky at first. Both use
particles, little bitsy
words (like ga, wa, and o
in Japanese) that mark
subjects, topics, objects,
etc. And the word order
is strange until you get
used to it. For instance,
English speakers would
say, “Luke is a Jedi.” in
Japanese, the word
order would be “Luke a
Jedi is,” which may
explain how Yoda got his
speech pattern.
If you’re going to study
Japanese, you might find
the writing system
flummoxing. There are
two alphabets, hiragana
and katakana, plus the
Chinese kanji. Hiragana
is typically used for
particles and for prefixes
and suffixes of nouns,
verbs, adjectives, and
purely Japanese words.
Katakana is used for
foreign words and official
documents. Kanji,
Chinese characters, is
used for everything else,
like this: the word “dog”
in Japanese and
mandarin is written 犬,
but the Japanese say
“inu” and the Chinese
“gŏu.”
The good news is the
pronunciation.
Japanese is an open
syllable sound pattern,
meaning that most
syllables end in a vowel.
There are five vowels,
and they are
pronounced exactly like
they are in Spanish and
they never change.
Hooray!

SPANISH

If you’re looking for
something NEUF (Native
English User Friendly),
then study Spanish.
Compared to these
other three, it’s like
learning Pig Latin. But
eriously-sway, Spanish
is Latin based, so a lot
of it looks like
English, as in estómago
(stomach) and flores
(flowers). It’s easy
grammar-wise with its
subject + verb + object
sentence structure.
According to Spanish
language web guru
Gerald Erichsen,
“mastering the grammar
of Spanish can be a
challenge, [but] basic
grammar is
straightforward enough
that you can have
meaningful
communication
after only a few
lessons.” No wonder
Spanish is the most
popular foreign language
in American high
schools. It’s the easiest!
Besides being más fácil,
there are a lot of other
reasons to study
Spanish. It’s a beautiful
language; it’s spoken by
377 million people in 25
countries as its primary
or secondary language;
it is growing as a
business language in
international trade,
communications, and
tourism in South and
Central America, the
United States, and
Europe;
and it has an excellent
literary tradition. Wouldn’
t it be great to read
Miguel de Cervantes’
Don Quixote or Gabriel
García Márquez’s One
Hundred Years of
Solitude in the original?
So which language is
best for you? Korean?
Japanese? Swahili?
Whatever you choose,
keep these words in
mind from the good
Professor Hong: “The
best way to learn [a new
language] is to try and
immerse yourself into
the culture and speaking
environment. That’s not
always possible, but it’s
better to be somewhere
you have to speak the
language in a real life
situation. More than
anything else, you need
to practice.”

Spanish is known for its colorful sayings. Here are
a few, with their literal translation and English
equivalent.

Spanish:        Entre de caballo, salida de burro.
Lit:                 Entrance on horseback, exit on
                donkey.
Meaning:       Don’t start something you can’t finish.

Spanish:        ¡Vete a bañar!
Lit:                 Take a bath!
Meaning:       Get lost!

Spanish:        Trabajar para el gobierno.
Lit:                 To work for the government.
Meaning:       To work without pay or profit.

Spanish:        Yo tengo una tia que toca la guitarra.
Lit:                  I have an aunt who plays the guitar.
Meaning:        What’s that got to do with the price of
                  tea in China?

Spanish:        ¡Me estás tomando el pelo!
Lit:                 You’re taking my hair!
Meaning:       You’re pulling my leg!