Hm, my native language is german and i learned English since 3rd grade (8 years old)... Furthermore i learned French for 7 years at school.. But I'm not able to understand very much <.<.. And since that month I have the chance to learn Spanish at vocational school..

Well technically it's Indonesian, but I have been living abroad since I was 10, so my Indonesian is elementary school-level and I can barely answer people even though I can understand almost everything that I hear. English is my "native" language now. I guess it's a bit different than having it as a REAL native language (maybe it uses a slightly different part of the brain or something), but I can't say that I don't have a native language now can I?

Kyouki, it means madness. That's why it says "Tokimatsuri" in my title, but no one seems to notice it. As for whether I'm a native Japanese speaker, well, not really.

I have to deal with people with whom the only mutual language is English (mostly not native English speakers though), so it's not like I was ever interested in speaking English with other people. It did take a while to get decent skills in it because you need to pretty much be able to answer spontaneously (unless you want to seem like a retard)—not like when reading aloud etc.—and it makes your speech sound pretty awkward.

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Far-off places with sweet sounding names.

My native language is hungarian. Well, I started to learn german when i was 7 yrs old, but i think english is easier. I'm used to read manga in english beacuse my native language have still less scans and the text of the mangas are easy to understand (even so, sometimes i need the dictionary). Watching movies and animes I prefer the original sound and subtitle in hungarian (hungarian dub is sucks).
I'm still not perfect in english, so sorry for the mistakes

Ah, I see. What is your native language then? Also, what does Tokimatsuri means? Festival time?

Filipino and bisaya,


kinsay pinoy dira?

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My native languages are Portuguese and Bissau Guinean Creole. I started learning English and French when I was 6 years old, Russian at around 11 (I completely forgot for lack of practice), Netherlands Dutch around 16, and Italian around 19/20. I never learned Spanish in school but can understand it since it's similar to Portuguese.

What are you talking about?

I've learned 5 languages, and English was the easiest one to learn.

If anything, Japanese (written Japanese) was the only one that troubled me.
A 'nightmare'? Try to learn it and see the truth for yourself.

P.S.: For your information, even Japanese has many irregularities, but people who lack the knowledge of Japanese think that Kanji is the only problem.

1) Pronunciation: A single kanji could be pronounced in multiple ways (and tons of Kanji are pronounced the same way), so pronunciation has always been a problem when we talk about Japanese, as even a little change in the pronunciation could mean a completely different thing.

2) Spelling: Compound kanji are used in irregular ways which is trouble in itself to 'spell' something.
Katakana is again a problem when we're talking about the 'spelling' of a non-Japanese word.

3) Grammar: The difficulty of grammar depends upon the writing style of the author/writer, but generally, 'actual' written Japanese is more complicated than its colloquial (or spoken) counterpart.

Last edited by HitsujinoHon at 12:35 am, Sep 30 2013

I have no idea what you're referring to with "A 'nightmare'? Try to learn it and see the truth for yourself." I'm a native English speaker so I don't think there's any possible way for me to learn English at this point.

I will say that trying to help my kids learn to read English is very difficult - many letters (esp. vowels) can have several different sounds, or letters combine to make new sounds (th, sh, ch), or letters combine but the sound stays the same (ck), or letters aren't pronounced at all (the "l" in "walk"), or the letter isn't pronounced but having it there changes the way the rest of the word is pronounced ("can" vs "cane"). And everything seems to have exceptions - "i before e except after c or when sounded like "a" as in neighbor and way..." and it goes on from there with more words that don't follow the "rule".

Compared to the pronunciation of Japanese kana, English is quite messed up. But then Japanese also has kanji, which have their own set of difficulties, what with the different readings etc.

English does have the advantage of words not having a "gender", which is something I tend to forget about since I haven't really had to deal with it.

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"[English] not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
-James Nicoll, can.general, March 21, 1992

Oh, I was obviously talking about learning Japanese.

P.S.: I do agree that 'pronunciation' could pose a problem for English Beginners though.

Last edited by HitsujinoHon at 12:32 am, Sep 30 2013

You just pointed out some of the reasons why I said written Japanese is more difficult than written Chinese. Written Chinese is actually not all that difficult—it's the spoken language that's the problem for most learners.

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Far-off places with sweet sounding names.

The first language I learned was Chinese; however, I'm American, so English was introduced to me when I was around four years old. I'm much more proficient in my English than my Chinese now, so although Chinese is my native language, it's not my most fluent and is certainly no where close to the proficiency level of those who were born, raised, and educated in places where Chinese is the primary language spoken and/or taught in school.

English, the best language in my opinion , I also speak French as a secondary language and some others but mainly English and French , I'm part Spanish and Dutch so I know a bit of those (reluctantly because I'm not really interested in languages that probably won't help me apart from Japanese as I wasn't to be able to buy manga when I visit Japan and not have to go through the awkward process of having my Japanese cousins translate yaoi for me)

Last edited by Narufan1st at 10:28 am, Oct 22 2013

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Recommend me horror , yaoi and shoujo manga please

My native language is Thai.

English? I've been studying it since some 10 years ago. To be honest, only in the past 4 or 5 years has the study been effective. Before that were some stupid lessons.

My English is communicable. My writing skill, I believe, is proficient. My listening skill still needs work though because I've never had English immersion. Reading and speaking I can do quite good jobs.

Native language is German, I learned English at school starting at 5th grade. Which was, uh, some 17 years ago. Also been to the US for a bit and my sister lives there with her family.
I'm very fluent and had seminars on both business and technical English already.

I also learned Latin at school for 5 years and got an N4 certificate in Japanese 3 years ago. Didn't have as much time to learn Japanese as I'd like for quite a while now, I do read some Japanese light novels and manga though (with both a normal and a Kanji dictionary), which helps a lot for me.
Also helped me with English early on, reading English novels with a dictionary by my side.

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