LL-L "Language learning" 2003.02.20 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Alannah Stepa <astepa at shaw.ca>
Subject: Language Learning


>From Alannah Sheriland astepa at shaw.ca

A Japanese student's perspective.

This is Kenta, one of my Japanese sons. I had showed him some of the
postings and he wanted to reply.

***

Hi, I am Kenta and I have been to Canada for two years. I am a college
student.  I like learning a new culture and a new language but I feel
learning a new language is very difficult.  The reason is English rules are
very complicated. For example, when I learned English first year, my
instructor said, "People do not usually use semi-colon in the writing."
Then, I learned English from another instrucotor. The instructor said, "
People use semi-colon in the writing." And, I thought which is the correct.
It makes me confuse.

When I came to Canada, I could not speak English at all. Also, I had some
difficulties about English sounds. For example, Japanese does not have "R"
and "L" sounds difference and "TH" and "S" sounds,too. However, English has
different sounds between "R" and "L" also "TH" and "S". I still have those
problems when I talk to other people.

The most common mistakes for writing a English is articles, prepositions and
pronouns. The reason is Japanese does not have articles, prepositions and
pronouns. Therefore, when I write an English sentence, I miss articles and
pronouns many times. Another common mistake is sentence structure is
different between Japanese and English.
In Japanese, basic sentence structure is starting subject, and nouns and
finally verb. On the other hand, sentence structure in English is starting
subject,verb and nouns. So, when I write an English sentence, I make wrong
order for sentence structure.

When I ask the grammer question for my instructor, and A instructor says,
"It is correct." and if I ask to B instructor same question, then she says,
"It is incorrect." Those are okay case for asking my question to the
instructor. The worst case is when I ask the grammer question and the
instructor says, "I don't know."
It is worst case for asking my question to the instructor.

To Ben

First I came to Canada, I lived small community and everybody try to
understand how my feeling. Then, I moved to big city, I had some trouble to
make new friends. The reason is I am Japanese and people accept diffecult
for strangers.  When you talk to Japanese students at college, I think they
are not mean.
I guess they just do not understand English, so they did not answer your
questions.  If you meet me, I am happy to talk to you.

***

Kenta will be graduating from a two year, general studies diploma program.
He arrived here two years ago and he should be graduating with honours.
Any comments that are posted will be forwarded to Kenta.

Alannah astepa at shaw.ca

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language learning

Hi, Kenta (Kentarô 健太郎君?)!

Thank you for writing to us.  It was kind of your instructor to share your
thoughts with us, and it was very good to get an insight into your
experience and perspective of learning English.  What you explained is
consistent with what other Japanese students have told me about their
experiences.

Now you can probably understand what kinds of problems people from the West
have learning Japanese, even if we do not consider the special problems of
reading and writing.  Phonologically, there is the problem of stress
(emphasis).  In Western languages, a certain syllable in a word receives the
main stress.  In Japanese this is not so; instead, syllables are pronounced
a bit higher or a bit lower, and that never changes.  (There! I used a
semicolon!)  In grammar, there is the problem of when to say _wa_ (は) and
when to say _ga_ (が) to mark the subject of the sentence.  Instructors give
students rules, but those rules sometimes do not apply.  It is very
difficult for us to learn to use and understand sentences in which the
subject is omited, and that happens a lot in Japanese.  You said, Japanese
has no pronouns.  Westerners think it does have pronouns, such as
_watakushi_ (私) and _boku_ (僕), _anata_ (あなた), _kare_ (彼) and _kanojo_ (彼女,
but I believe that most Japanese people think of them as nouns).  So when
they Westerners study Japanese they want to use those "pronouns" each time
they would say "I" (_boku_ for males), "you", "he" and "she" in English.
Because of that they use them too often, and that must be strange for
Japanese people.

As you can see, there are problems either way, and only persistent study and
practice can overcome them.

It is good to know that you are doing so well in your studies despite all
the problems of learning to use linguistic elements that are unfamiliar to
you.  Best wishes for the remainder of your studies!
__________
Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn
Administrator, Lowlands-L
http://www.lowlands-l.net

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