10 reasons to start learning Vietnamese

Ever thought of learning one of those amazing sounding Asian languages? What pops into the mind of most people at the beginning (including myself) is of course Chinese, Japanese and Korean. But how about one of those beautiful languages which are not thought of frequently? Such as Tagalog, Thai or Vietnamese? Imagine studying one of these languages and blowing people away by doing something totally different. Surprising them with your newly achieved skills and introducing them to a language which is so unique.

Vietnam is an amazing country and Vietnamese is an amazing language. For both beginning and advanced language learners, Vietnamese is a perfect language to study. According to the graphic below its difficulty is rated as 'medium' meaning it's significantly different from English but can be learned with some devoted studying. Since Vietnamese is not a common language being studied it's also perfect for the aspiring polyglots among us.
Now let's get to my 10 reasons to convince you even more!

1 - Vietnamese is spoken by 75 million people. which means they have more speakers worldwide than Korean!

2 -  There are large communities of Vietnamese speakers in Australia, the United States and other countries. In the US it's even the sixth most spoken language and in France it's the most spoken Asian language.

3 - Vietnamese is heavily influenced by other languages. Major influences in the early days from Chinese, later by French (through colonialism) and English (trough globalization).
Which makes it easier for you learning Vietnamese if you already speak one of these languages.

4 -  Vietnamese uses a Latin alphabet with accent markings
So that means no difficult memorizing like Chinese or Japanese.

5 - Vietnamese is a challenging language for (aspiring) polyglots, since it's probably something completely different than you're used to. However perfectly doable for beginners since it's a language of medium difficulty.

6 - There are only three accents in Vietnamese language (Northern, Southern & Central)
unlike for example Chinese which has a different accent for almost every part of the country (Yue, Wu, Min, Hakka etc.)

7 - There are only six tones in Northern Vietnamese and even fewer in the other dialects.

8 - Vietnamese, like many other Asian languages is an isolating language, which means it does not use different marking for tense, gender, number and so on.

9 - Also like many other languages (such as Japanese) it uses the SVO (subject-verb-object) word order for their sentences.

10 - And last but not least; Vietnam is a beautiful country, with great history, delicious food, and kind people who will be impressed by you speaking or even trying to speak Vietnamese.

I hoped this sparked your interest for this beautiful language.
If you want to start with Vietnamese I suggest reading my post learning Vietnamese Northern or Southern accent.

Thank you for reading!

~ mei mei

Book Review: Chineasy the new way to read Chinese

My apologies for not writing in a long long time, but I was really busy with many things. One of them was getting a copy of Shaolan Hsueh's Chineasy. Because I was convinced that after the release they wouldn't sell out that fast I didn't pre-order a copy. Big mistake because the book was sold out online! I tried to find a copy everywhere but I could only order one from Amazon. I was really lucky I stumbled on a copy yesterday when I was in our capital city. Long story made short, I am going to introduce Chineasy today.

Chineasy is a book which states to read Chinese in a whole other way. An very easy and fun way. I was very interested because it covers basic Chinese characters which can also be quite convenient for Japanese learners to know, since most of the basic characters are the same.

The author, a Taiwanese woman residing in the UK, had difficulties with teaching her own children Chinese with current existing books and methods so she created her own. As a result came Chineasy. The books is based on building blocks to quickly learn several hundreds of characters. If you have studied Chinese characters or Japanese Kanji it is likely that you are already familiar with this technique. But born as the daughter of a calligrapher and a ceramic artist, Shaolan Hsueh grew up immersed with art which has a great influence in the making of Chineasy. She worked together with an graphic artist Noma Bar who made the characters come to live visually. Honestly, I have to say that the bright illustrations and the interesting descriptions really caught my attention and made me smile while reading.

Although the technique is good, the illustrations are great, and the descriptions are interesting some of the links between the illustrations and words were pretty far-fetched.

As I continued reading, the end of the book contains some sentences which are build upon the words we have learned so far. Although some of the sentences are useful for daily life, others are really odd for such a book; 'The rich girls stinks', 'The mermaid Princess burst into tears'. I think I wouldn't use both ever.

At the very end there even is a short story which is kind of hard to grasp, even with the great visuals.

Overall I think it's a great book. If I got children I would enjoy to teach them Chinese words from this book. And even if your a businessman or student, this book will give you an insight into Chinese language. As I explained, there are some negative points about the book, but overall it is fascinating to read. I would recommend beginners who have not studied Asian characters before to give it a try.

I hope you enjoyed reading, have you bought Chineasy already?

~ Mei mei

6 reasons why you should learn Korean / why Korean might be easier than you think!

When you think about the Korean it might seem just another difficult Asian language. But don't get scared about what they  tell you, Korean is actually one of the easiest East Asian languages to learn! I will give you six reasons why Korean might be easier then you might think and why you should start learning Korean right now.

1. Korean has one of the most intelligent writing systems on earth. Compare it to Chinese and Japanese and it is looks suprisingly easy as well! The Korean alphabet is called Hangul and consists of 14 consonants and 10 vowels. That makes only 24 characters to learn!

2. Hangul is written the same way you probably have learnt. From left to right, top to bottom. And unlike Japanese, it has spaces inbetween.

3. Korean is not a tonal language. The language does have some accents but these don't change anything grammar wise.

4. The grammar in Korean language is very simple and straightforward. For example; you do not have to worry about gender and many verbs are just made out of nouns + the verb 'to do'.

5. There is a huge amount of information (most of the time for free) on the internet. You have lots of dramas with Korean and English subtitles and the amazing podcasts of Talk To Me In Korean are also free!

6. Korean has a lot of English loanwords (Konglish )and many Koreans are eager to learn English.

I hope this post has triggered your interest in Korean language. Read some more information about Korea and you will probably fall in love with it's beautifull language, interesting culture and kind people. If you are a fan of everything Japanese, have a look at my other post which compares the Japanese language to Korean.

Thank you for reading!

~Mei mei

The two best apps for learning Japanese on Iphone and Android (so far)

Since it's in my reach to use both Android and Apple devices I'm going to review a few apps which claim to help you with your Japanese. In daily life I use a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini and I also own a tablet from Samsung. My boyfriend is a huge fan of Apple so he has an Iphone 5S and an Ipad Mini. With so many devices lying around it wasn't really that difficult to test a couple of apps on these popular devices. Today I will give an introduction to the two best apps I have found so far.

Human Japanese;web page
Supported on; PC, Mac, Iphone, Android, Windows Phone

Highly praised by the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal this is indeed quite an amazing app.
You can download two versions; Human Japanese and Human Japanese Intermediate. I have downloaded the first version which is free. It takes some time to download though. When I opened the app it gives an easy introduction on how to navigate trough the app. When you have finished the introduction you can start with the first chapter. The first chapter is another introduction, this time they will introduce the Japanese language to you. The explanation is easy to read and very detailed. If you don't like a lot of reading this might not be the right app for you though, after six pages of reading we arrive at the next chapter. The next chapter covers pronunciation. After ten pages of detailed information there is a quiz to put your fresh skills to the test. After that there is a short summary on chapter two and then we arrive at the next chapter. This is basically how the whole app works. There are seven chapters which you can study for free. For the other 33 chapters you need to upgrade to the full version. The main menu allows you to fast forward to the quizzes and have a look at the dictionary. Although it is a lot of reading, the subjects are very interesting and easy explained.
The full version is available for +/- $9,99.
If you think you've got the basics down you can download Human Japanese Intermediate. In this version they will explain more advanced topics and you can practice your Kanji. I suggest you to go trough the free seven lessons first and have a look. It is really worth it!

Overall rating; Human Japanese
Visual / layout; 4/5
Information; 5/5

Pro's;
- Clean layout
- Detailed information

Con's;
- The amount of reading can get a little boring for some people.
- The layout looks really large and a little ugly on my tablet.
- Only seven lessons in the free version.


Mirai iStart Japanese;web page
Supported on; Apple devices only

I don't want to be mean but the app I thought of most useful was this one, which is only available for Apple devices. (Don't be sad though, I'm still on my journey finding even more useful apps which are compatible with other devices too!) Mirai is a Japanese study app which let's you listen to a series of Japanese pod casts all under the supervision of a penguin with glasses. In every lesson you will follow a basic conversation visualized with speech bubbles that have English grammar explanations.  For the Japanese bubbles you can toggle between romanized words and Japanese script. For every lesson there is a vocab section an a quiz at the end. You will even learn how to write some Kanji in the writing section where they show you the correct stroke order. The free version has 20 lessons for the full version you have to purchase a subscription which costs +/- $3,60 a month. Although you get some good things for your money, I still don't like the idea of a monthly subscription. I really hope you give this a try because the free lessons can teach you a lot of new information. If you have conquered all the 20 lessons you can just delete the app and search for a new one right? If you're really interested in this app but don't have an Apple device you can check out their blog here, where you can learn the Kanji of the day (with stroke order!) and listen to 10 Japanese pod cast lessons!

Overall rating; Mirai iStart Japanese
Visual / layout; 5/5
Information; 4/5

Pro's;
- Beautiful layout
- Informative lessons which don't take a lot of time
- Writing section
- 20 (!) free lessons

Con's;
-  Not completely free either
-  Only compatible with Apple devices


Conclusion;
Actually these aren't the best apps out there I think, I will have to continue searching for even better ones. If you want me to test out a particular app please let me know. You can comment below or send me a message and I will be happy to try out some new apps for you.

Thank you for reading.

~ Mei mei

The Chinese should change their writing system! - Happy year of the Horse!

The biggest struggle of people who learn Chinese is of course their writing system. Not only students who study Chinese on a daily basis struggle with this, but it is also a huge issue for people who want to start learning Chinese. They want to try studying Chinese as a second language, but are held back by all the difficult characters and never actually start because they fear they will fail mastering the characters. Have you ever had the same thoughts? I know I did, and even the Japanese Kanji seemed like a lot of characters to me.
I got inspired to write this post when I read an online discussion. The original article gave an introduction to the concept of Chineasy. A huge discussion was going on in the comment section with quite interesting thougts and opinions. The comment which started the discussion was; ''The Chinese should change their writing system!''

Chineasy
Chineasy is an award-winning concept which makes it easier to remember all the Chinese characters. I will give an introduction and a full explanation about Chineasy after I have purchased the book.

Discussion
A man posted a comment below the article stating the Chinese should change their writing system to a phonetic system like our Latin system. He said this because he also felt it is too hard to learn all the complicated characters as a foreigner. Although it might sound drastic changing the whole alphabet, this actually happened in 1926 in Turkey. In the early years Turkish was written using a form of the Arabic script. However, the Arabic script is rich in consonants but poor in vowels while Turkish is the complete opposite. After years of public debating, people opposing from the idea and people supporting the idea, the Turkic republics of the Soviet Union adopted the Latin script. Which boosted major changes in Turkey.

Reform of the alphabet
Why can't we do this with Chinese? I read this question a thousand times in the comments. People call the alphabet 'unpractical' and 'complex' but is it really that unpractical? The Chinese can easily read ancient books and writing because the characters have stayed the same. Phonetic scripts are based on pronunciation which constantly change. Also although there are many dialects in Chinese, everyone can understand each other by the written form.
But there are actually many answers to the question at the top. For example; there are way too many homophones in Chinese like 'shi'. When they are written in Pinyin it becomes shi1, shi2, shi3 but even then there are too many forms of only shi3. Changing the script sounds a little crazy now right? If you are really persistent writing Chinese in a Romanized alphabet take a look at pinyin.info . On this website they even have an article about the attempts of the Chinese adopting the Latin alphabet. So you can't say they didn't gave it any thought at all.

I also wanted to say; Happy year of the Horse! I wish you all a lot of wisdom and prosperity in the new year. And I hope all of you lucky Horses have a good year!

Thank you for reading.

~Mei mei

Valentine's Day and White Day in Japan and other East Asian countries

The international day where we celebrate love is coming close! But how do they celebrate Valentine's Day in Japan and in Korea? What is so different about it? How will you show your feelings to a Japanese man or woman? I'm going to cover some of these traditions in my post today.

On the 14th of February it is Valentine's Day of course. In Japan  they have the tradition that on this special day women give presents to men. Most often they give chocolate. In common opinion it is the best if you give homemade chocolate to that special person in your life which the Japanese call 本命チョコhonmei-choco (chocolate of love). You can also use this if you would like to confess to someone. For your male friends and colleagues you can give store bought chocolate 義理チョコ giri choco (courtesy chocolate).  

In return men who understood the value of your precious chocolate can give something back on the 14th of March. This day is called White Dayホワイトデー.

White Day, Marshmallow Day?

White Day was celebrated in 1978 in Japan for the first time. It was started by the National Confectionery Industry Association with the thought in  mind there should be a ‘return day’ for Valentine’s day. In 1977 a confectionery company called Ishimuramanseido from Fukuoka marketed marshmallows on March 14, calling it ‘Marshmallow Day’ with the hope the men buy the marshmallows to give in return for their Valentine’s gifts. Soon after that other confectionery companies began marketing white chocolate.

Returning the favor

 According to a survey by Ageil Media Network in 2010, 66% of the women questioned answered that they would prefer to receive handmade sweets in return for their efforts on Valentine's Day. They said it shows men's diligence and that they understand women's feelings. Also 63% of the questioned men said they would try to make sweets by themselves for White Day. For the men who are proud of their sweets making skills, nowadays they even have a competition for it in Japan which is called; 'White Day Daisakusen; ike otoko eno michi'  (White Day Strategy; the way of cool men.) Other popular gifts are chocolate, sweets, cookies, white lingerie and marshmallows. There even is a unwritten rule which is called 三倍返 (sanbai gaeshi) and means ‘triple the return’. I think you can guess it means you can’t satisfy your special person with just a simple gift!

Other countries

Valentine’s Day and White Day is also celebrated this way in Korea, China and Taiwan! 

In Korea these kind of anniversaries are very important for couples. In Korea it's very likely to really show you are a couple. Many couples were matching outfits and have couple rings. They also have many special days which they need to remember. Ever celebrated  100-days dating day? Rose Day on May 14th or Kiss Day on June 14th? No? Me neither, but if you get a Korean girl or boyfriend you might will!

本命チョコをあげたことがある？

~ Mei mei

Incorporating a foreign language into your daily life

The topic of this post is incorporating a new language into your daily life. When you don't have a friend, a colleague or someone else who speaks the language of your interest, maintaining a foreign language can be quite difficult. Below I have explained some simple and advanced techniques to take a your skills to another level.

The 'sticky notes' technique;
This is a perfect technique for those who live by themselves. You write words on a sticky notes in the language you are learning and paste them all around the house. For example you can make notes for doors like; bathroom, toilet and bedroom. But the possibilities do not stop there, they are endless. You can basically stick the notes onto everything, the more sticky notes you have in your house, obviously the more you learn. I do admit this can look a little weird to your friends and family but it's for good cause right?

Shopping;
There's a lot to learn with this simple daily task. You can make shopping lists in the language of your interest and you will learn not only many nouns but also counters!Try to name the items you see when you are outside. If you don't know the word, write it down in English and look it up later. This method is not too challenging but adds some fun in the study process (which can be quite boring sometimes ). When you get home you can apply the 'sticky notes technique' and label all your bought items. While labelling the items you can even write down expiry dates or  the country of origin (for fruits).

For the die-hards;
This is for the people who really want to take a language to the next level. Adjust your phone settings to your chosen foreign language. This will be really challenging because you will experience a lot of head scratching situations, but you can learn so many new words! Just put a shortcut somewhere on your device which links to Google Translate and don't forget to write down how to put the settings back to normal.

Find native people to talk with;
If you have access to the internet you have access to people. Finding study buddies or native speakers is easier than it might seem. If you don't know how to take the first step I recommend you to read my blogpost here. I explained two easy ways to find native speakers and study buddies in that post.


Good luck!

~Mei mei

I wish we had more Japanese snacks in Europe

Studying different languages at the same time

Learning two languages at the same time can be amazing but also confusing. At college I study English, German and Spanish while in my spare time I study Japanese and Mandarin. People often ask me if I get confused between these languages. While the answer is yes, I still can differentiate between all of them and I will give some pointers on how to learn different languages at the same time.

While you're studying at college you often study different languages at the same time. Why aren't we getting confused in college then? It is because they separate the classes. You spend one hour completely focused on one language, do something else and then they give you one hour again to focus on something different again. You can apply this method out of the classroom too. You can listen to Chinese music while driving to work, make your grocery lists in German and read a book in French.
The key to this is to keep everything separated and make a routine out of it. But, if you are listening to Chinese music while driving to work you must only listen to Chinese music. That way your brain is able to get used to different languages and you have less chance to mix words up.
In my daily life I speak Dutch with my classmates, English at work, German with my father, Japanese with friends and Spanish in the classroom.
As for the amount of languages, I think you should stick with a maximum of two languages at the time. Also choose two languages that are not similar to each other so they don't overlap in the process of studying.
Remember that time is a luxury and haste is the worst enemy of quality.

I hope this will help you.

~Mei mei

How to find native speakers to help you improve your skills

If you want to take your new language to a whole new level you should surround  yourself with your new language as much as possible. The best way to do this is to have a native speaker by your side. A native speaker can correct you, help you with pronunciation etc. The possibilities are endless. But if you live a 100 miles apart how do you find one? Since we live in the 21st century there are a lot of options. On the internet you have a lot of nice websites where you can start connecting with people from the other side of the world. I will introduce two of them in this post.

Interpals
Link; http://www.interpals.net/index.php
My profile; http://www.interpals.net/Meimeisensei

Interpals was actually one of the first language exchanging sites that I found when I started studying Japanese. (So I also had to remove the dust from my profile before writing about it). Interpals is a website that lets you make your own profile. You can fill in which languages you speak (and what kind of level you are) and you can fill in which languages you want to learn. You can also update your profile with all kinds of personal information like your favorite books, movies, quotes etc.

Then you have the option to search for friends. You can select the boxes for your preferences. You can search by continent, country and language. After that you can also select what kind of contact you want; language exchange, email penpals and several other options. You can send people messages to get in contact with them. Then you can choose yourself how you would like to exchange information.

Personally I really like Interpals because of the many options. You can just look for a casual friendship with a person from a foreign country or find someone which you spend your time with studying together. I think that is something that makes Interpals very versatile.

Lang-8
Link; http://lang-8.com/
My profile; http://lang-8.com/713828

Lang-8 is a new site which I recently discovered. I was searching a topic in Japanese on Google and accidentally stumbled upon Lang-8. I'm very excited to share this site because I have very high expectations of it. I just started with Lang-8 but so far I'm very pleased with what I see. Lang-8 is a website where you can make a profile just like Interpals. The major the difference is, you can post a journal in the language you are learning and it will appear directly to native speakers. The native speakers can correct it and give you tips so you can improve your skills. Also you can correct the journals of others to help them and earn points. The more points you earn more people will view your journals. I really like Lang-8. You can perfect your own language, improve the language you are learning and make new friends worldwide. Also the layout of Lang-8 is really convenient en clear.

It would be very nice if you would add me on one of these pages so we can study together. I would love to hear your thoughts one either of them.

~Mei Mei

How to start learning a foreign language top #3 tips

This will be a short introduction into the basics of learning a language.

1. Set a goal

Setting a goal is very important while learning a new language. What do you actually want to learn? Do you just want to say 'hi' and order a meal in a Japanese restaurant or do you want to understand your favorite Japanese movie? If you go for the first one, you only have to learn some grammar and the vocabulary of words you are using in the restaurant. For the second one, you have to dig deeper into grammar and learn more vocabulary.

2. Consistency

Learning a language can be simply compared to losing weight. If you don't eat healthy and ignore your workout schedule nothing will change. This is somehow the same as learning a language; if you don't study and don't practice you will learn nothing. Start with infusing your new language into your daily life. Spend 30 minutes per day for studying and have a rest day on Sunday. Listen to music in your new language and look at the lyrics. Watch movies and listen concentrated while reading the subtitles. Make grocery lists and count numbers all in your new language. Think about when you want to reach your goal and make a schedule. Be pro-active and stay consistent.

3. Maintaining

This is one of the hardest things to do. Maintaining the new language. If you don't know someone who speaks the language you learn, find a language buddy online so you can practice. The best thing to do is write everything you learn down. You will buy a lot of books, find a lot of online information and hear a lot of new things. It is obvious that you can't remember everything straight away so write everything down in your own ' language book'. Go trough the book every week and try to remember everything little by little. And if you are ready for it, combine tip #1 and #2 to set a new goal so you can challenge yourself.

I hope this will help you!

~Mei mei

Introduction to my blog

An introduction / explanation to my blog;

Welcome and thank you for visiting my blog!
On this blog I will share the experience I gain from studying different languages and cultures.
As for my self, I grew up with my father who is partly Chinese and partly Malay. As he truly loves the Chinese culture and food, he taught me a lot about his culture as I lived together with him for over six years. In times when my father was very busy I had a lot of hobbies to keep myself entertained. One of them was learning languages. I started learning Japanese a couple years a go when I wanted to use my spare time to learn something useful. Since my father rather wanted me to learn Chinese I studied Japanese in silence. A few years ago I got an amazing opportunity to work in a 5-Star Japanese hotel for half a year. Of course I had an amazing time there and my Japanese skills were put to the test. I perfected things in my pronunciation and got to practice a lot.
In the same area there is a Korean school, which was of course too interesting to stay away from. I studied Korean on the side for half a year as well and got a fairly good introduction into the language.
Now my head is full of Asian languages (and some Western I learned on the way as well) I'm really interested in learning the similarities but also the contradictions between several languages.

On this blog I can give you some tips and share some of my experiences while I'm on my Journey. I hope you enjoy reading it.