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Post by Emma on Oct 18, 2019 23:59:01 GMT -5
Welcome, I like your username!
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Post by devogirl on Oct 19, 2019 0:13:10 GMT -5
Hey! Cool intro! I have a bunch of friends who are really skilled in music and language whereas I suck at both *eep* I’ve always wondered if there was some sort of correlation. Feels like they could both reside in the same part of the brain, considering music feels like a type of language in itself. Anyhow, welcome! Yes, music and language are definitely related, and there is a strong correlation between learning both. Also people who speak tonal languages like Chinese are much more likely to have perfect pitch. Interesting blindLeap that you are learning both Mandarin and Japanese at the same time. I think both are quite straightforward in terms of grammar, much more so than English. The hard thing is the writing system, and in Chinese the tones. My children are learning Mandarin in school and I envy their ability to internalize the tones so easily. They try to correct me buy I can’t hear the difference at all.
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Post by linda on Oct 19, 2019 1:04:17 GMT -5
Hey! Cool intro! I have a bunch of friends who are really skilled in music and language whereas I suck at both *eep* I’ve always wondered if there was some sort of correlation. Feels like they could both reside in the same part of the brain, considering music feels like a type of language in itself. Anyhow, welcome! Yes, music and language are definitely related, and there is a strong correlation between learning both. Also people who speak tonal languages like Chinese are much more likely to have perfect pitch. Interesting blindLeap that you are learning both Mandarin and Japanese at the same time. I think both are quite straightforward in terms of grammar, much more so than English. The hard thing is the writing system, and in Chinese the tones. My children are learning Mandarin in school and I envy their ability to internalize the tones so easily. They try to correct me buy I can’t hear the difference at all. I also think that there is a close connection between languages and music. I‘ve been surrounded by classical music at home from my early childhood and I believe that helped me a lot to develop „an ear“ for the sound of different languages (I’ve studied Japanese and Mandarin at university and lived abroad for several years so I got the chance to pick up some of a few other languages as well). I was totally shocked when I came to China for the first time and noticed that no one understood me because apparently the tones were not correctly pronounced. It’s difficult if not impossible to learn a tonal language when not living in the country, I believe. How does the writing work for blind people? I have absolutely no idea. This is so interesting!
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blindLeap
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Post by blindLeap on Oct 19, 2019 2:14:12 GMT -5
SO ...the two systems vary wildly. I don't know all that much about the Chinese writing system yet other than that it somewhat resembles Pinyin, combining initials, finals and , when required, tonal signs to write the characters. Japanese however I know more about, they have made it into an abugida. One part of the cell is used for he vowel while the other part is used for the consonant, ka ke ki ko ku all using the same dot pattern around the vowel markings denoting th k-line. What makes it such a brainbender is that by doing that, the characters resemble letters I've known all my life, they just mean something different now. Two kana I will never forget are ha and na, because there's this cutesie video on youtube about the " hiragana song" and it is b a youtuber named Hana , written in kana. Except, ha looks like a u to me, and na is the letter k I know. So that spells UK, and this person is apparently from Northern England, so that is somewhat hilarious. What I meant by reading being flipped on its head is that like I said, you look at a kanji and based on the stuff around it you generally pick what reading to use. For blind people reading digitally, the screen reader does that for them and provides what it thinks is the correct reading. So by default, you only get the reading the computer overlords think is correct which is brailled in kana markings and spoken well ...like the readings it has picked would suggest, but if it's somehow incorrect you have to go character by character and basically figure out where the computer screwed up, if that makes sense
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Post by linda on Oct 19, 2019 2:57:35 GMT -5
All that sounds really complicated to me... but very impressive! Thanks for the explanations, blindLeap!
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Post by LaMara on Oct 19, 2019 6:24:37 GMT -5
Hello and welcome! I have lived in the Netherlands for a year and tried to learn dutch... I failed miserably and all I can remember now is how to say “I don’t speak dutch”, some food related words and that really bad curse that starts with the letters GVD... But I can honestly say that the year I spent in your country was one of the best of my life! I admire people who can learn languages as an adult. Besides my native language I can only speak English, but I started studying it as a small child (well also latin but that’s because I was forced to study it, also it’s not a spoken language). The few times I tried to learn a new language in recent times, my brain just noped out of it... (Also now I NEED to know the etymology of the word banana)
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blindLeap
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Post by blindLeap on Oct 19, 2019 7:29:44 GMT -5
Hello and welcome! I have lived in the Netherlands for a year and tried to learn dutch... I failed miserably and all I can remember now is how to say “I don’t speak dutch”, some food related words and that really bad curse that starts with the letters GVD... But I can honestly say that the year I spent in your country was one of the best of my life! I admire people who can learn languages as an adult. Besides my native language I can only speak English, but I started studying it as a small child (well also latin but that’s because I was forced to study it, also it’s not a spoken language). The few times I tried to learn a new language in recent times, my brain just noped out of it... (Also now I NEED to know the etymology of the word banana) Lol everybody who comes here learns that curse, especially tender-souled Americans And well, Dutch isn't the easiest language to pick up to be fair Cool to meet you And let me extend you a warm welcome to the Banana Etymology acquisition corps, BEAC for short
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Post by Julia on Oct 19, 2019 9:10:59 GMT -5
Mandarin I learn because I think it will be useful to know, Japanese because I like the language and the way it works. Polish is a bit of a personal challenge, I have friends from there and there's a very active Polish community here in the Netherlands :-) I hear Mandarin is considered a very good language to know, especially of you go into the business world. I would never expect the Netherlands to have a Polish community!
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blindLeap
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Post by blindLeap on Oct 19, 2019 9:29:00 GMT -5
Oh yes, and it is growing :-) I have always been a proponent of learning at least enough in a language to make a foreigner feel at ease that someone's willing to meet them in the middle as it were. Polish grammar is rather complicated though and it became a bit of a challenge for me to pick it up further than that
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