eileenting88 said:
Hello Iwanin. Mind answering some questions of mine? :wink
Not at all,
eileenting88 said:
1. How many languages do u know?
Cand I say
3.35 ? English and Spanish = 100% each. As for Japanese, I guess if you went by the "official" certification criteria I'd be somwhere between 70% and 80% ... so let's say 75%. I also studied French at one point, and since it's very similar to Spanish, I was able to advance rather quickly... but it's been nearly a decade (!) since then, so I guess you could say I'm at something like ... 65%? I can still read it fairly easily, but I'm sure my pronounciation's more than a bit lacking by now.
eileenting88 said:
2. Out of all the languages that u know, which is the most difficult one to learn? Why?
Japanese,
hands down.
Spanish and English were both a breeze, because I had the fortune to learn them at an early age. Why, at six I learned read English all by my lonesome! (obviously, I already knew how to read Spanish and how to *speak* English, but still...)
French was a lot more challenging, simply because I started as an adult (I was 18 at the time), but since it's basically Spanish with a funny accent, there wasn't much of a problem.
With Japanese, though, there are all sorts of challenges.
1. You're not easily exposed to the language.
Just compare the amount of Hollywood material being broadcast all over the world! Practically everyone with a TV set or a movie theater nearby is constantly exposed to English all over the world. With Japanese it's a bit more challenging: you have to seek out and find the material yourself and it's a real dragg. So,unless you happen to *live* in Japan, this is a big obstacle.
2. Etymologically, Japanese has zero relation to Spanish, English, etc.
In Spanish, "vaca" (pronounced "Bah-kah") means cow; in Japanese, "baka" 馬鹿 (horse+dear - not kidding!) means idiot! There is no relationship between the two languages. Spanish, English and French all have strong greek and latin undercurrents. Thus, you have words like the one for moon: in Spanish, "luna"; in French, "lune" (I think). Anyway, in English the word is quite different, but anything related to the moon is "lunar". "Lunar landing", "Lunar surface", "Lunar Eclipse". So you have a point of reference.
So just how exactly do you remember that moon is "tsuki" in Japanse? Answer: it takes a good deal of effort.
3. Syntax.
The syntax is completely different, so you have to learn to reorganize your thoughts. For instance, verbs always come at the end. Surely Japanese Yoda was, uhum, yes. So you have to learn to think in "Yoda mode". And don't get me started on the sentence structures made possible by being able to pre-position a conjugated verb to act as a noun-modifier...
(and no, I wasn't joking).
4. Pitch based accent.
Completely different from the stress based accents used here in the west. I still struggle to identify pitch patterns - which, like English stress patterns, must be memorized. Long live Spanish and the nearly perfect phonetic equivalence in its orthography!
5. The proliferation of homophones.
When someone asks me what "shi" means in Japanse, the answer is invariably "which one?". Same goes for "shin", "ou", "ka", "tsu", "ki", "ko", "tatsu", "ketsu", etc...
6. The 3,000 + Chinese characters you have to learn in order to read comfortably without a dictionary at hand.
Considering points 1 through 5, this is the least of your worries.
eileenting88 said:
3. Can u translate Eileen to both spanish and Japanese for me? Also, teach me how to pronounce them too.
In Japanese they'd just attempt to reproduce your name using Japanese phonemes... so pretty much the same (unless you wanna get anal and make a fuss out of the fact that the "L" sounds a bit different and also doubles for the "R"). Normally foreign names are written in katakana. Airiin would thus be アイリーン (I think), but you can also write it using kanji for their sound and not their meaning. I believe there is something like an "official" set of Kanji characters typically used for each phoneme, but I don't know it by heart...
It's basically the same with Spanish, only without the Kanji.
. Spanish speakers would simply say "Eileen" with their native accent. You could spell it however you'd like. One of my best friends is named "Ahylim", which is a name her parents made up, but that sounds - phonetically - very close to your name (the h is always silent in Spanish).
eileenting88 said:
For me? Well, I play mostly RPGs, so I definitely played more PlayStation games than Xbox games this past generation. That said, I never miss out on (Tecmo's)
Team Ninja games, and I own all major consoles. But in this new generation I'm leaning heavily towards
Xbox360, becuase it has both online games and titles from two of my favorite developers, Team Ninja and Hironobu "Final Fantasy" Sakaguchi.
Honestly, online is one aspect where I think Microsoft really trumps Sony.
)
I like the way you structure your posts too 
