Hi Skritter friends.

I was wondering a bit about all of you and your motivations behind your language study. I thought maybe could start a thread and see where everyone is at.

I'll start.

I'm learning Chinese because I love China and I want to live and work in China and also because I think Chinese is really cool and everyone thinks you are really awesome if you can speak/read it.

I'm 22, originally from Australia and currently living and studying in Sichuan Province.

You're turn.

It's brain healthy to learn foriegn language.

Interesting topic. Good call.

I agree with slidedown; I think it's good exercise for the brain to learn foreign languages, though others have disagreed with me in the past.

I'm not going to tell the long story of how I began learning Chinese, but I'll say that I'm somewhat invested in it at this point after having studied it for about 7 years. I'm not saying that I don't enjoy it or anything, I just mean that I regard it as more than a hobby at this stage in my life.

I study Chinese because it's challenging, and because there aren't a lot of other things that appeal to me. Chinese has done a lot to make me a better person. It has turned me from being cocky to someone who tries to always be genuinely modest. Chinese has helped me kick several bad habits that I won't mention out of shame. I feel much more educated, worldly, and refined after spending the last few years studying Chinese, but of course I still have a lot to learn and improve on. I guess in many ways I'm indebted to Chinese.

For me it started purely as a survival mechanism, because after attempting to travel in China without speaking any Chinese I literally thought I might die from the lack of ability to meet my basic needs, like food and shelter. Ok maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but I've travelled to over 90 countries and China was by far the most difficult when it came to the language barrier.

Oddly enough, even though I love languages (I'm a translator by profession) I had previously had no interest in Chinese. I had actually lived in Beijing for five months without learning more than 10 to 20 words (I was studying Russian instead),and the sounds of Chinese didn't appeal to me at all.

Once I started listening to ChinesePod though, I got hooked. Three years later I'm starting to translate some short documents from Chinese at work. I've come a long way, but there's still a long way yet to go, and I expect that Chinese will be a life-long adventure for me.

Was always interested in taking Japanese since I was running a small business importing car parts to the states from Japan, so I started to self study but didn't really have time. When it came time to attend college I was ready to finally take a language class.

That evening (before selecting my classes) I was out to dinner with friends and they were arguing the merits of Chinese and Japanese. They both sounded so awesome but I had to choose one. Went home that night and decided to take Japanese, since I already knew a little bit and was into the car scene there. When I went to pick my Japanese class I found that all the seats were full. I know I could have just added the class with the instructor, but I decided it was fate and signed up for Chinese (I'm impulsive like that).

I started teaching myself with ChinesePod over the summer and walked in my my first Chinese class knowing how to 自我介紹. My teacher commented that I had solid pronunciation and tones (for a newbie I guess) and I was hooked.

That was back in '06 and I've been learning, traveling China/ Taiwan, and teaching Chinese ever since (well the teaching part is still pretty new).

I just love Chinese

Originally out of necessity (living in China), these past few years out of passion for the language and a desire to communicate more clearly with old and new friends when I occasionally made trips back to China. Planning on relocating back to Beijing or Shanghai in the not-to-distant future, so that's one more fire under my ass!

I love learning languages and chose Chinese for the latest attempt. I chose it because I didn't want to study another European language, so Chinese fit the bill. I also chose it because I believed it would be very much unlike the Indo-European languages ( French,Spanish,German for example ) and it is.

It's in a completely different group, Sino-Tibetan. I thought it would be just what I wanted. When I first started to study Chinese in the early '90s, there seemed to be very little in the way of Chinese teaching materials. As a result the process of learning Chinese has been an on-again,off-again process. I found a small school in New York to start studying and find out if I could manage learning it. Now, of course, there are a lot of sources for learning Chinese.

As an aside, I just started an on-line course in Natural Language Processing. It will cover a bit about the differences in the way Chinese and English are processed. The course is offered by a group called Coursera which includes Stanford and several other universities. Two Stanford professors are teaching the NLP course. Coursera's goal is to provide high quality on-line education at no cost to the student. I believe they are meeting their goal. I guess I've gotten off topic, so I'll stop, but Coursera is worth looking at.

Started with Japanese at age 17, after a fascination with Japanese culture that started at age 12, when a Japanese TV series (Oshin, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshin) was aired on Belgian public television. We had a very nice teacher, but unfortunately he died a year later and classes were scrapped. The Internet had only just started at that time and was mainly used as an extension to the BBS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system) of old. My little country town did not have a bookstore and the local library did not have anything on Japanese, so for years I looked at the copy of an old Nakama textbook that our teacher had given us, misty-eyed, thinking about what could have been. I tried to start again at age 26-27 (when I bought Remembering the Kanji and a whole bunch of other textbooks) but there were no sites like Italki or Skype, nevermind Skritter.
After having learned a lot about Japanese history and not having anyone to speak Japanese I did not see the point in continuing to learn the language and started to focus more on Japanese movies, which led to Korean movies and Chinese movies as well. I even built a home theater, for the purpose of being able to watch them on the big screen.
My interest in the Chinese language did not start until I met my girlfriend, now almost one year ago, at my best friend's wedding in Belgium. She barely speaks English but is pretty much perfect otherwise. We have been able to make do with the limited knowledge of each other's language but it really bothered me that I could not have a basic conversation without having to grab a dictionary. So after I returned from Beijing I signed up with a Chinese language teacher on italki.com and had a 2 hour lesson every day (now a one hour lesson every other day, and lots of skrittering after work). I should be able to reach the 400 character mark before I leave for Beijing again next Friday and I hope to reach 2000 by the end of December with the 5th book in the New Practical Chinese Reader series.

My sister lives in Tokyo. Last summer I was going to go on holiday with her in Japan. I thought she wouldn't be able to take the whole two weeks off that I wanted to take over there. I thought that if she had to go back to work and I was going to be in Japan on my own then I had better try to learn at least some of the language.

Once I'd started on the path of learning Japanese, things just snowballed and I got really interested in Japan and Japanese. I subscribed to JapanesePod101 which really keeps my interest up. Several months later I came across Skritter and now use that too.

One thing I love about Japanese is that there are so many facets to it: the culture, the grammar (all those particles), the kanji etc. When you want a break from one thing (e.g. the grammar), you can switch to learning the kanji and vice versa. It lets your mind change gear, but you are still learning good stuff.

Now that I feel I am getting somewhere with Japanese, I also hope that one day it will come in useful professionally.

I've always been a big nerd, so I'm more scared of my mind degrading as I age than of my body degrading as I age (I'm 23, so not a huge concern yet, though!) After reading about language study decreasing the rate of Alzheimer's, I figured I should seriously try to learn a second language. I chose Japanese because it's such a vastly different language than English, so I figured it would provide a lot of mental exercise for me! I've always enjoyed watching anime and reading about Japanese history, so it was a natural choice.

I did consider learning Mandarin, but there were a few roadblocks that led to me choosing Japanese instead. For one, I'm not very interested in modern China. The poor people are so repressed that, for me, their rich history is eclipsed by the modern authoritarian regime. Because of this, I don't think it's somewhere I would enjoy traveling to.

I've also had some slight hearing loss since I was a child, so I worry that I wouldn't be able to accurately discern the tones of Chinese. The tones are a scarier obstacle for me than the multiple readings (on' and kun'yomi) of Japanese. Someday, if I become proficient in Japanese, I may try out Chinese just to see if I can do it!

I've always been able to speak, but never read or write Chinese. I went overseas to visit relatives in Taiwan a few years back and added them all on Facebook, but was never able to understand them. Now, after a month of skritter, I can read snippets of most of their posts, and occasionally even surprise myself with reading entire messages - definitely worth the hard work.

tl;dr - to connect with family.

I've been interested in China and Chinese language since I was a kid, maybe because my parents told me stories from China where they used to live for few years before I was born.

I studied a bit on my own in middle school and high school, then chose a Chinese course at the university. But it was only two years ago when I finally moved to China where I know study Chinese language undergraduate degree.

My mom was actually expecting me when they were still in China, perhaps the food and smells of China had an effect on me even before I was born!

I think I am different than most. I am learning it purely for economic reasons. In 10-15 years China will be the biggest economy in the world. They also are the most populated. Chinese also tend to hold their culture and language very well where ever they go. These factors suggest that even though it will be very difficult to learn, it will become more and more prevalent.

Just trying to be ahead of the game...

I live in China, so like most others here, I study to be able to communicate. I don't know if I'm still at the you're-really-young-and-your-brain-absorbs-languages-easily age, but I have been studying Chinese since I was about twelve or thirteen and now have a moderately-sized Chinese vocabulary.

I started Skritter about a year ago as a way to improve my reading skills. The Skritter Extreme Challenge (studying 25 hours for 25 days) helped me raise my reading level by about 200 characters.

@dfoxworthy

I used to think that China will become a huge economic force(much more than it is presently), but I've changed my mind about that. I live in China right now, and while I'm certainly not an expert on China or economics, I really doubt that China's economy will continue to grow much more than it has. Adding to this, I also want to say that China is still a developing country, and even if in continues to grow it will still be far behind other leading countries.
In terms of population, I think China will soon lose its competitive advantage in that aspect as well, because its population is aging rapidly and India's population will surpass China's within 15 years.
I used to think that Chinese people hold on to their culture very well, but I've also changed my mind about that.

I studied Japanese literature in college many years ago and decided to learn Chinese based on what I remember from Japanese. Not easy, but very challenging and enriching. I'm sure people wonder what that old man is doing with his Kindle Fire on the bus, on the way to work. I love learning new things, and this fits my needs perfectly. I wish I could eventually learn to read the literature but I doubt if I will attain that degree of proficiency.

I am learning because I want to be able to communicate with my wife's family. I also enjoy learning another language. I hope one day I may be able to do something more interesting in my career through knowing Chinese.
Matthew

Partly because to gain advantage over my business competitors:
I live in the Netherlands. Which is a small country and (therefore) a nation of traders. It is typical for people in small countries (like Holland, Belgium, Danmark) to learn 2 or more different foreign languages. The products my company buys are being produced less and less in Europe and more and more in India/China.

The main reason however was that I wanted to study something for a hobby such as carpenting or an other language than the usual ones close by such as French, Spanish etc. (Apart from my native Dutch language I already speak English, German and understand some French and Italian).
During my decision making I realised that (like many other westerners) it is as if I live in a house with several rooms, but there is one door I never opened. Peeking through the door I see an immense room even bigger than all the existing rooms together. That room was the Chinese language /culture. So the decision was easy...

My father taught shotokan karate when I was young, so growing up we often had guest sensei's stay with us. At a young age I had a lot of exposure to Japanese language, food and culture. I have been interested in all things Japanese ever since. I'm slowly (very slowly) learning the language on my own while attempting to work through a degree. I would like to live and work in Japan at some point, but that is years away at the moment. I'm 25 and just went back to school (I had previously worked as a baker) so the current goal is simply finishing university.

*Excellent topic idea by the way, it's really interesting!

It seems like there is alot more people here learning Chinese as opposed to Japanese.

It also seems that there are more people here who currently do not live in China or Japan. Interesting.

Thanks for all your replies, I enjoyed reading them. Happy Studying!

^^
It would be fun to hear the % stats about how many people study Chinese and/or Japanese on here. At a university in Holland which has both Chinese and Japanese studies, there are many many more Japanese classes than Chinese classes, but apparently the majority of them quit, in contrast to the students of Chinese. I think it had to do with most of Japanese-learning students being Japanese animation/game stuff lovers, while the students of Chinese had more different reasons to study such a different language.

I heard 80% of the first-year students of Japanese eventually dropped out, I'm not sure if it's true but in Holland it's very common to 'try out' a study and switch.

I read on John Pasden's blog sinosplice . com
that Japanese pronounciation starts out relatively easy but then gets progressively more difficult
whereas Chinese pronounciation starts out hard and gets easier.

Whereas the grammar learning curve is switched, Japanese grammar initially being difficult and becoming easy, while Chinese grammar initially seems simple and becomes more complicated.

I wonder if this is a factor in so many students of Japanese dropping out Elwin?

I don't know but if the pronounciation is easier in the beginning it should be a bigger attraction to keep on studying I would think, opposite to Chinese. It doesn't make sense then that so many students for Japanese drop out especially in the beginning. So I still think it has to do with the reasons why many start their study, more obsessed with Japanese' animation/game stuff than the actual language or culture.
Not implying though that most students of Japanese have this sort of pattern, just in that uni it was like 80% Japanese 20% Chinese evidently due to the popularity of Japanese animation/games.

I do tend to see a lot of that, Elwin--people getting into Japanese due to anime/games, and then abandoning it. It's actually one of the reasons I got into Japanese, but I've managed to not get scared off. You have to be the type of person who embraces a challenge, and sets goals for yourself.

It's not instant gratification, for sure, but being able to recognize kanji 'in the wild' or understand a short conversation in your favorite anime gives a wonderful feeling of satisfaction. I'm looking forward to being fluent someday, just for the rush it gives me!

@Elwin
a random guess that I can think of is that most Japanese programs don't teach the Kanji of words that have Kanji in them toward the beginning of students' studies. So, for example, instead of teaching that "sensei" is written 先生，teachers only teach Hiragana in the beginning. I think that by waiting, and marginalizing Kanji in the beginning makes Japanese seem harder and harder and harder. Of course, I'm really not in a position to judge but this is just a guess that I can think of as to why there's a high Japanese drop-out rate.

Another thing is the cultures of Japan and China are SO different, and that really reflects in the teaching styles of the senseis vs. laoshi. In my experience, Japanese teachers are far stricter than Chinese teachers, and since both of the languages are really tough, it could mean that lots of students studying Japanese get pushed away by the strictness. As I recall, the pace of my Japanese 101 class was WAY faster than the pace of my Chinese 101 class. I spent about the same amount of time preparing, but it still wasn't enough for Japanese, because the pace was way too fast. Also, for Chinese, I remember focusing on only super high frequency vocab in the first semester, whereas in Japanese 101 we were studying words like "eraser" and "desk", which probably aren't high frequency words.

I'd still like to go back and learn Japanese,though, even though I pretty much quit it a long time ago. I think that already knowing Chinese characters makes it very tempting to learn Japanese

I'm from England and I'm learning Chinese for the most part to improve my career prospects. I have been working in China/HK for about 3-4 years now and often use Chinese in my job. My speaking and listening are at a reasonably good level but my reading and writing are way way behind!

I feel that what ever I do for the rest of my career the more I improve my reading/writing and Chinese in general the more opportunities I will have.

Also I'm learning Chinese to communicate better with my Chinese wife and try to understand her way of thinking :)

Recently she said to me " eh it's so tiring to talk to you.... with a Chinese person it's far more relaxing!!! " that's because she still has to repeat things now and then when I don't catch them first time haha!!

Finally although my wife and daughter and family are the most important thing in my life I think a person's happiness in life is influenced amoungst other things by improving and reaching goals and getting satisfaction from it. So sure putting in the hours and seeing the improvement drives me on too.

Moving to China and studying Chinese was one of the best decisions I ever made! so many cool expereinces I think you all know what I'm talking about :) there are a lot more challenges and fun/interesting times ahead!!

My current goal it so be able to read all of the Newspaper in Chinese. I'm still quite a long way off. Hopefully Scritter will help me get there! As long as I put in the hours.

Good luck people on your Chinese/Japanese journey. No pain no gain as they say!

I want to learn Chinese because I think China is the up and coming country. It opens the gates to better jobs and trades.

pingpangqiu, how did you meet your wife? Is there a big language barrier between the two of you?