Learning A Language Isn’t Easy

This is one of my most favorite scenes from the movie Star Trek 6. In it, the Enterprise is sneaking into the Klingon Empire and has to pretend to be a Klingon ship:

You can see that Uhura makes many, many grammar mistakes, and doesn’t have a “Klingon” accent.

This happens to me all the time when I speak Japanese: I sound like an idiot, I use strange grammar and I have an accent. It doesn’t sound natural. I’m grateful though, because at least with Japanese, I have some speaking practice. With Korean, I have even less practice, so it sounds even worse.

As you can see in the scene above, books don’t really help. Language is fluid and unpredictable, so you have to be comfortable enough that you can adapt to the situation. Practice over study. ;)

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About Doug 陀愚

A Buddhist, Father and Japanophile / Koreaphile. The total package.
This entry was posted in Japanese, Korean, Language and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Learning A Language Isn’t Easy

  1. jackielahora says:

    It’s true. Books don’t really help. I tried learning Japanese from a book, and it didn’t work out. The best way to learn a language is to enmesh yourself in the culture and society of the language.

  2. Hi jackielahora and welcome to the JKLLR. :)

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