I'm learning Japanese in anticipation of a business trip there. I'll grab any excuse to learn a new language.
It's slow going with this, though. Except for the vocabulary that's obviously based on English, there aren't any existing words in my mental files to hook the new words onto, as there has been with the Romance languages I've studied. Even Welsh, somehow, was much much easier than Japanese has been. By October, I may know how to say two of the six versions of "train." However, I'm enjoying the challenge. I've even learned about half of the Katakana alphabet. Just for fun.
This time, I'm not going to make the mistake I made when I learned how to say "I do not speak Greek," with such a convincing accent that none of the people I talked to in Athens believed me.
What a silly phrase to learn proficiently. Why do they teach it? You'd think that saying "Look, I hear sounds that I recognize as human, but don't understand a thing you're so helpfully saying," in one's own language would be a good tip-off.
I know I won't really be able to manage in Japanese in Japan, nor will I really need to. But I can now say "I'm tired" in seven languages.
If I were some kind of international prostitute, I think this knowledge would be very handy.
Then again, if I were an international prostitute worth my garter-belt, my ability to communicate with body language would be more practiced, and I wouldn't need to know handy catchphrases in many tongues. So to speak.
Plus, my stamina would be better.
