Friday, July 17, 2009

Multilingual...ism

I find it harder and harder to be learning more than one language at once. Prime example? Japanese and French.


As you may have known, the English sentence order is SVO (Subject-verb-object). For instance, "I hid an Easter egg." The subject, in most cases, comes first in the sentence (I), then comes the verb (hid), then the object (an Easter egg). However, in Japanese, the sentence order is SVO. Which means instead of saying "I hid an Easter egg," you'd be saying "I an Easter egg hid".

Sometimes, when speaking in French, I get an irresistible urge to put my verbs at the end of my sentences. God forbid I speak to a French native anytime soon! They'd think I was Yoda!

I found a very helpful person on Youtube who specializes in this exact type of problem: kemushichan. In particular, this video of hers deals with those who are learning several languages at once. (She even happens to mention my own situation in the video!) Watch the video, and look at her channel-- she might help you with some of the problems that YOU are having!


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