Greetings fellow L19x19ians,

Seeing as I'm sick right now and woke up at 2 AM, I found myself with some spare time to ponder a question I've had for a while now.
You see, I've been wanting to learn another language for a while now (one of the big oriental ones) and eventually I'd like to learn all of them,
but starting all three of them at the same time, is simply pure madness, it would leave me with no time for Go.
My question to you guys is, which language would best coincide with my go studies, Japanese, Korean or Chinese? Of course Go is not the only reason,
I'd like to learn these languages for several reasons (like a job maybe, at some point), but I feel like it's an extra motivator.

Whilst contemplating your answer please take into consideration ;

- Studying resources for go in that particular language (whether it be online or in books/magazines doesn't matter)
- Online learning resources for that paricular language, as we have a pretty crappy library
- What language will be most useful outside of Go

I honestly can't decide, each language (and country) has other qualities I'm attracted to, please help me decide, any help is appreciated.
Thank you in advcance.

I can comment on Japanese and Korean, because I've studied those two a lot.

First, I think you should pick the language that interests you the most. That's a key factor.

You can find lots of go material in both languages. You might find more Japanese materials, both for learning and go, especially in the west.

That said, there are some similarities between the two that can help you. I studied Japanese first, and I believe it helped a lot in understanding Korean.

It comes down to what you like the most. All three can benefit from the study of Chinese characters.

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be immersed

I realise that in the end it all depends on whatever language I like most, but that's also why it's impossible for me to choose.

I am interested in Korean because it's supposed to be the only language on earth that was actually created by men in search of the most logical and efficient language, which I find incredibly fascinating.
Not to mention I'm a big fan of SC (lots of e-sports actually) and K-pop.

I am interested in Japanese because it is, in my opinion, the prettiest out of the three language. I find it very smooth compared to Chinese for example which sounds pretty sharp.
Also I enjoy watching Anime, reading manga and I'm sure there are plenty of resources online to help me study.

I am interested in Chinese because it's probably the most commercial out of the three. Also the fact that chinese go books cost virtually nothing is very appealing.
And you just mentioned learning Chinese could eventually help me learn the other two.

If I am completely honest with myself, Japanese is probably the least interesting for me right now.. but I think there might be more go resources in Japanese, which makes me doubt myself.

All three countries have many go resources. I have many, many korean go books. It is just that Japan is more popular in the west.

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be immersed

There are some considerations that had a impact on my choice. Out of the three languages:

Which have night classes at your local university? (or whatever works with your schedule)

which can you most easily get tutoring in?

Which can you most easily befriend native speakers?

By the way, when Rubin mentioned being able to speak with native speakers, it reminded me of a popular site that I like to visit.

You may already be aware of it, but if you're not, I highly recommend Lang-8 (http://lang-8.com).

It doesn't help you much in terms of speaking, but it's a way for you to practice your writing and have it reviewed by native speakers. I still say some pretty unnatural phrases in Japanese and Korean, but I feel that this site has helped me a little bit.

It's a good opportunity to get help from native speakers, even if they're not around you.

In exchange, you can correct other users' English

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be immersed

My vote was for Japanese, but maybe that's just because it's what I'm taking

Seriously though, all three are reasonable, and you should really just go with what you have the most interest in.

By the way Kirby, do you know of a similar resource for speaking practice?

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"There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level." -- Bruce Lee

Get some Japanese friends

If that's difficult to do, sometimes you can find language exchange groups especially near universities. When I was in Japan, they had a group called "@home", which held sessions throughout the day where you could go and converse with people in Japanese.

Their webpage used to be here: http://www.insc.tohoku.ac.jp/~athome/, but the link isn't working for me. Google's cache shows this: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... p/~athome/

If it's hard to find something like that, if you're a student, perhaps you can sign up for a language partner. They can speak in English, and you can speak in Japanese - or vice versa.

I think the easiest route is to make some Japanese friends and practice talking with them. Any way that you can get this practice will be useful.

I did a google search, and it looks like there are online services where you can sign up for this kind of language exchange and do voice chat (eg. http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/), however, I do not know how good any of these services are.

I think the best route is to just try to make some Japanese friends, and practice speaking with them a lot. If there are groups that you can find which facilitate this, such as the @home group I described, it will be even easier for you to get practice.

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be immersed

Wow, folks, clearly Chinese is being under-represented here. It is easily the most used language of the three and hence the easiest to find language practice partners for.

I think you will find no substantial difference among the 3 languages in terms of locating go resources. As a plus, visiting China is the cheapest of the 3 trips.

I misclicked Japanese, when I believed Chinese was the most correct answer.

Board member tchan could probably give one of the best answers, as he has one of the largest go book libraries.

Considering the quality of go books, apparently Japanese is the best. Go in China and Korea is like fast-food, while in Japan it remains a bit arty. No wonder Japanese pros would spend time on creating tsumego and writing books.

Outside Go, I would say Chinese and Japanese are the choice.

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长考出臭棋.

Man, I guess this means I have to trash three-fourths of my study materials. Can't have these books of bad quality

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be immersed

I did not say it's bad, McDonald's tasty sometimes

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长考出臭棋.

You're right. After all, who better to assess the quality of my go books than somebody that has never seen them?

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be immersed

Having no idea what is correct, I will offer some advice.

Clearly outside of Go, Chinese is the most useful.

However, given your personal interests, Korean might have an edge.

On a practical level, for go study, am I correct that Korean might be the easiest, particularly to read?

Certainly Chinese seems the most difficult, particularly to speak.

On quality of resources, I have to believe there is plenty in all three languages. Japanese books are often beautiful, but as you say Chinese are cheaper, and the usually come out with much of the Japanese stuff.

Based on english translations only, Korean material seems very useful, practical and to the point - as opposed to lofty an philosophical. If much of the Korean material is similar, I think it makes it more accessable and quite useful.

Again this is your decision, and I am making some assumptions above that may not be completly true, but Korean seems a good fit for you.

People learn in different ways, so I think it is difficult to say that one language is "harder" than another. There's also the point that learning any language can be a continuous process. Even when you have achieved "fluency", there's a good chance that there are still new vocabulary or slang words to learn. For example, English is my native language, but I'd still say that there's room for me to learn more English.

That said, I will give my opinion, based on how I learn.

In my opinion, if you are going to learn any of the three languages seriously, learning Chinese characters is helpful. Even in Korean, where Chinese characters are typically not used anymore, many words are based on Chinese characters.

In that regard, I think that Japanese is a little bit easier in terms of reading, because the Chinese characters are clearly visible. If I see a particular character, there is no guessing what the meaning is. The character is plainly visible.

With Korean, on the other hand, Hangeul is very easy to learn, but it is a purely phonetic alphabet. This means that, while many words are based on Chinese characters, the actual Chinese characters are hidden from view. The result, to me, is a language that is easier to read phonetically, but harder to extract meaning from.

Chinese characters are extremely helpful in the three languages, and these characters are visible in Chinese and Japanese. Because of that, Korean can be a little bit more difficult to get meaning from.

In addition, I think that the actual sounds that are used in Japanese are easier to distinguish, typically. With the exception of the "n" sound, everything ends in a vowel sound, so it is a bit easier to pick out what people are saying. In Korean, combinations of the batchim and the next hangeul character sometimes lead to pronunciations that are non-intuitive to me. This may be due to the way that I learned hangeul in the first place.

But in any case, I think that people learn in different ways. For me, I think that Korean is a bit harder than Japanese in several regards. This could also be due to the fact that I lived in Japan for a longer period of time, though.

In the end, again, pick the language that's interesting to you.

I will agree with Horibe's point that, disregarding go, Chinese might be the most practically useful. After all, there are a LOT of Chinese people in the world.

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be immersed

I think the level of effort involved probably should be a big factor. Specifically, Chinese is considered to be one of the hardest languages for Westerners to learn.

According to Daniel Kane in "The Chinese Language: Its History and Current Usage" the U.S. Foreign Service Institute (which, among other things, trains U.S. diplomats in foreign languages) for many years estimated that it would take a Westerner approximately 520 hours of language training to reach the level of basic professional competence (both speaking and reading) in a Western European Language, and approximately 2,400 hours of language training to reach the same level of competence in Chinese. So learning Chinese took well over four times the effort for a Westerner than learning a Western European language.

That having been said, Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more people by any other language, so it might be more productive in some ways to learn it rather than, say, learning four Western European languages. But learning Chinese definitely constitutes a major effort.

Do you have the statistic for the other way? How long does it take a chinese to reach the level of basic profeesional competence in a Western European Language? It took me 8 years, 6 years middle school and 2 years universtiy to learn english. Most boring thing in my life...

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长考出臭棋.

Yep, if you're a "Westerner" (I suppose that actually means "native English speaker") then it's harder to learn Chinese than a "Western European" language (I assume that means things like Spanish, and not like Basque).

But here we're comparing Chinese with Japanese and Korean. Chinese is quite likely easier to learn than Japanese. Dunno about Korean.

Yes, you're right. I lost track of the original question a bit and my post wasn't really responsive.

I note that the Foreign Services Institute's present ranking of language learning difficulty for English speakers suggests that you are also right that Japanese may be harder for English speakers to learn than Chinese. All three languages (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) are Category III languages, but Japanese gets an asterisk for being especially problematic.

See http://web.archive.org/web/200710140059 ... tions.html

It's kind of sad that the three major Go playing countries all have languages in the highest category of learning difficulty.