I was reading this post by funnyoldlife and it brought to mind the time when I considered studying Law and Japanese at university, during the time I was studying my A Levels and deciding which universities to apply to through UCAS and which courses.
During secondary school, I learnt Welsh, French and German, eventually going on to study German at GCSE and A Level. I have always harboured a desire to learn Japanese and/or Mandarin, and this is why I considered studying Japanese at university. However, I was put off when I learnt that spoken Japanese relies heavily on intonation to inflect the meaning of spoken words. I thought to myself: “how can I learn to speak Japanese if I won’t be able to lipread when it’s being intoned in a certain way?”.
Now, funnyoldlife has said he learnt Japanese at university. Time for me to go to college, methinks! One question though: what can you do in terms of communication support?
Hi Rob
It is actually Chinese that relies on intonation which changes the meaning – check out the romanization part in the front of a Japanese/English dictionary – it’s fairly straightforward but watch for the ‘fu’ sound, which is made like ‘hu’ with lipshape ‘fu’. Japanese syllables are not stressed as in English. The interesting bit is learning some kanji – one stroke out of place, and it’s wrong! I didn’t have any communication support at all, I relied on my books to teach myself and I went to my tutor if I still had difficulty.
Nowadays, universities will have a disability officer who can arrange the support you need. I’m not sure whether this works well in practice though – that might depend on the university and on how well they have taken on board DDA compliance. A friend was a disability officer at Newcastle university and they had everything in hand.
Funnily enough, I did Law as well… loved that too.
I’ve linked to your blog on my site, hope that’s ok.
Tina, thanks for the comment.
Ah, so I was wrong about Japanese after all. I’ll definitely have to take it up then!
I know you’ve linked to my blog on your site – that’s how I found your site in the first place! Your support is appreciated.
I have learned Japanese, the written Japanese, hiragana. To write on a paper and give to the Japanese person instead of talking. I learned the hiragana alphabet and some kanji, it makes it easier to read and write some Japanese words.
But you have to inform your teacher that you want to focuse on the written Japanese, not spoken Japanese, if that is what you want. Some teachers focuse only on spoken Japanese…