Become the ripped white American dude named Jon Jonstone that Japan thinks you are.
Back in 2012 I met a guy in China from the US who sang and played guitar, he wasn’t particularly good, but he was good looking, he got fluent in Mandarin and went around playing covers of popular Chinese songs and people loved him, he had a big following and got all the ladies. In the US he probably would have fizzled out. Well played.
never heard of Jojo before
to save me a few minutes, which character is he?
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I also have no idea who or what this is.
Basically all of them.
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This is much less convincing than if he were a specific one.
So basically Joesph Josetar looks like this
and his bff is Robert Edward O. Speedwagon, who looks like this
and his rival is Dio, who looks like this
and basically everyone is ripped with amazingly styled hair
So. Been having fun learning a fast rap song in Tagalog.
It’s been GREAT for learning the language. In particular the pronunciation.
To be able to keep up with the rap, you have to really pay attention to how the mouth moves, there’s no where to hide.
I’ve realised that a huge part of real pronunciation is learning which sounds you can smush together or omit, and which parts you need to retain for emphasis and clear communication. The rap has helped me learn that.
It also helps with the natural rhythm. There are a lot of syllable duplications in Tagalog, i’ve always struggled with how to say them naturally.
Finally I’ve realised I’ve been pronouncing two of the basic pronouns wrongs.
Ko and mo (mine, yours), should be really really short vowel sounds, I had shortened mine from my natural English long O, but now realise I need to shorten them even more.
For those interested, it’s this one.
Skip ahead to 30 seconds for the fast parts.
Definitely recommend if you like a bit of a sing along.
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Nice progress and song is pretty catchy!
Yah, music is definitely one of my go to ways to try and get some language practice in. I think I have songs in about 12 languages in my library now.
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I’m about 10x better a karaoke singer in Japanese than I am in English. Singing your way to fluency is definitely a thing.
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Been waffling back and forth on what to spend my team learning.
On the one hand, I’m 2 years into a 5 year stay in Thailand, so Thai would obviously make a lot of sense. The issue is that I really hate the tonal nature of the language, and I have very little love for the music, movies, TV shows, etc. Once I leave Thailand, I think I will almost never use it again. I made decent-ish progress with it, I got up to a vocab of maybe 600 words and could express basic ideas (listening was still atrocious though).
On the other hand, I consume so much Japanese media via anime, music, and movies, and I know that this will never stop. Other than English, I probably consume more Japanese stuff than any other language.
As such, I’m taking my talents back to Japanese language learning. Early on, it’s a lot more accessible as after only a week I can already say stuff like “I’m going to eat sushi” or “my house is over there”, but I know it will get extremely difficult once you get into some of the tougher grammatical concepts (not to mention Kanji).
But the learning materials are great and it’s actually fun learning. Right now I’m playing an RPG designed to slowly introduce you to the Japanese language called Wagotabi. If all goes well, and I have a decent-ish level in a year, I might do an extended trip to Osaka (1-2 months) to test out my Japanese.
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I reckon the Japanese is the right call.
Learning a language as an adult is a huge undertaking.
600 words is a great start, but it’s a fraction of what you will need
I think approach it as something you would be happy doing everyday (with occasional breaks) for the next ten years at least
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Yah, that’s a good rule of thumb. I usually fail if the motivation isn’t there, but with Japanese I can be learning passively thru music and anime series while I’m enjoying myself.
Have you ever come across a white person who is truly fluent in Thai? I’m sure they exist, but I’ve never seen it in real life.
Do you spend much time in Thailand? How would you ever even come across a foreigner who speaks fluent Thai?
It’s quite rare, but they definitely exist. Schools to teach Thai to foreigners are quite popular here and often have waiting lists. I’m sure a chunk drop out fairly quickly, and then others will drop out along the way, but even advanced classes seem to have decent attendance.
You really have to be committed though because in Bangkok you can get around fairly easily with just English in most of the zones tourists/migrants will be living in. The other thing is that the barrier to having a reasonable convo with someone is just so high. It’s not like Spanish where you can get to that level with 4-6 months of consistent effort.
I’ve been to Thailand at least 10 times and I lived in South East Asia for a significant portion of my life.
Hmm in that case I’d say it’s pretty odd you’ve never met a foreigner who speaks Thai. There’s plenty of them.
I’ve met white people who speak Thai, but not at what I’d consider a fluent level.
I’ve also met foreigners who speak Thai fluently, but they weren’t white.
You seem to be weirdly good at judging fluency