Okay well at the moment im doing my 10 compulsory GCSE's and the three options i chose (english, maths ect) but on top of that, im doing piano, Japanese (GCSE) and Latin (GCSE) both of the last three aren't compulsory, but i wanted to do them anyways. Im also really interested in Russian and Mandarin at the moment and would like to do them, but if I did, would it be too much? My friends and parents both say im doing way to much at the moment but I'm not sure about that... Mandarin and Russian both look so interesting >.>! /Ty
Well, i'd like to spend my gap year in Japan, and if i knew fluent Russian and Mandarin, it would be all the easier to go visit China and Russia. /Ty
My dad, goes to all those sorts of countrys - says most of them speak english**, so when people go on tourist, you can usually get by with just the basics. If I were you id pick one and stick to that then you learn one really good, instead of like, 4 T_T. And if its between russian and mandarin, choose mandarin as China is supposedly going to become the worlds biggest superpower therefore language = more worth to it EDIT: well kinda crappy english as its compulsory to learn in schools in some of those countrys, my friend told me it is in Korea, dunno, might be the same in Russia and China...So id actually do neither if i was you
Whoa, that is quite a workload. If you think you can do it then go for it. Don't overdo it though if you aren't competely sure.
I do There so interesting - Latins a bitch though.... so many different ways of saying the same word >.>!
if it interests you i say go for it. I know what its like to be overextended school-wise, i havent even had a lunch period for the last two years of high school. all in all, i have no regrets though i think its important to learn time management early and to follow your academic passions. but yeah, languages are basically the shit so I say go for russian and mandarin. mandarin is AWESOME, i will most likely major in it when i am in college
Oooh your tempting me Hmmm Im definitely going to have to look into this.. Any tips for learning Mandarin? I can only say hello in Russian, and my Russian friend says I can't even pronounce it properly /Ty
I second Mandarin (which will also make Cantonese an easy second dialect/language to learn as well if you're trying to rack up language fluency).
Agreed. Employees and Universities (even Colleges) love languages. They will definetly not do you any harm in the future, and it will make you stand out amongst a large group of people. Saying that, it's better to stick with 1 or 2 languages and nail them completely rather than take on loads and give yourself a workload you cannot keep up with. If you're sure you can handle it then go for it, if not then you'll still have impressive qualifications already.
not quite, even if you are fluent in mandarin, cantonese is not a walk in the park to learn. they share a writing system but the pronunciation is not even similar, plus cantonese has 9 tones instead of the 4 in mandarin. I have some Canto-pop on my ipod and it is incomprehensible even with my knowledge of mandarin, i can only pick up a few basic words here and there that the two languages share i guess its probably comparable to learning french after learning another romance language like spanish (not too difficult, but it still takes time), at least that is how it has been described to me but still, go for mandarin, its awesome
