x-posted to correctjapanese

So here's this crap 作文 I did last night on a whim. It's pretty sketch, and if someone would point out things I did wrong (which is to say, stylistic tips would be welcomed, but secondary in priority), I would appreciate it very much. We learn through our (manifold) mistakes! *wince*

外国語を習うと、同じ語族の中に言語一を以上習いたいのです。例えば、アイスランド語を勉強していて、他の北欧諸国語も興味があります。でも、アイスランド語に一番興味があっても、ちょっと習いにくいだと思います。それから、ノルウィエー語とか関してる言語を初めて習うのはいい考えだと思います, より安いであろうから。同じように、他の語族にも「gateway language」があります。これ習いやすい言語です。ペラペラなったら、より難しい言語の同じこともう分かるから、難しい言語は安くなります。もしそうなら、どの語族にも、語族の全部言語を習うつもりであれば、こんな「gateway language」を習うのは有用だと思います。語族の中に一番安い言語を選んでペラペラになると、他の関する言語を習うのも安いであろう。ケルシーと言う友達の場合に例えて、最初にドイツ語をペラペラなって、デンマーク語とノルウェイー語を習って、今スウェーデン語とアイスランド語はペラペラ話せても、絶対に分かります。日本語と中国を勉強することはちょっと違いですが、漢字なので相似もあります。漢字の音読みを分かってなると日本語と中国語と韓国語の中に同じ発音がある言葉を覚えるのが易しいだと思います。関する言葉が多いなのです。例えば、英語の「teacher」の意味言葉は日本語では「せんせい」で、韓国では「セィオンサエング」です。それ以上に、英語の「university」や「student」や「library」や「newspaper」って意味の言葉は日本語と韓国語と比べると、たくさん類似点もあります。もちろん、この単語は中国語に関しますから同じそう発音なのに、和語は韓国語の単語に関しません。その上に言うまでもない、関する言語を兼ねて勉強するなら、同じそうな言葉か漢字がまごまごにできますが、まだ分かるであろうから、枝葉末節だと思います。がんばって続けるなら、なんでも習いたい言語ができるね。


The English translation, in case I managed to so mangle my Japanese that my intention became completely scrambled:

When learning a language, one often wishes to learn more than one language within the same language family. For example, I'm learning Icelandic and I also have an interest in other Scandinavian languages. But even though I'm most interested in Icelandic, it's a little hard to learn. So I think it'd be a good idea to learn an related language like Norewegian because i would probably be easier. Similarly, I think other language families have "gateway languages." A gateway language is an easy to learn language. After you've learned it, difficult to learn but related langauges are easy to learn because you already know the cognates and grammatical similarities. If that's the case, then no matter what language family is under consideration, then if you're going to learn all the languages in one language family, learning the gateway language is really useful. Within the language family you pick the easiest language and once you're fluent, it should be easy to pick up the related languages. Take for example my friend Kelsey. First she learned German and then she learned Danish and Norwegian. Now she can understand Swedish and Icelandic, even if she can't speak them fluently she can understand them completely. Studying Japanese and Chinese is a little bit different, but because of kanji there are similarities. If you come to
understand kanji's Chinese readings, it's easy to memorize the pronunciation of the words that are the same or similar in Japanese, Chinese and Korean. There are a lot of similar words. For example, the English word "teacher" is said "sensei" in Japanese and "seonsaeng" in Korean. Moreover, the English words meaning university, student, library, newspaper and more, when compared in Japanese and Korean there are many points of similarity. Of course, these words are all related to Chinese, so even if they are similar, the native Japanese and Korean words will not. Moreover, it goes without saying that if you're studying related languages simultaneously you can become confused by similar words, but since you'll still understand, it's no big deal. If you continue to study hard, you can learn any language you want.


I'm looking at this and laughing over how little effort went into making sure I wasn't just making grammar up, but hey, I'm too 下手 to fix it myself, so here goes.