The simplest Asian language for Anglophiles

[gobbledonk]

Troops,

 

I know the focus of this forum is on the Thai language, but I hope you'll forgive my blasphemy in this instance.

 

Given my pathetically small understanding of the many languages spoken throughout Asia, this is a big call, but I believe Bahasa Indonesia may well be the perfect 'first' Asian language for those of us from an non-Asian background.

 

1. Less emphasis on tone - even if you get it wrong, they can usually grasp what you meant

 

2. Pronunciation, with a few exceptions, is similar to English syllables.

 

3. Words sourced from Portuguese, English and other languages (yeah, I know this happens everywhere, but I doubt that its to the same degree).

 

None of this helps you learn Thai / Mandarin / Khmer or whatever, but it does give you the potential to communicate with 300 million Asians. If there is an easier language, I'm keen to hear about it. Any thoughts ?

[jp1]

If there is an easier language, I'm keen to hear about it. Any thoughts ?

 

How about Malay or Tagalog (Philippines)? Tagalog has many words which have a Spanish origin.

 

 

[Guest lazyphil]

Stick to English mate. Well that mutated version you lot speak ...Harold Bishop isn't too bad though

[gobbledonk]

Interesting - one of the language whizzes here at work claims that Bahasa is similar to Tagalog, same-same Malay. Her native language is Tamil, but she grew up in Malaysia, speaking pretty much every language in the region (Cantonese, Malay, Indo, English and God-knows-what-else). I dont know how good her other languages are, but her English is excellent - the old colonies really seem to have imprinted the language on the people, even this long after the last British troops were driven from Malaysia (ok, Malaya).

 

Apparently, Malay, Tagalog and Bahasa belong to the Malay-Polynesian group of languages : it may be unfair to compare them with 'real' Asian languages ....

[khwaimaisabai]

Says artiew:

---

.... even this long after the last British troops were driven from Malaysia (ok,

Malaya

).

---

Hi art,

 

I had always thought that they left (voluntarily) by boat. If someone drove them, then they must have gone by land and come into Thailand - this gives the thread a Thai subject now - what was the sanuk scene like for the British troops apparently driven here from Malaya, and what type of vehicle would the drivers have used? Tourist buses?

 

A long journey by bus though.

 

And I think the internationalisation of the English language is more to do with American influence than British or Australian.

 

Khwai

[Guest lazyphil]

<<And I think the internationalisation of the English language is more to do with American influence than British or Australian>>

 

I understand what you're saying but remember the British globalised English and the Americans have just kept that enforced

[Guest]

It all depends on what "learning" means.

 

IMO Madarin Chinese is the best because

 

(a) its influence is felt all over Asia (similar to Latin/Greek in English)

 

( There are millions of Chinese speakers outside of China and even outside of Asia

 

© It is a syntactically very simple language and word order is similar to English

 

(d) There are tons and tons of learning materials available for learning it

 

(e) It makes a good introduction with respect to certain features common to many other Asian languages (tonality, ideographic writing)

 

(f) There is a well-established, regularized, and accurate transliteration system (pinyin).

 

Of course, many people complain that the sounds and tones hose them up. Well then, that pretty much rules out all Chinese variants, plus Thai, Lao, various Burmese languages, etc. But not Khmer or Japanese (neither of which is tonal). Japanese is almost mathematical in its regularaity and structure, the sounds are readily pronouncable by English speakers, and there is almost a complete parallel vocabulary of foreign-sourced ("loan") words such that once you understand the patterns of how English syllables are mapped into Japanese, you can almost make words up on the fly and be understood. However Japanese has relatively few sounds and is very complicated to learn.

 

If you're talking about reading and writing, Japanese is by far the most complicated of the languages I've encountered in Asia, because there is an inexact and twisted mapping between Chinese characters they borrowed for writing vs. the spoken language. Thai is comparitively easy, since it's not ideographic.

 

[OCgringo]

for me any Asian language that does not use Western letters / numbers would be very hard to learn

 

I think you learn by being there, you see a sign , know what its about and associate the 2

 

if its in a "chicken scratch" alphabet you cannot associate the 2.

 

For me its hard even in Eastern Europe where Czech and Polish etc uses western letters but it does not associate with any western language

 

And a "picture" language like Chinese or Japanese would be very hard to learn to read....

 

But then most Americans can barely speak English, at least thats what the Brits say !

 

Cheers/////

[gobbledonk]

And I think the internationalisation of the English language is more to do with American influence

 

If you are talking about people under 30, this may be the case, but my point was that the British colonised so many parts of the world long before the US was able to use TV to spread its cultural ideals. Yes, there are former US colonies in the Asia-Pacific rim, but these are far outnumbered by countries which had the British 'Raj' for anywhere from 50 to 100 years - that simply doesnt die out overnight.

 

Oz has very few colonial legacies - we administered places like New Guinea when we were still a fledgling democracy ourselves, but Canberra has enough problems within our own borders without looking to someone else's patch.

[jp1]

Apparently, Malay, Tagalog and Bahasa belong to the Malay-Polynesian group of languages : it may be unfair to compare them with 'real' Asian languages ....

 

I agree, they're no 'real' Asian languages. If one takes these languages out then it becomes really complicated. If you want to avoid a tonal language but are still interested in a real Asian language think of Korean or Japanese (both languages have more or less the same Grammar and are distantly related to each other). But both written languages are very complicated.