Languages

haha, had Mother Tongue exam today. My mother tongue is Chinese, of course. It's a lovely language and I can hardly believe it when people say that they hate learning Chinese. It's amazing how beautiful languages are. A mix of sounds, symbols or even gestures in the right order, and you get a perfectly usable language.

I particularly think it's nice to be a linguist. It is always good to know more languages so that you know what people are talking about and whether or not they are scolding you. You are also able to compare the differences between languages and then you are more aware about the meanings behind them and why they were formed in this way. .For example, have you ever stared at a certain word or letter and wondered how come it was formed in that particular way, like why the letter 'a' looks like 'a'? In this aspect, I like Chinese because there is always an explanation as to why the word was formed in this particular way because Chinese script is pictorial, just like the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Of course, it is not really that pictorial now because Chinese words have been changed many times over the millenia when the Chinese civilisation is in existence.

Maybe I shall be a linguist, but where will I learn languages then? At a language laboratory? hahaha. There isn't any that I know of. Unless you learn from somebody then. Actually, I learn Japanese.

An encyclopedia I once read wrote that Japanese is apparently unrelated to any other language. I disagree. Yes, it may be that spoken Japanese words are quite unrelated to other languages, but the written script is very similar, the traditional Japanese script that is. Chinese can read some Japanese words because they are written in Chinese-invented script, just that it is pronounced in a different way in both languages. In fact, when the Japanese invaded Singapore in 1942, the soldiers could communicate with the Chinese locals by writing down what they wanted. If they wanted to talk to Malays or Indians, they would just ask the Chinese to tell them what they wanted.

This has a historical origin. During the rule of the Chinese emperor Qin Shihuang, people were ordered to look for a herb or any type of medicine that would enable someone to live forever. Since everyone wanted to get rich, many people tried to make the 'Elixir of Life' but ended up inventing gunpowder instead. I am sidetracking, if you didn't notice. Okay. So people either wanted to get into the emperor's good books(and just see what happened to the people who tried to do that) or get as far away from the Chinese empire as possible.

A certain old man went to the emperor and told him that he would be able to find the herb guaranteeing immortality, but the conditions were that he would have to sail to a far island to brew this concoction, and at the same time, he needed 50 virgin boys and 50 virgin girls. So the old man and the 50 boys and 50 girls(the ship must have had been very crowded. I wonder if they got seasick?) sailed for a long way east. At last, they reached a land which is today known as Japan. As Japanese originally descended from Chinese, it is hardly surprising that some of the olden script used in China at the time is present in the Japanese written language. To be fair though, they have been different from the Chinese for 2000 years now and the invention of their language is just as remarkable as any other.

haiyah. Look how far I went just talking about languages. Oh well, going to prepare for English mid-yr tomorrow!