Buying my plane ticket tomorrow

Beginning to wonder if it would be ethical to introduce a child to a constructed language...? I realized I'm obsessed with languages and find myself wishing I had (been brought up with or had the opportunity to go) learned dialects or less commonly spoken languages (within Japanese this means going to a rural area and hoping to be accepted there? and within Chinese means focusing on a totally different language like Cantonese or trying to find a dialect somewhere with close approximation to Mandarin i.e. Shanghainese and it's supposed 60% affinity)...

Which explains my interest in Toki Pona. Seems pretty simple with only about 130 words in the language, a serious of lessons and no need to worry about pronounciation. But if I find Japanese lonely, wouldn't it be even lonelier with Toki Pona? But Toki Pona's active online communities and also available materials would be easily identifiable, while for some reason Japanese resources simply evade me.

http://bknight0.myweb.uga.edu/toki/lesson/lesson1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_pona
(I think I'll go ahead and learn it -- the idea of a truly simple language appeals to me, and the sort of lifestyle pacing that I try to give myself (and my Sheik)).

I'm beginning to feel exasperated about this lack of resources too, especially considering that my main resources nowadays mean that Japanese in general really isn't fun or interesting. It's so much easier to find interesting topics, social commentaries, etc in Chinese.

Take this video on Shanghainese, for instance: I can understand most of what they're saying!



Just goes to show that the WU program really was a good investment and their teaching is beast; my language partner was amazing; but probably most importantly my level of exposure during those two months was probably equal or greater to my exposure to Japanese outside of the classroom. I am in the middle of an NHK podcast and have been for the past 6 hours, and when not paying attention I can't understand anything, while listening I am only catching about half of the material. I am still a long way from understanding the Chinese news podcasts I have been downloading for the last year or two (have to clean out my podcasts sometimes), but still, it scares me. And this is precisely what was making me so hurt (伤心） yesterday when Haskins commented on my betrayal. I've been in overdrive mode trying to compensate for this shift of interests? attention? but so far the only thing that's coming out of it is a heap of unread tabs about Chinese society on my firefox and little progress in my reclaiming Japanese and reasserting it's importance, but aside from the notes carved into my phone recently (most of which are ashamedly simply questions reframing the issues about China into a more global/foreign policy related frame) there's not much progress.

Like these guys point out, the most important things in language learning are: availability and use of comprehensible input, motivation, time put in, and whether learning is fun.

I'm not sure which of these is the most important, but I can say that for my Japanese learning, these are all lacking, while for Chinese (at the moment?) they are overabundant -- all from my beginnings at college (friends, fun levels of classes, affinity/attraction to food and culture).

Another thing I would probably add to the list is the importance of a community. I just haven't been able to make that for myself in Japanese outside of Japan and 花火. What should I do? I've already found out there's a (predictably easy to find) online community for people who want to learn Shanghainese... not to mention materials aimed at native Chinese speakers themselves. Brings to mind the shows on dialects (and another show, forgot the name, where celebrities come onto the show and read things, have it in a previous post but should have downloaded the show at the time or at least watched it in it's entirety because the series has been removed from youtube after allegation of a copyright violation :( Who was watching that anyway???) that came/come on as NHK specials, or the websites devoted to Osaka-ben (for some reason my motivation gets less and less, even though (or dakara ka?) I've met Osaka-ben speaking people...

Ugh. And all of this is 迷わせるing me in terms of the consideration of future job, internships, grad schools, and general life direction (the curse of our generation - too much information, not enough processing. too large decision trees, too little chopping at branches) [for some reason I have the strongest urge to force a differentiation in the two and too phenomes, because when I read it out loud regardless of semantic intent I can only think of the "two" meaning when it comes to the latter half of that lower-case declaration... also should look at my punctuation use. I don't think too many people agree with it haha, although I don't often agree with other people's].

Sometimes I get the really strong urge to learn Korean (and almost regret, although it is more tempered now because of my increased proficiency in Chinese, that I didn't make the leap and study it during undergrad) too.
Found out the girl from Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is also the girl from one of my favorite movies, Il Mare, and also the girl from My Sassy Girl, which I have yet to watch in it's entirety.

Sometimes I even
want to learn a
a...
romance language!
泣　｡ﾟ(ﾟ´Д｀ﾟ)ﾟ｡　泣

(Which, somewhat ironically, would probably wind up as Spanish. Think of reading 100 Years of Solitude and all the Hispanic or Spanish-speaking people in my life haha. How much would my interactions with them have been different? Even (especially?) Lisa...)

Have to remember to write about China's so-called "(Post-90's) sexual revolution", and the condoms and vibrators in front of the checkouts in Family Marts in Shanghai. And there I go, proving my point again.

Maybe it's just that, weird stuff from Japan is taken for granted nowadays...