On 12/13/2021 at 6:10 AM, ezochi said:

Japanese is probably easier than Glaswegian!! 🤣

Doubtful...

3 sets of characters Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana and (Kanji) alone has over 50,000 characters itself. And then there is the dialect itself which differs from one Japan region to another. Both my kids have managed to master the language (speaking as well as writing) what took me decades only to find myself forgetting a large portion of it.

Edited December 15, 20214 yr by udidwht

10 minutes ago, udidwht said:

(Kanji) alone has over 50,000 characters itself

Maybe in Chinese but not in Japanese. The vast majority of Japanese learn (and forget) only about 2,500 kanji and spend a lot of their compulsory education (9 or 10 yrs) learning them. 

On 12/14/2021 at 11:31 AM, harrry said:

A country which sadly is at the bottom of most scales of English proficiency despite a population paying a fortune for extra English classes. 

Common here too, probably a feature of societies that place more store on test scores than using a language for practical purposes.

I dont know if there are many Brazilians here at AVSIM, but greetings from one of them!

33 minutes ago, scotchegg said:

Maybe in Chinese but not in Japanese. The vast majority of Japanese learn (and forget) only about 2,500 kanji and spend a lot of their compulsory education (9 or 10 yrs) learning them. 

Abridged would be a good term of the 2500+ characters generally used. There really is no definitive number of kanji characters in the Japanese language. The kanji dictionary contains over 50,000 characters. What is necessary to function in Japan is roughly 2100+ of the kanji characters. A very complex language compared to English.

2 hours ago, udidwht said:

Abridged would be a good term of the 2500+ characters generally used. There really is no definitive number of kanji characters in the Japanese language. The kanji dictionary contains over 50,000 characters. What is necessary to function in Japan is roughly 2100+ of the kanji characters. A very complex language compared to English.

I’m not sure ‘abridged’ would be better than the term universally used in Japan for this list, 常用, or common / standard kanji. If some kanji dictionaries really do have 50,000 characters then they’re almost certainly full of examples with no practical use in Japanese and only good for reading Classical Chinese poetry or other niche pastimes. ‘Abridged’ suggests shortened, which I don’t think many people in Japan would consider and accurate reflection of the standard kanji (many of which people regularly forget how to write).

And character number is no indicator of language complexity at all. Japanese has no articles, and although there are basically only 3 in English (a/an/the), the nuances their broad uses carry are extremely complex.edi

edit: that's not to say at all that Japanese is not complex, just that it's difficult to say any language is inherently more complex than others. English is very complex in many ways.

Edited December 16, 20214 yr by scotchegg
clarification

On 12/12/2021 at 6:35 PM, David Mills said:

"Thank You" to all you non-native English-speaking simmers, who communicate so graciously in a second language for the benefit of all in this forum. My hat's off to you.   

Thank you for the kind words, much acknowledged.

Regards from Kent Bergstrom. Sweden.

4 hours ago, Felipe Mendes said:

I dont know if there are many Brazilians here at AVSIM, but greetings from one of them!

Quick question, is the Brazilian version of Portuguese a lot different than Portugal Portuguese?

Or is it like English vs. American English = "colour" vs. "color".

2 hours ago, Mace said:

Quick question, is the Brazilian version of Portuguese a lot different than Portugal Portuguese?

Or is it like English vs. American English = "colour" vs. "color".

Well, the accent is very, very different, but i belive most of the words have the same meaning. We have a big portuguese community here in Brazil, i've spoken with many of them and we can perfectly understand each other. I heard once, and i don't doubt that, is that our portuguese is a little more complicated to write. We have a word (ç) and a lot of other rules that is very unusual in other languages, and make things harder to learn

On 12/12/2021 at 6:35 PM, David Mills said:

As someone who speaks only one language, I must express my admiration for the many of you multilingual simmers. The topics and terminology used throughout this forum are particularly exacting in terms of the linguistic skills necessary to communicate a message or ask a question or offer a response. I personally can't imagine doing so in a second language. Even the MSFS development team itself is largely composed of multilingual individuals. Many -- perhaps most -- of the best and most helpful contributors to this forum live in non-English-speaking countries. Yet we completely fail to appreciate that, for our own benefit, they communicate in English so that those of us of lesser linguistic flexibility can benefit from their flight sim knowledge. So I just want to say "Thank You" to all you non-native English-speaking simmers, who communicate so graciously in a second language for the benefit of all in this forum. My hat's off to you.   

Thank you so mich for those kind words, David ! People like you make the difference in this forum and on our planet.

God bless you and your family!

Carsten

Well said, I will appreciate their posts more now that you have reminded us of this fact. I too only speak English and always have huge respect (and envy!) of my multilingual friends. 

I tried, I really tried hard in school for French but it was never my strongpoint and I called it a day. 

On 12/16/2021 at 6:31 AM, udidwht said:

Doubtful...

3 sets of characters Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana and (Kanji) alone has over 50,000 characters itself. And then there is the dialect itself which differs from one Japan region to another. Both my kids have managed to master the language (speaking as well as writing) what took me decades only to find myself forgetting a large portion of it.

As a self-effacing Glaswegian, I was being a wee bit tongue in cheek! 😜🙇‍♂️

I have been in Japan for over 25 years and passed a "3000 kanji" proficiency test about 12 years ago. The pass rate for native speakers (or "writers" is about 10%). People thought I was a weirdo! They weren't wrong. 🤣

I sometimes hear the number of 50,000 for kanji, and some of my older dictionaries might have something near that! In a parallel life, I would love to quit my job and live devote more time to learning them, however useless they may be! 😄

Nice to hear from another language fan! Have a nice weekend!