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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 833255" data-attributes="member: 63">Funny no one has mentioned any Middle Eastern or African languages yet, or at least I haven't seen them mentioned.  I, for one, would love to learn Arabic one day; it's just so pretty.I'm studying Japanese now, and really, the characters ain't that hard, since at least 'Nihongo' (as Japanese is called in Japan [Japan itself is called Nihon {I can't understand why English decided to change the names of places, like Deutschland}]) has letters.  Sure, there are two separate alphabets for if you're speaking native words or foreign words, but at least you can spell things phonetically.  I don't see the real value of having 30-stroke kanji to write words that can be spelled with 10 strokes worth of letters, but at least it saves some space, and is pretty.  Plus it gives me more chances to pull my grade up since we have a kanji quiz every few days.Chinese, though, is tonal, and as far as I know doesn't really have an alphabet, relying just on . . . what are those characters called?  They're the same thing as Japanese kanji pretty much, but there's a lot more of them, I'm sure.I recall reading that there is a language with three different "t" sounds.  Try to say "Tom is taking a taxi," but for the first 't,' put your tongue near your teeth.  For the second, have it in the middle of your palate, and for the third, have it at the back of your mouth.  I can't tell the difference myself, but my ears haven't been trained for it.  I guess it's similar to Japanese people having a hard time with words like "Strength" or "McDonalds."Suturengutsu = Strength.Makudonarudozu = McDonalds.Then again, I also originally had a hard time with the difference between Oishii and Oishi, and properly pronouncing 'tsu,' but I've rambled enough for one evening.  Goodnight.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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