Russian or Japanese.. need a new language

[kats0]

I'm currently looking for a new language to learn, that might have the potential of making me a bit more competitive on the job market. I have considered several languages, including brushing up on my Spanish or German, but I believe that it would be safer to pick a language that is not [closesly] related to any of the languages I know so far. The languages I've been considering most over the past few months, are Russian and Japanese.

As far as Japananese goes, what I'm mostly interested in is being able to carry on a decent conversation with Japanese people, since I know the language is really hard for anything more than that, and currently I just don't have a lot of time on my hands. My aim would be at knowing the language well enough to be able to have both casual and business conversations, and get around in the country. So I am not interested in being able to read scientific magazines or novels (yes, I have read noir's rant on Japanese, hence ). I would just prefer to have a good and functional command of the language.

I have a few questions left about Japanese:

• How useful do you believe the language is in international business? (if you have any experience in that field) E.g. as opposed to, say, Mandarin Chinese, or German?
• Is a command of Japanese helpful when traveling in Korea, China or other East Asian countries?
• Since my interest is mostly on being able to have conversations and for business purposes, does it suffice to learn only the kana?
• Is there any way to get a certificate to prove that you have a certain degree of proficiency in Japanese, without knowing the Kanji? (I know that to pass the JLPT, one must study Kanji also)
• Does Japanese demand a huge amount of vocabulary to learn?

On to Russian. I am already familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet and the concept of grammatical cases. Russian doesn't have a reputation of being easy, but I am fairly certain it's not nearly as difficult as Japanese, simply due to its simpler writing system and the fact that it's closer to English, French or German. If I choose Russian, I would aim at developing conversational skills, but I'd also very much like to be able to read the language (e.g. newspapers) and maybe some literary works as well. Here are a few more questions:

• How useful is Russian, really? Especially in business?
• Does Russian have many irregularities in its grammar (e.g. verb conjugation)?
• How long does it take to reach a decent level of proficiency, say, about mid-intermediate?
• Is there a huge gap between literary or formal Russian, and the spoken language, as appears to be the case with Japanese?
• Does Russian require a huge amount of vocabulary to get by?

I would very much appreciate if you could help me out on this one. Any additional thoughts are welcome.

Thank you.

[Trapy]

Go for Japanese if you want to live there (note: live not work), and get into the whole high-tech or auto industries. I say live, because you kinda need it to live there, but not necessarily work. Japanese will be very impressed if you learn their language. It's hard, but that's not it. Any new language can be hard. They'll be impressed because they'll honestly believe that you can't speak it without Japanese blood in you.

-That is a bit of a steryotype, but it's kinda true. What I mean by it is, you'll almost always have an english translator, "just incase you need it" whether you speak it perfectly or not. (this info coming 2nd hand from a collection of Japanese friends, never been to Japan myself).

With Japanese you can at least recognize traditional Chinese characters in Korea and China. For speaking you'll probably be more likely to get around in english, due to all the tech and pop culture cognates.

Russian is easier (Indo-euroness), but what are you going to do with it? Work in Central Asia for gas companies? (which might not be a bad idea, but gas companies have $$$ for local translators) Eastern Europe for Manufacturing? Do you want to live in, say, Moscow, Kiev, or to a much lesser extent, Warsaw/Prague/Belgrade?

Also, most importantly, $$$
Japan has a higher GDP than most of eastern europe and central asia, but, Japan has a lower GDP Growth than those other two in 2007.

While this is a language forum/etc, and we have a bias towards picking the language that you'll LEARN, rather than GIVE UP after 8 months, I would say pick the language of where you want to LIVE in 10 YEARS. 2 years is waaay too optimistic. Maybe, there's a chance, but it'll probably be some internship and pay terribly with no career prospects. 5-10 years is a realistic time span.

[Karavinka]

It greatly depends on your current location.

[ILuvEire]

Also, what languages do you already speak? A language like Korean, Mandarin, or even Vietnamese will help you with Japanese. Any Slavic language will probably help you with Russian, as will any agglutinative language (like Finnish, Latin or Latvian).

[kats0]

@ Trapy: Interesting point of view! Thanks for the reply. I'm not in a hurry, and I have enough time left to decide. I will certainly be bearing the points you've made in mind.

@ noir and ILuvEire: I'm located in Western Europe but it's very likely that I will relocate in the (near) future. Most likely to 'North America. As I said, I'm familiar with cases, since I know basic German, so Russian doesn't really scare me off as far as that is concerned. I don't speak any East Asian languages but I'm quite familiar with several of them from some previous self-study and lots of personal research.

I should add that I'm just a student at this time. I'd prefer to work for a large company, so business skills are important to me, but I might just as well end up working for a newspaper or a government agency, etc. What matters to me most is the usefulness and importance of the language. I believe both Russian and Japanese are important, though each in a different way.

Japanese is not that important in global organizations, for instance, but it can be very useful in business since Japan is the 2nd or 3rd largest economy. And it is important due to Japan's influence in the East Asian region. Russia is nowhere near Japan or Korea's economic and technological standards, but I suppose I might add: "yet", since it may be at some point in the not so distant future. It is in any case important enough from a geopolitical point of view, and I think on a global level.

Both countries and their inhabitants interest me more or less equally.

[Zorba]

How useful is Russian, really? Especially in business?

It depends what type of industry you're in and how good your Russian is. Knowledge of any language won't clinch you a job in business, but it might be an advantage and you might get to use it in your job. Or you might not. Of course, you've got to get to the stage where you're pretty fluent before it counts for anything. But I think you have to look at it this way: think of your Russian or Japanese as an added bonus on your CV, not what will pre-determine the job you can get. Don't suppose that learning Russian will open up magic doors to jobs where you'll be speaking lots of Russian.

How long does it take to reach a decent level of proficiency, say, about mid-intermediate?

About three years of serious study, preferably including some time spent in a Russian-speaking country.

Is there a huge gap between literary or formal Russian, and the spoken language, as appears to be the case with Japanese?

No.

Does Russian require a huge amount of vocabulary to get by?

The problem isn't in the amount of vocabulary required, but rather in the difficulty learning the vocabulary, but you'll know about obscure vocabulary if you're familiar with Asian languages. For an English-speaker, expect Russian vocabulary to be signficantly harder to learn than French/German/Spanish: e.g. "liberation" is "liberation" in French, "liberacio'n" in Spanish, but "освобождение" [osvobozhdenie] in Russian.

[Preno]

I have no idea how useful the two are in business, but if I were deciding between these two, the fact that you only get to use Japanese in Japan, while you can get by with Russian in pretty much the whole post-Soviet bloc and some of its neighbours would probably be a big factor. I guess it also depends on what places you would like to visit in the long-term - if you ever see yourself travelling to Ukraine, Central Asia, Mongolia, Caucasus,..., for example.

[kats0]

Zorba and Preno, thanks both for your answers to my questions and comments regarding Russian.

I fully agree with Zorba's take on this - I'm not expecting my new language skills to make me a millionaire and provide me the "perfect" job. I simply want to learn an additional language to add a more competitive edge to my cv. And of course also just because I may find it personally rewarding and enriching in many other ways.

I'm interested in various industries, including but not limited to natural resources (oil, gas, etc), and technology (esp. computer-related, security, aerospace, etc). Not manufacturing or retail though.

I am currently thinking more in the direction of Japanese. It might be a good choice for anything related to technology and electronics. And even though Japanese is only spoken in one country, it has a sizable population, and it is a country that will remain very influential in the East Asian region. I can also identify more with Japan than Russia in some ways. Language-wise, I think I will just follow the JLPT guidelines and study the Kanji at my own pace. I'm not in a hurry anyway.

Russian should have some degree of usefulness in the oil/gas business, and one of the things that make it so attractive is that it is spoken in so many countries. In addition, it is also very important from a geopolitical perspective, mostly because of its very oil and gas reserves that especially the EU depends on.

One of the things that scares me about placing my bet on Russian, is that Russia does not seem very stable. It does not seem to have a very business-friendly climate. Consider the nationalisation of many oil and gas companies under the presidency of Putin, for instance. If you look at the degree of economic freedom and its infrastructure, it leaves a lot to wish for. Ditto with regard to political freedom. Then again, China and India have their share of problems in these matters as well. But at least the political situation seems more stable, and less hostile, from my perspective.

One problem both Japan and Russia have in common is their aging populations. If Russia wants to be able to compete with the US, the EU or China, it had better liberalize its economy instead of relying solely on oil and gas for revenue. I think Russia's aging of its population will destabilize the country. In the case of Japan, it's probably less likely to cause destabilization since it doesn't have any significant ethnic minority groups that grow faster than the ethnic Japanese, which could lead to clashes.

But anyway, this is mostly speculation of course, and perhaps getting a bit off-topic. I'm interested in these sorts of things though.

Any thoughts, ideas, comments or answers that can help me in choosing a new language, are welcome !

Thanks.

[Karavinka]

If you're interested in reading technical documents (which will inevitably be a part of your job if you work in that field, even if not as a developer) then Japanese can be as useful as English. Sheer number of technical writings done in and translated into Japanese makes it worth learning for engineers and the computer science students. (Though, not a necessity if you already have a good command of reading technical English.)

How useful is Japanese in East Asia? It really depends on what you view as the standard of usefulness. Of course, Japan is a major economic/financial/trading hub of the pacific rim, but you would be wrong if you think you could do with Japanese in the business sectors of China or Korea. The usefulness of Japanese would be greatly reduced unless you work in a Japanese firm or a firm which deals heavily with other Japanese firms. Your edge in Japanese may even disappear if you actually locate yourself in an Asian country other than Japan; there are tons of Korean-Japanese or Chinese-Japanese bilinguals.

Whatever is the industry you're looking for, learning Japanese gives you the most advantage if you work in Japan. This in itself is not a bad idea, their firms are among the best in the world, and the experience you get there will remain a significant portion of your CV.



(Btw, as a student of Japanese in North America, I found this language absolutely useless.)

[kats0]

Hey noir, interesting reply. Never really considered living in Japan for some time and working for a Japanese company there. I must admit it's not really what I had learning Japanese in mind for, but it's an interesting idea.

How come you've found Japanese totally useless so far? I take it you mean you'd have to live in Australia or New Zealand to make any profit out of your Japanese abilities, without having to actually move over to Japan?

I must say I'm totally clueless now. Making this decision is a whole lot more difficult than I had anticipated. I will have to think some things over and decide what I really want out of learning Russian or Japanese. Which is okay, since I have more pressing things going on right now and I can afford putting this on hold for a while.

In the meantime, anyone, feel free to share your thoughts.

[ILuvEire]

How come you've found Japanese totally useless so far? I take it you mean you'd have to live in Australia or New Zealand to make any profit out of your Japanese abilities, without having to actually move over to Japan?

Japan hasn't had any huge mass migrations over to the USA/N.America any time recently. I have met quite a few Japanese immigrants, but they all spoke perfect English, or refused to talk to me in Japanese.

[Nero]

Japanese: for this reason.

[BezierCurve]

Japanese: for this reason.

That's a huge advantage. I have no knowledge of Japanese and so I didn't get it. What was he trying to do with that broomstick? Clean up the sky or pull down the sun???

[ILuvEire]

Personally, if I were in your shoes, I'd choose Japanese. Japan seems on its way to being a major world power, where as Russia seems to be going the other way...

[kats0]

I recall a question that was posed on Yahoo! Answers that was similar to mine, where a person asked which might make a good additional language for business. This person spoke Mandarin and English natively. One of the answers was that he/she already knew the business language par excellence, English obviously, and that of one of the fastest growing economies on earth. In other words: "why bother?!"

Perhaps I needn't have worried so much about the usefulness of my target languages in business myself, since I already speak the most important business languages to varying degrees. Brushing up on or perfecting my current language abilities might be a much better choice as far as business skills go.

I must say that what really motivated me to consider learning an additional language is not so much its usefulness in business, but rather its geopolitical importance - which usually implies a degree of economical importance as well of course. From that point of view, I have always believed Russian to make most sense, but being rather biased toward East Asia due to my fondness of that region, and Japan's regional importance and status as a highly developed economic powerhouse, you can probably understand my reluctance to choose Russian.

On a more practical note, I simply lack both time and energy to study the Joyo Kanji using the Heisig method, and learning Japanese vocabulary and grammar in addition to that. I have attempted learning the kana more than once, and even that never quite worked out the way I wanted it to. I just kept mixing them up, and learning the kanji on top of the kana only made that worse. I figure I must lack some brain quirk that is required for Westerners to wrap a gazillion strokes around my head in a matter of a few months to a couple of years.

The advantage of Russian is my familiarity with its system of declensions, and French and German vocabulary. I also know the Cyrillic alphabet. It takes some practise to read it fluently but at least you don't need to study over 2,000 different characters. It may not be as pretty to look at as the Japanese kana and kanji, but at least it's functional, and it definitely makes a heck of a lot more sense to me than mixing four different writing systems.

That being said, it's very likely that I will go for Russian after all. Nevertheless I'm still open to comments, and if you have any good arguments to prove that I really should go for Japanese, feel free to post those.

Note that whatever language I choose in the end, I will have to put it on hold for months to come due to... business. College business. Ugh.

Personally, if I were in your shoes, I'd choose Japanese. Japan seems on its way to being a major world power, where as Russia seems to be going the other way...

Could you elaborate a bit on why you think that, please?

[ILuvEire]

On a more practical note, I simply lack both time and energy to study the Joyo Kanji using the Heisig method, and learning Japanese vocabulary and grammar in addition to that. I have attempted learning the kana more than once, and even that never quite worked out the way I wanted it to. I just kept mixing them up, and learning the kanji on top of the kana only made that worse. I figure I must lack some brain quirk that is required for Westerners to wrap a gazillion strokes around my head in a matter of a few months to a couple of years.

It's not that you can't you just need to learn the way they teach the children. Start off with Hiragana, when you become proficient move on to Katakana. All through this time you can study some basic kanji. The first 300 aren't too complicated.

Once you get a good feel for Hiragana and Katakana you can easily tell them apart, as well as tell them away from kanji (okay, not all kanji...ロ means Ro as katakana, but mouth as a kanji).

Personally, if I were in your shoes, I'd choose Japanese. Japan seems on its way to being a major world power, where as Russia seems to be going the other way...

Could you elaborate a bit on why you think that, please?

Japan has the 2nd largest economy in the world.

Japan's main exports are transportation equipment, motor vehicles, electronics, electrical machinery and chemicals.[50]

All things that won't be in short supply anytime soon.

Plus, Japanese is grammatically more interesting to me than Russian. Russian is so...indo-european. Learning Japanese I've discovered tons of new grammatical concepts. And it's very interesting to look at such a largely different culture.

[hashi]

From my point of view, (especially as I do live in New Zealand), I would say Japanese. It is significantly harder in SOME respects, but Russian isn't as simple as a walk in the park either and (especially in New Zealand), Japanese will pay off alot more. Put it this way, here, every university offers Japanese (theres even one just for Japanese) but only one offers Russian as a SIDE course to enrich the main focus (I can't remember exactly what that is). Russian might be easier for you however, knowing German as you've said.

[kats0]

I have just deleted my previous post. I will explain why.

I can basically make a strong case for either of the languages. One moment I favor Japanese, but the next moment I'm convinced that Russian is the best choice, and so on. Not only that, but I might just as well decide not to go for another language after all, and just stick to the languages I already know and keep improving on or brushing them up.

I will definitely need some more time to figure this one out and think about what I really want to achieve, why, and whether it's possible and worth the effort. In the meantime, I will probably just keep on learning the kana as I had been doing. If in the end I decide to go for Japanese, I will already know the kana. If not, I will still be able to boast that I can write Japanese... NOT

Feel free to write down your own thoughts if it adds to the discussion. Thanks!

[polishboy]

* How useful do you believe the language is in international business? (if you have any experience in that field) E.g. as opposed to, say, Mandarin Chinese, or German?
I think when doing bussiness in Japan, many Koreans and Chiense learn it too though, but maybe it would be strange if you try to talk in Japanese to Chinese, I don't know.

* Is a command of Japanese helpful when traveling in Korea, China or other East Asian countries?
Many people there learn it.
* Since my interest is mostly on being able to have conversations and for business purposes, does it suffice to learn only the kana?
But kanji is all the sugar, is it not?
* Is there any way to get a certificate to prove that you have a certain degree of proficiency in Japanese, without knowing the Kanji? (I know that to pass the JLPT, one must study Kanji also)
* Does Japanese demand a huge amount of vocabulary to learn?
I read much more than English, in English you use 2 000 words in daily conversation, but in Japanese 10 000.



* How useful is Russian, really? Especially in business?
I think useful, especially in post-soviet union, and Eastern Europe.
* Does Russian have many irregularities in its grammar (e.g. verb conjugation)?
It seems so.
* How long does it take to reach a decent level of proficiency, say, about mid-intermediate?
it may be long.
* Is there a huge gap between literary or formal Russian, and the spoken language, as appears to be the case with Japanese?
no, they don't have "classical Russian".
* Does Russian require a huge amount of vocabulary to get by?
I think not so many...
Maybe like Polish.

[ILuvEire]

Also, he (she?) decided to pick Russian. She (he?) said that on the Japanese forum.