Friday TeaDay 2/4/11 Language barrier collapse?

[Chip]

Good TeaDay everyone, and welcome to a new TeaDay filled with lots of good tea. Please stop in and share what is in your cup throughout the day.

Yesterday we discussed drinking Chinese teas for the Chinese New Year. You can still vote and discuss yesterday's topic.

Today's TeaPoll and discussion topic. Has your enjoyment of tea caused you to consider learning its origins' languages? Please share.

We are looking forward to sharing our TeaDays. Bottoms up.

[Poohblah]

learning mandarin at university now

[auhckw]

Learned chinese in private tuition during my younger schooling days, but have forgotten 90% (read/write)...

[Trey Winston]

Considered: yes. Done anything remotely related to it: no. Going to do it: very unlikely.
I understand that learning Chinese is insanely difficult, what with the tones and the demanding script and so on. I would like to know it, but I'm not keen on learning it. Serious respect to those who actually learn it.

Having some Dragon Well now.

[Nenugal]

I'm trying to learn some basic tea names and expressions in Chinese and Japanese, and my Chinese officemates and friends are more than willing to help me by letting me know when I'm pronouncing Chinese tea-names wrong

[el gringo]

I've only picked up a few bits here and there. I'd love to learn Japanese, but I really don't see it ever happening as I am way too lazy.

Unfortunately the only Japanese I know comes from tea and kendo and I'm not sure they come in normal conversion very often!

[JBaymore]

Tea, ceramics, and cultural interests all lead me to study Japanese a bit. でもわたしの日本語がとてもへたですよ。

best,

..............john

[Xell]

For me it's a bit opposite, started learning language and only after moving i got addicted to japanese green tea Sadly, i'm still far from speaking fluently. I'm lazy, when it comes to a lot of practice.

[brandon]

I am TeaFluent in 3 languages!

[karmaplace]

I said, "Yes, and a little," but, like Xell, I'm a bit opposite. I was an East Asian Studies major in college, and studied Japanese for two years and Korean for three. I didn't become interested in tea until my senior year (while I was in the US), but from this forum I've picked up a lot of the Japanese vocabulary, and then used it to find the Korean vocabulary for tea and tea related items. So, I've learned a lot of new Korean tea-related vocabulary since coming back, thanks to my love for tea.

Raspberry oolong today.

[brlarson]

I would be interested in learning Japanese, but there are a few languages that would have a higher priority in my to-be-learned queue which I could use for business.

Hou de's shui xian again this morning.

[artmom]

Considered, yes; done, no. Do enjoy reading about the different cultures and the tea, though.

Japanese black today; I forget how strong that tea is and I need to cut back on the ratio of tea to water!!!!

[gingkoseto]

I don't know. As much as I want to learn, Fujianese is impossible to me. I feel I would need a plastic surgery on my tongue to be able to pronounce Cantonese is slightly easier, but really only slightly. I can understand like 10% of it

[entropyembrace]

Not really thought about it....Im more focused on trying to reach a basic conversational level in Spanish...which is hard enough and it´s part of the same language group as my native language!

[brad4419]

I signed up to take Chinese 1 this quarter but droped it halfway through the first class. Foreign languages are just not my subject. Maybe someday I will have more time to learn Chinese and/or Japanese.