Friday TeaDay 2/4/11 Language barrier collapse?

[Chip]

I have many times considered it, but unless I would be conversing on a daily basis, it would be virtually impossible for me to fully grasp Japanese or a Chinese dialect. So, maybe that is just an excuse, but for now I settle with learning tea/teaware related terms as many of us do.

Great TD began with the virtual last of Kumpu from Ippodo with the Mrs. Then some dribs and drabs of leftover sencha that have been hanging around way too long. Last up, Musashi from O-Cha

[AdamMY]

Oddly enough I took a semester of Japanese while I was just getting into tea, but long before I started drinking the copious amounts of Japanese Tea I do, or before I started collecting Japanese Ceramics.

Perhaps because I have studied it for a semester, I think Japanese is much more accessible than Chinese, in part because it has (two) phonetic alphabet's so to speak, which cover all the sounds in their language, so it is somewhat easier to become speaking/listening fluent in Japanese, and be able to write half decently. The real problem comes from building up the list of Chinese Characters to make your writing look standard.

Chinese seems so incredibly foreign to me, in writing and pronunciation (tonal, and inflections).

[nickE]

I would love to learn Chinese, but I doubt that it will ever happen.

American Hao 1005 ripe yesterday.

[the_economist]

im supposed to have learnt mandarin but really suck at it still. tea is motivating me to read more articles in mandarin though

[IPT]

Tea is one of the major deciding factors in my moving to China, so I guess you could say I learned Chinese because of Tea.