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NTREEG (Offline)
JF Regular
 
Posts: 49
Join Date: May 2008
12-27-2009, 11:48 AM

That all depends on where you're planning to move to...Japan or China? Where I lived in the USA, there was no need for either of the languages in my line of work. Of course moving to one of those countries changes all that.

If you're going to learn a foreign language anyways, there's nothing compelling you to stop at just one. Spend a couple years, learn one, then spend a couple years and learn the other. If you have the opportunity, I strongly encourage studying actually in your target country if at all possible. Your language ability will improve by leaps and bounds from the immersion and being forced to use it everyday.

No matter which language you choose to tackle, I suggest learning the written forms (especially kanji) as early on as possible. There's a kind of feedback loop that happens when you learn kanji. Your vocabulary starts to grow from learning kanji. And in turn, as your vocabulary grows it becomes easier to learn and remember new kanji you see in kanji compound words if you already know one of the characters. Kanji knowledge and vocabulary reinforce each other so it'll be better in the long run to start learning them as soon as possible.
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