I joined the PolyCon last year and got so drunk on the first night that I got a serious hangover on the second day TT Probably not going to repeat the same mistake this year!
I did my MA in Linguistics in Japan and worked for a tourism office there for 3 years. Now I’m stuck in Hong Kong teaching Cantonese, Japanese and Thai online. I have learnt many ASEAN languages and am particularly fluent in Thai, Vietnamese and Taglish (not Tagalog haha)
Looking forward to get to know you and exchange ideas and experiences!
Hi~ That’s impressive. I’d love to know how you started and whether knowlegde of a certain language helped you with another one.
I’m August from Vietnam and I’m staying in the US. I’m learning Mandarin now.
Knowledge of Cantonese surely helped me learn Vietnamese. The pronunciation of sino-vietnamese words are really similar to their equivalent in Cantonese. Thai and Lao are very similar too.
Also, many ASEAN languages borrowed words from Sanskrit, that you might come across words that you have already learnt in another ASEAN language.
The relation between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia is like Spanish and Portuguese. There aren’t dialects, but different languages that are very mutually intelligible…
Even closer, in fact. A speaker of standard Bahasa Malaysia can understand 75-80% of standard Bahasa Indonesia. Some linguists even consider official languages of Malaysia and Indonesia as two registers of the Malay language.
Just over 200 years ago, inhabitants of Riau Islands and present-day Kuala Lumpur speak the same language.
