Oops. I guess I need to edit my comments a little more carefully. BTW, when did you pick up Russian? Did you ever live in Russia?

Yeah, I got the Shida and Taida thing after I talked with one of my students and recognized the tai and da characters on the sign for the NTU Hospital.

While I may have schizophrenic tendencies in this regard, I still think I’m pretty much just one person.

I’m thinking of trying to pick up a bit of Japanese as well, and improving what little Spanish I can muster. Russian, I think, is a lost cause. All the fluency I once had has left me, and I don’t see myself using it on a regular basis. It’s kind of too bad; it’s a beautiful language, but the grammar is rather complicated.

I learned that Shida is NTNU and Taida is NTU, right?

That’s right. The only people I ever hear say “NTNU” or “NTU”, though, are Taiwanese people who have an obsession with using no Chinese at all when speaking to a westerner. All my foreign friends at Shida called it Shida, and my friends at Taida called it Taida. So did people on the street. If you say “NTNU” to a normal Taiwanese person, they’ll likely have no idea what the heck you’re talking about. That’s what happened to me during my first week as a student there, at least.

Based on my experience, learning Japanese is way easier than learning Chinese. Maybe even twice as easy. I think you’ll do well.

I actually want to brush up on my German. I’m fluent, but I need to practice it. Once I am back studying, I think it will be easier than right now. We are still adjusting to Taipei.

I learned that Shida is NTNU and Taida is NTU, right?

I might feel a little cool, but I’m surrounded by much cooler people. Just on my blogroll, John, TC, Poagao, Range, and Patrick (the nebulon fry) are all clearly more impressive language students than I am. Additionally Brendan, David, Franc, Darin and Angelica (Battle Panda) have each done much better than I have at at least one language. Actually, I think Brendan’s Chinese ought to count double. At least.

When I first came to Taiwan, reading novels would have been a bit difficult, unless they were online and I could use a tool like Rikai. I was at a level where I could understand news about things I was interested in, such as basketball or computers. I used to watch a lot of Japanese movies before I came here, and that definitely would have been an option, though. Unfortunately, I didn’t do it. So now my Japanese sucks and I can’t make use of those resources… for the time. Lost in Translation was an interesting movie, though.

Is “Taida” Taibei Daxue? National Taiwan University?

Táidà is 台大. That means Táiwān Dàxué, or Taiwan University. Taiwan National University is fine, but everyone I know just calls it Táidà.

Why don’t you read in Japanese for fun? For example Haruki Murakami was such a hit in recent years. You could read his novels in original language. Per my opinion to read in one’s native language after university is just waste of time. Foreign literature offers huge amount of art works and new ideas. What about watching movies? For sure there are a lot of Japanese movies in Taiwan. Probably you could understand Japanese part of ‘Babel’ and ‘Lost in Translations’.

Is “Taida” Taibei Daxue? National Taiwan University?