Today’s post isn’t going to be about Japanese at all, though I might find a way to fit it in. I do have a Japanese post waiting in the wings, but I think I want to discuss something else. If you would like a Japanese post, please skip this one, and the next one will be about Japanese. If you just want to unfollow me, well, go for it, I guess. I have been on this planet for somewhere around forty-five years, and I have seen some crazy stuff. I… Read More »Speaking Out
One of the more frustrating things about Japanese to a beginner is the multiple levels of politeness. At first glance they seem completely foreign, but I really don’t think they are. It’s baked into English as well, it’s just not so much a grammatical construct as a manner of speaking. Contrast, for example, Greetings, I would like to inquire as to the report dated 11/15/2019, and await your reply forthwith. with Yo, dawg, you got that report or no? The first example is intentionally pretentious, but you get the idea. … Read More »Politeness
Over the past year or so, I’ve become something of a fan of Babymetal. This may seem odd to people who know me, because I’m a classically trained musician, and I find most metal to be just people making noise, loudly. But Babymetal has proven to be an exception. There is a particular characteristic of classical music, in my view: it’s all perfect. As I’ve mentioned, I’m a huge fan of romantic era piano concertos (Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, etc.) and I’ve come to believe that every one of them is perfect,… Read More »Babymetal
I think every country has something I call “cultural neuroses” – or at least I started to about twenty seconds ago. Something in the culture that lives deep inside the cultural zeitgeist and underlies invisible assumptions that a culture makes. In my opinion, this is one of the primary reasons to learn a foreign language – but for two reasons, not one. One reason is to try to see the cultural neuroses in other cultures that are invisible to them. And another is to try to see the cultural neuroses in… Read More »Cultural Neuroses
I have been on Wanikani for a few months now. I am taking the lessons very slowly so that I don’t get overwhelmed. It’s funny – every time I learn a new kanji or a new pronunciation, I think “how am I going to remember that?” And then, a month later, I look at it and it pops to mind, completely unbidden, the moment I look at the word. So I think the harder you work at Japanese, the more you’ll seem to advance, and the quicker you forget. It seems… Read More »Working Hard at Japanese Doesn’t Work.
Let’s face it. As a Japanese learner, Kanji are intimidating. They are this set of pictographs that really seem to have nothing to do with anything, each of them have a whole bunch of readings, all of which apply only in specific contexts. There is a sentence: 明日は日曜日です Where the same kanji appears three times, has two different readings, and two and a half different pronunciations (one of them is in a word that has a reading that only applies across the entire word – there is no specific reading… Read More »The Intimidation Factor of Kanji
Here is a secret about me: I did not actually go to traditional high school. I was home-schooled. My feelings about home-schooling, based upon my experience, are decidedly mixed, and lean negative, but that’s not a discussion I want to get into here. One of the things that has haunted me through most of my life was the feeling that I had major gaps in my education. I think perhaps one of the reasons that my interests are so varied and diverse is a subconscious desire to close those gaps. … Read More »Education Gaps
I have been blogging in one form or another for about twenty or twenty-five years now. I was blogging back when the only way you could blog was mark up the HTML yourself and put it on a static page, then manually link to it. Then WordPress came out and made it easier, and there are a few other blogging platforms that are probably better in one way or other. I blog because I am curious and I like to share my curiosity. I am, if not educated, at least… Read More »Why I Blog.
I am a computer engineer. Before I learned Japanese, I have learned about sixteen different computer languages to a degree of proficiency with which I can make production applications out of them. In doing so, I realized that there are features every language that runs on a procedural basis will have, and each language implements these using a slightly different syntax. The same thing is essentially true with human languages: why do all languages have essentially the same underlying conceptual structure, and only differ by means of vocabulary and grammar? … Read More »Multithreading
I don’t often pay attention to the stats on this blog. Quite frankly, I write because I want to. I have no illusions that I’ll ever be able to monetize this, and I have never sought to. If this blog ever gains enough popularity that I can try other projects I’ve been meaning to, perhaps then I can at least recoup the cost of hosting it, but as for right now, I’m not concerned with it. But that said, tonight I looked at the stats, and this month has been… Read More »Thanksgiving