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漢字

Kanji makes it easier?

One of the assignments given to us by sensei was to do a skit where we have to make up and memorize our lines.  I’m finding this very difficult and am rather annoyed by the whole idea. Okay, “rather annoyed” is something of an understatement.  I’m closer to “royally pissed” on the scale, I think. But it is what it is, and I have a partner I can’t let down, so here we go. Anyway, as I’m studying, I have found that one of the biggest obstacles to my memorization… Read More »Kanji makes it easier?

Still plugging along…

I feel as if, if I even come close to mastering Japanese, I’ll be able to learn any other language I want.  Japanese is hard. Crazy hard. But I keep encountering ways to look at it that make it easier, and sometimes it feels like you just kind of have to luck your way into learning these things, as there seems to be nowhere that has everything you need in one place.  Every site or book seems to have parts of it, but you have to spend months just piecing… Read More »Still plugging along…

What Exactly are Kanji?

I think one of the most difficult things for a westerner to wrap their minds around is kanji. I don’t mean memorizing the kanji or their readings, but exactly what they are in the first place. We think of them as words, but I don’t really think that’s what they are, not really.  I think they are, instead, concepts, and those concepts are represented as logographs.  But I think you don’t really directly translate a kanji.  I think you take the concept that the kanji represents, crystallize a contextual meaning… Read More »What Exactly are Kanji?

A Post About Actually Learning Japanese

After all of the posts about Japanese culture I’ve been spewing forth, I thought I’d write one about actually learning Japanese. I finally found a tool that I actually like, and I finally feel like I’m actually learning things. Putting the effort into learning hiragana and katakana has been completely invaluable.  I say this because it underpins absolutely everything else, and I think that this is probably the first thing that needs to be done – before kanji, before pronunciation, before everything.  Because it makes everything past that so much… Read More »A Post About Actually Learning Japanese