Skip to content

language

Japanese is Biased Against Beginners

As I have been learning Japanese, one observation keeps coming to mind, one I can’t shake: Japanese is incredible, amazingly, spectacularly biased against beginners. What I mean is this: when you start learning Japanese, there is a hump. The hump seems almost insurmountable. You have to learn an entirely new way of thinking about language – the grammar is exactly backwards from English, there are several different writing systems that are completely unfamiliar, and (at least for any practical purpose) you have to learn them quickly, because you’re not going… Read More »Japanese is Biased Against Beginners

Drinking From the Firehose

I have been learning Japanese now for a little over a year. One the one hand, I know more than I did. I can put together basic sentences, I know probably a thousand words (a hodgepodge of adjectives, nouns, verbs, and things I picked up from variety shows and songs), and I think a fair assessment of my skills right now is that I could probably find my way around Tokyo if I needed to. I am very familiar with hiragana and katakana, and I even know a few kanji,… Read More »Drinking From the Firehose

Japanese Does Get Easier

So the final grades are in.  I got a 91%.  I would have gotten higher but sensei dinged me on participation.  I’m not sure why, but the difference between 91 and 98 percent is really just ego, to be honest.  So I’ve let it go. Japanese is an interesting language – it has a very, very high initial learning curve.  It’s intimidating as heck and it’s hard to even know where to start – because you have to learn several entirely new writing systems before you can even start doing… Read More »Japanese Does Get Easier

Class is over

Last night I tool the final exam for the Japanese class I’ve been taking for three months.  I learned a lot.  I’m pretty sure I passed with an A (or at the very worst a B).  I feel like I have a better foundation than I did when starting the class. I am not taking Japanese II for the time being. I have felt uncomfortable in a college setting from the very beginning, and there were many reasons for that.  A relatively large percentage of the students there were teenagers,… Read More »Class is over

How did the skit turn out?

Pretty well. The constraints were, we had to use introduction phrases, speak relatively fluently, and make sensei laugh.  So early on, we came up with the idea of a doctor and patient.  My partner was the doctor, and I was the patient.  I had not filled out the forms and she kept asking me questions while I asked for help. The kicker was that the questions got more and more absurd the longer we went on. Towards the end, she asked my cats’ names (Inoki Antonio, Abe Shinzo, Takahashi Minami,… Read More »How did the skit turn out?

This should be easy.

Here’s the thing about Japanese:  It should be easy.  It’s not really a hard language, to be honest.  It seems like one, but that’s only because I feel we approach it in exactly the wrong way.  If you try to memorize it, you’ll kinda fail, or it’ll be at least a lot harder than it needs to be. The trick to learning Japanese is to accept it for exactly what it is, and leave all of your English preconceptions at the door.  Japanese is difficult only because we can’t let go of… Read More »This should be easy.

One third through…

Tomorrow is the first of four big tests in Japanese class (there are three tests and a final exam).  I must say that I’m dreading it, even though I’m pretty sure I have a lot of it down.  I wonder if it’s enough. Last week I was sick with a cold and I hardly studied at all.  I rather miss being able to study at my own pace, and I’m not entirely sure that the structure is helping me.  It’s not hurting, don’t get me wrong!, but I feel like… Read More »One third through…

The Most Important Thing

Every now and then, I take a step back and try to reassess where I am and what I’m trying to accomplish, but even more importantly, how to get where I want to be. And frankly, there’s a lot of noise, and not much of it is helpful. I’m on several sites. Each one of which claims that they all I’ll need to get fluent, which is essentially a lie with a little bit of truth. But they only teach the mechanics. Even if I were to be fluent mechanically,… Read More »The Most Important Thing

Japanese Class: Day 5

Tonight was day five of the Japanese class I am attending at Austin Community College, and I have decidedly mixed feelings about it. On the positive side, I am learning stuff, and I get to practice speaking a little.  And I am learning things I didn’t know. On the negative side, it’s going very slow, and the process of learning is not in the way I learn the best.  Honest truth is, I do best when I’m exploring, and this is very structured and rigid.  I understand that that’s to be expected… Read More »Japanese Class: Day 5

Patterns

One of the phrases that I am required to know for Japanese class is “nanimo kakanaide kudasai”.  It means “Please don’t write anything”. I could have just memorized it, but I find that really difficult.  So instead I broke it apart into its components. First I saw “nai”, which I know is a negative.  I looked up “naide” and found that is a command word meaning “don’t do whatever it is”.  First thing I learned, stashed away for future use.  I saw that it also has a similar word, “nasai”,… Read More »Patterns