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Japanese class – second day

Today was the second day of the Japanese class, and we hit the ground running. Most of the practice I’m going to need to do over the next few days is writing.  I need to practice writing some of the hiragana, even though I can recognize almost all of them by sight.  I can’t really write them.  So it’s good practice and I don’t mind doing it.  The rest of the stuff is really easy – or more accurately, stuff I already learned – so it’s really not going to… Read More »Japanese class – second day

Gauging Progress

The very first thing I watched in Japanese – and the thing that made me feel like I wanted to learn it, was this video: It is a rather cute video of a bunch of Morning Musume girls (this was 13 years ago!) taking a faux English lesson. When I first watched this video, I was highly dependent on the subtitles.  By “highly dependent”, I mean that everything they were saying was, to me, utter gibberish.  You might as well have tossed me in front of a charismatic speaking in… Read More »Gauging Progress

Japanese Class: 1st day.

Today was the first day of Japanese class at Austin Community College.  For many reasons, I will avoid any mention of the other people in the class, other than to say there were other people in the class of varying ages, backgrounds and knowledge of Japanese.  As expected. As for me, it is clear that there are gaping holes in my knowledge.  In my “introduction” (which I absolutely, positively, did not want to do) I said that I “know enough to be dangerous” – and I feel that more strongly… Read More »Japanese Class: 1st day.

Syllables

There are about a hundred syllables in Japanese, give or take. I looked up today how many syllables there are in English, and the answer, apparently, is 15,381. I think this gets to one of the roots of why Japanese is a difficult language to master for English speakers, and English is a difficult language to master for Japanese speakers.  Japanese syllables are always pronounced the same way.  It’s true that they might run together and thus make slightly different sounds in practice, like あい sounding a little like the English… Read More »Syllables

What is Missing in Japanese Language Education

I have been thinking a bit about why Japanese is so seemingly difficult to English-speakers such as myself.  I’ve made a few other posts on this topic, but I think they were all skirting around a more fundamental issue. English is a very difficult language, from what I hear.  Of course I’m fluent in it, but that’s because I was raised in the language.  And because of that, there are some things that are pretty obvious that may not be obvious to a foreign language speaker.  Specifically, some words have… Read More »What is Missing in Japanese Language Education

Prelude

I have purchased the books required to attend the CC Japanese class, and have paid the tuition.  Looks like I’m doing this. The book is “Yookoso 3”, which is horrendously expensive (I got it for about $99 and that’s half the price the bookstore was selling it at), the workbook which is also horrendously expensive (I got it for $80, which was a $40 discount from what the bookstore was selling it), and I didn’t opt for the CDs, as those resources are available online.  So, in total, I would… Read More »Prelude

Counters

Every language has an annoyance. In English, it’s the definite vs. indefinite articles.  I have been told that this is almost impossible for a foreign person to get right, though I don’t see what’s so hard about it.  In Spanish, it’s the conjugations – I like to joke that there’s a special conjugation for something that happens on Tuesday under a full moon.  But I’m only partly joking. There are two things in Japanese.  Wa vs. Ga, and counters. The Japanese counter system is insane.  In case you didn’t know,… Read More »Counters

Wait Just a Kanji-Pickin’ Minute

I realized something today that has been kind of simmering in my consciousness lately, and I’m not quite sure what to make of it. Many words in Japanese are actually compound words.  For example, 美味しい means “delicious”, but the words separately mean something like “beautiful taste”.  電車 means “train” (or that’s how it’s taught in Japanese Level Up), but the kanji separately mean “electric train”.  But 大丈夫 is not really a compound word, it means something entirely different than the three kanji separately would indicate. So is it reasonable to… Read More »Wait Just a Kanji-Pickin’ Minute

Cadence

The fundamental difference between English-like languages and Japanese-like languages is the word order.  The other differences are important, but I think it’s this difference that requires the most change in mindset. English is a prepositional language.  This means that the particle-equivalents come before that which they are to modify.  For example,  “I am going to the store”.  “to”, in this case, is prepositioned – it is positioned before the part of speech that it is going to modify – namely, “the store”. Japanese is a postpositional language.  The particles come after the part of speech… Read More »Cadence

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…