My text books...so expensive! 
This is some Hiragana which is an alphabet used to spell out both Japanese and English words. Then there is Katakana (similar to Hirigana in that its an alphabet), Kanji (Chinese characters) and Romanji to learn (Romanji is writting in roman characters so that's the easiest and what I already kinda know) How I am going to remember all of that I don't know. It would have been easier to learn this in Japan but I was too busy having fun. The problem was all my Japanese friends wanted to speak English with me to practice, so I never had to learn much Japanese. My Canadian housemate on the other hand lived in the country for 1 year so he had to learn Japanese to survive as no one spoke English. He told me he learnt by watching Japanese TV. Maybe I'll watch stuff on youtube to practice. I can't wait till I can read all of my Japanese magazines and not just look at the pictures (well I can read the word for shampoo and conditioner, I had to learn that so I didn't accidentally shampoo my hair when it was time to condition) I know its going to take longer then 4 weeks to learn a language, but this is an intensive course. By the end of it I should be able to read at a 4 year olds level which is more than I can now! Next semester I am taking Japanese language 2 so by the end of the year hopefully I can read and write as an 8 year old, exciting.Wish me luck.
***Fashion posts to resume Friday with my planned big post that is taking a while to put together***
がんばって Hayley!
ReplyDeletemy eyes have just popped out of my head trying to understand...good luckxxxx
ReplyDeleteIts not as hard as it looks Hayley! Its the Kanji that takes years to learn! Good luck anyway, I'm sure you'll be fine. Japanese is not a difficult language to learn when compared to Chinese and Arabic, so that should put you at ease...I hope!
ReplyDeleteI watch some Japanese tv on satellite here in London, I got it initially to watch Arabic and French tv and then paid to get NHK and it helps a lot. So i'm sure you tube will help too. Another good thing is Japanesepod101.com on itunes. you can download lessons for free and its great to hear conversations on the go. I am flying to Germany in a few hours (for the day) and will be taking my ipod with Japanesepod101.com on it. Give it a try! (they also teach slang etc.)
Best of luck X
Haha, it is not as hard as you might think. And by the way, it is katakana, which is used for transcribing foreign languages into Japanese scriptum. Kanjis are the only thing you might have to worry about, but even without them you can get away with it easily. You might not be able to read the menu, but.... whatevs, haha! Good luck.
ReplyDeleteHm, and I think Chinese is much easier, considering grammar. There are more Kanjis of course, but if you kind of get their system, it is all ok.
i totally SUCK at kanji. It's really hard to pick up.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty good at hiragana and katakana though.
I'm so glad I'm learning jap in school right now.
Study hard hayley! I'm sure you'll be (near) fluent in no time. :D
do you go to VU? i think i may have seen you in the lift once, hmmm.
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone for your encouragement!
ReplyDeleteOh and the_kitten, just after I wrote that we had a class explaining the difference and I realised I had it wrong here...oops!
Pam, yeah I go to VU. Do you have a blog?