Life: Self-analysis

[Xhell]

Yeah, all those Kanji......seems ridiculous. I hear of Cat's endeavours to claw his way through them, slowly over the course of the easter period (well, revising 200 of them!). One day in the future when I'm somewhat less burdened, I may get one of these "Teach-Yo-Self" packages...

IRT Wise: mhm, that's one of the reasons I like anime....just love the sounds those crazy characters make ^_^

[mrwiseman]

Yeah, girls are so high pitched (I love that) and guys, especially when surprised, excited, angered, etc. are so exaggerated and contrast with the former.

[Cataferal]

IRT Raij - Its hard enough with a teacher, the standard being around 7 years to become an efficient speaker. You really need someone to be there to help you, and show you how to pronounce the words too. As a westerner learning an eastern language, ive come to find out there are some really tricky hurdles to jump regarding the intonation of words. For example, depending on the volume you pronounce the two syllables in the word "hashi", it can either mean "bridge" or it can mean "chopsticks".
Packages and online resources will work for things like kanji revision, but to learn the full language it just wont cut it, sadly.

And yeah, those kanji really take a lot of time to learn. To be a proficient reader in Japan, you need to know around 2000; im learning 200 in one year. If your good at associating shapes with words, then you'll obviously find it a breeze. If not, then you'll be like me, and have to spend around an hour a day learning 10+ new kanji, and then constantly test yourself afterwards.

<font color="#345E81" size="1">[ April 10, 2005 07:47 PM: Message edited by: Cataferal ]</font>

[mrwiseman]

IRT Cata: Well pronunciation will be very easy for me as Japanese sounds surprisingly similar to Spanish (save for a couple consonants and a few simple details, you can read any Japanese text as you would read Spanish right away). Intonation is different; Spanish is like English, although there are a few words with the same phonemes different intonations (e.g. "'porque" = because, "por'qu?" = reason - but you would normally use "raz?n").

I'm bad for anything memory-related except useless facts. How much time in average do you spend learning Japanese in a day? (Counting class time, and study time.)

[Cataferal]

Well, im doing a GCSE (a 2 year course) in just one year, so the difficulty is much greater. I spend 4 hours a week, across two lessons. Homework takes around an hour on average, and you get one per lesson. Kanji tests are every week, so you have to learn 10-18 in what time you have.

However, when i started 3 years ago, it was incredibly incredibly basic, and very welcoming. You dont start with kanji, just sentence structure and vocabulary. It might be worth your while just starting and seeing what its like, as i dont know what kind of courses are open to you.

[Dreamer7000]

LOL thankies o^_^o
Japanese is indeed interesting, and hard @_@ I'd like to learn it one day.
But Raij, I do think you don't really need another language, you mastered english and you can express yourself amazingly beautiful. I admire you for that, you have a real nice way with words.

[Hell Knight]

Yeah, indeed. I want to learn Japanese instead of German, but sadly it's impossible, because our school doesn't support Japanese. And I don't think many students would learn Japanese either

[Xellos]

...Punks.

Everyone but me manages to learn another language somewhat.

[Xhell]

IRT Xel: and me, don't worry. I too am linguistically incompetant.

IRT Cat: yeah, considering what you said, perhaps it would be more apprporiate for me to try and learn japanese at an earlier date. Hmm, perhaps during the upcoming summer holidays after exams? I'll need to research into potential courses to undertake though. Hrmm....

[shroomin_buffalo]

Well, I thought I'd do this little ditty as a way of intergrating myself. I'm no open book, I shroud myself in a mysterious shround, but I will divulge some stuffs to yous.

Although clich?, I'm one of those introverts who becomes almost extrovert among friends. I love social situations, but often don't get involved because I'm either not invited or too lazy to go. I'm afraid I don't know too much about anime or manga, which I can see you guys do, so I'll just keep my head down when you start on that. I guess I could consider myself a nice guy, compared with most anyway, but I think I can be a jerk sometimes, but the way I see it is; everyone's a jerk. I suppose it could be suggested that I need to shift a few pounds, but I don't really care about that, if people ever comment on it, I'll just gobble them up. I hate ignorance and incompetence which i hypocritical, because I'm often both. I love films! Anyways, not much else to say, so I won't say any more.