Ta-Ta For Now

So, I'm slowly but surly building up my Hiragana list. I'm up to 20 letters with the addition of the T-family. Do you all think I move much too slow? The thing is I want to have these letters MASTERED before I move on to do more. When I look at a page of Japanese... well, I want to instantly think "KI!" not "Umm... I'm pretty sure...umm... that that's... kiiii(???)" And that is my explenation (in case you were wondering). I think going slow for now is a good aproach. Lots and lot of repetition. Once I master hiragana I will also go back to using Rosetta Stone (I'm kinda looking forward to that).


In other Japanese Learning related news. Thanks to awesome people online I found out about this (supposedly) great book. "Remembering the Kanji" I am wondering if parallel to Rosetta, as well as University Classes, I should invest time (and money) into this book. Ever heard of it friend?




QOTD: What's your personal experience, or the word of mouth you hear, about Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" series?

A Small Break

I haven't really practiced in a few days and I feel kinda bad about it. I'm having a really busy week. Still working on getting the S-family of Hiragana symbols down. I need to devote more time to this. :[

On a lighter note: going to NYC on Wednesday was really enjoyable!

QOTD: How many days a week do you practice Japanese?

Hiragana Brainwash!

I found this very cool video on YouTube. It might seem like brainwashing at first, but it actually helps one to memorize Hiragana. Props to GenkiJapan!



QOTD: Do you know of any other cool Japan or Japanese-Learning related videos floating around the internet?

Enrolling: Japanese 101

First, hiragana update! The more letters/symbols I know, the more confusing it becomes. I'll try to memorize the ones I learned extremely well before moving on to new ones. I hope this will eliminate the problem. Today, I finished K’s and moved on to the S’s. Here are the letters (again, are they called letters?) that I know so far:

Charts from About.com

I went to the Dept. of Asian Languages and Cultures at my University yesterday to see if I can sign up for Japanese 101 come fall semester. Unfortunately they weren’t able to tell me one way or another. As it turns out, even with 7 sections offered, classes fill up quick. I’m guessing it must be a popular course! And so, all I got out of the present administration was: “Classes are full… blah blah blah, and so on.” Well, all I can say is - thank god for my determination to be admitted into this program. After coming home yesterday, I e-mailed the professor directly and just now she responds telling me to come see her on Day 1; she will get me in. I’m starting official Japanese on September 2^nd! Should I celebrate or start to panic? Haha… I hear it isn’t an easy class.

Before I go, BIG shout-outs to Lunar, Sam, Akihiro, and Amy for reading and responding to this very young blog… and thus supplying me with (much needed) creative fuels to write more entries. It’s nice to know someone is reading this :)

Question of the Day: Did you ever take (or plan to take) official Japanese classes?

More Hiragana + History Lesson

More Hiragana for me. Today I've learned E (え) and O (お), as well as KA (か) and KI (き). Only thing that bothers me is that depending on the website I go to, the style of Hiragana letters seems to be different. So, what is the correct way?

Also, browsing stuff about Hiragana, I have found some interesting facts about the history of this writing style in relation to gender. Very interesting as well as bizarre for me to find out:

"Historically, in Japan, the regular script (kaisho) form of the characters, so-called otokode (男手), "men's writing", was used by men; the cursive script (sōsho) form of the kanji was used by women. Thus hiragana first gained popularity among women, who were not allowed access to the same levels of education as men. From this comes the alternative name of onnade (女手) "women's writing". For example, The Tale of Genji and other early novels by female authors used hiragana extensively or exclusively.

Male authors came to write literature using hiragana. Hiragana, with its flowing style, was used for unofficial writing such as personal letters, while katakana and Chinese were used for official documents. In modern times, the usage of hiragana has become mixed with katakana writing. Katakana is now relegated to special uses such as recently borrowed words (i.e., since the 19th century), names in transliteration, the names of animals, in telegrams, and for emphasis." ~ Source: Wikipedia.

So, let me get this straight... males and females used different writing methods for the SAME language? Wow.

QOTD: How long did it take you to learn Hiragana?

I Can Write... Auiii!

あういいい! ...but I can't do much more than that right now.

So, after coming from work today I've decided to give Hiragana a try. Since it was/is already late I compromised on learning just 3 "letters". Hahaha... are they even called letters?

I've learned A (あ) I (い) and U (う). I can also write "auia" and "uaiu" ... gee I feel like I'm fluent already! Ha! あういあ!



That's my notebook above, first attempts :)
I've noticed that writing this takes some effort! It's almost like being back in 1st grade and learning how to write your abc's all over again!


This chart from About.com was very helpful during this initial lesson. Yoshida Institute is another good website I have found.

Question of the Day: What was your reaction to first writing in Japanese? Harder than you expected it to be?

Efforts to "Uncomplicate" Japanese Learning

Day 2. Well technically still the same day, just after midnight now, hehe. I decided that Roseta Stone will not do alone in case of Japanese. It is still a great tool, but it was much more... how to say, self-explanatory of a language program when I migrated from a European language to another European tongue. Japanese, as I quickly found out last time, is a whole new ball game. And that is exciting as well as scary for me. After some internet research I have decided that Hiragana is probably the first thing one should master... naturally this assumption might be wrong, but how would I know mate? To my pleasant surprise I have also found many tools for learning Hiragana online! The one that stands out the most, as it teaches you the writing stroke order is this 3-part YouTube series by MasamuneJJ (see lesson 1 below!) ...I just hope that it is accurate, as again, I have no idea how good it really is. On another topic, I'm checking with my university tomorrow to see if I can get into an introductory Japanese class this fall. Will report on that shortly.

Question of the Day: Name some good tips on how to learn Japanese? What study habits or study methods do you use?