わたしは日本ごをはなしますか。

わたしはこんしゅうなにおしましたか。そうですね。月曜日から金曜日までたのしいなにかをあまりしませんよ。しゅくだいがたくさなります。まい日たいてい五時かん半ぐらいねます。まいしゅうテストがあります。時々二つか三つがあります。でもしゅうまつはいいですよ。いまここでさくぶんをかきませんよ。でも、まい日いっぱいべんきょうしますけれどもわたしはさんえんせいの時がすきです。いまはしゅうまつによくともだちとたのしいなにかをします。でも、ことしまでにはあまりしません。だから、ことしはわるくありません。


Well, that's something I guess. I couldn't think of anything else to write about with our given vocab short of another Sakubun, so I found myself looking up some new constructions and grammar to experiment with. I probably butchered most of them, but at least now I know a bit more about them when we do get to them. Anyway, although most of my complaints are based on fact if you can make sense of what I wrote up there, I'm really not that whiny. I just couldn't think of anything else to write about.

Some things that I tried using in the paragraph:
けれども　- Although
XからYまで - From X to Y (Time)
たのしい　- Fun/Interesting
いっぱい　- A lot (Adverb)
までに - Until

Blog Musings

I suppose what makes a good blog depends on what the purpose of the project is. In my mind, the primary purpose of it is to have a network with which to share thoughts and sticking points that we've developed in the transition to a relatively difficult language. When I learned Spanish, there wasn't nearly as much of a total reinvention of how I express myself as it is with Japanese. It can be difficult to change the way we think, but I also find it fascinating how different it can be. In some ways, it's a much more streamlined and intuitive language; in other ways, not so much. For instance, I find the thought of having different conjugations being used to convey different levels of respect counter-intuitive and needlessly complicated, but I'm sure Japanese people learning English find themselves asking "what is the point of having verbs conjugate differently depending on the subject?", and they'd probably be right, too. I find myself feeling the same way about Kanji. It just seems to me like the language would be so much easier if everything were in Hiragana, although spaces would have to be used to be able to read anything, but I can't only imagine how overwhelming it must seem to try to deal with the Roman characters somehow being pronounced differently in every word that they appear, sometimes not even being pronounced at all. Having people with whom to discuss things like this can sometimes make things make a little more sense, or at the very least make us realize that at least there are others to share in the misery.

It can also help the strength of our class as a learning group to see each other as more than just a string of Katakana followed by "-san." A little bit of personal revelation in the blogs can make it easier for us to get to know our classmates, opening up the avenues of communication more and allowing for us to help each other more easily, whether by actually helping with the subject matter or by making the class more enjoyable.

By my interpretation of the blogs, then, the important things to include in a blog are primarily to discuss what our overall observations and problems with learning the language are as well as any significant events in our personal lives that seems worthy of sharing. It appears to me that one of the possible pitfalls would be to simply use the blog as, well, just a blog and posting about their day and skipping the subject of Japanese almost entirely. Although some people may enjoy doing that, I'm sure that's not what Sato-sensei quite had in mind with this assignment.

I took my cookies out of the oven before I started writing this, so they should be done by now. いまクッキおたべます。おいしいですよ。

Finally Friday

This has been the most hellish three day week that I can recall. Or, as one would say in Japan if they had the language skills of a 2 year old,　こんしゅうわいくありませんでした. And now I just spent like 5 minutes fixing my font. That'll show me for trying to type in Japanese. Anyway, test today wasn't too bad. There wasn't really much that studying in the classical sense could have done to prepare me better, since most of it was just practice to get a feel for word order and appropriate particles and all that jazz. I had to cut my dialogue much shorter than what I would have liked, though. I asked that Japanese girl to see a movie with me on Saturday about 15 seconds into the conversation. I guess I'm just a player like that. I had another test earlier in the morning that I was and am still a lot more worried about, both because the class is horrible and there are only 2 tests total for that course.

Oh yeah, and I turn 21 next week. Yay.

I need this weekend

このしゅまつわたしわよくねます。べんきょうしません。

This break is so long overdue. I can't wait to get home and take a nap today. I've been staying on top of my workload at least...kind of. Kanji is making more sense to me now than it was last week now that it's had some time to sink in, but it's still intimidating when I think about just how many there are. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step," as they say. The semester is going by really fast, though, which is both a good and bad thing because it's probably going to be my most challenging out of my four years here, but the thought of finishing here also implies entering that scary realm of the real world. All throughout high school, I never thought beyond getting into a college, it all seemed so far off. Right now, I can't even think past next week because I'm just trying to survive until the weekend. Maybe I'll travel. I can't think of a better time to do it before getting settled into a long term job. There's also grad school to worry about. I wonder how it will play out.