Japanese language class kicked my butt today. Not because it's hard but mostly because I seemed to have pre-read the wrong chapter, doh. I am at the stage where I understand what the instructor is saying, well at least for the simple sentences we're now learning, but I can't seem to make sentences of my own. The language structure is different, trivial in fact when compared to English, but completely different from anything I've seen before. Semantically, however, I also think it trumps anything I've seen before.
Learning Japanese as a native English speaker feels like going from a Windows PC to a Mac all over again. Even better, it feels like going from C++ to Lisp - for my computer programmers out there. It's so straight forward that it makes you feel like you're doing something wrong. We can learn a lot from this language. There are so many useless aspects of English, like subject-verb agreement. Who needs that? Does it help us be more descriptive? Why do we need "he is", "you are", "they are", etc.? Let's get rid of it. Everyone "is", no matter what's the subject. While we're at it, let's dump singular and plural as well. That gave me too much grief as a child.
By comparison English is such a harder language to learn that I am happy I started with it. I must admit though that writing Japanese is a whole different story. And I haven't even gotten to Kanji yet, that thing scares me. Katankana and Hiragana, no problem. We'll see how it goes from here, but I am completely thrilled to be learning a new language that is not romanic. Once I conquer Japanese I'll take a whack at Chinese, but I can't promise anything there.
Labels:
Japan,
Tokyo
