Fail at Language Retention
So today so far I've been studying Japanese. Working through another chapter in my kanji book to balance out the actual language learning. Since I've been warned by people that while just speaking Japanese is fine for a tourist, living there requires kanji in order to read.
My main problem with kanji is remembering which of the two readings to use when I spot the kanji. I have a feeling it's just going to be one of those things that sinks into my head over time. Or I'll just be constantly saying the wrong thing when trying to speak what I'm reading. I can get the meanings in English no problem most of the time, it's just getting the pronunciation of the word right.
So far the book has been nice to me, the first 50 odd kanji are all based on pictures so I can recognise them pretty much without fail for their meanings. So then I got into the review for the first 5 chapters and was confronted with a mini story which was a mix of the three kanas which I had to translate. First run through got me most of the kanji and the odd word the book had decided to supply me with. Then I had to quickly check a few verbs that I hadn't come across yet in my actual Japanese text book and so didn't know. After that it was trying to fill in the blanks with the few words that I really couldn't remember or just simply didn't know. So I poked Jazz, who is in Japan, and got her to help me with the last few bits. So then I had a bit of paper with sentences that looked like they'd been written by someone who didn't understand English word order (literal translations are fun) which of course had to be converted into actual English. So probably between 1 and 2 hours later I had a reasonably okay translation. I'm still not great at trying to actually use the right reading of the kanji when I just look at it and try to speak it, but I'm betting the more vocabulary I pick up from the book the easier it will be.
Anyway, here is my attempted translation.
私は日本大学の学生です。専門は体育です。十月九日にタイからきました。月曜日から金曜日まで日本語クラスべんきょうします。私は日本語が好きです。
I am a Japanese University student. My specialty is physical education. On the 9th of October I came from Thailand. From Monday to Friday I have Japanese classes. I like Japanese.
先週の土曜日に私たちは田中先生と山へいきました。いろいろな学生がいっしょにいきました。男子学生と女子学生が三人ずつでした。私たちは岩田さんの車でいきました。岩田さんは日本人ん男の人です。一時間くらいあるいで大きい森へいきました。そして、小さい川のちかくで休みました。その川の水はとでもきれいでした。
Last week on Saturday we went with Tanaka-san to the mountain. Various students went together. The male students and female students were in groups of 3 people. We went in Iwata-san’s car. Iwata-san is a Japanese man. For one hour we walked in the big, dark forest. And we rested near a small river. That river’s water was very pretty.
It might be terrible but at least there is some sort of understanding of what the heck is going on. And I'm finally getting the hang of reading Japanese text. I've struggled for ages because there aren't really spaces between the words and stuff because of the particles. Well I can finally spot a handful of particles and so can tell when one word ends and another begins and what it's doing in the sentence.
Also we have snow here, which is both lovely and annoying. Lovely in that everything looks so pretty and it's cold so I can bundle up warm. Bad in that I may struggle to get to my friend's house at the weekend if this keeps up, and worse... I may struggle to get to a part-time job interview next week.
My main problem with kanji is remembering which of the two readings to use when I spot the kanji. I have a feeling it's just going to be one of those things that sinks into my head over time. Or I'll just be constantly saying the wrong thing when trying to speak what I'm reading. I can get the meanings in English no problem most of the time, it's just getting the pronunciation of the word right.
So far the book has been nice to me, the first 50 odd kanji are all based on pictures so I can recognise them pretty much without fail for their meanings. So then I got into the review for the first 5 chapters and was confronted with a mini story which was a mix of the three kanas which I had to translate. First run through got me most of the kanji and the odd word the book had decided to supply me with. Then I had to quickly check a few verbs that I hadn't come across yet in my actual Japanese text book and so didn't know. After that it was trying to fill in the blanks with the few words that I really couldn't remember or just simply didn't know. So I poked Jazz, who is in Japan, and got her to help me with the last few bits. So then I had a bit of paper with sentences that looked like they'd been written by someone who didn't understand English word order (literal translations are fun) which of course had to be converted into actual English. So probably between 1 and 2 hours later I had a reasonably okay translation. I'm still not great at trying to actually use the right reading of the kanji when I just look at it and try to speak it, but I'm betting the more vocabulary I pick up from the book the easier it will be.
Anyway, here is my attempted translation.
私は日本大学の学生です。専門は体育です。十月九日にタイからきました。月曜日から金曜日まで日本語クラスべんきょうします。私は日本語が好きです。
I am a Japanese University student. My specialty is physical education. On the 9th of October I came from Thailand. From Monday to Friday I have Japanese classes. I like Japanese.
先週の土曜日に私たちは田中先生と山へいきました。いろいろな学生がいっしょにいきました。男子学生と女子学生が三人ずつでした。私たちは岩田さんの車でいきました。岩田さんは日本人ん男の人です。一時間くらいあるいで大きい森へいきました。そして、小さい川のちかくで休みました。その川の水はとでもきれいでした。
Last week on Saturday we went with Tanaka-san to the mountain. Various students went together. The male students and female students were in groups of 3 people. We went in Iwata-san’s car. Iwata-san is a Japanese man. For one hour we walked in the big, dark forest. And we rested near a small river. That river’s water was very pretty.
It might be terrible but at least there is some sort of understanding of what the heck is going on. And I'm finally getting the hang of reading Japanese text. I've struggled for ages because there aren't really spaces between the words and stuff because of the particles. Well I can finally spot a handful of particles and so can tell when one word ends and another begins and what it's doing in the sentence.
Also we have snow here, which is both lovely and annoying. Lovely in that everything looks so pretty and it's cold so I can bundle up warm. Bad in that I may struggle to get to my friend's house at the weekend if this keeps up, and worse... I may struggle to get to a part-time job interview next week.