(no subject)
Ok, so after much negotiating with my Directors I have finally got them to cut my trip down to 3 months and I wont have to leave till fall season. Which gives me ample time to look for a house and it will also allow my mom to visit this year so that you guys can have some AUTHENTIC Indian food (No, no curry).
It also gives me enough time to learn some Japanese. I say "some" because I just realized the uphill climb I have with this language. Now I read/write/speak 4 languages and can understand 2 more,but Japanese as it turns out is probably going to be the toughest one that I shall try to learn.
First of all I looked at their alphabet yesterday (called Hiragana), and it has 56 characters. Now in all the languages that I have learnt if you have a letter "K" and want it to make a "Ka" sound you just add the letter "a" to it. And if you have a letter "M" and want to make a "ma" sound you add the same letter "a" to it. NOT IN JAPANESE! "k","ka","m", "ma" and "a" all have different characters and don't look anything like each other. So now I have the pleasure of trying to remember these 56 characters(but there are some tricks to about half of them,so it boils down to memorizing about 28-30 of them).
Now,get this, there are 4 different alphabets in Japanese. Hiragana, Katakana, Romaji and Kanji. Romaji is not a big deal, its just Japanese words spelt using the english alphabet. Hiragana and Katakana are the 2 alphabets used in daily reading material. But Kanji is the killer. It is what can be described as the pictorial alphabet. They describe words as drawings (like chinese) and there's thousands of them!!
Barring the whole world being nuked, and for some freak reason Japan being the only habitable place left, and somehow I end up there, I have decided that learning Kanji is optional.
So anyway, it looks like Japanese will be the next language that I learn. Wish me luck...
Tonight I shall be going to watch a French movie and have some wine. After the movie I plan to find a bar and drink to French movies.
It also gives me enough time to learn some Japanese. I say "some" because I just realized the uphill climb I have with this language. Now I read/write/speak 4 languages and can understand 2 more,but Japanese as it turns out is probably going to be the toughest one that I shall try to learn.
First of all I looked at their alphabet yesterday (called Hiragana), and it has 56 characters. Now in all the languages that I have learnt if you have a letter "K" and want it to make a "Ka" sound you just add the letter "a" to it. And if you have a letter "M" and want to make a "ma" sound you add the same letter "a" to it. NOT IN JAPANESE! "k","ka","m", "ma" and "a" all have different characters and don't look anything like each other. So now I have the pleasure of trying to remember these 56 characters(but there are some tricks to about half of them,so it boils down to memorizing about 28-30 of them).
Now,get this, there are 4 different alphabets in Japanese. Hiragana, Katakana, Romaji and Kanji. Romaji is not a big deal, its just Japanese words spelt using the english alphabet. Hiragana and Katakana are the 2 alphabets used in daily reading material. But Kanji is the killer. It is what can be described as the pictorial alphabet. They describe words as drawings (like chinese) and there's thousands of them!!
Barring the whole world being nuked, and for some freak reason Japan being the only habitable place left, and somehow I end up there, I have decided that learning Kanji is optional.
So anyway, it looks like Japanese will be the next language that I learn. Wish me luck...
Tonight I shall be going to watch a French movie and have some wine. After the movie I plan to find a bar and drink to French movies.