Conversations in Class! And here I thought this shit was over with.
So this week, I was in class, which was a nice break from the monotony of my normal job. The actual content of the class doesn't matter, really -- and trust me, it's boring -- but pretty much everyone there was fluent in Chinese, and most of us were second language learners
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japanese knows how to trick you. with chinese, you know that you're looking at. it's all pretty straight forward. you know going in that there are a bajillion characters. you know that its going to be hard.
with japanese, it pretends to be easy. it draws you with the simplified alphabet before you realize that there are 3 of them. you freak out, but then japanese lulls you back into a sense of false safety with other parts of their language. so i think "hey! they don't use plurals! awesome!" or "hey look! when you count after nine, it's just one ten one for eleven! or five ten six for fifty-six! that's easy!" or "they only have 4 ways to conjugate a verb! sweet!" or "this should be easy. the verb ALWAYS goes at the end!" this is a mistake.
and then the realization kicks in...
"wait...but then i don't know how many things they have...oh that's ok. i'll just count them...hold on, there are HOW many ways to count things?...so which one do i use here?...wait...i have to conjugate verbs based on the past AND negative?...hold on...what the hell? i thought verbs only go at the end? but what if i have a super long sentence? why are there other verbs?? AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!" etc *le sigh* *mumbles to self* why am i learning japanese again?
and that is why japanese is fox demon.
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