See above.
I am learning Japanese. It’s awesome! Rhys and I are going to Japan next year on our honeymoon, and we decided that we should learn a little of the language before we go… given that we can’t really wing it by looking at signs or menus and trying to guess what they say in a country whose character system isn’t the same as ours. In South America, you can get away with guessing. So many of their words are similar to English, and those that you don’t know, you can at least try to pronounce. But random characters from Japan’s three character systems? Not so easy. That’s why we’re learning. (Well, it’s kind of only me right now, and I’m teaching Rhys the words and characters I know).
I’ve only started this week, and I can recognise & write the characters for the vowels (a i u e o), as well as a few of the consonants (ka, ki, me, so, tsu, shi, n). I have learned the other characters, but I’m just yet to memorise them. In true me fashion, I am of course learning online… using a combination of YouTube videos and LiveMocha lessons. I’ve already learned a few words: ai (love); onnanoko (girl); otokonoko (boy); onna (woman); otoko (man). Whee! It might not be the most efficient or even authentic way of learning (I’m not going to be surprised if I find out I’ve been learning entirely the wrong thing), but given that I bought my dog online, it’s probably quite safe to say that I’m rather trusting of this interwebby thing, and believe that there’s a strong chance that I won’t be lead astray. Plus, it’s free! Bonus.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to speak as fast or fluently, but it’s really fun to learn. I haven’t made a serious attempt at learning a language since I was in year nine French where, for the record, I pretty much messed around the whole time and got a pretty bad mark. I also took year eight Japanese, but all I remembered how to do this week was count to nine, and say ‘good morning’ (ohiyo gozaimas). I am totally going to speak the shit out of some Japanese this time next year (even if it’s just to Rhys, because I’m sure once I get to Japan I’m going to be waaaayy too scared to actually use my fledgling language skills).
