Hi, everyone!
To me, Japanese learning has always been on the list.
When I was a high school student in Dalian, China, a city that was colonized by the Japanese from roughly 1905 to 1945, half of my classmates chose Japanese as their first foreign language. Mine was English but for communication, I tried to amuse them by talking about Japanese-origined English words. After graduation, I even tried to teach English to some of these Japanese-majored classmates, and they taught me some Japanese for exchange.
When I was a undergraduate, I started to think about learning Japanese seriously. Thus I tried to remember all hiraganas and katakanas. But that ethusiasium quickly faded facing the difficulty of this foreign alphabet. But as a modern Chinese history student, I kind of have to read Japanese articles and books. So though I have not mastered the grammar, I tried to read the Chinese characters between the lines and guess what the authors were talking about, with the help of a dictionary.
Finally, the day has come when I really have to learn Japanese. This time funded by Princeton Universty, where I am enrolled as a PhD. student in East Asian Studies. Indeed, it is definately to learn a language by doing it than thinking about doing it.
頑張ります。
That's really cool that Japanese culture and language has been around your life for a significant time now. Is Japanese still spoken regularly by the older generation in Dalian, China?
回复删除Hi Benjamin. Not regularly I would say. The early 20th century was not an age for public education. But for the educated ones, yes they could speak Japanese fluently like other educated people in Korea or Taiwan, two other places colonized by Japan before the end of WWII. All of the above places I think have preserved some Japanese influence in their food, language and other cultural aspects.
删除Hi,my name is Hirkoi Hakotani. I'm the freshman from the Ritsumeikan University.
回复删除I'm happy to hear that you are intersted in Japan. I sympathize with you that learning Japanese is actually very difficlt and makes you exhausted.
Even though it is a small country, Japan has a lot of various culture. Only with two-hours-ride will take you to a completely different world, so I strongly recommend you to go travel around.
はじめまして、ようです、どうぞよろしく。I am just starting my Japanese learning and it is so nice to know anyone from Japan. Since I am a graduate student, I think I could spend some time in Japan for language training, traveling or conference.
删除