Dear learners,
Thanks for the sharing your story behind learning Japanese in
the comment section in the previous entry.
I have to say I really enjoyed reading them. Yes, you had to fill student information sheet on the first day of class and I read those, too but what you wrote on the last blog entry was far more revealing. It's like there was your voice, more or less, and I could hear you, well almost.
If you haven't read what others wrote, please read them through.
My hope is that learning more about each other will contribute to form positive / supportive learning environment for all of you.
I thought I should comment back to your comments but if I did it in the previous entry it will be really long so I think I'll do it here in a new entry.
About the heritage that you have, it just makes me think about the consequences of the actions taken by our former government and how I relate to that.
>koさん
It's interesting to hear you say that Japanese is cooler sounding language. I, as a native speaker of the language, can't ever objectively hear Japanese as a foreign language. So I think it's just interesting to imagine how it might sound to speakers of other languages....
One of your favorite movies is in Japanese? Which one is it? Maybe someone else in the class has seen it, too.
Wow, so Japanese is really a part of your career plans. That is great!
Environmental issues are definitely global issues and something Japan has had for long time since the 1970's. And, yes the connection with that generation.
>
Jazz/ヤスミナ さん
You have multiple interests in Japan. Appearance in Japanese fashion magazine sure told me you were interested in modern pop culture, or one element of it but you have more. Lucky you to be here and able to take courses in history. I would be interested in taking them except I'm a bit scared to do that on top of the coursework I'm doing in TC....
And what a linguist you are to be interested in learning 20 languages. I think you can say that learning Kanji in Japanese will help you learn Chinese better because believe or not more than half of Japanese vocabulary is Chinese origin. Well, I should say words (compound words, to be more precise) made of words written by kanji. They sound very different because they were taken from different dialects and at different era but there is some systematic correspondence, so it should help you a bit.
Ten years ahead of you? In terms of what? Declining birth rate? Hmmmm. But I can imagine you will be going to Japan to study for sure. There is KCJS and summer programs as I mentioned above in my comment to Pedro san.
Speaking of doctor,
one of my students was interested in why so many female doctors who must have worked so hard to be a doctor quit after certain years of practice. She said she would be going to Japan this summer to do some research on that. I wonder how she is doing....She also has Japanese family members.
Korean and Japanese share so much similarities, indeed. Grammar (word order, use of particles, counters, politeness language) influence of Chinese, vocabulary. Actually there has been a boom in Japan for Korean culture (music, TV drama) and more and more people are learning Korean in Japan, too.
I think it could be exciting to see how your own resources from exposure and casual learning to Japanese would be reconstructed through learning it formally. I'm sorry it's my interest in second language acquisition babling...
You know, come to think of it I have a friend, well he was a undergraduate student here but lived there for a couple of years and came back and almost finishing law school in Toronto. And I think he said he already has a position or position waiting for him to practice in Japan....He said he would be coming to the
Chat Club on 10/6. So maybe you could talk to him then.
Well, this is taking me longer than I thought...
Sumimasen ga, I think I'll write another entry to finish what I started.
