What I Learned Today… October 9th, 2007
I wanted to write about what I’ve been studying at university. I know this has the potential to be a very boring post, but I’ll try to inject it with my usual balance of borderline funny jokes and insane ramblings. If you really can’t bear to read it, just rub your face against the screen - you’ll soon feel like I do after two hours of grammar conjugation.
My university has an incredibly intensive Japanese course - it’s famous for it’s drop out rate and general amount of stress put on it’s students. We currently have around sixty people taking the class, and the lecturers are expecting around thirty of us to graduate into the second year. They are expecting only around twenty of us to complete the entire course. It’s kind of strange making all these new friends, knowing that only one in three of them will be around four years from now. The reasons people drop out vary, but the usual reason is “it’s far too hard” or “it’s far too fast”, and it really is. We cover two or three new grammar points in an hour, and get just one hour to practice them in a classroom enviroment. After that, we’re on our own. If you don’t practice or understand it - tough luck.
This “tough love” approach is kind of daunting, and I know quite a few of my colleagues are somewhat put off by it. Personally, without sounding like a sadist, I am finding myself benefitting from this regime. Yes, it’s not much fun sitting in the library going over worksheets time and time again, but at least I’m doing it, consistently, for hours at a time every day. Something tells me if they were “coaxing us into” the language, I wouldn’t be nearly as motivated.
Anyway - the nightmare that is Japanese. The first rule is that we absoloutly had to know the two basic scripts of Japanese. We all took tests in both of them and thankfully, I passed. From the get go, everything written on the worksheets or by the students should not be in English, aside from personal notes. It’s quite difficult, but it has improved the speed and accuracy of my composition, which is a nice side effect. Sadly, it’s also turned me into a nervous wreck. Can’t win them all…
Personally, I’m struggling at the moment with the Katakana (foreign words) spelling. Things like Chocolate - is it チョコーレト, or is it ヨコッレト ? It’s really annoying that, even after a year living in Japan, I can make mistakes just as much as everyone else. I was looking over some notes I made during my gap year and I was horrified to find I’ve forgotten half of it. Scary stuff. (It’s チョコレート, by the way…)
In reguards to the speaking, I think I am keeping my head above water, although that may be on the grace of what I learned during my gap year. We are currently doing an アンケート (questionnaire), and my partner and I decided to do ours about alcohol. Our three questions went something like this;
1. きりんビールをのみますか.
Do you drink Kirin beer?2. あなたはたいていどこでビールをかいますか.
Where do you normally buy beer?3. わたしはごぜんん六時から九時までヴォッカをのみます.あなたは何時から何時までアルコールをのみますか.
I drink Vodka from 6am to 8am. What time do you normally drink alcohol?
The teachers were impressed at our questions although they did express distress at our drinking habits. Suprisingly, not one of the students we surveyed drinks Vodka at 6am. Those fools don’t know how to live!
Anyway, that’s what we’ve done so far in a nutshell. This week we’re doing yet more grammar, and then the whole vicious learn-repeat-study-consider suicide-learn-repeat cycle starts again. Wish me luck.