2011年7月29日

Ahhhhh!!!!!! Summer daze have taken their hold and I forgot to post a reflection yesterday. And all day today. Yesterday was our skit and I have to admit I was pretty nervous about standing in front of a class speaking Japanese, but all in all it wasn’t too torturous. Kind of fun actually. Mainly because, thankfully, we were allowed to read from a script. And since I forgot to post a reflection yesterday I’ve almost forgotten what we did in class other than the skit. I’ll have to refer to my notes… Ah yes, first we did a review of vocabulary and read a letter in class that had quite a bit of Kanji. We did a listen exercise in the workbook to with a guy that has a really bad life. We also did and Kanji review for the quiz this Monday.  

2011年7月28日

Today was some more grammar but seems easy to grasp. The final is going to have a TON of grammar I expect. This unit’s vocabulary seems to be a little easier to remember for some reason. Maybe because there are a lot of nouns with Katakana and sound much like their English counterparts.

Our two new grammar points were:

Please do not (do something)…

~ないでください。

Like/Dislike - Good at/Not good at

[person]は[verb]のが｛すき・きらい・じゃうず・へた｝

Kat-san also sent everyone a link to The Kanji Handbook. It looks really helpful for learning Kanji. My favorite phrase was:

山ountain climbers without a chart 拙lumsily 出epart

2011年7月27日

Today was pretty relaxed and a welcome break in the middle of summer session III. It was fun working on the skit with バザさんとキャツトさん. Today were also a few new grammar points:

なにか - something (telling)
なにか - anything (question)
なにも  - not anything (must be used with a negative)

Since we had a break from homework and studying for a quiz too I had the chance to go see a comic book movie with a trailer at the end for The Avengers, which is to begin shooting soon in Cleveland, but this is the movie Marvel should be making:

2011年7月26日

Today we learned some more conjugation of vocababulary. Probably the best part was the practice and the in-depth sentence examples that were on the board. That really helped with learning how to structure the sentences. Converting to short form is pretty much just as confusing as converting to te-form just because it seems like there are alot of special cases, and the vocabulary is in ru/u verb forms. Japanese is a complex language but seems to make sense in some instances to me. What I mean is that some parts seem to be actually intuitive and conjugating some words and tenses just come naturally. Unfortunately, most don't. The others just take work.

Today there were two new grammar points: 
   
Quoting a person (somebody said that...)
(short form) + といってしました。

I think that...
(short form) + とおもいです。

2011年7月25日

Ahhh, I always forget how much there is to do for this this class, and it's going by in a flash and summer is melting away. Today was some new vocabulary and short form in Japanese. Something which my brain wanted to turn into te-form at certain points today.

Present Affirm:
                              Long:              Short:
verbs:                   よみます　     よむ
い-adjectives　    かわいです　 かわい
な-adjectives　    しずかです　  しずかだ
noun+です（だ)  がくせいです   がくせいだ

Present Negative:
                          Long:                               Short:
verbs:               よみません　                  よまない
い-adjectives    かわいくありません　     かわいくない
な-adjectives    しずかじゃありません　  しずじゃない
noun+です       がくせいじゃありません   がくせいじゃない　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

2011年7月20日

Today was 6 hours of studying for the upcoming mid-term, along with the homework and I still feel well, well behind the point I think I should be to be prepared. Today we learned to join adjectives and nouns with the te-form. The grammar is getting pretty sophistocated I must say. We also did some in-class reading of a letter in Lesson 7 which I was pretty unconfident about. I had the chance to look over it a few more times and feel better about some of the Kanji that we recently learned. However, I think バザさん said in one of her posts that the vocab seems to go out the window after a quiz, which I think is completely true. I just hope it happens after the mid-term!!!   

2011年7月19日

           Today we had some challenging new grammar, but thankfully I was able to pick-up on it a little better towards the end of class. The practice in-class was extremely helpful too. ベッツィー先生 is correct in that nouns are probably easier to remember since you can actually place an object with the word, I found that trying to remember some of the verbs (alot of the verbs actually) on the fly is my greatest weakness, before particles. In my mind the only particles in existence are は,と,を.
  

I am beginning to realize also that sometimes it would be easier to just use straight-up Kanji rather than hiragana as far as correct spelling is concerned, even though Kanji can get pretty complex. An example would be for man and woman. The words are long when written in Hiragana and there are many places for spelling errors, but with Kanji there are really only a few characters to remember.

Some new grammar points for today and on tomorrow’s quiz…

～てる　～ています　～ていますした　～ていません　～ていませんでした

スタートレック

Mr.スポックさんはみみが大です。

ウフーラさんはかみがかわいいです。

カークさんはかっこいいです。

スールーさんはかみがみじかいです。

八人です。

2011年7月18日

Today we learned people counting:

ひとり　（一人）ふたり　（二人）
さんにん（三人）よにん    （四人）
ごにん　（五人）ろくにん（六人）
ななにん（七人）はちにん（八人）
きゅうにん（九人）じゅうにん（十人）

And attributes for people (in post above.) And some new vocab, alot of new vocab.

4コママンガ

OK, so this post is seriously overdue due to a last minute camping trip and golf outing this weekend (I don’t even play golf but my team won first place anyway).

Joining sentences with theて-form has been the most enjoyable thing we’ve done so far since I’m really not good with particles. So anytime I can avoid them, I’m happy. We have learned a lot so far. At first it seems like a lot to digest/keep straight, especially with the new Kanji, but I can see the real value of Kanji now and I feel like my skills in Japanese can begin to mature. Well, mostly in theory rather than in practice for the moment.

2011年7月14日

I think the most fun thing we did today was the conjugation of new grammar using the て-form.

1.)    Making a request for an action - ～てください。

2.)    Asking and giving permission - ～てもいいですか・～てもいいです。

3.)    Expressing something that is forbidden - ～てはいけません。

The most challenging thing today was two-fold. That is, remembering the vocabulary and then knowing how to transform into て-form. う-verbs generally use the ちいさい ・つ. る-verbs make life easy, just dropping the る. And the irregulars just need to be memorized. The only way to get over it, べんきょうする.

We did three new Kanji today too –　ガケ、ガイ、コク。(not the actual Kanji).

2011年7月13日

The most fun thing we worked on today were the vocab slides. The よかままんがwas fun too, just wish I had some better ideas other than a guy who likes to play video games and take baths. My art skills are pretty lacking too. It should be more fun, but I’m just so burnt out lately. Ah, and our first quiz today was not so great either. Not really sure about what it is about verbs in Japanese that don’t stick. Nouns are better for some odd reason. I would think it should all be about the same.

2011年7月12日

てform today was quite confusing. I guess that’s to be expected however with a limited command of the vocabulary. Todays exercise with locations was difficult also, but again, must be due to vocab. The げんき site has links that have been helpful.

My greatest hope is that てform makes conjugation of verbs easier, sometimes it is difficult to know which particle to use. It seems like it opens up a more natural form of communication which is not so formal, and is probably the hallmark of a foreign speaker, formality. I also found a website that I think will be helpful in learning てform.

http://japanese.about.com/library/bl_verbs.htm

Almost every show where they speak Japanese I’ve seen on theてりび I can hear someone using the てform.

My greatest achievement today was getting MS Word 2010 set-up to type in Japanese after getting some unreliable information from the internet. Microsoft’s site actually. That said an East Asian language pack was only available for users of Windows 7 Ultimate, and that I would need to purchase a language pack for $25.00. The solution actually turned out to be much simpler, and cheaper. Free actually. Nothing better than free. Just add the Japanese keyboard layout through Regional Languages in the control panel and switch between languages on the task bar. Thanks Microsoft.

All this after going through the steps to set-up my netbook on the wireless network here at home and sharing the CD-ROM on my desktop since my netbook doesn’t have a CD-ROM to install the language files for Word 2007 (which I know has the language packs) that I thought we’re installed during a recent SSD upgrade. I love computers, after they decide to do what you want them to anyway :)

2011年7月11日

Today I learned that I have a lot of catching-up to do after taking a year off from Japanese. The most fun thing about today was reviewing all the material that is familiar to me. I also found out that it is not quite that easy to instantly recall.. so my greatest success today was that discovery. So I believe my greatest limitation right now is the ability to recall the material. The only way to overcome this will be to heavily review the first five chapters of the Genki text, website, flashcards, listen to the CDs, visit Japan over the weekend, etc.    

始めまして

Hello everyone, my name is Kairu and I am in your Japanese II class this semester. I chose Japanese as a foreign language because I wanted to challenge myself and learn a language that is not typically chosen in the U.S. Another reason I chose Japanese as a foreign language is that my major is geology, and as everyone has witnessed in recent events, Japan is very geologically active. I would like to visit Japan one day, so learning Japanese would be very helpful. What I like most about Japanese is the writing system, although it does get very complex and is different from or own writing system, I think it is very elegant. Good luck to everyone this semester.