I'm doing 40 things
This quarter I’m taking Japanese I at my community college. It is actually amazingly fun. I am doing well with writing the kana, but am having a little trouble with speaking the language; I tend to want to reply in Spanish! I took Spanish two years in high school and three quarters in college, so I guess I am way more conditioned to respond that way. It takes me a while to think about it to say it out loud, so I guess I need to work on speaking much more than writing.
It’s a lot easier than I expected, but I imagine that learning kanji will be a real killer. We are not learning much kanji in my class right now, but I found a website that is great for learning it – kanji-a-day.com. It shows the stroke orders and has a huge dictionary of the kanji with pronounciation; it’s very helpful for anyone who wants to learn kanji. I am trying to focus more on what we are learning in class first, however (I’ve heard that many Japanese people won’t even be able to fully read a newspaper until they are out of high school because there are so many kanji to memorize?)
I’m disappointed because the college I am transferring to next quarter will not have Japanese classes (something I didn’t look into, but it’s my best option otherwise), but I plan on continuing to practice it myself until I can apply for dual enrollment with the loca community college; I am having that much fun with it :) Perhaps I can even get in a quarter to study abroad!
