Despite being in Korea, interestingly enough I have been picking up on a few Japanese words as well. My housemate Yoon-Seo (윤서) sometimes in the midst of speaking Korean and English to me, he also adds a few Japanese words as well.
At first it was really confusing, because I don't speak neither Korean nor Japanese, and I couldn't distinguish between the two. But after living with him now for almost 3 months, I've picked up on some of the Japanese.
Furthermore, we met a women named Momoko who is an exchange student at Korea University, and she offered to teach some Japanese classes for free. So while I am trying to learn how to speak Korean, I also decided that since I have been presented with the opportunity to learn Japanese, I thought I'd give it a shot.
I had my first Japanese lesson yesterday, and in terms of speaking it went pretty good. But reading and writing for the time being is really difficult. Some of the letters are shaped similarly to letters in English and the Fidel (Ethiopian Alphabet), but so far I haven't found any specific pattern within Japanese writing. What also makes it difficult is that some letters in Japanese, which look almost the same with maybe a slight difference in the way they are written, often have two very different pronunciations.
I'm not 100% invested in learning Japanese, but since I have the opportunity to learn, I thought I might try it anyway and see how it goes.
Ooh, my parents would find this interesting. Apparently the grammar is also incredibly hard. I have this false idea that learning languages is easy because Spanish and French are so easy to (start) learning. But now I'm trying to learn German (which still shouldn't be that hard, come on!) and finding it rough. I think I need a class, because it'll be more structured. But paying for a class? Hm. I love the stories, and would be interested to hear more about what you do on a day to day basis.
ReplyDeleteYeah Japanese grammar is tricky, but in terms of syntax it's very similar to Korean. But ugh, reading Japanese is incredibly difficult and apparently there is more than one counting system, like Korean.
ReplyDeleteI guess my day to day life consists of coming to Connexus by bus or subway, and every other day I teach a morning class at 11:00, so I don't have to wake up too early, which is nice. Then after lunch, I usually have class from 2-5 in the afternoon, and one or two night classes in the evening. So I keep pretty busy. My next blog entry will also have a little more info on my daily life.