If I had to make a pie chart for the amount of time I spend working on each of my classes' homework, the slice that represents Chinese and Japanese together typically accounts for anywhere between 50-80%, with Chinese still taking up the bulk of that slice. The point is though that I spend a good amount of time each day thinking and speaking in one or the other language... and now I've begun to confuse them at inopportune moments. Probably the worst instance of this is during Chinese class, where I constantly respond to my teacher's comments by saying "Hai". I can get on board with that though, since even before I started taking Japanese I would respond to statements by saying "Hai", but it's been getting worse. Recently my teacher asked me what time I typically go to sleep every night, and I very nearly said にじはん instead of the proper response in Chinese. When I realized what I was about to say, I just stared blankfaced at her for three whole seconds while I tried to think of the words in Chinese, which I learned in my first year but suddenly could not for the life of me remember. Then the other day in Japanese, when さとうせんせい said we were going to learn new grammar, I said something along the lines of "ah, 新(xin, which means new in Chinese)のgrammar". I guess さとうせんせい heard me, since he looked at me and said "あたらしい". I hadn't even realized I had switched them! Turns out that あたらしい can be written as 新しい, with the kanji having the same meaning, which leads me into my second point. Kanji are becoming more and more present in our homeworks and lessons, and I'm excited to find out that I can understand the written forms in kanji before I learn how they are spoken in Japanese. Granted, the Chinese characters that I know are "traditional", and thus slightly more complicated than the kanji, but it's such a cool feeling the be able to apply my knowledge of Chinese to learning Japanese.
Alright, that's enough self obsessed ranting for now. I plan for my next post to either be about cool Japanese music or cool Japanese anime, and 神さま willing, it'll be up soon.
じゃまった、
ブライアン
Thursday, October 25, 2007
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