I had this brilliant idea that if I study a bunch of nouns and learn to conjugate a bunch of verbs, I should be able to start speaking some basic Japanese. Seemed logical enough. Except that I...don't...understand...anything!! Okay, that may be a little melodramatic. But, it is disheartening to realize that I will probably only be able to assimilate one verb a day, or maybe every two days, in all of its conjugated forms.
This begs the question: How many of these forms will I actually need on a regular basis? And should I learn ALL of them, or just start off with the polite form? Well, I chose the latter, hoping that the plain forms will sort of 'expose' themselves if I encounter them in daily speech. If I have a solid understanding of the polite forms, I *should* be able to decipher the plain and casual forms based on context.
I blogged recently (err, yesterday) about smart.fm and the incredible tools there for learning Japanese. Today, I referred to a nice list of 'basic' verbs posted by Koichi of Tofugu and wrote them out in hiragana. (I am SO not ready for kanji yet, but soon...) I then visited the cool verb conjugator and proceeded to type up a chart in Word listing all polite forms of each verb. This accomplished quite a few things. I repeatedly encountered each verb and conjugated form, and I got some practice switching back and forth from English to Japanese input on my computer, something I've had difficulty with in the past. My primary computer runs Windows XP and my laptop runs Vista, and neither seems to like Japanese input. My Japanese class begins on the 19th and I'll need to be able to type in Japanese in chat, so the practice is good for me.
To think, not long ago, this would be gibberish. But today, I typed it AND I can read it!
At any rate, I did learn quite a bit today, and feel as though I'm making forward progress. The progress may be slow, but I suppose I can't realistically expect to learn a second language in a week. I will continue to do my best.
This begs the question: How many of these forms will I actually need on a regular basis? And should I learn ALL of them, or just start off with the polite form? Well, I chose the latter, hoping that the plain forms will sort of 'expose' themselves if I encounter them in daily speech. If I have a solid understanding of the polite forms, I *should* be able to decipher the plain and casual forms based on context.
I blogged recently (err, yesterday) about smart.fm and the incredible tools there for learning Japanese. Today, I referred to a nice list of 'basic' verbs posted by Koichi of Tofugu and wrote them out in hiragana. (I am SO not ready for kanji yet, but soon...) I then visited the cool verb conjugator and proceeded to type up a chart in Word listing all polite forms of each verb. This accomplished quite a few things. I repeatedly encountered each verb and conjugated form, and I got some practice switching back and forth from English to Japanese input on my computer, something I've had difficulty with in the past. My primary computer runs Windows XP and my laptop runs Vista, and neither seems to like Japanese input. My Japanese class begins on the 19th and I'll need to be able to type in Japanese in chat, so the practice is good for me.
To think, not long ago, this would be gibberish. But today, I typed it AND I can read it!At any rate, I did learn quite a bit today, and feel as though I'm making forward progress. The progress may be slow, but I suppose I can't realistically expect to learn a second language in a week. I will continue to do my best.
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