I Turned Japanese!!!

Nah, just kidding. How I wish though. Japan is known for many things amazing things at that. From their culture to the places in their country that seemed to be filled with magical history. Their traditions that are just worlds apart compared to what I've been accustomed to.

Anyhow, this freewrite exercise will just be circling around about my poor attempt to learn their language and nothing more. Just that. If you're cool with that, I'll appreciate you staying on. But if you don't like that part. You can stay tuned too because I have something here to surprise you. Deal?

I have been fascinated with the Japanese language ever since Back in college I took it upon myself to do my readings and to teach myself a thing or two about their language. I've started with their phonetics. And then quickly turned myself into their basic vocabularies. From counting 1-10 and those words that are normally taught in preschool. Words like apple, bag, cow and dog. It really was fun trying that.

I have even immersed myself in trying to write their letters. I used to memorize the hiragana and I was able to write a bit of words using their letters. But now, I seemed to have forgotten every bit.

Listening to them has also been a big help so I was used to their tones, pronunciations and the way they speak. I find the male speech for them really intimidating and authoritative. Their girls’ speech however was so cutesy and just adorable. I listened to them most of the time. Even my music player that time was filled by Japanese songs.

Speaking of songs, they really know how to make good music. Haven't heard a single song from them that I can consider crap music.

There was a subject in my college that was called foreign language. As soon as I enrolled that semester, I was excited to see that subject in my curriculum. I heard from other students that Nihongo was one of the languages they were going to offer that sem. But to my utter disappointment, our class fell into the Chinese language program. I was bummed out. And until today, I still haven’t learned anything from that. What a waste.

After that, I tried to teach myself the language even harder. My phone was filled with applications that could assist me in my task. Dictionaries, teaching apps and all of those stuff. I think I've tried most of the apps that could do that today.

To set the record straight though, I'm still not good with Nihongo. In all honesty, I also forgotten how to read and write hiragana. Don't start me with katakana too. I can recognize words and phrases but I don't think I can hold a straight up conversation with a native speaker. But there was a time that I could keep a basic conversation with them.

First of which was back in college. There was a program in school that allowed students from Japan to visit our university for a period of time and they will conduct some sort of reach out project to the community. I was lucky to be part of that project.

Our group then was composed of several of my classmates and a few Japanese students. Since I was trying to learn their language then I was able to chitchat with some of them and made friends. Although the majority of the conversations are done in English we still tried to exchange knowledge. We teach them some Filipino words and they in turn teach us some Japanese stuff. It was fun. The program we did was hold seminars for public school teachers then on how to incorporate computers into their lesson plans. The project ran for several months for a year and to be repeated in the next year.

The next experience where I had to try to speak was when we went to Japan for leisure. Asking for directions, or conversing in the market place, knowing the basics was really a life saver then. Nothing really beats talking to a native speaker as a practice.

So all that being said, there is only one reason that started me to want to learn Nihongo. And that reason is to watch Anime without subtitles. Silly I know but it's a big difference if I could do that. I mean if you watch a show with subtitle, you'll find yourself most of the time reading and not focusing on what’s really happening behind the texts on screen. I mean yeah, I could watch a dubbed version instead but, if you're a true anime fan, the English version of a show is just in reality a universe different from the real version. The difference in voices is a big factor for me. The voice actors in Anime are just so well casted and they really bring the characters to life unlike the English or local translated dubs.

Anyway, that's just it. I'm sure that I'm not alone with this situation and you might be one of those who want to learn another language to be more connected to the things you love. I don't know, Korean perhaps?

Hey there!!!

Thank you for joining me for another freewriting session. I was supposed to publish a creative article today but all the juices were squeezed out to my eyes. Anyway, I appreciate you coming here and as always,

Cheers!!!

Lead image : https://gbatemp.net/threads/learning-japanese-the-nihongo-faq.290986/