Easy Peezy Japaneesy..?
I have been very quiet on social media since I arrived in Japan. A lot has happened and I wanted
some time to digest everything before I shared online. It has been a time of so much fun and discovery but also some harder moments of frustration and asking myself why I was even bothering learning such a difficult language. I still ask myself that question sometimes! Truth is, while living in Japan, it can be really difficult to do daily tasks and adapt to life unless I have at least a basic grasp of the language. Washing, cooking, shopping, using an air conditioner and finding the hot water in the shower were all a huge task I couldn’t do alone. Recently, after doing the grocery shopping by myself and feeling so chuffed I cooked a meal: Pumpkin soup and spaghetti bolognaise only to find it was lobster soup and tuna spaghetti. Did I mention I don’t eat sea food?
Luckily things are starting to change now, I have been studying the
Japanese language for exactly two months and I just finished my mid-term exams yesterday, receiving over 90% on all exams. I figured this is the perfect time to take a moment and reflect on how I’ve been going and share it with you. In three words the first half of semester have been: exhausting, intense and rewarding. I have learnt hiragana (46 characters), katakana (46 characters), and 80 of the 2000 kanji (each has between 1-8 different readings). My spoken vocabulary is approximately 450-500 words in Japanese and I can write these all in hiragana and katakana.
The difficulty of Japanese, compared to other languages I have learnt, would be roughly equal if it didn’t have kanji. The kanji writing system makes learning Japanese an incredibly time-consuming venture for a native English speaker. Fluency means many things to many people, but to me in my Japanese language it means communicating at ease without mind-blank moments in conversation. Personally, I have decided that being fluent in Japanese is not, and will probably never be a goal of mine as my career will revolve around other languages. Fluency in Japanese may take approximately seven years living in Japan depending on the person and circumstances. While I am here my main goal is to speak well enough to feel confident travelling independently around Japan. By the end of this semester of study I should know around 1000 spoken vocabulary items and 200 kanji with their variations.
If someone told me one year ago, while I was living in France, that I would be where I am today studying Japanese full-time and planning to work here in 2015, I would never have believed them. It certainly hasn’t been all easy but I am really proud of what I have done and where I am at today.
20th August, 2014
20th October, 2014
Here's a list to give you a better idea of my capabilities right now, Ill write an updated list at the end of this semester and see what has improved:
I cannot:
Have a conversation in Japanese
Read most kanji on the streets
Read books written for adolescents or older
Be 100% confident in spoken situations dealing with numbers (I'm always too slow and then second guess myself)
I can:
Order coffee confidently
Speak, respond to and write basic greetings
Understand isolated words and sometimes the gist of most things I hear.
Express myself with basic adjectives
Read graded children's readers.
I have had many lapses in motivation but it helps when I remember that each bit of language I am learning opens up another little corner into the Japanese world that I couldn’t access before. As always, the more fluent I become in any language, the more aware I am of the potential for further development. And although I told myself that this semester I should focus more on my hobbies than previously, I find myself increasingly driven towards learning the language.
What languages have you tried to learn? How did you find it?
- Bec
