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tmcgAfter a day and a half of studying flashcards at this useful site and practicing writing with the help of this useful site, I can now read Japanese words rendered in Hiragana characters. Very slowly, by sounding them out, but it works, and it's something I couldn't do on Monday or Tuesday.
This is the first time I've tackled a non-European language with a writing system different from the one we use. (I took Spanish through college, Irish Gaelic for a few years after college, and the equivalent of about two years of high-school Latin through my former employer.) It's a thoroughly amazing experience to learn to read all over again. I don't remember learning to sound out words in English; the only memory I have of learning to read was missing the word "penny" on flashcard in first grade and being mad at myself and getting it right the next time, which makes me think that I learned words whole rather than letter by letter.
This whole thing was prompted by my current triumvirate of overlapping film obsessions: Akira Kurosawa movies, samurai movies, and Toshiro Mifune movies. (Netflix is a wonderful thing.) I've heard so many hours of Japanese lately, and seen so many conflicting subtitle translations (Sanjuro to a gaggle of overeager young samurai on his heels: "We're walking like one big centipede! I can't move like this!" as opposed to "This is like being followed by a trail of goldfish dung--how can I get rid of you?"), that I wanted to understand some of the dialogue on my own, so I looked for online instruction--and found some, and found that after Lesson 5 I was going to need to be able to read Hiragana.
I'm inordinately pleased with myself. And my brain feels good.
This is the first time I've tackled a non-European language with a writing system different from the one we use. (I took Spanish through college, Irish Gaelic for a few years after college, and the equivalent of about two years of high-school Latin through my former employer.) It's a thoroughly amazing experience to learn to read all over again. I don't remember learning to sound out words in English; the only memory I have of learning to read was missing the word "penny" on flashcard in first grade and being mad at myself and getting it right the next time, which makes me think that I learned words whole rather than letter by letter.
This whole thing was prompted by my current triumvirate of overlapping film obsessions: Akira Kurosawa movies, samurai movies, and Toshiro Mifune movies. (Netflix is a wonderful thing.) I've heard so many hours of Japanese lately, and seen so many conflicting subtitle translations (Sanjuro to a gaggle of overeager young samurai on his heels: "We're walking like one big centipede! I can't move like this!" as opposed to "This is like being followed by a trail of goldfish dung--how can I get rid of you?"), that I wanted to understand some of the dialogue on my own, so I looked for online instruction--and found some, and found that after Lesson 5 I was going to need to be able to read Hiragana.
I'm inordinately pleased with myself. And my brain feels good.
