tmcg: (quill)
Terry ([personal profile] tmcg) wrote2002-12-05 12:40 pm
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Hiragana

After 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.


[identity profile] akaspeedo.livejournal.com 2002-12-05 07:25 pm (UTC)(link)
I had a similar experience when I first learned to read Hebrew. I'd love to learn some Chinese, having way many Chow Yun Fat dvds.

Language, music and math are supposed to be the best things for your brain, right?

[identity profile] terrymcgarry.livejournal.com 2002-12-06 09:09 am (UTC)(link)
I'm glad for language and music, because I definitely don't feed my brain enough math, and I'm not real motivated to change that. :)

I almost took a Hebrew course through the local continuing-ed program, but it was on a bad night. Eventually I'd like to learn to read those characters. I'm glad we don't have to learn a lot of Hebrew terminology for Krav Maga, the way it sounds like you have to know a lot of Japanese when you do karate and Korean when you do Tae Kwon Do--it's enough just learning Krav Maga! But at the same time I'm sorry, because then I'd be learning some Hebrew.

About a year ago I was trying to work with some teach-yourself-Chinese tapes my mom had given up on, but all I really wanted was to get a clue about how the syntax worked. I still have the tapes, and a pretty good book, if you'd like them. I'm fascinated by the characters, but I can get my fill of those through Japanese kanji, so I'd be happy to pass it all along to someone who'd use it.

I'm such a language w/h/o/r/e/ dilettante. *g*