You’ve probably noticed the not so subtle Japanese characters on my new blog design. If you haven’t, you should probably start paying attention to more things in life. I’m studying Japanese again. After an 8 year break from using the language in any capacity, I’m back to tackle the seemingly pointless goal of speaking fluent Japanese.

I realise that I don’t fully understand my desire to learn another language. It excites me, it always has and I know that if I go through life without giving it my best shot, I may regret it one day. So, I’m willing to spend a small amount of time trying to understand my desires.

Why would I burden myself with the humongous task of learning a language that has 3 alphabets? Two of these ‘alphabets’ have 46 characters each and the 3rd has a total of approximately 50 000 characters. (these are called Kanji) Oh but it’s ok, I only have to know about 2000 Kanji to be at a High School level.

However, I need to reel it in a little, because Japanese is not nearly as hard as it looks, sure there’s a lot of brush strokes to remember, but the language structure itself is quite simple.

You’ve probably heard that the English language has more exceptions than rules. As I’m learning Japanese I am paying a lot more attention to the English language and all of it’s intricacies. Each day, I feel more and more lied to by the English language.

Punctuation Saves Lives

For example, who remembers “I before E except after C…and except in these words; species, science, sufficient, AND except in the cases of these words where ‘ei’ is used even when there’s no c; seize, weird, vein, their, foreign.” You suddenly have so many exceptions that you’ve forgotten the original rule!

Oh and learning Plurals in English is really fun, just remember, the plural form of most nouns is created by simply adding an ‘S.’ Like this…
More than one snake is snakes
More than one apple is apples
More than one fish is fishs (no it’s not)
More than one woman is womans  (no it’s not)
Wait a minute… I’m not sure I really believe there ever was any rules in the English language.

I think I’ve made my point about the difficulty in the English Language in only 2 paragraphs… So, I’m thinking, If I learnt some of the hardest parts of the English language at age 6, I can learn another, potentially easier language at age 26, right?

For starters, the Japanese language is phonetic… Each character has one sound, no exceptions. Wow, that was easy, I can now pronounce ANY word I learn – correctly, first time, every time. This isn’t so bad.

Additionally, learning Japanese is fun for me. I get the warm and fuzzies about learning new Verb conjugations on a Friday evening and don’t get me started on learning how to write new Kanji’s, over and over and over again on lined paper until I’m confident I can do it in my sleep.

Really, I’m not joking, the idea that I could communicating with foreign person in their native language is an exciting prospect. Maybe in a past life I was an explorer…Also, I find the Japanese language beautiful and expressive. As an artistic person, I love drawing these little pictures to express my meaning. Wouldn’t you?

花　 愛　雨

Flower     Love       Rain

Does any one else find it incredible that over 7100 languages are spoken on Earth. For each one of those languages, there has been a community different enough from the one next to it, to develop a new repertoire of sounds. Because that’s all it comes down to – I’m learning a new repertoire of vocal sounds.

Wish me luck folks.
じゃ,またね。

• Japanese
• Language