There’s not enough hours in a day. Jobs are the worst. I should totally just have a gofundme or some bullshit so that I don’t have to work anymore. Then I’ll just learn stuff all day and feel stressed because there’s still not enough time in a day.
Ok, so I left off at some ungodly hour (like I do every night) a while back half-way through Human Japanese Chapter 10. I should try and finish that since I’ve found myself attempting to learn kanji. I don’t even have a good grasp on katakana! That said I managed to also spend a bunch of time looking into a strategy for learning Kanji today, so expect a look at that before the week is out. Since I can only memorize so much a day, I’m going to hold off on it just until I finish enough Human Japanese that I feel that I’ve got katakana down. In the meantime, I’ll be using Obenkyo to test myself a couple of times a day to help pound the kana into that noggin.
Human Japanese
Frankly, I’m not going to retain any kanji right now until I am willing to spend the time memorizing them. I’m going to continue writing them in the hopes that some basic repetition causes the symbols to stick over time, but Human Japanese doesn’t cover them at all (at least not at this stage). What we do cover is just the hiragana, and the meaning. So lets dive in:
| ふゆ | 冬 | winter |
| はる | 春 | spring |
| なつ | 夏 | summer |
| あき | 秋 | autumn |
| いい | good (learned already in Pimsleur) | |
| おてんき | お天気 | weather (learned already in Pimsleur) |
| こうえん | 公園 | park (learned already in Pimsleur) |
| ね | ね – particle that seeks agreement (learned already in Pimsleur)Basically, it serves the same purpose as the dastardly Canadian “eh?”. Which is much superior to “are they? isn’t it? was he? hasn’t she?” or any other rubbish piece of language. |
Japanese sees adjectives placed before nouns. いい for example. Good dog would be, “いい犬” or いいいぬ.
こんしゅうはまいにちいいおてんきでしょう。
こんしゅう – this week – 今週
は – particle topic marker
まいにち – every day – 毎日
いい – good
おてんき – weather – お天気
でしょう – conjecture form of です, similar to “it might be”.
今週は毎日いいお天気でしょう。
And now for some katakana!
ナ – 2 stroke : the first stroke is intersected right in the middle
ニ – 2 stroke : ni means two, and this katakana is practically the same as the kanji (Kanji: 二 ニ :Katakana)
ヌ – 2 stroke : This is essentially a タ (ta) but without the first stroke).but do note that the horizontal stroke extends further than the diagonal down-right stroke
ネ – 4 stroke : You can kind of think of the first and third strokes as a supporting structure down the center
ノ – 1 stroke : There are no other lines to attach to no.
fuck, I’m already forgetting オ イ シ ツ チ グ テ ソ… maybe I should be trying to do flash cards on the way to work or on the toilet or something.
ハ – 2 stroke : the strokes are both curved slightly, and do not connect
ヒ – 2 stroke : stroke two should form a solid 90 degree angle
フ – 1 stroke : it should be slightly wider than it is tall, and the curved part should definitely not be straight. This is not a 7.
ヘ – 1 stroke : this is for all intents and purposes the same as the hiragana version – へ ヘ. Hiragana is on the left, and actually extends ever so barely noticeably further on the left.
ホ – 4 stroke : According to Human Japanese, there should be a hane at the bottom of that second stroke.. interesting that the font doesn’t include it, however as a whole the fonts have been rather un-calligraphy-like.
These letters use both ten-ten and maru to get the p and b sounds. Since these sounds occur frequently in foreign words, they end up used quite frequently.
ハ ヒ フ ヘ ホ
バ ビ ブ ベ ボ
パ ピ プ ペ ポ
Yeah… I’m pretty terrible with katakana at the moment… I definitely need to step up my game. That’s 16 wrong out of 50 questions. I think I’m going to be getting some use out of Obenkyo.