Another Day, Another Lesson Finished

Just because I haven't been posting blogs doesn't mean that I haven't been doing lessons. Frequently now, I am constantly reviewing material I've already "Learned Today" in posts below. In fact, when I do a new core lesson, it covers all the material that I'll be expanding on over the next few days.

I approach my lessons sort of like a school class. I devote around an hour a day, and if I feel like I've absorbed a lot of information during a week then I will not feel guilty in taking a day or two off from my active studies (computer lessons). I will almost always read some of a book either pertaining to the language itself, or Japan in general just to keep myself immersed. I do this out of genuine interest, though. Not out of self-discipline to keep myself in check. I also try to listen to (kiku!) or watch (miru!) something in Japanese everyday as well. This is usually nothing that I have to go out of my way to do however, as you'd probably deduce from my last post. More and more I'm finding myself recognizing words and parts of sentences. Even if I'm not able to understand an entire sentence, I'm able to identify the subject and single out the words which are the actions, and look them up (sometimes, this is still a rare thing).

I mentioned Ayumi Hamasaki previously. I've been listening to certain songs of her since early 2004, some of them I even learned phonetically just to be able to sing along every once in a while. Now I'm finally at a point where I can understand what some of it means. It's like having a jigsaw puzzle for a really long time, being able to see the picture on the box, but when you open it it's a jumble of pieces with which you don't know where to begin. With each word and phrase I learn, I'm putting pieces together in little patches, gaining small views of the real picture inside the box. Sure I've read translations of the lyrics before, but people always say that translations are an approximation. There are rarely times where you're going to directly translate a sentence from Japanese to English (and vice-versa) word for word. So when you're reading a translation, you're getting the translators' approximation of what is originally said. And when it comes to song lyrics some huge liberties can be taken.

One thing I've learned, especially from reading a book I just got; Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You, is that the entire meaning of a sentence can change very easily and unintentionally to a non-native speaker. Here is a great example the author, Jay Rubin, uses;

Here is a sobering anecdote to illustrate how potent a little wa can be in differentiating a topic from implied others. [...]

I and a few other American scholoars were at a party and one of us tried to compliment our Japanese host by saying, Konban wa oishii mono ga takusan arimasu ne. By this he intended to say, "What a lot of tasty dishes you're serving us tonight." The host laughed and remarked, "You mean I'm usually stingy on other nights?" By putting wa after "tonight," my colleague had in effect said "Tonight, for a change, you're serving us a lot of tasty dishes."

 An amusing story amongst friends, but I'd hate to be in that situation with a stranger who might take it as an insult! I certainly have a long way to go!

However, this book has been very valuable in "making sense of" things that I wasn't too sure about thus far. Such as the differences between wa and ga in sentences. On a -very- basic level, when wa is used after a word, it puts the emphasis on the rest of the sentence containing the important information, whereas when ga is used after a word, that tells the listener/reader that the subject before ga is the important part of the information.

• Watashi wa ikimashita - "I went." Being the answer to the question "And what did YOU do when you heard about the sale?" "Me? I went."
• Watashi ga ikimashita - "I went." Being the answer to the question "Who went to get help after he hurt his leg?" "I went."

Non-textbook explanations like this are a big help, especially since I'm taking such a personal approach to learning the language. These are things that will stay with me forever.

-Brendan