on typing

I have learned how to type Japanese fairly quickly, and a knowledge of Chinese is again particularly useful - I have started limited experiments with kanji in my homework, and although it is complex, I feel very able to handle everything - ku-ji, Honkon, yuubinnkyoku, rainen - and will continue to balance hiragana and katakana with a judicious use of kanji.

I'm finding prior knowledge of Chinese to make the process of learning Japanese tolerable and even pleasant despite the huge volume of work...

onward!

As with many beginner language classes, we have progressed from fun, easy, novelty to the serious stuff: the transition to the sheer memorization and brute force that is the unavoidable part acquiring any language so different from my own. The volume of work is difficult but by no means impossible - it is inevitable that one will spend this much time outside of class reviewing if classtime is to be worthwhile.

I think maybe in the second half of the semester we could progress to more regular tests - for the time being, the barrage of quizzes and homework is sufficient to move us into hiragana, and later on katakana.

Right now, the challenge is finding the sheer amount of time needed to complete all the work - once I can devote the time, it's not too difficult.

the saga continues

I have found Chinese to be of continuing usefulness, this time in numbers - coming up with the verbal equivalent of a number like 180,000 would have been more difficult without prior knowledge of the Chinese counting system, especially since Japanese (or at least this textbook) does not seem to use digit grouping commensurate with counting units. For instance, in Chinese numbers it would be written 18,0000 to reflect the amount denoted by the word "wan."

I think group projects will be good; I am more ambivalent about tests, but don't have enough footing in the language to estimate whether it is the best way to review the material. In the end, I don't think it will make much of a difference when and how the material is reviewed - at such a basic level, we will either use and capitalize on what we've learned once the class is over or we won't; I'm not sure what kind of difference exams will make...

in the beginning

So far, Japanese has been fun and not too difficult. I find some similarities to Chinese which make the mental adjustment easier than, say, Chinese-to-English; the respective possessives, no and de, function similarly, as does the logic of certain word combinations: daigakue/daxue, daigakusei/daxuesheng, gakusei/xuesheng.

So far, I'm finding flash cards and repetitive writing sufficient to keep up in class, and I find that the homework is not too difficult.

I'm a little apprehensive about the switch to hiragana and katakana, but I imagine persistence will pay off as it did with Chinese characters, and at least the size of both alphabets is pleasantly limited.