出来るかどうか分からん

Last week Thursday was the midterm for the hardest class I'm taking this semester. It's the level five Japanese class on kanji readings and grammar forms. The kanji we had to learn ranged from 案山子 (かかし scarecrow) and 胡瓜 (きゅうり cucumber) to 老舗　(しにせ old shop) and　所謂 (いわゆる the aforementioned). Most are words I didnt think had kanji, like scarecrow, or are difficult to use (in my opinion), like 所謂. As for grammar, a lot of them are forms I've never learned in English, like ~がち, which is used to indicate an undesireable tendency, or ~的, which is attached to nouns and make them into adjectives. In addition to this, we learned the (usually very slight) difference between similar grammar points, such as the difference between ~間 and ~うちに (~間 implies a measurable time period, whereas ~うちに is used when a certain state of being is in effect).

Now dont get me wrong, there were many times that I feel I learned worthwhile information. Particularly in grammar, the many new suffixes will allow me to express myself more deeply in Japanese. And as someone who wants to eventually be fluent in the language, I must at least be exposed to every grammatical structure in Japanese.

That Wednesday night, as I used my flashcards to memorize the kanji that I didnt know already, I felt so overwhelmed. The kanji that I was memorising in this class and the other Japanese classes were but the tip of the iceberg. Around 2,000 kanji are required to read a newspaper, and that's only individual characters. They can be added together to create even more words, and those readings are not always obvious. To obtain the reading for 修行, for example, it can be broken into 修 and 行, しゅ and ぎょう. This gives us the reading しゅぎょう or learning. To get the meaning based from component kanji, we can take 若人 and split it into 若 for young, and 人 for person, and get Young Person. However, there are the special readings for 木綿 and 氷柱, both of which are not easily discovered. And while the grammar points are useful to deepen the meanings of the words I use, I must admit that they do not come quickly to the mind. ~かねる is attached to verbs to indicate that the despite how much you want to do something, you cant do the verb that it's attached to. I'm probably more likely to use ~にくい, which simply means "it's hard to ~" than use ~かねる.

But then again, I suppose that I should have been prepared for this. Human beings express themselves via language, and use it to paint descriptive pictures of themselves, their surroundings, their feelings. Everyone's got a story, and language is how we present that story to others. In this world, we are surrounded by complex situations and feelings. The only reason that I find it easy to express myself in English is because I grew up speaking it. In the same way, Japanese is easy to a 日本人 because they've grown up speaking only it. And I'm sure they get perplexed by some English quirks and oddities. I'm sure the practice of capitalizing certain words is confusing to them. And the way that English changes its endings to indicate plurals often seems to be so random and aribtrary. So I guess it's a give and take kind of thing. While I have been born into the English speaking world and can use it to its fullest degree, I must work hard to reach the same level of ability in 日本語.

A friend of mine who had already done a study abroad in Japan gave me some advice that, to be honest, I never really tried hard to follow. He said that I should constantly work on kanji. At lunch or on a train, I should always try to read what was written. I finally tried to do that, just a little bit, this weekend. When I was waiting at the bus stop, there was a notice from the bus company. It basically said that because of terrorist attacks, if any mysterious object is found near the bus stop, to contact the company or the next bus driver. Using the dictionary on my iPod touch, I was able to look up the readings and meanings of all the words on the notice. I think I ought to start being a little more proactive with this. I have a few magazines here, and I bought them mostly for the pictures. Perhaps it would be more useful to me if I were to translate these articles?



Can you read this?