alexseanchai | (no subject)

Dear Living Language book: y u lie to me? 'Cause I know for a fact that 'watashi' is not the equivalent of 'I' in English, because there are lots of first-person pronouns in Japanese and only one in English, and telling me that 'watashi' = 'I' flattens out a lot of the meaning entailed in using 'watashi' instead of 'boku' or 'ore' or whatever.

I realize lesson one may not be the place to get into these fine distinctions, but.

Also Japanese the Manga Way romaji uses macrons to indicate long vowels and Living Language romaji doubles vowels to indicate long vowels ("Tōkyō" vs "Tookyoo") and neither of those is how I've picked it up from fandom and this frustrates me. Also insert gripe about having to memorize kana, and about a lot of the writing being up-down right-left instead of left-right up-down. And I'm pretty sure this whole paragraph comes from a place of [something] supremacy (not sure if the something is 'white' or 'American' or 'European-origin' though), which only frustrates me more.

ETA: Oh. I figured out what irritates me so about having to learn kana. I have been reading since I was three, my parents tell me. I do not remember being three. As far as I'm concerned, I have always known how to read...and if I actually want to learn Japanese, I have to learn to read all over again with no idea how I accomplished this feat the first time.

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Yeah, I guess.

There is a reading and writing booklet that comes with the set, which is apparently meant for writing in, yes. Though there being so many kana, the booklet only gives space to practice the kana and twenty kanji. Plus a few blank pages at the end.

Okay. I guess that makes sense. And I don't understand the nuance, not really, I just know it's there.

*offers biscuits* At least you're aware it's a thing even if you don't necessarily have a name for it and try to acknowledge it as existing? That's more than a lot of people do.

Ouch. That really doesn't sound like a lot of space. Are they entirely blank or do they have squares like in this notebook?

*ruffles hair* I'm sorry I didn't know how to make it clearer. You knit, I think? I think I remember you talking about knitting projects you were working on. If you do, perhaps try to think of it as similar to learning how to knit. People usually start off with something easy to learn the basics of the craft and then gradually move on to more difficult patterns and stitching, don't they? Second language teaching is a little like that: you start people off with the basics and then gradually make it more difficult.

Mmm... If you decide to look it up elsewhere, I recommend keeping it as passive knowledge for the time being. The (admittedly few) English sites I've seen tend to gloss over the grammatical nuances of pronouns in general as well as ignore the fact that Japanese pronouns aren't used quite the same as English pronouns.

Nod.

Six practice squares per glyph, which is not terribly much space, yes. I suppose I could graph paper or something to practice further.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense about starting easy.

Graph paper would definitely work, yes. ^_^ It's not necessary as you can practice on blank sheets too, but it helps and makes things easier. Whatever paper you end up using, I recommend boxing things off in groups of four like the notebook I linked you does, though. It's not a massive thing for kana studying (and you're supposed to switch to drawing them in the smaller squares after a while), but it'll be extremely helpful when you move on to the more complex kanji. (Also, because I found it whilst rummaging around the internet earlier, kanji dictionary!)