Why?

So, this fall, I have enrolled in Japanese for beginners, taught at the notorious Northwestern software company where I am currently employed. Why did I do this to myself? Well, the good reason I used to have (that I traveled to Japan occasionally in my former incarnation as a content manager for an in-your-face video game console targeted at aggressive teen males) is no longer so, as I am now a technical writer for a ubiquitous suite of business productivity applications, and have no travel opportunities on the near horizon. My only remaining reason, then, is that not learning a foreign language in high school (despite four years of enrollment in Spanish at an astoundingly sub-par babysitting warehouse masqerading as a high school) is my biggest personal regret.

While in Japan, it struck me with great force that I must learn Japanese. Thus over the past two years I have tried with very limited success to memorize certain travel related phrases, useful mostly in taxi cabs. My official foray into classroom learning has been a great leap in effort and concentration. I have learned more than half of one of the three character sets used in written Japanese, and so I can now officially say that my journey of a thousand miles has in fact begun with the first step. I figure that this goal will literally require years of study and dedication to arrive at even basic results. I do not know if I have the stamina to make it, but I have begun. So far I have not missed a class. I guess you just have to take things like this on a day to day basis.

Read on as I describe my struggles. This really, really needs to be a blog and not a regular web page or it will, like Tiny Dog itself, become a nightmare of cutting and pasting.

Study session: 10/26/03. Numbers are hell.

So we are neck-deep in the chapter on numbers, and the Japanese have this weird system of numbering whereby random numbers at random intervals can be pronounced in different ways, or are actually entirely different words. There is no rhyme or reason to this madness, and you simply have to shift your brain into the appropriate, inexplicable version of that number as you stumble up the numerical chain. For example let's talk about the number four.

Four, itself, can be either shi or yon. Sometimes it is shi, and sometimes it is yon. Only the shadow knows when it is which. However if you are telling time, suddenly it becomes yo. !?!?!? Then there is eight. Eight, simply, is hachi. Ok, that's cool. Except, as part of "800," it becomes hap (hap-pyaku, even worse, when most other numbers in the 100's end with hyaku). 8,000? Has (has-sen). Whereas, 4 remains yon (not shi) in its 400 and 4,000 incarnations.

I know nothing I just said makes sense. It doesn't to me either, especially when called on to count real fast in Japanese in front of a classroom at 9 am. Welcome to Japanese for beginners, my little American losers, with your 26-letter alphabet and tritely repetitive numbering system.

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