I'm naturally extremely camera shy
Monday, September 29, 2014
Goal Statement For Class!
Alright so in regards to my weaknesses and goals...
It's not too hard for me to memorize vocabulary, grammar and other technical points like that, in fact I feel like that's the part of learning a new language where I have the most fun! For me the main thing I need to work on is the pitch and intonation part of my prosody. My speed of speaking is adequate at this point but the feedback I received from Shibata Sensei let me know that I tend to raise my pitch at the end of sentences and that this isn't good in Japanese unless i'm asking a question. (Which I wasn't doing so, oops!) I guess the problem is I'm perhaps still imitating a more English way of speaking where slight raises in pitch (regardless of words) indicates a bit of deference and cordiality.
Hopefully I'll be able to work on this and improve a bit by shadowing and paying extremely close attention to that particular aspect of speaking when listening to music or anime for the next couple of weeks. I watch anime and listen to music a lot most weeks so I won't set an exact time that I'll be doing this but I'll say that for at lest five minutes of every anime episode or for the first chorus of each song I'll try to listen to/ imitate pitch patterns very closely.
It's not too hard for me to memorize vocabulary, grammar and other technical points like that, in fact I feel like that's the part of learning a new language where I have the most fun! For me the main thing I need to work on is the pitch and intonation part of my prosody. My speed of speaking is adequate at this point but the feedback I received from Shibata Sensei let me know that I tend to raise my pitch at the end of sentences and that this isn't good in Japanese unless i'm asking a question. (Which I wasn't doing so, oops!) I guess the problem is I'm perhaps still imitating a more English way of speaking where slight raises in pitch (regardless of words) indicates a bit of deference and cordiality.
Hopefully I'll be able to work on this and improve a bit by shadowing and paying extremely close attention to that particular aspect of speaking when listening to music or anime for the next couple of weeks. I watch anime and listen to music a lot most weeks so I won't set an exact time that I'll be doing this but I'll say that for at lest five minutes of every anime episode or for the first chorus of each song I'll try to listen to/ imitate pitch patterns very closely.
Some Great Music From Okami
One of my favorite songs from おおかみ, the game from before. :)
Such a beautiful singing.
A Little More About Me; Art!
One other thing that's related to Japanese 101 and my study of the language and culture is my love for some of the modern and traditional styles of art seen in a lot of Japanese anime and video games today. Its a hard thing to describe but one of my all time favorite examples of a modern fusion of traditional and contemporary Japanese art styles is the Japanese RPG game Okami. Not only is it a FANTASTIC game. (I'd recommend it to anyone :) ) but its some of my favorite artistic visual work to date.
This is more of an example of the art in-game which is great but the really gorgeous stuff is the more traditional versions the creators also did to supplement it...
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| The dark stylized lines are really pretty and inspiring to me as a developing artist myself.! |
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| One of the typical pieces you'd see on a loading screen or start menue. |
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| The game itself is meant to be based off of Traditional Watercolor Techniques |
I really love the use of line and color and the way games like these try to fuse traditional and modern art styles!
So I guess you could say art is one of the parts of Japanese culture today that I really appreciate, and that it helps motivate me to learn the language as best I can.
げいじゅつ が 大すき です!
Monday, September 22, 2014
Japanese Introduction Practice :)
はじめまして、 れのるどです！ いるのいすのしかごからきました。ぷりんすとんだいがくのいちねんせいです。わたしのせんこうはせいぶつがく。 にほんごがすきです！ どうぞよろしく。
Thursday, September 11, 2014
First Post: Why I Choose to Study Japanese!
それ は わたし の "Blog" です!
(^ That might not be gramatically correct but that's why I'm in 101 :)
This assigned class blog sounds pretty fun, so hopefully I do this right!
I guess I'll start of with a more academic, serious-sounding reason for why I decided to take Japanese...
For the past 6 years or so I've been devoted to studying Spanish and consequently did so all throughout my high school career up until the end of my senior year when I completed the AP exam and tested out of my language requirement as a result. But even though I'm not required to take a language I love the process of language learning and decided that Japanese would be the next most relevant language for me to learn personally, so here I am now in Japanese 101. I self taught myself the basics for the past year or so as a hobby, so I have a little past experience but nothing major!
Now the less academic reason is one I'm hoping at least some of my classmates can relate to, and that reason would be simply having a positive personal interest in the culture and things like video games, anime, art, music, and light novels etc. that are originally in the Japanese language. I love to read and watch shows and listen to music in English but the Japanese equivalents grab me as well, so the fact that I enjoy those cultural things and love language learning made the choice to take Japanese in Princeton a no brainer. I'm incredibly excited for this upcoming year and it's good to meet you all.
(^ That might not be gramatically correct but that's why I'm in 101 :)
This assigned class blog sounds pretty fun, so hopefully I do this right!
I guess I'll start of with a more academic, serious-sounding reason for why I decided to take Japanese...
For the past 6 years or so I've been devoted to studying Spanish and consequently did so all throughout my high school career up until the end of my senior year when I completed the AP exam and tested out of my language requirement as a result. But even though I'm not required to take a language I love the process of language learning and decided that Japanese would be the next most relevant language for me to learn personally, so here I am now in Japanese 101. I self taught myself the basics for the past year or so as a hobby, so I have a little past experience but nothing major!
Now the less academic reason is one I'm hoping at least some of my classmates can relate to, and that reason would be simply having a positive personal interest in the culture and things like video games, anime, art, music, and light novels etc. that are originally in the Japanese language. I love to read and watch shows and listen to music in English but the Japanese equivalents grab me as well, so the fact that I enjoy those cultural things and love language learning made the choice to take Japanese in Princeton a no brainer. I'm incredibly excited for this upcoming year and it's good to meet you all.
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