hello there,
I'd like to join with Japanese. I just started learning it and my first goal is to learn to read and write the hiragana characters. At the moment I try to tackle 5 new ones every day. But I already did some a few months ago, when I dabbled in the language. That way, I plan to finish learning the Hiragana characters in the mid of this months. Let's see how that works out. If it's getting too confusing, I will slow down.
There were many reasons I started learning Japanese.
1. I wanted to learn a new language. I studied French on and off before, but somehow hadn't the motivation, because there was no hook. I just started it at school and didn't want my effort then to be a waste of time. Something new is always more exciting, but that alone would not be enough I guess
2. I am fascinated by any kind of other alphabet or writing system and Japanese has 3
I enjoy writing with pen and paper and learning another writing system is very appealing to me. I was torn between Chinese and Japanese, but chose Japanese in the end for the following reasons.
3. A friend of mine is quite into Japanese from the Manga and Anime side and so I thought we could motivate each other better, when we would learn the same language. Though she lives a few hours away from me. But apart from chatting via Skype it would also be an opportunity to exchange letters and maybe write some Japanese in between..
4. I have some Japanese people in my sports club, so I could practice/ talk to them or first at least try to understand some of what they talk to each other.. I'm rather shy when it comes to practice something in presence of other people, which you have to do when practicing languages with others. Maybe I just practice on my own and when I am sure of something, I talk to them...
5. I also do like Manga and Anime. I know they don't use 'normal' language there, but since I am someone who doesn't really goes out to talk to people in another language for practice anyway, understanding Anime is a reasonable goal for me.
6. I want to learn about Asian culture/ history in general and one way is including learning the language as well. I chose that path.
So, my overall goal is probably not to speak fluently, but more to understand the language written and spoken in various forms (Anime/Manga, everday language etc). And also to learn about the culture and history. Which I think is easier when one studies the language as well. Especially in a language like this with all those characters who themselves consist of a combination of characters. It's interesting to know what some characters also contain and how to interpret that etc.
Maybe talking to Japanese people will be a future goal, but for now it's not my focus.
I do have a question about the group: I've read somewhere that there won't be any TAC this year. But in the first posts there is a lot of writing about a challenge. So is this actually a TAC team? Or just a permanent study group and the challenge mentions were concerning the monthly challenges?
I still had to look a lot of it up though. 