1424: わたしはいぎりすじんです。(Or Something.)

Last Japanese class before the Christmas break this evening. I’ve been quite pleased with my progress to date, though there are still things I struggle to remember — and the second half of the hiragana table continues to elude my memory. I’ll get there in the end, though, particularly if I make some time to revise over the Christmas break.

One thing that’s really struck me after each session is how much I get into the “other language” mindset when I come out of the class. Immediately after finishing a session, my brain is still in “Japanese” mode and I find myself having to stop myself saying ありがとう rather than “thanks” when someone holds the door for me, or attempting to respond to someone’s initiation of a conversation with some random Japanese phrase. (“So, how did you like that?” ”スミスさんのほんです。”　”That’s… nice. See you later.” ”おやすみなさい！”　”Yeah, whatever.”)

This is a positive sign, I guess. And more and more phrases are coming readily to mind, too. Not necessarily enough to make a conversation flow particularly naturally, mind, but enough to be able to state some basic things and ask some basic questions.

Japanese is a challenging language to learn for sure, but the fact is it’s perhaps not as challenging as its crazy non-Roman alphabets might suggest. In fact, grammatically speaking, it’s a lot simpler than English, and its pronunciation — reading kanji aside — is very straightforward, since there’s only one way to pronounce each hiragana/katakana character. Once you get your head around the correct pronunciations of the vowel sounds in particular, it becomes very easy to read Japanese words and phrases out loud — if they’re in romaji, anyway; deciphering hiranaga and katakana takes a little longer to learn, but once you get your head around it, it should be reasonably straightforward.

I have no idea how long it will take to get my use of the language to a functional standard for something useful, such as going to Japan, speaking to a Japanese person without the aid of an interpreter or even seeking a career that makes use of said knowledge.

Actually, the latter point is an interesting one; I’ve mentioned a few times on these pages that over the years I’ve realised I don’t have a whole lot of “ambition” to be a particularly successful, well-known or famous person. I have accomplished one personal goal by becoming a professional games journalist — and believe me, there are days when that isn’t all it’s cracked up to be — but beyond that? Who knows.

Well, that’s not quite true; since getting considerably more interested in Japanese entertainment — video games, anime and other related material — I’ve found myself thinking that a career in translation and localisation would be something I’d really enjoy doing. I’m under no illusions, of course; I follow a few localisation specialists on Twitter, and they put in long hours, do hard work and regularly have to deal with some of the more idiosyncratic aspects of both English and Japanese… but that’s the sort of challenge I think I’d enjoy. I can see myself poring over the script for, I don’t know, a Legend of Heroes game and mulling over the best possible translation of a particular idiom; arguing with fellow localisers about whether or not it should be a straight translation that keeps the Japanese character intact, or an Ace Attorney-style localisation that transplants the overall narrative thread to a situation that’s a bit more “Western”.

Anyway, that’s at least a few years off yet, but it’s something to potentially aim for, anyway. And in the meantime I can satisfy myself with starting to understand more and more of the unsubtitled battle callouts in JRPGs and fighting games, or recognising particular common words and phrases in anime.

わたしはうちにかえります。

おやすみなさい！！

Or, you know, something.

1375: Desu

A few weeks into my Japanese evening class and I’m enjoying myself. There’s been a fair amount of stuff I’d managed to pick up naturally simply through watching anime, playing games and looking things up myself out of curiosity, but it’s nice to know that I was at least correct in all of these cases.

I’m finding the process of learning enjoyable. It’s been a while since the opportunity to learn something in a classroom-style environment — and no, I don’t count teacher training days — and it’s good to get back to it. I can’t help but feel that, having chosen to do this, I’m appreciating it far more than if I was obliged to be there at, say, school or even, to a lesser extent, university.

It’s also enjoyable to be in a group where there’s a decent mix of abilities. I know first-hand how frustrating it is to teach a mixed-ability group, but it’s quite satisfying to sit in a room with other people and be able to tell — this sounds bad, but what the hell — that I’m not the worst person there. In fact, so far I’m feeling quite confident in my own abilities with regard to pronunciation, remembering phrases and so on.

The part that’s doubtless going to be somewhat more challenging is the learning of the Japanese characters, beginning with the hiragana set. I can remember a couple of “sets” of these without too much difficulty, but others are a bit harder to remember — and it takes me time to parse them into the syllables they represent. I’m sure that’s something that will come with practice, but it’s my one real stumbling block at present. It’s not a massive problem since the majority of the initial work we’ve been doing is in romaji rather than kana, but I rather optimistically picked up the textbook the course is using in its kana incarnation, not realising that it pretty much expected you to have both hiragana and katakana pretty much sorted by the time you start learning words and phrases. I may have to invest in the romaji version for at least the early weeks — that or spend a bit more time doing self-study on hiragana and katakana, anyway. It’ll come in time, I’m sure.

So far we’ve only learned a few basic words and phrases — introducing ourselves, saying good morning/afternoon/night/bye, giving our phone number — but things seem to be moving along at a reasonable pace, and the class is working well together. I still feel a bit nervous about interacting with relative strangers, to be honest, but I’ve been going for three weeks now, including talking to people, and haven’t exploded or shat myself or anything like that, so that’s good.

I’m interested to see how far this initial course takes things. I’ve certainly got the taste for learning again, so may well end up continuing my studies once it finishes in January — or perhaps that’s the time to switch to self-study. We’ll see. Either way, I’m enjoying myself at present, and hopefully it will prove useful (or at least vaguely bragworthy) at some point in the near future.

1361: Hajimemashite

A new experience for me tonight as I started an evening class. That’s a symbol of being a “grown-up” isn’t it? Something like that.

I’ve actually been looking to do something like this for a while, as I’ve been missing the experience of learning stuff. And I’m not talking about the interminable tedium of corporate training or the equal horror of teacher training days; I’m instead talking about actually sitting there in a class, learning something that won’t necessarily be directly relevant to your life and/or job immediately, but which will provide some sort of knowledge you can whip out on occasion and impress people with.

Those who know me will be unsurprised to hear that it’s Japanese I’m learning. My choice of this is partly due to my own interest in Japanese culture, but also for the fact that it might genuinely be useful in the future depending on what directions my career goes in. If I can get good enough at Japanese — this is a big “if”, obviously — I’ll be able to talk to Japanese developers more easily, or move into localisation (something I’d actually quite like to do) or any manner of other things. The prospects are quite exciting — a hefty period of concerted study away, sure, but still exciting nonetheless.

I impressed myself with how much of the first session’s content I already knew having picked it up from various places. Anime and games are not always the best place to pick up Japanese since there’s often a lot of dialect and deliberately “wrong” mannerisms used (Squid Girl’s use of “de geso” at the end of every sentence springs to mind, as does Compa’s overuse of “desu” in Hyperdimension Neptunia) that will probably make you look rather foolish if you were to use them in conversation desu.

This evening, we largely focused on things like introducing yourself, giving some basic details like where you’re from, what you do and that sort of thing, and asking questions. A lot of it was stuff I’d already figured out for myself from a combination of my own deductions and occasional Internet searches prompted by an “I wonder if…” thought. I was pleased to discover that a lot of things I’d figured out for myself turned out to be correct, so I can now reasonably confidently introduce myself, say good morning, good day, good evening and good night, and say “excuse me” and “sorry” — both rather important.

I felt a little of my usual social awkwardness when we were required to talk and practice with the other students in the room, but no-one bit my head off, yelled at me or called me a prick, so I guess it was successful. I’m sure everyone — including me — will loosen up in the coming weeks, too; after all, the very nature of an evening class means that everyone there actually wants to be there to learn something, so it’s unlikely anyone there is going to be a cock deliberately.

So a success for now then. I have absolutely no idea how much I’ll learn over the course of the next few months, but I’m interested to find out, and the structure of a class will hopefully spur me on to keep practicing and studying in my own time too.

On that note, oyasumi nasai.