JLC-Wilson-Serena

  Learning hiragana is not too difficult and I find it very rewarding because after you learn it you can read a lot of Japanese, even if you don’t know what it means. It kind of demystifies the language because it is only made up of those sounds. I think learning to read English is a lot more difficult than hiragana because in English there’s a lot more sounds and things like silent letters and foreign words that are all pronounced differently. However, adding katakana into your learning takes more time to read Japanese. Not to mention kanji, which is much more difficult than either hiragana or katakana. I know some kanji but they are much more difficult to remember and they often change meaning based on context. If I remember correctly, you can speak fairly good Japanese without knowing many kanji because a lot of them are rarely found in everyday speech. I don’t remember learning English but learning hiragana for me consisted of comparing them to pictographs to remember the sound...

The use of names is different in Japanese than it is in English. I know from exposure to Japanese resources that they use their family names more than their first names, first name usage is reserved for those that you know very well and are close with. In English we use everyone’s first names by default, ones last name is only used in specific circumstances or after a title such as doctor, mister, missus, etc. Personally, I’m glad people don’t call me by my last name here. I like my first name much better and it’s interesting to have your identity tied so closely to your family. It’s almost like you’re seen as less of a person independently from your family, though that idea comes from a very American and individualistic point of view. I know for them it’s also about social distance and privacy in a way, using someone’s first name is almost intimate and so going by a last name makes more sense, I’m sure if I grew up there I would prefer it that way. I wonder if they find it odd calling...

  I am most excited about being able to communicate with and meet new people. The prospect of being able to make new friends with the ability to speak Japanese in common is a goal I’ve had since becoming interested in the language. Also, the ability to learn other languages after Japanese is intriguing to me. I am interested in a couple of other languages and I’m hoping that after learning my first language, I will be able to continue to learn more like Korean due to them being similar. I also have a terrible memory so continually exercising it while learning to speak Japanese could potentially help my memory. I did not know of this benefit before watching the video and I did not consider the personal benefits that language learning could give me. Furthering that, the improved problem-solving skills that language learning provides could make me a stronger person who is able to think better than I could before. The opportunities available to me with Japanese fluency will greatly inc...