Cementing My Knowledge of Japanese Adjectives

This post is pretty much just me attempting to remind myself of how to conjugate Japanese adjectives. It's the only section I've really struggled with thus far, so I figure it can't hurt to write out what I've learnt to try and remember it better. So yeah, no need to read unless you want to learn a little Japanese =P

な (na)- adjectives omit the な when coming after a noun. When preceding a noun, however, the な is included. ie: 車は好きです (kuruma wa suki desu) will become 好きなくるまです(suki-na kuruma desu).
な adjectives are conjugated as follows;
Positive - です (desu)
Past - でした　(deshita)
Negative - じゃりません (jarimasen)
Past-negative - じゃりませんでした (jarimasendeshita)

い (i)- adjectives are recognised as always ending in 'i' when positive. There are exceptions (すき and きれい ending in い but actually being な adjectives, for example) but there's no real way to explain or learn that other than plain old memorisation and practice. The い is included both before and after the noun, however it will change depending on conjugation.
Conjugation is as follows;
Positive - い (i)
Past - かった (katta)
Negative - くない (kunai)
Past-negative - くなかった (kunakatta)
Oddly enough, you will usually add です (desu) to the end of each phrase regardless of whether it's in past or present test, or whether it's positive or negative. It's a politeness thing.
So if you were to say your car is not dangerous you would have to include です (desu) at the end despite the sentence being neither positive nor in present tense. ie: あなたの車は危なくなかったです (anata no kuruma wa abunakunakatta desu).

When the adjective is preceding the noun, it's easier to see the adjective + object as one entity rather than two separate words. It makes figuring out sentence structure and speaking fluently easier.

Languages!

I totally typed up a blog about my language choices ages ago, but it turned into a list of why I adore certain countries and that kinda wasn't my intention x3

Yesterday a bunch of us went to the University of Queensland to check out the campus and their courses. My decision? St. Lucia is a beautiful campus. It's huge and the buildings are magnificent. Their courses, on the other hand? Well, they're quite good as well, but, unfortunately for me, they don't offer quite what I'm looking for.

More research is needed, I guess, so I can find out what place offers the greatest course. I'm currently still aiming for Griffith university (Nathan campus, as it has the best courses for languages). At Griffith I can do a Bachelor of Arts in Language and Applied Linguistics, specialising in Japanese and Italian. That's enough to get me into translations for both languages. If I were to go to UQ I could do a BA in both Japanese and Italian, but I'd have to go a step further and do a Masters in Translation and Interpretation for one of the two. I'd much prefer not having to do a Masters degree, to be honest.

I love learning Japanese, and I adore the media from Japan (hence why I'd translate it, of course). That said, I absolutely adore Italy. I have more of a passion for Italy than I do for Japan. My love of Japan really does centre around their anime/manga/movie industries and the language, rather than the country, their history or the people. For that reason, even though I'm more set on translating Japanese, I'd prefer to go study abroad for a while in Italy.

At UQ one of the speakers mentioned that you really need a few languages to get into these fields, not just two. Especially if you're doing a European language, because a lot of Europeans have 2, 3 or even 4 languages under their belts. Fluently. I only know one, and it's the only language I've ever spoken my entire life. I've only ever been required to know one. Australia is mostly monolingual, so it's never been compulsory for me to learn another language. For a country that attempts to define itself as multicultural, we really aren't...

Aaanyway. I'm really looking forward to uni now. Really. One guy learnt Japanese and German, and actually studied in Germany for awhile. While there, he got to learn Old Norse and translate documents from Old Norse into German. Why? Why not, I guess... Rule of cool, or something. I think that's damn awesome. Studying overseas really does sound epic, and I'm looking forward to it. I'd love to go study in Italy. There's so much history to study and architecture to admire and gorgeous landscapes to gaze at and delicious food to try and a beautiful language to listen to and oh my God the entire place would give me a brain aneurysm.

Ahem. Moving on. I have a lot of languages I want to learn. My list is as follows:

1. Sicilian
2. Japanese
3. Standard Italian
4. German
5. Spanish
6. Macedonian
7. Russian
8. Latin
9. Greek

I cannot actually think of a tenth language that I actually care about enough. =(
Truly, only the first 5 or 6 are really ones I'd like to learn. The last 3 are also epic, but not to the same extent. You know, Romance languages are my favourite. They sound amazing. Funnily enough, only 4 made it onto the list (with Latin being a dead language and all). Also, I don't care if Sicilian is just an Italian dialect, it's freaking epic and is practically it's own language. I adore it. Sicily is very underrated. I love the south kthx.

I really hope I'm not disappointed by university life. I'm looking forward to it. A lot. And I'm really looking forward to just plain immersing myself in the languages. I'm just looking forward to the future, I suppose. It's nice to have ambition for once =P

La Bella Lingua

A few days ago I started writing about the top languages that I wanted to learn (I will post that eventually, by the way). Most of you probably know that, at uni, I'll be studying Japanese and Italian, and after uni I might have a go at German (there's no way in hell I'll ever be fluent at all three of course, but it'd be nice to know some basic German on the side, right?) or Macedonian. Truthfully, Sicilian would probably be my ultimate favourite, but where the hell would I learn that?
Usually I fangirl over Japanese because it's different to English, it's very rounded and pretty sounding, their writing system is a lot more creative than the Roman alphabet could ever be and... well, anime and manga is originally written in Japanese, so it must be good. I adore Japan, and I really, really love the language. Unfortunately, it's just me. My family are... well, they're accepting of it, but they aren't fans of the country at all, and most of my friends are into other languages and cultures. Not that that's bad; it's always good to be an individual. It just makes it hard to truly fangirl when you don't have anyone to fangirl with. I can fangirl at them, but that's hardly the same.

Anyway. As I outlined in my language blog post that I have not posted yet (whoops), my great grandmother, who knew seven languages or something, loved Italian the most. I found out a few days ago that her daughter, my grandmother, loves traveling around Italy. I don't know where Italy is in comparison to all the other countries she seems to love, but it's definitely somewhere near the top of her favourites list.

I started to see a trend here, so I pestered my aunts on the other side of my family to see their opinions. As it turns out, they love Italy even more. One of them told me that Italy was her absolute favourite place, especially Sicily. Which is brilliant because it really seems that Sicily doesn't get the love it deserves (neither does the language, but that's a rant for another time).
I told her that I wanted to go to Italy and Spain at some point. She replied with "Spain is brilliant. It was this atmosphere that you have to love. But Italy will always be my favourite. It's beautiful. It has such amazing landscapes, and it has this really extensive history you just end up immersed in. The language is really pretty, too."

...well then.

I'm easily influenced, so I've started to look up more on the country and the language. I've always adored Italian. Pfft, they say France is the country of l'amour, but it's got nothing on how romantic Italian can sound. As I said earlier, I love Japan. My interest in Japanese culture will always top my interest in Italian culture. But when it comes to the languages, Italian may actually come up on top. It's more melodic and bright sounding, and the consonants are just so much sharper and more crisp.

Er, I'll stop fangirling over that now. I spent awhile looking at different places in Italy (Rome is gorgeous and Venice is so one-in-a-kind, but I still love the entirety of Sicily~) and then started looking up a heap of words. Why not add some Italian to my vocabulary, right? I like to think of it as getting a head start on my uni stuff. Yeah. That's my excuse.

Anyway, today I have decided that andiamo is one of my favourite words. It means let's go, basically, but to me it sounds a bit more urgent. It's a very pretty word. It just rolls off the tongue so easily. I dunno, I just like it a lot. Is it bad that I first heard the word through Hetalia?
I've also learnt that Italians use the term che cavolo as something similar to "what the hell". Thing is, it literally translates to what cabbage. So next time something weird and befuddling happens, make sure to exclaim what the cabbage?!?, alright? ^_^

Ti amo, hai capito? ♥ I absolutely adore how this sounds. Heh.
Italiano; la bella lingua indeed.

The Sadness That is a Holiday.

Most people are excited to go on holiday. Me? Not so much. Well, okay, that's a lie. I love holidays. I just hate leaving the house on the holidays. Especially when the holiday destination(s) won't have internet.

I'm being forced to go on a cruise. I know what you're thinking. Oh no, you have to go on a free holiday (I'm not paying. That's what parents are for) and you get to relax and do nothing. What horror!

Yeah. Well. Shut it. It's not quite like that. Despite being 17, I'm being forced to go to the kids club. Which means I get to hang with a bunch of 12 year olds (pretty sure the younger ones get their own room) in a room full of xBoxes and colouring in books. I don't even like xBox. Now if there were PS3's or Wii's in the room, I might stop complaining.

Nah, really, that's not so bad, I guess. I'll have my laptop. I'll have my MP3 player. I'll have stuff to do. I'd just rather do it at home. Or in the cabin on the ship, if need be. Not with a bunch of pre-teens looking over my shoulder.

I'm also going to be forced to participate in, well, everything. Which includes things like Pirate Night where you dress up like a pirate. Playing dress up can be fun, but my parents are picking out costumes. Well, more to the point, Mum is. And I can't really participate. I'm under 18, so I can't go to the bars or anything. That's where all the drunk, foolish behaviour will be. I'll be, as I said, stuck with the pre-teens. Lovely.

Pretty sure my family is there to eat and do nothing else. There are some epic restaurants on board, sure, but I refuse to have three course meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Goddamn it, I can barely have one three course meal let alone three.

Maybe they're trying to fatten me up? It's Hansel and Gretel except with my sister and I.

I don't want to be eaten.

On the plus side, I now know how lame my wardrobe is. I have a suitcase full of jeans and one dress. Yeah, just jeans. And my T-shirts all proclaim either the name of a band or a logo/character from a Nintendo game. Well, I have a lonely The Big Bang Theory shirt, but that's the only odd one out, really.

Anyway, pre-teens and cruise boats aside, I've had some pretty good holidays thus far. I've met up with some friends twice. Once at the shopping centre, once at the beach. I can't believe I've never gone to the beach with friends before. We spent more time on public transport than we did in the sand, but who cares? It was very, very fun. Definitely a highlight of the year, I'd say. And we didn't even do much. We built a dodgy sandman/elephant/castle/thing and ate icecream. But whatever. I found it to be pretty dang epic. Even when our bus was late and we missed out train, we still found the entire thing to be entertaining.

I don't know how many people have struggled to play uno on the train without losing the cards over every bump, but I can now say that I have. And I am proud of it.

Oooh, something else worth mentioning. I am now watching the anime Soul Eater. I didn't expect to like it, but trust me when I say it is epic. The artwork is very Tim Burton-ish. I do love Tim Burton. The sun looks a bit like the moon from LoZ: Majora's Mask, actually. Anyway. I've only seen 13 episodes thus far (which is like, the entire series of Angel Beats!. Gotta love short anime) and I haven't been disappointed. The basic idea is that there are humans, and humans who can shapeshift into weapons. These 'weapons' find people to wield them (called meisters) and, as a pair (or, in one case, a threesome. Not in a suss way) gather the souls of witches and 'evil' humans. It's pretty good. For such a large cast, the characterisation is surprisingly good. It's a good series if you like dark humour and the contrast of kiddy-ish animation with slightly more adult concepts. I'll write more about it when I return from the cruise and have seen more than just 13 episodes.

Can you tell who the weapons are? It's a bit odd having humans as weapons, if you ask me. In a clockwise direction, starting with the guy in the yellow jacket, you have Soul Eater, Black Star, Tsubaki, Patti, Death the Kid, Liz and Blair (the cat). In the centre is Maka.

I'm actually enjoying the dub, funnily enough. K, so, maybe I started watching because of Todd Haberkorn. Whatever. I love that guy. I'll blog about him when I return as well.
On the cruise I shall restart the series with the sub and make comparisons. This might be another dub that I prefer, meaning that it can be put into the same category as Inuyasha. That's means it's a damn fine dub. Then again, recently I've discovered that I adore Funimation's dubs, so I may have to expand that section of my favourites.

This image is kind of maybe awesome.

Plan to alleviate boredom on the cruise:
- Watch Fruits Basket
- Watch Soul Eater
- Learn more Japanese (Specifically, learn the 'ii' adjectives, learn 4-stroke kanji and put together longer sentences)
- Write blogs while cruisin' it up
- Finish reading Wuthering Heights

Really, that should take quite awhile. Fruits Basket might not, but Soul Eater is 50 episodes long. Le Gasp! I'm watching something longer than 30 episodes! This is amazing.

Or not. I watched the entirety of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z multiple times as a kid. But whatever.

I keep procrastinating with my Japanese study. Ho hum. Guess I should focus on that more, since I want to be a Japanese -> English interpreter/translator one day. Ii-Adjectives are a bitch to conjugate though. Why can't the be as easy as masu-adjectives?

Also, just for the hell of it, here's a screenshot of my desktop with my awesome Luigi's Mansion 2 wallpaper. I may as well show off my desktop occasionally, right? Why not?


Yeah, it's a bit cluttered, but whatever. I'll clean it up eventually. Hey! That's something else I can do on the cruise. xD

Procrastibation.

I'm not going to explain the word 'procrastibation'. C'mon guys. It should be obvious.

Anyway, I'm procrastinating, like I usually do. Not procrastibating (I would hardly advertise that online, guys) but just normal procrastinating. I have an assignment due tomorrow that I've hardly started. That's okay. I'll do it in the morning. That's how I did the last assignment. Woke up at 3am, finished it by 6am. I'm damn good like that.

You can't blame me for procrastinating. It's a stupid assignment. The task sheet is badly written and the teacher annoys me. Yeah, that's totally reason enough to not do an assignment. Moving on.

Pretty sure I looked at the task sheet, looked at the teacher and thought "what". Just like this gif. Yeah.

So how am I procrastinating this time? Unfortunately, I am not procrastibating. I don't think masturbation is a very productive way to pass the time. No, I'm listening to music, reading fanfiction and browsing Livejournal. Oh wait, that's what I normally do when something is due. Hm.

I'm a very predictable person, I suppose.

Then again, I'm not completely predictable. Guess what music I'm listening to. It's not indie, progressive rock or alternative for once. It's not in English or Japanese. Yeah, I've gone way out there. Sort of. I am listening to Italian rap.
Well, I'm listening to a bunch of songs in different languages about different countries. It just so happens that In Italia by Fabri Fibra (Ft. Gianna Nannini) is playing at this current point in time.

I figure I should listen to some more Italian if I want to learn the language... then again, there are a lot of languages I want to learn. Japanese, German, Macedonian, Greek, Spanish, Russian, Finnish, Portuguese, Latin and... Corsican, perhaps? Northern or Southern Corsican, I'm not picky.
I'd also like to learn Venetian, Sicilian and Neapolitan, but I may be going a bit over the top with the whole Italy thing. Corsican also counts, even if it's also spoken in France.

I'm too easily influenced. I started liking Finnish because of Tenuto Tuo, and it was Phantomess and Clearly Unfocused who got me into Spanish. But whatever.

L'italiano by Toto Cutugno is playing now. Which is quite a strange contrast when compared with the last song.

I should stop babbling on about languages now. Just for the record, I am studying Japanese and 'standard' Italian at uni. That will not change. However, I'd like to do German and maybe Sicilian one day in the future. Maybe. Depends on how difficult it is to learn Japanese and Italian... but hey, I'll keep those as my goals, anyway. It's nice to have goals, even if you probably won't reach them. It's free to dream big, right?

Right.

(The word 'procrastibation' was totally stolen from [title of show] which is absolutely hilarious and everyone should go watch it. Yes, right now. Yes, you. Go watch it. You won't regret it. Alright kiddies, go procrastibate and have fallacious arguments with your friends, mmkay?)

Pickles Have Many Names

I have spent the day reading Catch 22 so I can start and finish an assignment on it. The draft for this assignment was technically due last Thursday, however I had not finished the book. Truth be told, I didn't even plan on finishing the book. Hence why I am rushing to finish it now as the actual assignment is due in 3 days.

Unfortunately, I fail at keeping at one task for an extended period of time. As a result, I've ended up doing various things along with reading my book, such as discuss uni options, read fanfiction, follow Tim Schou on Twitter, follow a bunch of Hetalia roleplayers online, listen to the Eurovision contestants from this year, listen to Plastic Tree, look up a translation of the lyrics of two Plastic Tree songs, analyse these lyrics, sing along with the original Japanese lyrics, look up other Visual Kei bands, browse Facebook, eat chocolate, feta cheese, jelly crystals, cookies, lamingtons, bread and noodles, read messages about Belgium from a close friend, fight with Songbird for not playing my music, fight with Adobe Flash Player for crashing on multiple videos, watch videos of cats jump into boxes, fight with my sister and listen to a website that plays recordings of thunderstorms on a loop.

I've been very productive.

All of this reading and procrastinating has given me a hunger for pickles, actually. We have a jar, however there are only five pickles in the jar, so I only had one. Which sucks because I am really craving more.

Actually, the jar calls them 'Dill Cucumbers' and has something in Polish underneath that. Wikipedia calls them pickled cucumbers along with the above names plus variations of these names. They also call them 'gherkins'.

The thing with pickles/pickled cucumbers/dill cucumbers/gherkins is that they are a little bit sour and very salty. And I love salt. So you can understand my sudden craving. I adore salt. Today has been a very sugar filled day and I am sick of it. I want my salt, kthx.

I have 100 pages to go of Catch 22. Gosh dang it to heck.

I suspected that Plastic Tree were big on cutesy, kinda romantic, kinda sad lyrics. And I was right. Which is amazing because, as I've said before, my grasp on the Japanese language is rather small and failworthy. I looked up the lyrics to スピカ/Spica and アンドロメタモルフオーゼ/andro metamorphose. They are very good songs. Very emotional songs. I already knew the gist of Spica which is why I looked up the translation, but I didn't know much about Andro Metamorphose. I just looked up the lyrics because I liked the music.

Here are my favourite parts of each song

スピカ/Spica. Spica is the brightest star in Virgo, and the 15th brightest star in our sky.

まだ　星の光が　忘れそうになった思いを繋げるなら
覚えた星の名前が　隠れてしまった未来を照らすのなら
きっと　となり同士　ふたりぼっち　白いスピカ

Which translates to:
If the light of the stars still connects me to a love I’d forgotten
If the name of the star I’ve just remembered illuminates a future that was hidden
We’ll surely be side by side, just the two of us, a white Spica

アンドロメタモルフォーゼ/Andro Metamorphose is probably the most difficult title to remember. I don't know why. Anyway.

名を呼んで 名を告げて
透明じゃない僕にして
食べかけの月が僕を冷たく睨んでる
未来まで一緒にさ 行けたならよかったな
してあげたい出来ない事がたくさんあるんだよ

Translation:
Call my name, tell me my name
Make me visible
The half-eaten moon glares down at me coldly
I wish we could have made it to the future together
There are so many things I want to do for you, but can't

Yeah, so, they have very good lyrics.

Heh, when I scroll back up and read the first two paragraphs of this post, I feel like wincing. When I read something, I tend to adopt the voice used in that text (or at least, attempt to adopt it) and end up writing in a similar way. I think I was trying to write in a voice similar to that used in Catch 22, but it got a little muddled when I looked up pickles/pickled cucumbers/dill cucumbers/gherkins on Wikipedia, and I ended up with... well, whatever I wrote in the beginning of this post. Cool.

I'm Not Doing This During Class. Definitely Not.

I am confused.
I’m writing this in my spare period at school. And I am very confused.
I’m putting off my school work to muse over my life, because I am doubleplusconfused.
I am so confused that I’m not taking words from 1984 and changing them for my own purposes. I do not have any real reasoning behind this. Pretend that links back to me being confused, kthx.

Well, now that I think about it, I’m not that confused. I have theories behind why certain things are happening, and I don’t think I’m too far off (though I’m sure I’m not a hundred percent correct. I can’t be right. I mean... that doesn’t even... I’m not going to think about that). I can comprehend what’s going on, so much so that I’m formulating my own little ideas about this all. So clearly I am not confused.
But... well, that word seems to suit my thoughts better than any other. Yeah, I get what’s going on. But there’s still some factor that’s utterly... perplexing... and I’m not quite sure what it is that makes things perplexing, nor can I explain this any better. I just can’t. I’m going to blame the English language and say there just aren’t enough words to describe this. I like insulting the English language though, and I have a feeling that there aren’t any languages that could describe this situation efficiently enough.

I won’t go into detail. No one wants to know about my social life. Just know that I completely understand everything that’s going on, and yet I still manage to be completely and utterly confused. Maybe... Maybe I understand what's going on, and I get the theory behind it, but on an emotional level my brain just goes whaaaat. Yeah. Yeah, maybe.

You know, the English language has so many synonyms, and yet we still aren’t specific enough in some areas. In Japanese, the words watashi, watakushi, atashi, ore and boku all translate best to I. They are different, but it’s close to impossible to show that in our language. Fail to us.

I should go do some work now. So much stuff is due... I can’t focus though. Gotta hate being unable to focus. I suppose, at the least, I could go make some notes or something. Ciao.

"But worry not, I emerged triumphant in the end. If by triumphant you mean shirtless"

The title is an awesome quote from an epic Hetalia fanfic. No, it's not as dirty as the quote makes it seem.

K, I've decided what course I'm doing for uni. I'm definite on it, now. Naturally, it involves Japanese. I'm also wanting to learn Italian. 'Cuz Italian is cool.
I wasn't into learning languages until last year. Oh, how things change. Don't get me wrong, I've loved Japanese culture for a few years now. I love their games. I love their television. I love their music. I just never felt the need to learn the language. Then, after watching Death Note, I discovered the band ナイトメア。Or Naitomea. Which is really just the Japanese approximation of the word nightmare. Gotta love all the ways of reading Japanese katakana.
Anyway, I was listening to them and absolutely adoring Yomi's vocals. He is very emotional with his singing. So I looked up a translation of the lyrics. But... it wasn't the same. I mean, the translations made sense and all, but it's not quite like hearing it for yourself. I realised then that I wanted to hear the song in its mothertongue. I didn't want a translation. I wanted to hear how it was written, the way it was supposed to be heard. I wanted to understand the vocalists intent rather than just read a translation that lacked the kind of emotion you could hear in the song itself.

That, my friends, is why I decided to learn Japanese. To listen to one band. Is this sad? Possibly. But it's kinda maybe changed my life (insert more corny phrases here). I mean, I ended up really loving the language. I soon came to appreciate the differences between English and Japanese; how rounded the language sounds in comparison, how simple it is grammatically, how complex the formalities are and just how different it is. And once you start really researching it, you can see how the culture is reflected in the language as well. It's interesting. It's fun. I've developed a love for the language, the history behind it, the country itself, the people, everything. Really, the language barrier is pretty bad. You miss out on so, so much by speaking only one language.

So I decided, hey, I may as well use this to my advantage. What can I do with Japanese? Well, I love video games and anime. Could I... I don't know... translate them?

Yes. Yes, I most certainly could.

It was only recently I decided I should do Italian. I watched the film The Bicycle Thief earlier this year and decided that this language sounded really, really cool. I ended up looking up plenty of languages, just to see how they all sound. I came back to Italian in the end though. Screw what everyone else says, French isn't the language of love. Italian is. It's beautiful, mmkay? I could talk for hours about what that language does to me. I adore it. Oh hay, you speak Italian? Excuse me while I take off my clothes.
I guess I'm also learning it so I can go to Italy and sample the pizza and pasta there. Viva Italia! :3

This has all lead to me looking up countries in general. I started watching Hetalia when I got an interest in countries, and that certainly jump-started things. I ended up learning some (slightly modified. Yeah, slightly...) world history through humour. Trust me, that's the best way to learn ^^. After watching each episode I'd look up the references. I started reading the webcomic as well. Eventually I started just outright looking up the countries online regardless of whether Hetalia had touched on said country and its history. I'm slowly but surely gaining knowledge on all sorts of world cultures, languages and history, for no reason other than my own interest.

Random fact: I've always hated flags, you know? They seem pointless and... I don't know why I dislike them. I just do. These days I do enjoy looking up the flags of each country and learning about what they represent, though.
And to think, all this random culture-immersion-stuff came from me listening to one band. xD

In conclusion, I am now going to study Japanese and Italian. And I have completely faith in myself with this. I'll get through, because I'm studying things that I enjoy. I will emerge triumphant in my language studies. Hopefully I will emerge with my shirt still firmly placed over my torso, though.

You know, watching Eurovision this year isn't really linked with all that. My good friend Tuo is very much in love with the show, and I am very glad I followed his lead. It also helps that the Hetalia fandom also appreciates this show. That said... I'm mostly watching now for the unintentional double entendre's that I kept hearing. Israel's entry for Eurovision this year was one of the more obvious ones. Honestly, the lyrics can be taken in a rather... awkward way.

♪Ding dong, say no more
I hear silent prayers
And it's making me high and fly
I know where to go and I'm coming now

See what I mean? I don't know how to take that. That last line... good lord, woman, keep it in your pants please. ^^

University

I have no idea what I'm going to do once high school is over.

Well, that's not true. I want to do languages. I want to learn Japanese. I want to be able to speak it fluently one day, and I'd like to do Italian at an intermediate level by the time I'm out of uni. I want to do a course that will help me get a job in translating and interpreting from Japanese into English. One day, I'll possibly translate from Italian into English as well. Maybe more languages. I also wouldn't mind doing linguistics.

No, a better way of phrasing that would be this; I have no idea what specific course I'm going to do once I'm finished with high school.

As you can see, I've listed a lot of stuff that I want to do, and there isn't one course that will cater to all of it. Therein lies the problem (lays the problem? Word tells me that it should be lays but I've always said lies because, well, that looks correct to me. Hm). I'm tentatively looking at one course currently. I've always questioned the validity of a BA degree but it's the only thing that truly fits what I'm wanting to do. So I'm currently aiming for a Bachelor of Arts in Languages and Applied Linguistics. I'll be specialising in Japanese, of course. Thing is, this isn't offered at my university of choice. It's offered at another good uni, but... well, I want to go to the same place as my friends.

Even if we grow apart (I really, really hope we don't), I still want to at least start at the same place with them. We'll have different classes, but I'll feel a little more confident just knowing they're at the same place as me.
Honestly, it was hard enough starting at high school on my own. I don't want to do that again.

Course and friend-placement issues aside, I am really looking forward to uni. I love learning Japanese, so I have a good feeling about studying it in a class. Perhaps I won't feel so bored during lessons. I might actually try for a change. I also think linguistics will be good because, with Japanese at least, one of my favourite things to study has been the grammar and syntax of the language. It's completely backwards in comparison to English. It's interesting. I also find conversations in Japanese to be a lot more efficient at getting the point across than in English. Well, excluding the pleasantries that you just can't get enough of when it comes to Japan, but I digress.

There's little I can do with language study here in Australia, but I figure that, if I'm not doing something I find interesting and fun, then there's no point in doing it. I refuse to do something I hate just because there may be plenty of career opportunities. I need to do something I enjoy. That something comes in the form of languages, for me.

I've heard the stories of university life. I assume college isn't that different, so I can throw those stories in there as well. But I'm trying to not go in with too many preconceptions. I don't want to end up disappointed, right? Even so, I'm holding onto the hope that the student body will be a lot happier and easier to get along with than those I've dealt with in high school. I'm also hoping that I'll get to socialise more. I'm hardly a social butterfly. If there's an event, I'll want to be in the centre of it... but I do get sick of it after awhile. I find myself wanting to leave parties early because I also need my alone time. So I doubt I'll be involved in huge gatherings every weekend. But I still want to go to some things. I want to go out to music concerts and see different performances. I want to actually have fun.

Yeah, I think I am getting my hopes too high still. But I can't help it. I'm looking forward to this all a little too much, I think. But you know, I like having something to look forward to. Even if that something is as nerdy as furthering your education.

God Doesn't Want Me To Study Languages

So I've just figured out why I struggle with the Japanese 'r' sound so much and why I cannot roll my r's. It also links to how I cannot lick the icecream bowl without managing to get icecream on my forehead and why I cannot, for the life of me, bend or roll my tongue in any way whatsoever. I appear to have 'Ankyloglossia'.

I've always had a short tongue. That's cool. At least I have a reason for it now. Ankyloglossia (often known as 'tongue tie', apparently) is where the skin under the tongue is unusually thick and/or short. So my tongue is attached to the bottom of my mouth. Well, everyone's is, but mine is stuck more than most. I don't know how this affects others, but for me it means I can't pronounce my R's properly. I didn't realise this until tonight, actually, when discussing pronunciations with my Dad. That was when he pointed out that I was weird. :3
I can't say an 'R' with my tongue. It comes out as an L sound. I try to compensate for this by using my throat to say anything with an 'r' instead.
So, for you normal-English speakers... say something, like 'rate'. Your tongue will probably be near the top of your mouth when you say the 'r' sound, right? Mine drops to the bottom of my mouth so that I can use my throat muscles to pronounce it. I have no way of explaining what I do, actually... Just that my tongue has very little to do with my 'r' sounds.

This also explains quite a lot. I did get tongue-tied more than anyone else as a kid...

Hm, yes, well, anyway. I pronounce my r's the same way that most German's do, it seems. Which is great, except... I'm not learning German.
And oh, the irony, it's also similar (though not quite to the same extent) to French 'r' sounds. I do not want to speak French...

I'm studying Japanese. In Japanese you pronounce the 'R' sound in between where you pronounce the English 'R' and 'L' sounds. But... that makes no sense to me because I can't make the English 'R' sound. So I kind of... make up a sound under my tongue. I'll explain that further down.

I also want to study Italian and possibly Spanish, which typically use the alveolar trill... or, you know, rolling the r's. Something I can't possibly do with my throat (Well, actually, I could learn, but at best it'll sound like a slight growl from what I can tell, and I don't really want to be growling at people). And I can't just learn to roll my r's the normal way, because my tongue won't work like that. It's kind of anchored to the bottom of my mouth, moreso than most... I've tried, but no matter how I position my tongue, it'll sound more like an 'l' than anything else.

The title of this post is wrong. It's not that I've been cursed to never study languages in general. It's more like... God has built me to learn languages I don't particularly like. Yeah. Thanks for that.

Not all is lost. I can make a slight rolling sound, in the same way I manage to make the Japanese 'r' sounds. I manage by moving my tongue in position to pronounce 'd' and then flicking between my 'r' and 'l' sounds underneath my tongue. I don't know how to explain that... I pronounce the 'r' with my throat, but flick air under my tongue to create an 'l' sound. It kind of rolls. It still sounds like more of an 'l' though. Actually, it mostly sounds Japanese and not at all Italian. That's not surprising though, since I figured this out while trying to pronounce the Japanese 'r' sound.

So much effort to make sounds that most people can do easily. O_O

I can get the annoying membrane under my tongue cut in surgery once I'm older, and I probably will do that. It's supposed to hurt a hell of a lot afterwards, but I think I can deal with it.

Curses. Of all the rotten luck...

Totes Working

I am sitting in class, bored out of my mind. We are supposed to be working, but who wants to do that during the last week? Anything we do now will not count to our grades anyway. So I'm watching Hetalia Axis Powers while pretending to work. I haven't been caught yet ^^
I'm extremely bored.
There's something about being forced to work that drains any energy I may have had. If I choose to do something, I'll be very productive. If I'm forced to work, I become a very, very bad (good?) procrastinator.

There's no spell check on here. Here's hoping my spelling is alright, then.

Alright, I'm going to be somewhat productive. I've loaded up TextFugu and am going to study Japanese. I mean, it's not school work, but it's still work, right?

Totes Learning Japanese

And failing at it.
Konbanwa. Watashi wa GoJo desu. Hajimemashite ^^
Or something.
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out the kanji. Romaji is pretty easy though. The only exception is in numbers.
I can write and read from 1 to 99 in kanji. I can't write out what all the numbers are in romaji though. Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, nana, hachi? Ku? Or kyu? I think ten is juu.
Ahem. Anyway, it's confusing.
But I'll get there eventually.
I figure I'll learn how to speak it by both study and using the immersion technique. I like subbed anime and I've been listening to music with Japanese vocals for awhile. No problems there.
Still... this seems like more hard work than what it's worth.
Hm. Oh well.
Wish me luck. =D