こんにちわ to you all.  Anyway, I’m Jessie and I’m currently an American undergraduate university student studying mathematics who also considers herself to be quite an avid language learner.  I’ve already learned Spanish and Hebrew quite well in a classroom setting, really enjoyed my studies in the two languages (Even though with Spanish I didn’t have much of a choice due to that being in middle/high school), and am at an advanced/fluent level in both of them as of today.  So now, I’m up for another challenge–for this new year I want to try some self-study in something really different, and I figure Japanese would be a taker because it’s one of the furthest languages from anything I already know that I have an interest in (There’s so much Japanese print and electronic media out there–plus the culture is pretty interesting, the food is AWESOME, and I would love to visit/work/study there some day).  The orthography is also pretty interesting–I’ve already taught myself hiragana/katakana and Kanji reading is definitely gonna be pretty challenging and interesting from what I can gather.  Oh and TextFugu was on sale of course–haha.

You all know, also, just the feeling of being able to read foreign languages after so much study, from my experience, I don’t know, it’s intoxicating.  I felt it with spanish and BIG TIME with hebrew (because of the different alphabet, or should I say, alef-bet (אלפבית)) and I’m already feeling it just by reading out ひらがな and カタカナ “alphabets” (syllabaries–xD), even if I can’t make them out into true words in most cases yet…I don’t know, I love it.  I want this with japanese!!!

Anywho, hi again to you all and がんばって everyone! ^_^

Btdubs my nickname on the forums; ג’סיקה = Jessica (The letters there are (G but the apostrophe/geresh (גרש) makes it J)sykh and the vowels are implied, plus you read it right to left–goes to show you how much language scripts can differ :D )