I’ve lost pretty much all interest in studying Japanese. :D

I’m having a liiiiiiittle bit of trouble with this. I pretty much know what’s being said, but there’s a few things that got me a little confuzzled. It’s a Facebook conversation I was having with my friend Erika. She has this weird perception in her head that I’m fluent in Japanese, so I don’t know what’s going on half the time we speak because we talk in Japanglish, so it’s a weird combination of piecing things together grammatically.

that’s great! 7月には日本にいるからいつでも連絡して :) this is super exciting :D 今年じゃなくても夏なら日本にいると思うから、if it’s summer, u r always welcome! (i mean i dont know which country i’m going for uni) gosh

So here’s what I think is going on:

that’s great! since I’m going to Japan in 7 months, get in touch with me anytime. :) this is super exciting :D [something something. idea of what's going on, but don't wanna embarrass myself if i'm completely off], if it’s summer, u r always welcome … blah blah blah

Haha, I have a solid idea of where you’re coming from. My heritage is really important to me, and the fact that my family hasn’t remained connected to it sort of bothers me. I’m Greek and Irish, and I really only know very little about my family’s history. I know a lot about the Irish side of our history, but not so much about the Greek. The Irish side is actually kind of cool, my great grandfather was supposed to emigrate to the United States on the Titanic, but he missed that because he got shwasted the night before and slept in due to his hangover. So, I sort of exist because of that. Also I’m related to a major socialist leader guy in the Irish Revolution named James Connolly. Still, aside from that my family is pretty disconnected to our Irish roots.

The Greek side is even worse. My grandpa spoke Greek fluently because he was a first generation immigrant, but because there was a lot of discrimination against Eastern Europeans and stuff back in the day, he decided not to teach any of his kids Greek. So, basically, all of my mom’s relatives speak Greek except for her side of the family. Sometimes we’ll go to Greek church for like big events, and those are wicked long with the priest speaking in Greek for half of the time so it’s a smidge’ awkward. After Japanese, or maybe even before it I really want to learn Greek.

Yeah. I guess connecting with my heritage is just really important to me because it feels like a part of my identity, and while being American is totally cool and all, I’d feel like it’d be pretty shitty if my heritage died out because of cultural assimilation.

I think it varies from person to person. I’ve been googling it after reading this and a lot of people say that they actually feel like the speak foreign langauges better when they’re drunk. I feel like this is attributed to (some) people not feeling so self-conscious when they’re drunk, so they’re not so caught up on making mistakes. I feel like it’s really dependent on your reaction to alcohol. Like for me, sometimes I speak in Spanish when I drink, and I’m never really entirely sure why. I’m also pretty sure that I do so pretty well — although I do so pretty well without drinking anyway, it just feels a little more natural under the influence.

As a side note, though, there was this one time when I was very, very under the influence of a certain plant that is medicinally legal in some places and I was pretty convinced that I could understand French almost fluently. I was going back and forth between freaking out that I was surrounded by people who were speaking French, and partially understanding them (probably through just context and made up stuff in my head). I was doing pretty good at Armenian too. I also tend to think that I can out-sing Whitney Houston in that state of mind, so all this should be taken with a grain of salt.

There’s also this app for kanji called “Ninja Words Adventure” or something along those lines. It only has about 500-600 kanji, but i has been by far the most useful in terms of retention for me.

Bon Iver – Perth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN4841U7M7M

Well, if you have a printer you could just print out enough lessons from Tae Kim and Textfugu to last you ten days. If not, I would go to the library and print them because Japanese textbooks run pretty high and aren’t all that useful aside from providing another perspective on a particular grammar point, and if that’s all you’re going for there are plenty of places you can just download them online if you’re okay with being a criminal. Making your own flashcards with index cards, or something similar, though would be a great idea because it’s like quadruple learning. Of course, all the vocab and grammar you bring along with you.

Perhaps camping themed vocab! Hoho! I am such a genius.