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According to this thread, 413.
I’m finally getting back into serious study. I had been partway through season 6 and then I stopped doing anything but reviews for the last month or so. Funny how living 3, and working 2, blocks from the Boston Marathon finish line will throw a woman off her game. On the plus side, my sudden urge to go visit family meant getting off the train near the NYC Kinokuniya. New manga is getting me more enthused about grammar and kanji again.
Thanks so much, both of you. I was going nuts trying to sort through options. I could tell a lot of reviewers had a very poor grasp of Japanese, so it was hard to tell how accurate overall ratings were. Typing in “kinichi wa” will not, after all, lead you to こんにちは.
Koichi could rewrite to reflect the technical definition of “is,” but technical definitions aside, “to be” does fall into a category that’s hard to define. The overall point Koichi makes is quite useful, and even while I (from a professional standpoint*) winced at the incorrect definition, I found the section useful. I’m okay with English grammar details being fudged a little in service of making the imperfectly analogous Japanese grammar points clearer. I agree entirely with Michael and Carlos on their points. Overall clarity should, in my opinion, be privileged over technical precision.
*freelance copyeditor/proofreader/line editor
For DS, I’ve really liked the Zelda games. There’s a lot of kanji, but when you tap kanji the hiragana pop up. This is particularly useful on occasions when poor screen resolution make some kanji very unclear. It’s still a bit advanced in terms of amount of text to get through, but it’s a good option once you’ve progressed a bit more.
@KiaiFighter Sounds like you’ve really liked your experience teaching at an eikawa. I hear a lot of mixed messages about working for eikawas because, apparently, some can be brutal. Do you have any advice or strong opinions one way or the other?
I keep looking into different options to get to Japan to teach English, but it’s been kind of confusing to navigate. From what a friend of mine who’s teaching public school right now through Interac says, a lot of the kaishas don’t pay well enough to guarantee I’ll be able to cover all the expenses I’ll have and still save a bit on top. Apparently Interac is good.
I do know I’m qualified to teach, both in Japan and the US. Well, in the US I’m qualified only at the college level or as a tutor, but adjunct faculty positions kind of work out to minimum wage at best when you throw in all the work hours required outside the classroom. I think in a lot of cases it’s more like sub-minimum wage, and no benefits. it’s kinda sad when I make a lot more per hour as a concierge than I would actually using my degree.
JKL: How did you go about converting your desk?
Thanks! I’ll check that out.
Yeah, as zeldaskitten et al said, there are a lot of songs where particle wo sounds like wo instead of o. Songs often make all sorts of dropped vowels quite distinct. Music isn’t a great place to pick up pronunciation. Words with “shite” usually have an almost silent i, and words like ikitai usually have an almost silent i in ki. Music brings those i sounds forward much of the time.
Sorry for all the romaji. I ‘m stuck with devices on which I can’t type kana today. They support reading, though, so it doesn’t bother me much.
Is the DS region locked? I don’t have one at the moment but I’ve considered getting one. All I have right now is a US region PS2 and a Wii (which I think is also region locked?), so to play games in Japanese I’d probably have to get a new system or be less of a luddite and figure out roundabout means on my Mac. Buying anything would have to wait awhile, but it’s nice to get an idea of how much I’d need.
Also, anyone know of dating sim games that are fun and aimed at the straight girl crowd? AKB48 is not my cup of tea for dating sims. I remember hearing about some, but I can’t remember where or when.
@Justin Like half the population of 20-somethings in Boston, I did indeed move here for school. I just finished my master’s degree (MFA in nonfiction writing) at Emerson College and walked last month.
I’m not sure which teacher my acquaintance who’s still at Northeastern had this last semester. My friends who went to Northeastern all graduated five or six years ago. The one who works in the library at Northeastern went to school in RI, and fled to Boston after graduation because he was tired of RI.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 5 months ago by
Kas.
Nice to see a fellow Bostonian on here :) A couple of my friends went to Northeastern, and another works there. I hear good things about the Japanese class there.
@Tom @Crystal: Taking a second language isn’t even required in a lot of US school districts, which I think isn’t a great idea. The economy is global, and I think it helps later in life to have some understanding of other cultures. It’s supposed to be easier to pick up a language later in life if you have exposure to a foreign language when young.
Had I remained in high school I would probably have taken Chinese, since it was offered at the school I was supposed to attend. (I didn’t quite drop out; the state I lived in allowed anyone over the age of 16 to attend community college without having a high school diploma or equivalency. I hated high school and took the opportunity to skip it, not that I was exactly ready for college, but I managed). I would have liked that a lot better than French, which I took a semester of at community college since it was one of the few languages on offer that I was vaguely interested in (I think the only uncommon language taught at the time was Russian).
@Raymond @Crystal: I’ve participated, or at least attempted to participate, in NaNoWriMo every year since 2006. Most of what brings me back every November is the awesome community of writers we have participating in Boston (we had an awesome community in Colorado too. I guess I’m lucky?). I gave up after 4k words in 2011 because it was either quit the novel or stop studying Japanese for a month. Not backsliding on Japanese seemed more important.
I really think having a good community is important to learning and/or trying new things. I haven’t been on these forums long, but so far the community seems pretty fantastic.
I’m Kas. Apparently I’m older than most of you (28). I live in Boston at the moment, moved out here for graduate school. Graduation is on Monday, which still seems kind of unreal even though I technically finished back in December (Emerson College only holds graduation once a year, in May). I answered why I’m studying in this thread http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/how-i-became-interested-in-learning-japanese/ and since it’s rather long I’ll skip boring you all with the repetition.
On a side note, England is awesome. I studied in London for a semester, back in 2006, and kind of miss it still. Too bad it’s so difficult for Americans to get work visas in Europe.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 5 months ago by
