When I tell my friends and family that I decided to take Japanese this year basically on a whim, they are surprised, and rightfully so. My high school offered only French, German, Spanish, and Latin (of which I took the last for four years), so Asian languages are a completely new realm for me.
As to why I decided on Japanese, I can't really say. I knew that I wanted to learn a new language that I could actually use to speak to people (unlike Latin) but I didn't really have any requirements other than that. I landed on Japanese after a lot of deliberation for these reasons:
- I've always wanted to visit Japan and it would be awesome to be able to speak with people there in their native tongue.
- It doesn't use Roman characters and it seemed like a fun challenge to learn a whole new alphabet.
That was about all the reasoning that went into it, but so far it looks to be a great decision. The class is really fun and it's awesome to think that I'm on my way to being able to communicate with a whole new group of people.
This isn't to say that it's easy, though. Memorizing a whole new alphabet with foreign characters has been a challenge, as well as trying to speak using non-native phonemes. However, I'm sure that with enough practice it'll all become much easier.
Check back for more juicy details as I continue my foray into the unknown!
じゃあ、また！
