Sharing Stories

[Fedgrub]

Hey guys, I thought it could be cool if we shared some funny, interesting or curious stories about when we first started learning Japanese.

I was motivated to learn Japanese because I went on a Contiki tour through Europe, and did a short stop over in Hong Kong for two nights. I know right now you ask, why do you want to learn Japanese again? haha. Well, a girl on my tour named Kazuko and I became very good friends, and she had obviously invested a lot of time into learning the english language, although her wordtank helped her a lot. I felt really bad that Kazuko had spent so long learning my language, and I could not even count to three in hers. After the trip, I really wanted to keep in touch with Kazuko, so I decided I would learn Japanese to make it easier for her. I didnt think I would enjoy it at all, but I do! Thats my story, anyone want to share theirs?

Did you guys find that when you started to learn Japanese, sometimes constructing English sentences came out in the word order of Japanese? It has happened to me a few times, and I just laugh. I assume its because before I tried to learn Hiragana and Katakana I was just reading Romaji while putting too much emphasis on the English translation and it probably was the cause haha.

[jkeyz15]

I'm learning because my friend got me interested.

It's not that he's got a little Japanese or something in him (one of his great grandparents; you can't even tell), as none of his family can speak it but him. But he grew up as a toddler around a japanese friend. His Japanese that he learned was done passively by playing with the kid at a young age (toddler). His Japanese was poor through most of his life in elementary school. His friend moved away, (he did too). His Japanese was nothing spectacular but he had a nice base in the language. He studied in his preteens and became fluent rather quickly. We are in high school now, he's a little older, but I always just thought it to be so cool that he could speak another language almost natively. see him talking with some Japanese friends of mine and I got interested.

I thought it would be boring, but it wasn't and now it eats up a lot of the free time that I have left over from other stuff.

[Fedgrub]

I'm learning because my friend got me interested.

It's not that he's got a little Japanese or something in him (one of his great grandparents; you can't even tell), as none of his family can speak it but him. But he grew up as a toddler around a japanese friend. His Japanese that he learned was done passively by playing with the kid at a young age (toddler). His Japanese was poor through most of his life in elementary school. His friend moved away, (he did too). His Japanese was nothing spectacular but he had a nice base in the language. He studied in his preteens and became fluent rather quickly. We are in high school now, he's a little older, but I always just thought it to be so cool that he could speak another language almost natively. see him talking with some Japanese friends of mine and I got interested.

I thought it would be boring, but it wasn't and now it eats up a lot of the free time that I have left over from other stuff.

Yeah, its crazy how time consuming it is even though it feels like you have only been sitting down with a book of it for around 20 minutes. What feels like 20 minutes is really 2 hours!