Japanese Language

hello!

to ward off boredom i started downloading the famous (well at least for the kids) animation series Naruto. it's fun! it's no longer the usual japanese cartoon series because it has a nicely weaved storyline and the animation is cutting-edge. they use a lot of saturations now, and i noticed the lines and constrasts are more defined.. anyways.

so the series is subtitled in english, but i found it hard to shut off my hearing mechanism to just focus on the english subtitles. and then i have to watch the cartoon attentively, in case i miss a visual glitch that turns they story around (it happens often). therefore after every episode, i congratulate myself for successfully managing a multi-task endeavor. ;p

anyways, my polyglotic self is playing on me again today... i find the japanese spoken language a bit interesting. sometimes it's screechy, but most of the time it's candid and ponderous... i want to sort of... learn it. OH! okay here we go again.

did you know that i started learning the french language because i heard two people conversing in french and i had a moment's time talking to myself, describing how it sounded like? i remember, i told myself it was so romantic, that every phrase reminds me of the cream puff that a high school classmate was selling. and it flows, and flows, and it's smoky at its best, with a hint of luxury and delicateness... hmmmmmm.. c'est une langue tres belle.

iniwiz, this time the japanese language intrigues me because it's a bit "robust" compared to the french language. i thought maybe learning about the language would give me an idea how... the japanese people eventually rose the economic ladder. ? i know it's pretty far-fetched, but, well let me explain this: i have a notion that the success of nations are partly determined by their culture, including the language they speak. the japanese have been very japanese all these times. they even closed the nation from international trade once. they were poor then, but when they came out of their invisible prison, they never looked back. they're now at the top, intact and patriotic and all. now compare te japanese case to our case. we filipinos are so disintegrated. even our language is not as defined. the Filipino language that linguists have known from textbooks is not really the filipino that we used to day. the more prevalent language for communication nowadays is the Taglish, an amalgam of the filipino and english languages. it's very partial, and it doesn't give justice to both languages (but i didnt post this entry to reprimand the filipino people for not using the filipino language properly, i mean, even i speak taglish most of the time..)

well back to the japanese language, since i was so interested at learning more, i hurried to national bookstore which is just a hundred steps from my condo. i went there to browse the language books in the farthest corners of the building (i wonder why they had to be put there, they should be more up front, coz language is a very interesting matter..) the polyglot in me was driving, and guess what, i only looked up one book about kanji, and spent the remaining two hours looking at MANDARIN instruction materials. yes, now the chinese language. i thought i could help reading the books as long as it's not all phonetic.

and then my polyglot self suddenly died out. i realized the only reason i got far in my french studies is because it's just a language with new word spellings, and that's it. yes maybe there's a new syntax and phonology, but it is closely related to the english language, which i already know. this is also the reason why i get to understand some spanish, and even some italian and portuguese. that's also the reason why i don't know any east asian language: they are hard to learn due to the fact that i have to learn them first by letter, as they use phonetics when writing. symbols and whiffs and whahaveyous. no. i told myself. that's gonna take some time.

so no oriental languages for me in the near future.

but that's okay. i have plenty of time to learn another language or two. im just twenty.

and still have plenty of time to enjoy Naruto. but for now, i'll settle for simply immersing myself with the constant displays of candidness in their watashiwas! and sasukes! and haruko kanatas! ...

-japonais-