Japanese language overview: First page

My Life with the Japanese Language

I guess I would have to call myself a successful learner of Japanese. I took the language for four years at San Diego State University (SDSU), coming to Gunma Prefecture (right in the center of the country; see the "About J-List" page for a map) in October of 1992. Since arriving in Japan, I've studied Japanese by myself, preparing for the Nihongo Noryoku Shiken, the Japanese Ability Test, a standardized Japanese test that is roughly equivalent to TOEFL and TOEIC for foreign students of English. There a four levels to the test, from four to one: level four tests basic kana and the first fifty or so kanji; level one, the "holy grail" for all students of the Japanese language, tests over 2000 kanji and academic terms, and is required for foreigners wanting to study at a Japanese university. After three years of self-study in Japan, I passed level 1, which is quite an achievement (if I may say so) for a "white boy" gaijin (i.e., someone not coming from a culture, such as China, that uses kanji).

I still remember my first week of school at SDSU, way back in 1988. The fall weather was lovely in San Diego (this was back during the big drought California had, so it never rained), and I was a college freshmen, full of idealism and a zest for life. I went to Aztec Shops, the university bookstore, to get my books. They handed me my new Japanese textbook (at $55, I think it was the most expensive non-computer, non-car item I'd ever purchased up to that point in my life) -- Soga's Foundations of Japanese Language. I turned to chapter one, which promptly throws the student into a brisk study of hiragana (one of two syllable writing systems used in Japanese), using almost no romaji (roman characters, i.e., the alphabet) at all. It looked so hard -- I was sure I would have to give up my dream of learning Japanese.

I didn't give up, though. Nothing if not perseverant, I got through the first baptism of fire that was learning hiragana (really not hard at all, despite how it looks the first time), past the explanation of basic Japanese grammar, past katakana, past the rudiments of polite Japanese, as the semesters rolled slowly by.

But I noticed something alarming, though. Every semester, there were fewer and fewer people in the class. There were five or six different courses for first-year students of Japanese, overflowing with people wanting into the class; yet by the third year, there was only one course, and as time went by the number of students in the class dwindled from 35 bodies down to around ten. People were dropping out of Japanese study -- but why? Sure, some were graduating, but many were giving up. How could prospective students of Japanese stack the deck, so to speak, in their favor?

What I want to Accomplish

My point in writing this article is to provide a) a very basic "quickie" overview of the Japanese language, which will hopefully reduce the shock factor for anyone preparing to study the language, and will theoretically get some people not suited to the study of Japanese to "quit while they're ahead"; and b) some (hopefully) usefully advice for students, based heavily on my own experiences. I doubt if it'll go as planned, but then, you're not paying for this.

First of all, a disclaimer -- ask anyone who has learned a foreign language what the best way to study is, and he'll tell you the best way to learn a language is exactly the way he happened to learn it. It's just one of those things. Army code-breakers who had to learn Japanese in a matter of weeks during World War II will tell you that the best way to study is to take a fervent crash-course using the "Army Method" of language learning, because it worked for them. I'm going name this phenomenon the Higurashi Effect, after my former Japanese teacher, and hope it will stick, making her famous.

So when I give you advice for studying Japanese, take what I say with a grain of salt -- I am naturally biased towards believing that the best way to study Japanese is the way I studied it because "it worked for me."

So if you're still with me, let's get started.

 

PREV PAGE | NEXT PAGE