カタカナAnalysis!

カタカナはとてもおもしろいですね？！

My first example of Katakana came from watching a music video by Ayumi Hamasaki on YouTube. I realized that the word for "music video" was actually just ミュージックビデオ, rather than coming up with their own word. Then I thought of other technological words that we know which come from English, like テレビ and コンピュータ. However, there are also other technological words which have a Kanji or a Hiragana and thus seem more "native" Japanese. For example, 電話　（でんわ）and 電車　（でんしゃ）both have Kanji/Hiragana names, even though these technologies clearly came from the West. I believe that this discrepancy is due to the history of modern Japan and its relations to the outside world. In the late nineteenth century with the Meiji Restoration and beginnings of industrialization, Japan was ultra-nationalistic and therefore probably "naturalized" these words using concepts related to them. Therefore "electric talk" became the word for telephone, 電話。Trains, telephones, cars, and airplanes, all of which were present in Late Imperial Japan, all have Japanese names. After World War II, I think that the Japanese became more Americanized and more prone to adapt foreign (mostly English) words into their own language. Technologies which came out after WWII and the American occupation all seem to come from English, hence we have ミュージックビデオ、テレビ、とコンピュータ。

こんにちは！初めまして！私はアドです。私はアメリカ人です。コロラドから来ました。私は十九歳です。誕生日は四月二十七日です。私は二千九年にニューヨークへ来ました。飛行機で来ました。一人で来ました。私はコロンビア大学の学生です。コロンビア大学の二年生です。日本語の学生ですよ。私の先生はパク先生です。毎晩午後五時から午後九時まで日本語を勉強します。大変ですね？昨日寝ませんでした！毎日学校へ行きます。

ヘラクレスのソング！

好きですか？
私毎日聞きます！
日本語のヘラクレスのソングです！
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjaDHVd9NuQ

Why?!

Because I have been studying Chinese for a couple years, I used to always make fun of my friends who took or who wanted to learn Japanese.  China and Chinese just seemed so much better.  I made fun of their pathetic little islands and how made up the language looked compared to Chinese (Japanese looks like it is made up the night before; I stand by that).   Japanese was a language of confusing little squiggles, impossibly long words, and an economically stagnant country.  Ha! Why would anyone waste their time!

And now here I am.  Wasting my time learning the squiggle language.  Deep down I think I always knew that I would one day learn Japanese.  And I so strongly argued against its practicality in order to convince myself that I had to resist the urge! The lady, after all, did protest a bit too much. Maybe it was the urge to watch anime without subtitles, the urge to eat sushi all day long, or the practical excuse I gave myself that I needed to diversify my East Asian Language portfolio to stand out from other undergrads.  Whatever the reason, here I am!  I am excited and scared to see what this beautiful and complicated language has to throw at me, and to deepen my understanding of a very important country (still number three economically, after all...). 

わたしはアドです。どうぞよろしく！

おはいようございます。はじめまして！わたしはアドです。アメリカじんです。コロラドからきました。コロンビアだいがくのいちねんせいです。これはわたしのにほんごのブログです。どうぞよろしく！



おはいようございます。初めまして！私はアドです。アメリカ人です、コロラドから来ました。コロンビア大学の一年生です。これは私の日本語のブログです。どうぞよろしく！