Famed for its tough guys and rough south western feel, Hiroshima dialect is a great accent to add to your Japanese! Why learn the Hiroshima Hyogen (Accent)? Well to give you personality of course! And also connect you greater to the people of that region. Hiroshima is a developing city full of green, rivers and ocean! A city with a REAL Japanese feel to it and close to many great cultural and history hubs to keep any foreigner busy sucking in the surroundings. Hiroshima carps (the local baseball team) have one of the fastest growing fan basses and who couldn't like Hiroshima Yaki? Right? (Okonomiyaki with noodles). Anyway, lets begin learning!o
Raise your hand if you like Shakespear? (I do!) If you don't then you have a pretty good idea why you should stay away from this book in Japanese. Why do I say this? Well many of us will know from first hand experience (of getting kicked half way around High School) from Shakespear's usage of archaic expressions. This is a guide to "Why Natsume Soseki's "I am a cat" is too bad ass for you" and how you should Analyse books to judge their level.
Things are not as they seem In the past many have made me believe that from my first class of Japanese I have been in a race. The race starts at 5 and goes up until 1 where upon you become a king! Being king is the highest level and proves to others that you can rule over your Japanese language abilities better than those at lower levels than you. Well, this is what I was lead to believe until I studied Japanese for 5 years and traveled extensively in japan and it seems the picture is different from up here. To summarize, I have found that although it is difficult to become king, that doesn't mean that itâs the highest level. Also, like in the real world there are kings who are good at ruling and ones who aren't. Letâs explore further and I will explain why although itâs my time to shine, im deciding to not up-rank.
Have you ever written a Bucket list? How about a list of things you wished you had done? Now that 3/4 of my two year stay in Japan has passed, I am nearing the end of my Journey. I am generally not a person who likes to regret, however there are a few things I wished I had kept up with from Day 1 of Japan.
Four Years or sweat and tears it has taken me to reach my current level of Japanese. From the first words I spoke in class, to now living and working in Japan it has been a long journey. To be honest I am still not satisfied with my level nor the speed at which I progressed. So why then am I giving advice on “How you can optimize speed of learning with minimal effort”?. Well I have learned some things in my 3 years of university level Japanese, a teaching degree and 1 and a half years in Japan that help me answer that question better than I could 4 years ago.
In summary, my argument is that Katakana should precede Hiragana in order when learning Japanese for foreign learners. The reasons being that Katakana words are more useful for travel and also require less effort allowing the students to focus on the learning of other elements of Japanese.
I have a confession to make, "I LOVE books" especially ones with the promise of learning something by the end. But to be honest I am quite disappointed with the quality of resources I find on my weekly trips to the book store and I will tell you why.
Reference books are not the best learning tools available, however, they are what dominate the book market. |
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