Entries this day: Japanese_nihongo Journal government_grants

Japanese nihongo

2:28am CDT Wednesday 1 May 2002

After work yesterday I went straight to bed for 7 hours and woke up recently and started studying Japanese. I've learned all the hiragana (yay!) That's 71 characters, including the 15 that are similar to others. So I'm at the point now of putting characters together to make longer sounds.

So I figure I'll begin listening to the audio CD that I think came with the books I'm using.

I had taken the CD to work a long time ago, so I walked to work to listen.

It's terrible for a beginning student. A dry voice speaks dramatically "Vowels and Consonants." then the sounds of the letters are spoken in Japanese. Okay, fine; those are not really translatable, but the order is not the same as that in the book.

It gets worse from there. He says stuff like, "Key Sentences. Practice." "Vocabulary." "Vocabulary For Excersizes." after which the Japanese words are spoken, with no translation, no consistent order, no repetition, not enough time for a listener to speak the words or sentences after they are spoken.

I'll wait for to help me.

Journal

3:27am CDT Wednesday 1 May 2002

I have just tweaked my journal settings a bit, now 1997 and 1998 entries are available again after a few months of being inaccessible.

government grants

5:25am CDT Wednesday 1 May 2002

Maybe that annoying guy with question marks all over his suit shouting about free government grants is for real.

I paid $5.00 to find out. I'll let ya know.