Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Punctuation is important

As I mentioned in my last post, I was facebook-swarmed by Showa girls, which was super cute, and I got to see pictures of the fun things they've done so far in Boston, like going to Fenway and Blue Man Group and fireworks on the 4th.

One of them, who I tease by calling Yukari-sensei (she was one of the rotating tutors I had in my group), is a bubbly ball of energy who was very chipper and also wanted a bazillion pictures. Anyway, she knew that I am very poor with kanji, but I can do hiragana and katakana well. So when I posted on her Facebook wall, she was a saint and took the time to write out hiragana in her response.

I can read and understand this. Mind officially blown.

And I learned something important.

When communicating with a Japanese teenager, various adorable emoticons and pretty much all of the Lucky Charms shapes are vital. More so than punctuation. It's fun, it's silly, and it makes learning Japanese feel a whole lot less scary.

I jumped on that train like a spaghetti western bandit.

3 comments:

  1. So, I don't know what you're using to learn Japanese (other than it appears to be working!), but in the spirit of "more ways to do something is helpful!" I've found a website called Memrise that's actually really good. It's a crowdsourced online flashcard game that manages to tap into the geek "omg must do things for points" obsession. I'm learning Chinese through it and am retaining way more than I ever did in Chinese school.
    -Dromeda

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  2. I am totally stealing your awesome phrase "I jumped on that train like a spaghetti western bandit" for my own use. Just so'n's you know.

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  3. That Memrise site is turning out to be a great way to refresh my Italian vocab. Superthanks to TCC!

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