Final 俳句

Well, most of my comments seemed pretty positive, so I decided not to tamper with my somewhat successful first attempt.

Here are my original 俳句：

あき

きいろいき                  Yellow trees
カサカサカサッ            [rustling of leaves]
みちだらけ                  Covered road

ふう

ゆきがふる                  Snow falls
トトトットッッ            [soft walking. slows, stops.]
しふくかん                  Feelings of bliss

春休み ２

火曜日に　京都（きょうと）に　しんかんせんで　行きました。しんかんせんは一番はやいでんしゃです。東京から京都まで　しんかんせんで　二時半ぐらいです。そして、京都えきは一番きれいなえきです。

京都えきのまえ

京都えきの中

しんかんせん

京都には　じんじゃとてらがたくさんあります。とてもきれいです。

青蓮院　(じんじゃ）

清水　（てら）

てんりゅうじのうしろ

そして、京都のちかくに　日本ざるがあります！

日本ざる

木曜日に　しんかんせんで　東京に　帰りました。私と私の両親は　私のおじいちゃん一番好きなレストランに　食べに　行きました。レストランは　東京大学のちかくにあるので、１９６０年ぐらい　毎日　私のおじいちゃん　このレストランで　食べていました。

とてもおいしかったです！！　（tbc...)

春休み １

先週の土曜日は、でんしゃでニューアークに行って、ひこうきでとうきょうに行って、バスでつくばにいきました。私の両親は　三か月　つくばに　つとめています。ニューアークからとうきょうまでじゅうさんじかんぐらいですから、先週の週末はくたくたでした。日曜日は、筑波山と筑波山じんじゃに行きました。

筑波山じんじゃ

火曜日、とうきょうに　行きました。びじゅつが大好きなので、国立新びじゅつかんに行きました。国立新びじゅつかんはきれいなビールです。

国立新びじゅつかん

私の一番好きなアート

そして、めいじじんぐうに　行きました。とてもきれいです！

めいじじんぐう

月曜日はいそがしかったけど、火曜日の方がいそがしかったです。きょうとに行きました...

はいく

Well, here are my two attempts at a literary work. The nuances of poetry are hard enough in your native language, let alone a foreign one...

あき

きいろいき
カサカサカサッ
みちだらけ

ふう

ゆきがふる
トトトットッッ
しふくかん

PE Reflection & New Goal

To start off with, here are my goals from the first half of the semester:


Goals:

• To continue to improve my ability to first recognize, and second accurately imitate/reproduce the pitch patterns of spoken Japanese
• To continue to improve my ability to speak at a more rapid pace
• To improve my ability to both listen to and comprehend longer phrases and sentences, and be able to reproduce them without becoming sloppy with regards to pitch or pronunciation

As for the first bullet point, I think I actually made some significant improvement. Throughout the first semester, I struggled not only producing pitch patterns, but also recognizing them. Of course, producing them accurately is basically impossible if you struggle to recognize them in the first place. So, in order to get a solid foundation under me, I made it a point to do every optional listening exercise and I actually saw tangible improvement over the course of the semester. Of course, the second part of this bullet is accurately producing them and I still have a long ways to go (more on that later). The second and third bullet points were helped by the increasing speed/complexity of the Nakama dialogues (roughly, some were easier than others). I can certainly speak faster than at the beginning of the semester, but, again, I still have much work to do.

Now for my new goals. I am keeping them simple and to the point because I know where I definitely need to improve:

• Pitch: learn pitch patterns with vocab words right off the bat
• Speed: be able to speak faster with fewer あのうs, etc.

As for the activities through which I envision accomplishing these goals:

• Listen to online vocabulary at HRC and memorize the way each of these sounds as well as the way they look on paper. I think this will be tremendously helpful in reproduction if I have a good handle on how they should sound immediately upon learning them
• Continue to choose shadowing models that force me to speak quicker and say longer sentences
• Lastly, I know what an incredible opportunity I have with the week I am spending in Japan, so I really want to take full advantage of it, not only from a cultural standpoint but from an educational standpoint as well. Of course, it is only a week so I'm not expecting any revolutionary changes, but if I speak as often as possible and really embrace to the opportunity I don't see any reason why I shouldn't be able to take a few steps forward with my speaking abilities by the time I return.

カタカナ Analysis (Final)

Hello again. Thank you to everyone for your feedback on my original analysis. Following is an updated version of my original text:


As a chemistry major, when I began considering how certain words would be written in Japanese, my thoughts immediately turned to all of the incredibly long, complicated names of organic compounds in chemistry. Because English is in many ways the official language of science, I figured that some names such as nitrosomethylurethane (which is actually fairly benign when it comes to chemical nomenclature) likely would never have to be written in any place other than a highly specialized journal that is published in English in the first place. If it were translated into Japanese, it seems obvious that it would simply be written in katakana. However, I was curious about compounds like say octane, a component in gasoline, or elements such as oxygen or germanium. Turning to Wikipedia (also as a true chemistry major-- multiple professors have told me that they feel that the best treatment of all but the most specialized and rigorous topics in chemistry can be found on Wikipedia), I found that オクタン and ゲルマニウム were written in katakana, while oxygen had its own kanji: 酸素（さんそ）.  Looking further, I found a Japanese language periodic table (http://www.ptable.com/?lang=ja) and did a more complete analysis.



Elements with at least one kanji in their name:
hydrogen, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, flourine, silicon, sulfur, chlorine, iron, copper, zinc, arsenic, bromine, silver, iodine, platinum, gold, mercury, and lead.

These seem to fall into two basic categories: 

A. What I would call major elements, especially in the field of organic chemistry: (H, C, N, O, F, Cl, S)

B. Common/precious metals (Au (gold), Ag (silver), Pt (platinum), Fe (iron), Cu (copper), etc.)

All of these elements seem "important" enough to have actual Japanese words for them (as opposed to maybe Tc, which doesn't actually exist in nature), so, it seems that with regards to chemistry the normal trend is followed: true Japanese words are written in kanji or hiragana while foreign words that must be borrowed are written in katakana. This is clearly out of simply necessity. No one can blame the Japanese for not having a traditional word for elements or compounds not discovered until the 20th-century, and, anyway, coming up with their own words and kanji for all these chemical species would be impractical at best and impossible at worst.

In another example, in a book in the manga series クレヨンしんちゃん (aside from the obvious loanword usage in the title) I found an example of the onomatopoeia キキッキ, used for laughter. I actually find this to be an example of a case where the use of different writing systems in Japanese is actually able to draw a relevant distinction, because onomatopoeia are fundamentally different than other words in English, yet have no obvious distinction in the written or spoken language. While "normal" words represent an abstract concept while remaining distinct from it, onomatopoeia such as meow are an imitation of that exact concept. It is an interesting distinction that I am sure Japanese people are much more aware of than other Westerners because of the use of katakana for onomatopoeia.

During the course of my analysis, I realized that in English we have a system kind of similar to katakana for loan words, at least at first. Words and phrases borrowed from other languages are frequently written in italics, like hoi polloi or joie de vivre. Over time, as English speaker grow familiar with them, the italics go away and they are considered to be normal English words.

In looking at the textbooks' explanations of katakana, I actually found remarkable consistency. Some left out the onomatopoeia aspect of the katakana, but that does not surprise me as that is relatively minor when it comes to overall usage. Especially when it comes to a foreigner attempting to learn Japanese, the use of katakana for loanwords is much more relevant to learning Japanese.

As a final thought, here is actually a postcard that my parents just sent me from Japan. It is kind of a joke because they know that my senior thesis project has to do with lithium and its potential use in nuclear fusion reactors (Japan is actually big into nuclear fusion research, but that is a story for another day...).

ビデオブログ

すみません、the audio somehow got out of sync. I'm not really sure how to fix that...