PE Goal Statement

Goals:

•          Be able to distinguish between, and successfully produce, long and short vowels
•          Make my らりるれろ sounds actually sound as they should
•          Speed up my speaking without sacrificing quality/clarity of my sounds

Activities:

•          Listen to and mimic and/or shadow at least a couple minutes of Japanese every day
•          Go to Japanese language table or have a conversation with an authentic Japanese speaker at least once a week
•          Be proactive about meeting with しばたせんせいif I am having particular difficulties

Self-Introduction

こんばんは。はじめまして。おおのです。さんねんせいです。アメリカじんです。どうぞよろしく。　

The Beginning

はじめまして。おおのです。どうぞよろしく。As of right now, that's close to all I can say/write in Japanese; I guess you have to start somewhere. I have decided to start taking Japanese relatively late in my Princeton career because, having spent my childhood in THE whitest state in the country (Maine), I am eager to explore and embrace the Japanese part of my heritage (my father was born in Japan). I'm excited to learn enough Japanese so that I can, at the very least, survive a future trip to Japan on my own and hopefully be able to have at least a basic conversation or two with my obaa-chan (おばあちゃん perhaps?) in her native language. What I have been finding most difficult is reading the hiragana quickly. The characters are just so new to me that even if I know the meaning it takes me a little while to process them. Hopefully practice will make it easier. Well, I'm excited to begin.