Literacy Blog 1


 

 I believe I got a Christmas book this time around. Santa was in town and Satoshi ( I think that was the boy’s name) really wanted a bike for Christmas. And the next day he saw his bike outside his window. I will admit it did take a while to read this book since I still need to translate everything to romaji ( I know I should have everything memorized but I am a very slow learner unfortunately. I am sorry!(･_･;). The majority of the book was written in hiragana and a few characters in kanji here and there ( which really stumped me at first). As I continue reading I notice that the book provided the hiragana version of the kanji characters on the side ( i wish I noticed it sooner to be honest). Which made it so much easier to translate that to romaji. I forgot that Japanese is written vertically rather than horizontally like English is so that was a little jarring at first but not a big deal. But all in all it was a very cute book. I am happy he got the bike he wanted. I noticed there wasn’t much punctuation throughout the book like exclamation or question marks like they would be in English. Obviously the pictures helped me out a lot while I was reading. I remember having a really hard time with the word bicycle じてん車  and sock くつした or maybe it was stocking in this context. I tried to figure out most of the words on my own before looking them up on jisho but those took me a while for some reason.


Comments

  1. SenseiSeptember 27, 2023 at 7:17 AM

    Way to go!!! Your first book in Japanese! It seems like it should be easy, but these little differences can be surprising. You're doing great. Keep moving forward.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Katakana

Image
  I am glad I finally know why the Japanese language has three different alphabets. Hiragana is meant for native Japanese words while Katakana is for foreign words. If I remember correctly, Kanji is from Chinese characters that have been adapted into the Japanese language. Despite knowing all of this I still have difficulties telling Hiragana and Katakana apart ( I know I am so ashamed! I promise I will do better! ) Hopefully, as we continue on during the semester the difference between the two will become more apparent. A bit more practice and I am sure this will change! So far I am noticing that Hiragana is more rounded and much more natural to write down to me. (The curviness of the characters reminds me of Khmer in a way)I think I might prefer writing in Hiragana for now.  While katakana is more angular, sharp, and a bit rigid for me to write. But perhaps I’m just not used to writing these characters yet. ( I haven’t built muscle memory for the letters yet). I plan on doin...
Read more

Japanese Business card

Image
 Unfortunately, I don’t know much about business card culture in Cambodia or Vietnam since I’ve never been to either ( very sad, but I hope to go one day). However, what I have observed from watching my parents ( they own a restaurant for reference) is that they mainly just talk to people rather than give business cards. From what I have noticed, Japanese business cards seem to be very simple, formal, and straightforward. Which I think is very fitting for them as they are known as a kind, yet reserved and polite group of people.  Whereas in America business cards have a lot of emphasis on being unique with a goal of showing off their personality to the viewer through their card. This reflects American society well in my opinion; as most Americans value individualism. Usually in America, no two business cards look the same (at least that is what I observed on Google. I think this is especially noticeable in small business accounts. ). While making my business card I noticed mos...
Read more