The Future Challenge

The next challenge, once writing and being able to read hiragana and katakana, is being able to adopt the mindset needed to form Japanese sentences. It's a different field compared to Vietnamese, and vastly different to English. It took me maybe 1 - 4 months to grasp the structure in Vietnamese, but Japanese there are some rules I will have a little problem with memorizing and internalizing. The lack of subject and a few other words.

English for me has always been about making sure you know what you're talking about and the other does to. If the subject, or other important information, is left out of speech or a sentence, the other person is usually very confused and requires clarification.  It's common that you say it right once so you don't have to say it again. Japanese seems the same way, but for the natives. Outside looking in....I'll need to prepare my decoder ring and snacks.

It's going to an interesting next step.

Speech in Japanese and Vietnamese: Similarities and Differences

The basic speaking of Japanese I believe is easy, however I know that tone will soon play an important part in new words I will come across. The example of Hōyō 抱擁 (I'm hoping it means "Hugs" I'm using Google translate to help me). At first I spoke it too short, until I was correct and remember that the lines mean an extended sound. Once I remembered that I was able to connect that if I saw it anywhere else in translations. It is still early though to get that deep. I first must remember the double lines, and the small circle that represents a softer extended sound vs a short bouncing sound. This part is still new to me.

Another issue that was brought to my attention is the force of which I speak. As with Vietnamese, there is too much power behind each word, and consequently I always find there is a slight shortness of breath. The use of the jaw is not need as much. The lips, tongue and cheeks play a huge role in expressing the sound properly.

Admittedly Vietnamese gave my tongue a workout with "Ng", "R", "Tr" and "Ch". On the accents "Ng~a", "Na.ng" [ unikey is not working in Blogger] also. In Japanese my issue seems to be when coming across words with a combination I'm not used to speaking. Okyakusama お客様, Ostuskaresama お疲れ様, Doitashimashite どういたしまして as examples. I can now say these words better than I started, but my tongue seems to battle a lot with my teeth. Shaping the sound with the lips is foreign to me, and is also important to Vietnamese.

A I U E O Tsu = The forming the sound with the lips helps the sound become clearer. Tsu requires the tongue to articulate a very small U shape at the tip against the back of the front two teeth, or in my case, the top ridge just above the base root of the teeth.

" O O' O^ U "  = in Vietnamese also require the shaping with the lips

"Ng U' R " = Require some serious tongue action. There is a youtube video I will share that was shared by a language partner. This video was the best way to help me understand the "Ng" sound. How to pronounce Initial Ng Stuart Jay Raj . "R" is a little easier if you know how to roll your tongue. The sound "R" makes is at the very start of the roll "Ruh". " U' " I have not really figured out yet on it's own. In a word it's simple, but it's best to have the sound imprinted in your head to squash any mispronunciations early on.

Now having written that mouthful, here is what I have learned basically. I started learning Vietnamese first and hungrily absorb vocabulary, sound, writing, and basic sentence structure pretty easily, but speaking had been difficult. That is until I started to listen to my Japanese buddy. I realized that if they wanted to, they could very well learn Vietnamese speech wise. Japanese has the same lack of ending sound, The " R " would be easy to master in Vietnamese, and the foundation of "N" can easily give birth to "Ng". Sentence structure would be a different matter, but just speech I believe it can be possible. And because I realized this in my friend, I realized right at that moment that I had some foundation of my own to blend Vietnamese in Japanese and back. The key basics in both languages, translate well for each other. Flexibility of the mouth, placing the tongue, and relaxing the jaw.

ん   |   Ng

Experience currently with learning Japanese 2

The last post showcase my first attempt at writing Hiragana and Katakana on Thursday November 20. Currently today I have practiced again and there is much improvement. In my practice I have included also Vietnamese alphabet to refresh my memory. I am honestly very please, but eager to continue to practice writing and also working to memorize the corresponding romaji in my head.

The practice of Hiragana, Katakana and addition of Vietnamese.

Experience currently with learning Japanese

Most of these last few days I have finally decided to give myself a gentle, but strong push to get started learning Japanese. The first step is learning the alphabet and characters. My friend has directed me to many valuable websites and also videos that can help me get started. So far it is going well.

Wednesday she presented to me the chart of Hiragana and Katakana and instantly I was excited. However I was also nervous. How will I start? Will I find it harder than I expected? The truth was obvious once I placed pen to paper. I printed out the stroke order sheets, and their corresponding romaji sheet. When the time was right and a quiet place was found, I was able to sit and see what I could do. I started well at first, but like with learning Vietnamese, my hand would lose it's control and the characters became bigger, too open, and haphazard. I was a little disappointed and also happy that it wasn't as difficult to feel the rhythm as I wrote.

Hiragana I discovered was a lot more harder to control the movement of my hand. My hands were shifting to art mode, meaning I was trying to draw the strokes very loosely vs writing with control. Katakana, however, was flowing. I still found I wrote larger, but the strokes were closer to the image chart.

I will attach here the first attempts at both.

Introduction: The purpose

The general purpose of this blog is to share my experiences learning Vietnamese, Japanese and in the future Swedish and Chinese. I will also share common things amongst the languages, as well as their differences.

There is a possibility that I will share scanned handwritten practice that will demonstrate accent placement, grammar practice, and neatness. This blog is not intended to be perfect and professional. It may have spelling errors, very rarely explicit language (i high doubt I will get into that), and abuse of the comma ( , ) and possible incorrect use of the semi-colon ( ; ).

If anyone ever reads this and decides to comment, please remember to be respectful.

Alright that's all for now. Thank you for reading, and I hope that, as I begin documenting the journey, you will learn something here that may open the door in your own language learn experiences.