JAPANESE AB-INITIO

Outside of school, I have been studying Japanese for around a year. I really enjoy learning languages such as Spanish (which I take for GCSE), but for me Japanese was a whole new experience. It’s not as simple as learning the vocabulary and grammar and then practicing; in Japanese, three different alphabets must be learned: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji (the latter of which has thousands of individual characters that each represent a different word). I picked up this colossal task last year during the second lockdown through an online tutor, when I began the steady process of stumbling through the grammar and new alphabets just to make one simple sentence. Grammar in Japanese is nowhere near as simple as other European languages, there are dozens of new rules and ideas to keep in mind, and the sentences require English speakers to almost think backwards and upside down to understand. However, my basic understanding on how other languages work from Tranby assisted in the process. So far, I feel I’m steadily and improving, and I plan to be able to have substantial conversations in the future, and maybe even become fluent in the fascinating language that is Japanese. Will