I think my first half of PE went relatively well. I was very busy with my play, so I didn't get a chance to go to Shibata-sensei's office hours as much as I would have liked, but I'm going to start! I did start listening to the vocabulary recordings for every chapter though, which I believe has helped my pitch of the new vocabulary words a lot. I will definitely continue to do that in the second half of the semester. Doing the prosody exercises every week has also been very helpful. I didn't do it last week, but I will catch up and complete it over the break! My other goals were to practice Japanese in my free time by watching Japanese movies and videos, but I didn't have any free time! I don't think I even watched one movie the whole semester. I hope to go to some of the anime films shown at Wilson College next semester! GOALS:
Go to Shibata-sensei's office hours! For real this time!
Continue listening to Textbook recordings of vocabulary.
Shadow the vocabulary recordings as extra shadowings.
Do all prosody exercises
Read the Nakama textbook right after lecture to solidify what we learned in my mind.
Memorize a song chorus! I completely forgot to do that last time :(
Speak more Japanese with Vora-san and Li-san, and use plain speech!
Go to some of the "Moving and Drawing" anime films, if they look interesting!
Before doing this project, I always
thought that katakana was used just for loan words and some
onomatopoeia, probably because that is what our textbook would lead one
to believe. However, it is far from being as simple as that. I soon
found out that there are many more reasons why one might choose to write
in katakana as opposed to hiragana or kanji; I've tried to illustrate
some of the more examples here.
Expression #1: Sound Effects from もののけ姫 Film Comic pp. 34, 64-65
In one of the fight scenes of the film
comic for Princess Mononoke, there are various sound effects like "ガーン," "ゴバア,"
and " ドオ." They are written in bright red and violently scratched onto
the page. I think the reason the author chose to use katakana was to
make the sounds more dramatic. Katakana appears more angular and edgier,
making the sound effects look kind of scary and cool at the same time.
Also they give a feeling of hardness or sharpness, which fits with the fighting in the scene being depicted. They're also very simple, which makes them good for expressing emphatic
sound effects. Some sound effects in the comic, like "ざゆ," are written
in hiragana. This is supposed to be something slithering across the
ground, so I think because it is mean to recall a softer sound, the
author chose to express it in the more rounded hiragana (also in blue).
Though these katakana words are sound effects, I would categorize them
in the "onomatopoeia" group, because they are sounds that represent
actions, just like onomatopoeia.
The author of the manga made use of the various associations that people hold with the different alphabets, so that distinct feelings could be conveyed in each scene, even using the same onomatopoeia, theoretically!
Expression #2: リンゴとハチツとる〜りとけでる; Food Box
This is a picture of a box of caramel
apples I found online-- it is an example of what I think is one of the
most interesting uses of katakana. Although both "りんご" and "はちみつ" are
both normally written in hiragana or kanji, in this case they are in
katakana. I believe this is an example of what some of the textbooks
refer to as "emphasis." Having the main nouns of the package be in
katakana probably makes them easier to read-- now instead of a long
string of unbroken hiragana, there are two katakana words separated by a
hiragana と. This makes the words distinct.
Also, I notice that only the names of the foods are in katakana, and the
other descriptors are in hiragana. Perhaps this is done to call
attention to what the actual product is. It is also possible that the advertisers decided to use katakana so that foreigners with a basic knowledge of Japanese would be able to understand what they are buying. If this were the case, it would certainly make more sense to use english-katakana, so that foreigners could completely understand, but using katakana as opposed to kanji does certainly make it a little bit easier to figure out what the product is.
Why do the textbooks all have different explanations?
Although the textbooks were mostly similar
in explaining katakana and when to use it, there were some minor
variations. For example, only some of the textbooks mentioned "emphasis"
as a reason why katakana would be used, although I've found that this
is quite a common reason. I think there is so much variation because the
rules about when to use katakana are not very hard or fast. Katkana is
useful for many things, and can be employed at a writer's discretion. It
is hard to categorize the various ways katakana is used simply because
there are so many. As a result, I think most textbooks take the
extremely common cases of katakana usage and present them as being
essentially the only ones, because this makes it easier for first-year
students to comprehend. Some textbooks go more in depth with this than
others. One author might decide to mention the top four reasons for
using katakana, while another might decide to only list the times when
katakana is used almost 100% of the time, such as with loan words or
onomatopoeia. There is a lot of mystery that surrounds the proper usage
of katakana, and I think each textbook does the best it can to make the
decision seem simple for beginning Japanese learners. Sources: Nakama, Wikipedia, print-outs of other textbooks, http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/katakana-uses.html, すずきさん
Before doing this project, I always thought that katakana was used just for loan words and some onomatopoeia, probably because that is what our textbook would lead one to believe. However, it is far from being as simple as that. I soon found out that there are many more reasons why one might choose to write in katakana as opposed to hiragana or kanji; I've tried to illustrate some of the more examples here.
Expression #1: Sound Effects from もののけ姫 Film Comic pp. 34, 64-65
In one of the fight scenes of the film comic for Princess Mononoke, various sound effects like "ガーン," "ゴバア," and " ドオ." They are written in bright red and violently scratched onto the page. I think the reason the author chose to use katakana was to make the sounds more dramatic. Katakana appears more angular and edgier, making the sound effects look kind of scary and cool at the same time. They're also very simple, which makes them good for expressing emphatic sound effects. Some sound effects in the comic, like "ざゆ," are written in hiragana. This is supposed to be something slithering across the ground, so I think because it is mean to recall a softer sound, the author chose to express it in the more rounded hiragana (also in blue). Though these katakana words are sound effects, I would categorize them in the "onomatopoeia" group, because they are sounds that represent actions, just like onomatopoeia.
Expression #2: リンゴとハチツとる〜りとけでる; Food Box
This is a picture of a box of caramel apples I found online-- it is an example of what I think is one of the most interesting uses of katakana. Although both "りんご" and "はちみつ" are both normally written in hiragana or kanji, but in this case they are in katakana. I believe this is an example of what some of the textbooks refer to as "emphasis." Having the main nouns of the package be in katakana probably makes them easier to read-- now instead of a long string of unbroken hiragana, there are two katakana words separated by a hiragana と. This makes the words distinct.
Why do the textbooks all have different explanations?
Although the textbooks were mostly similar in explaining katakana and when to use it, there were some minor variations. For example, only some of the textbooks mentioned "emphasis" as a reason why katakana would be used, although I've found that this is quite a common reason. I think there is so much variation because the rules about when to use katakana are not very hard or fast. Katkana is useful for many things, and can be employed at a writer's discretion. It is hard to categorize the various ways katakana is used simply because there are so many. As a result, I think most textbooks take the extremely common cases of katakana usage and present them as being essentially the only ones, because this makes it easier for first-year students to comprehend. Some textbooks go more in depth with this than others. One author might decide to mention the top four reasons for using katakana, while another might decide to only list the times when katakana is used almost 100% of the time, such as with loan words or onomatopoeia. There is a lot of mystery that surrounds the proper usage of katakana, and I think each textbook does the best it can to make the decision seem simple for beginning Japanese learners.
Sources: Nakama, Wikipedia, print-outs of other textbooks, http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/katakana-uses.html, すずきさん
こんにちはみなさん！ This semester, it is my goal to do more PE! This should be easy to accomplish, because our PE assignments have almost doubled :O. I think of all the PE aspects, my pitch is the one that needs the most work, so I am going to try to focus on that more during shadowing and when learning new vocabulary words. I also want to work on just sounding more fluent in general-- making fewer pauses in my sentences, and getting to where things that are wrong just "sound" wrong. Here are my concrete goals:
Always listen to CD when learning new vocabulary, and say it out loud.
Always do optional prosody exercises.
Go to Shibata-sensei's office hours! Once per week if possible.
Watch Japanese movies or anime anytime I watch something.
Practice speaking while I walk places and in the shower!
Memorize one Japanese song (at least the chorus) by midterms
Continue watching funny Japanese videos on the internet when I want to procrastinate.
PE3 was so long, that I can barely remember the first part of it! I know one of my main goals was to make a 日本語のおんがく playlist, not just because of PE but also just for fun, and I did pretty well with that, as you can see from the music videos I've been posting! I did my best not to flood my blog with videos though, so you only got the especially weird and colorful videos. I did find some actually really good music though-- if you want to hear it, let me know! I also did pretty well with speaking 日本語 out of class with ボラちゃんとリーさん. I went to しばた先生の office hours a few times, but not as many as I would have liked, because I was just so busy, and I always forgot to go sign up! I am going to make a goal for next semester that I will go to office hours more! I also need to go to 日本語テーブル more, but it is ちょっとむずかし、because I usually have rehearsals at that time and have to get late meal... perhaps next semester will be better! I at least managed to make it to a few.
Also, for my last shadowing, I was able to do a monologue that I thought was really difficult and impressive when I first heard it, so I am pretty excited about that. ここですよ(the monologue itself, not me. I wish I could speak like her.)：
Overall, I think my pronunciation definitely improved. I am also able to speak more quickly and naturally, without having to stop to think as much as I did at the beginning of the semester. The other day, I was just sitting around and all of the sudden, "かう、かわない" just popped into my head, and I realized that I apparently know the plain form better than I thought. I am starting to get the feel of things, so that when I say or hear something wrong, it sounds weird to me and I know to correct it; this seems like a big step, I think. じゃああ、また next semester! Until then, I'll keep doing PE in the best place for such things-- the shower!!
