Nihon-go

It's been a pretty hectic week and I haven't had the time nor the inspiration to write something decent. I have just started self-studying Nihon-go (the Japanese language) and have been learning how to read and write one of the components of the writing system - hiragana. Next I will need to learn katakana and kanji, although I reckon my kanji will be very limited as I think it will take an eternity for me to learn every single character. It's that bad.

I might be exaggerating about how difficult kanji is, but it might surprise you that I used to study the Chinese language for almost 4 years as an additional subject a long time ago when I was in primary school. But since I did not find any use for it, my parents agreed that I stop lessons. I haven't forgotten everything yet - I think somewhere within the deep recesses of my memory, I still remember the basics of writing Chinese characters - the order and direction of strokes. This will be handy for learning kanji which are Chinese characters used in the Japanese language system. Their pronunciation may differ but the meaning is still the same.

There is a reason why I am learning Nihon-go and you will find out in my next post...