わかりますか？

Let's talk doing things.  Er, let's talk about verbs~ (duh).  Let's also talk about time, maybe?  "Tenses" maybe? "Verb tenses" so to speak?  How many ways can you do something in English? I can do it, or maybe I did it.  Maybe I will do it.  I could be doing it right now.  Or perhaps I was being formal and had done it, not to mention I have done it.  Is this something I have/had been doing? On second thought, I'll not be doing that...

Uh... where was I? (Where am I? Where will I be? >.<)  Well, I learned something new today~ In Japanese, there are only TWO basic tenses!  It's like, past tense, and *not* past tense.  The present and future are treated the same! It's, like, crazy! "NOW" DOESN'T EXIST!! THE PRESENT ISN'T HAPPENING!!!!!
わかりましたか？？？わかりますか？？？？
O.O
o.o
._.
..


えと。。。That's not actually true. Or, rather, I exaggerate~
"Now" does exist. As in, what time is it now? いまなんじですか。

Spricht jemand hier Deutsch? There is a similar sort of parallel there, too. Auf Deutsch: ich kann etwas machen.  Auch, ich kann etwas gemacht habe, oder ich machte etwas.  Anstatt, vielleicth, werde ich etwas machen.  And there you have your simple "I do it," "I did it," and "I will do it."  But you know, in English, we don't normally say, "I shop."  We swap the action verb for a helping one and change the action into a gerund, eg, "I am shopping."  But German doesn't have gerunds!  It is impossible to literally translate "I am shopping" to German; you can only say "I shop." Verstehen Sie?

My head hurts now...

サムライチャンプルー (Part 2!)

Without context, I'm moving on to the next awesome character in Samurai Champloo, Okuru!


He is only in the two part episode, "Lullabies of the Lost" or 酔生夢死 ひと夢。His featured song plays during the second part, while the cinematic reveals his mysterious past.  He is from what came under the control of the Matsumae (松前氏), which was a small domain in Hokkaido, the northern-most island of Japan.  He stands in contrast to Mugen, who is from the Ryukyus, as mentioned in the last post.  Anyways, this is his song:

The song is "Pekambe Uku" (ぺかｍべうく？) or Wheat Harvesting Song, by artist, Umeko Ando.  Unfortunately, I cannot understand exactly what she says, but the song is beautiful nonetheless, ね？


And now you're thinking, what is the point of me bringing all this up?  Not much, aside from that IT'S AWESOME.  What's awesome?  The writers of Samurai Champloo payed enough attention to detail in it's characters to give them historically based backgrounds.  Mugen is from the Ryukyus, which are islands far to south of Japan.  It is one of last areas to be brought under Japanese Imperial control.  This helps explain why Mugen and those he grew up with detest the central government.  On the other hand, Okuru is from Hokkaido, the northern most island.  This is another region that was brought under shogunate control very late in history.  Many of the peoples that populated this area are of Ainu decent, which explains the simple differences in their cultures.  Something perhaps more subtle is that the clothing that both Mugen and Okuru wear reflect the areas from which they came.  Even the songs that their respective episodes feature are traditional folksongs from their respective areas.  Obokuri Eeumi is a tradition Ryukyu song, sung by Ikue Asazaki, who typically sing Ryukyus folksongs.  Pekambe Uku is a tradition Ainu folksong, sung by Umeko Ando, who sings a lot of Ainu folksongs, and even won awards for this song in particular.


It's awesome that the writers of Samurai Champloo would put so much detail and depth into their stories.  WHY ISN'T MORE ANIME THIS AWESOME??? (I don't know~)  But now you know at least a little bit of why Samurai Champloo is one of my absolute favorite anime.


つづく？？？
（eh, prob not)

サムライチャンプルー

I'd like to call your attention to one my favorite anime (because I can't go four posts without talking about anime~).  As you may have guessed, that anime is サムライチャンプルー!  With the help of another class I'm taking, called Intro to Japanese Civilization, and a little research, I have found some interesting things (yay!)  But, I s'pose  I'll take it one at a time.


First, Mugen.  むげんはりゅうきゅうしょとうからきました。そして (semi-relatedly) おきなわ is part of the Ryukyu's!  Anywho, there is a two-part episode (Misguided Miscreants, or 暗夜行路 其之壱と暗夜行路 其之弐) which explores Mugen's past.  During one part, they play an incredibly beautiful song to accompany the imagery of the video:

The song is Obokuri Eeumi (おぼくりええうみ?) by Ikue Asazaki.  As this is a Japanese blog, I will attempt to write the lyrics in ひらがな。 Wish me luck

あらやしきくのでい

はらさくばくのでい

はれふしぎゅらさねじゅく

すらじふしろよんど

はれふしぎゅらさねじゅく

ふしぎゅらさねじゅく

すらじふしろよんど

きりしがきくのでい

くがねやべたていてい

はれももとびゅるわきゃ

やうりばゆわおよんど

はれももとびゅるわきゃ

ももとびゅるわきゃ

やうりばゆわおよんど

はていがちやなりゅり

とびばにやねらぬ

はれうとうかたばに

やからちたぼれ

ひとつあるばにや

かなしゃせにくすいてい

はれわぬやおくやま

ぬかずらだすき

おじゅうごやのていきや

かみぎゅらさてりゅり

はれかながじょにたたばくもていたぼれい

A translation of the song can be found here.  For the time being, my point in bringing this up, aside from the fact that it's a beautiful song, shall remain hidden until I explain part two, about Okuru.  But, that shall have to wait.

つづく


(Oh noes! I accidentally highlighted everything! How do I undo thiiiiiiiiissss??????)

Hooray!

I now know all of Hiragana! :O

 So, now I can write Hiragana in Hiragana! I mean, ひらがな！ははは, whoops, I mean "hahaha." Haha...  Anyway, I'll shamelessly admit that one of characters I've been most looking forward to learning is "nyan" or just "nya" which I now know is にゃ or にゃん. :3

 It's very surprising to me that instead of having a separate character that sounds like "nya," it's a combination of "ni" and "ya."  Another aspect of Hiragana that I found surprising was the difference between "ka" and "ga," "sa" and "za," etc (or, in Hiragana か and が or さ and ざ).  Although, to me, it makes sense that instead of having an entirely different character for similar sounds, you only have to modify a different character to get what you want.  But this also brings up another point.

Because the characters in English don't necessary mean anything by themselves, the syllables are must consist of multiple characters for the most part. I think a lot of the word structure gets lost when writing in romanji versus Hiragana.  For example, "tadashi" is a pretty neat word, in my opinion.  Mostly because of the "tada" part, where there is slight consonance between the "ta" and the "da."  However, in roman characters, "t" and "d" are completely unrelated, even though they sound similar.  Their similarity is incredibly evident in Hiragana, where "tadashi" is written ただし.  Similarly with "kaga" as かが.  Is it just me, or does かが look a lot nicer than "kaga" especially considering the consonance of the word?  It isn't. It looks awesome.  Relatedly, none of the roman character names match up with the sound they make. Like, the letter "t" is called "tee" but the noise it makes on its own is, well, "t."  The only way we understand the roman characters is how they relate to others.  With Hiragana, like I said before, each character is already a syllable and complete by itself, eg ね is "ne."  Pretty neat~

Unrelatedly, I am now having trouble remembering all the Hiragana characters. Ahahah, oh boy...  Well, I am actually pretty sure that I remember all of them except for the m set and and r set.  While I'm typing this I can sort of cheat, because I can just type らりるれろ or まみむめも without needing to remember the characters.  That aside, those are my last Hiragana to memorize! にゃにゃにゃにゃにゃ！ (that was me laughing maniacally)

Until next time, じゃまた
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なぜにほんご？

Why Japanese?

Admittedly, one of the main reasons why I want to learn Japanese is so that I could understand various anime that I watch and manga that I read.  But why not watch them with English dubbing?  That's because most of the time, the voice acting in the dubs are absolutely terrible.  Aside from that, you still have the problem of possible mistranslations, a problem which is even worse with fan subbed versions of anime.  Manga presents a similar problem.

There are still several other reasons why I want to learn Japanese.  I have never attempted to learn a language that uses a completely different character set than English (as I am already proficient in German).  I have also always been very interested in Japanese culture, be it modern or not, and I believe you can achieve a greater understanding of culture by learning the language.  Both of these things (learning the culture and the language) are what excite me the most learning Japanese.

Interestingly enough, the hardest part about learning the language so far is not memorizing vocabulary, the characters, or even getting the accent right.  The difficulty was mostly in the handwriting.  While I can recognize all of the characters that I had learned, being able to right them correctly and neatly is something that I very much need to work on.  I have to get the stroke order right, and if it's a hard stop or a flowing motion, etc.  It's probably because I'm too used to writing in roman characters, but the difficulty is there nonetheless.

Well, we shall see.
Pleased to meet you.
どうぞよろしくおねがいします。

はじめまして！

こんにちはみなさん！
わたしはロルダンです。
わたしはコロンビアだいがくのがくせいです。そしてさんねんせいです。
アメリカじんです。
フィラデルフィアからきました。
ぶつりがくのけんきゅうしゃです。

どうぞよろしくおねがいします。
わたしはおんがくがだいすきです。そしてゲームがだいすきとあにめとコミックがだいすきです。

よこそわたしのブログに。たのしんでください！

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