PE 1 Reflection
So I'm still making baby noises and annoying my roommate, but hopefully in a slightly more accurate way. When I practice Japanese, the feature of the language that stands out most to me is the intonation--the ups and downs of the words--that sound so musical. Thus, I've been paying the most attention to that and trying hardest to get that right potentially at the expense of other important parts, like loooong vowels and glottal stops. I think intonation can help a little with loooong vowels because, if I'm not hearing incorrectly, native speakers vary their tone a little bit while pronouncing long vowels to indicate a longer mora. So, what I'm trying to say is that maybe if I'm really, really lucky, my long vowels will improve a little bit as a side effect of focusing on intonation.
I've lined up some anime shows (though I haven't had time to watch any yet what with this weekend being parents' weekend). I think I'm going to start with Full Metal Alchemist. I considered Naruto, but I've gotten mixed reviews of that one. Maybe my reward for myself after taking the Japanese test this Thursday will be to watch some anime.
I have tried listening to Japanese music. It hasn't really helped. I get distracted and just end up listening to the music, so maybe I like music a little too much.
I went to the Japanese language table the first week and enjoyed it a lot (Makinoせんせい is adorable!) and plan to go more in the future.
PE 2 Goals
-Put some actual, concerted effort into understanding and making use of moras/rhythm by listening to the textbook recordings (I'd forgotten I have those lying around, they're actually quite helpful)
-Focus on long vowels, which I can neither pronounce nor understand right now. I'm going to try to re-do some of the old dictations involving long vowels so I can practice hearing them and hopefully improve my painfully slow writing at the same time
こんばんは！
ReplyDeleteYou are going to try and watch anime to improve your intonation? ほんとに？Sounds like a good plan to me! I saw the dubbed version of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, and it was really, really, REALLY good. Other than that, どんなアニメをみますか。
はじめまして。
ReplyDeleteコロンビア大学のコービンです。
Yes, so I've been feeling the same way. The biggest thing for me in Japanese that happens to be hard is that whole aural component.
I'd highly suggest this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434706/
It's on Netflix too.
はめまして！コロンビア大学のいちねんせいです。
ReplyDeleteI've been focusing on intonation too...but no improvement so far :/ Any suggestions?
I tried listening to music too, but a lot of the intonation gets lost in the melody and the syllables get mashed together so it's pretty hard to discern anything :/
Haha have fun watching your anime! :)
どぞよろしくおねがいします。