Wednesday, September 5, 2007

More is Less

The more Japanese I learn, the less I feel like I know. For example, when I first arrived I was having trouble understanding anything spoken at a normal rate. Now, after 4 months in Japan, I am often able to group what I hear into distinct words and phrases, turning one featureless blob of sound into smaller, more manageable (although no more understandable) chunks. I can often pull out a few (typically small) chunks I can understand (usually things like 'today' or 'I think'), but with most sentences, that still leaves me with about a dozen words I don't understand. That's 12 times as many things that I don't understand!

1 comment:

leoele said...

Dang... I was hoping you'd come back entirely fluent in Japanese, so that when we go to Japan you could be my personal tour guide.