Hi all! I just joined today.
I'm from Hong Kong, though I've also lived in other places like the US and the UK. English is my first language, Cantonese is my mother tongue and am a native speaker of Mandarin after a number of years of learning it. I've decided to take up Japanese recently, but due to uni commitments, it looks like that I'm only able to self-study it for the time being rather than attend classes.
So far, I've mastered hiragana and katakana for writing. However, I will need to get used to reading both at speed. Regarding speaking and listening, well, not much apart from very general greetings and a few catchphrases from anime I suppose, though pronunciations are going quite well I would think. I guess it's time to open the conventional textbook and read.
Why did I choose to study Japanese? Well I find the sounds of the language highly attractive as well as the rhythms within it. It also has some resemblance to Cantonese that I find interesting. The written language is also similar to Chinese in some ways and have near-identical kanji. My Chinese-Japanese friends have also influenced by choice. And of course, country-wise, I love the technology and food in Japan.
However, apart from Japanese, I intend to balance out my languages by learning another European language and am currently contemplating German. Nevertheless Japanese will be my foreign language for the near future.
Looking forward to learning nihongo with everyone on this forum!
I'm from Hong Kong, though I've also lived in other places like the US and the UK. English is my first language, Cantonese is my mother tongue and am a native speaker of Mandarin after a number of years of learning it. I've decided to take up Japanese recently, but due to uni commitments, it looks like that I'm only able to self-study it for the time being rather than attend classes.
So far, I've mastered hiragana and katakana for writing. However, I will need to get used to reading both at speed. Regarding speaking and listening, well, not much apart from very general greetings and a few catchphrases from anime I suppose, though pronunciations are going quite well I would think. I guess it's time to open the conventional textbook and read.
Why did I choose to study Japanese? Well I find the sounds of the language highly attractive as well as the rhythms within it. It also has some resemblance to Cantonese that I find interesting. The written language is also similar to Chinese in some ways and have near-identical kanji. My Chinese-Japanese friends have also influenced by choice. And of course, country-wise, I love the technology and food in Japan.
However, apart from Japanese, I intend to balance out my languages by learning another European language and am currently contemplating German. Nevertheless Japanese will be my foreign language for the near future.
Looking forward to learning nihongo with everyone on this forum!
nyaa~you are from hk too ^^
