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I'm working
On making my handwriting more legible.

I'm half-doing it to prep myself for working on kanji. As things stand, I know about 30 kanji by sight. I can write all of about 7. It's the tricky ones that throw me, like "you" in "do-you-bi", or.. let me just show you.

勉強 (benkyou) STUDY
曜 (you) DAY
話 (hana) SAY
私 (watashi) I/ME
木 (ki) 本 (hon) 水 (sui)
目(me) 日 (bi) EYE, DAY OF THE WEEK

As things stand, I can't look at these on the default Firefox font size. On my Jap-only journal, I've upped the font from 10 to 12. I still feel like I need to stare.

This really poses a challenge when I'm away from home, and have to use an online Jap-typing program. Staring at 13+ complicated kanji, usually looking for "曜".. Jesus, fuck. That one alone gives me issues on a daily basis. To WRITE that, I have to draw a little square, plot things out. I never write it on paper. I stick to calling it "you", and hit "2" on my typing program to call it up.

Japanese would be remarkably easier if their characters weren't so much alike at times. At least sometimes the forms themselves give hints. An open square indicates mouth: 口. So, when you see something like hana (話).. if you can see it, there's a little square. SOMETIMES these things will give you a fucking hint.

It makes my eyes bleed, but I always feel so rewarded by the fact that every now and then, when I check Jap outside of my making, I'm slowly being able to pick pieces I kind of know about. Not whole sentences, mind you. Usually suffixes. Particles: "Wo" [I know it's "o", but for the sake of Google-fu, we'll call it "wo"], "no", "to", "ya". Slowly, slowly, I'm getting katakana.

Particles are my friend.

I'm still being a jackass, and sticking to the -masu of everything. If I can't remember the -masu, I sure as shit tack on -shimasu to the end. I may be wrong; I may still be comprehensible. I think I'm using "to" incorrectly. I rely on it a lot for "with [so-n-so]" stuff. As in, "Watashi [I] to haha [mother] he mise [store] wo ikimashita [went]." That, and I really am abusing "wo", too. I was like that with "wa" for a long time. "Desu" I still abuse. I tend to use that very, very liberally.

A friend informs me that polite Jap is being wiped out. This kind of echoes what the internet tells me. Will anyone understand my love of -masu? Will anyone understand what it means? It's their fucking language. I would hope so.

Maybe polite Japanese is going the way of English and its structure.

Down the drain. Into slang and chatspeak.

Now, don't get me wrong. Conjunctions, slang -- they have a place and time. Internet acronyms.. well.. they're lazy. Abbreviations in general are pretty lazy. Issue is -- they're all so common that the real language sounds false to us.

Srsly [haaaa], dialogue sounds stilted without some kind of phonetics, or so on.

Jesus.

I will never experience Japanese for the prettiness I took it up for...

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Circa 2010