And, oh, last Thursday and Friday we learned adjectives. One of the things we learned was color in Japanese. So, in Japanese, we add “i” to the color to make it adjective. Thus, black is “kuro(i)”, white is “shiro(i)”, red is “aka(i)”, yellow is “kiiro(i)”, etc. (There are some exceptions where instead of adding “i” we add “no”, and by the way, all of this are written in hiragana and katakana, I’m writing it in English just so you know how to read it ^^). Thus, if you want to say “yellow pen”, you’ll have to say “kiiroi pen”. Yellow itself is “kiiro” but to make it adjective you have to add “i” at the end. This actually bothers me. You know I watch and read One Piece. And I learn some colors from there. We have Kurohige (Blackbeard (pirates)), Shirohige (Whitebeard (pirates)), and Akagami (Red Hair (pirates)). Why is there no “i” in it? Why not kuroihige, shiroihige, or akaigami, right?
Hence, after the class ended I came to Teacher B and asked her about my confusion. How do we decide when we should (not) add the particle “i”? (I also told her that I loved One Piece because in the previous chapter she used One Piece as an example in explaining sounds in katakana 😁😍). At this point, I’m not sure if I’m being annoying. I don’t mean to be a snob or that kind of smart aleck student who loves to “test” the teacher’s knowledge by being jerky and annoying asking irrelevant questions. I just happen to know these things and it bothers me and so I just brave myself to ask it to the teacher. Am I wrong? I’m just curious, right? I’m not sure if I was this brave when I was a student back then. I believe back then I would just keep silent and try to figure out things on my own. But, well, whatever, I’m curious and so I asked. I didn’t mean to trouble the teacher. Teacher B, though, seemed to find it hard to explain clearly to me. Instead of explaining the answer to me, she just said that it was a good point, a good question, that akagami is aka(red) as noun+ gami (hair) as noun, not adjective + noun. It’s normal if it functions as name. It’s not as satisfactory for me but, well, maybe it’s just one of those arbitrary things about language. Besides, she says MAYBE that’s because it’s a name (Akagami is the nickname of Shanks, the captain of Red Hair Pirates in One Piece, and yes, his hair is red). But I don’t know. Maybe because I expected a certain rule for the pattern and that’s not what she gave me. Well, anyhow, I guess sometimes I like Teacher B better when a student asked her about something and she confidently said that there was no answer, “that’s just the way it is.” I understand this, and language is arbitrary, like, for instance, if somebody asked, why do we use English Verb2 (past participle) for something we did in the past? Or, why do we have -s/-es ending in the verb for third-person singular in English? Man, it’s hard to explain. Is there any explanation? Well, there might be if we study further back about the etymology or the linguistic history. But in the beginning level, I don’t think we really need that 😐 But, anyway, at least when we get such answers we can mark the question or confusion as resolved. But the answer to my akagami-vs-akaigami question is not as satisfactory or resolving. But again, I cannot tell her that because I know she’s been trying her best to answer that. She’s nice too. (And I think she likes One Piece too 😍❤😍 Ok, this one is biased and so subjective. Haha 🙈😅✌✌✌). Besides, I could not stay any longer since the next class would begin so I just said thank you and left. I hope she wouldn’t feel offended or hurt because I think she asked me a question but I didn’t really answer that since I wasn’t really focused as I wanted to leave quickly 😀
Anyway, remember my test for chapter 3 in which I didn’t know the answer and just wrote the words that I knew? Guess what? It was right! I wrote “Japanese movie” but the answer was “movie” so I got 0.5 points cut off my score 🙈😅 But I really didn’t get it. “Movie” is “eiga” in Japanese and I thought the words were longer than that. That’s why. Haha But anyway, I’m happy 😀
And oh, there was also an assignment that asked me to write about my last weekend activity. And I wrote about the Lion Dance in Lee Lee store. I even browsed about the correct Japanese writing. I consulted my book and internet to make sure. But it seems that my teacher was confused with “Lion Dance”. She drew a cute picture with a question mark, which I understood as a sign of confusion or confirmation :/ Did they not know what Lion Dance is? O.o But it’s what it’s called in the flyer on the market. Personally for me myself, Lion Dance is kinda strange because in my language(s), it’s called Barongsai, and mostly not associated with lion, but dragons. It might be due to cultural differences. So, well… Did I get it wrong? The Lion Dance? Is it the wrong name? o.O
PS: The last two days before Spring Break the teachers have been playing videos about Japan and its cultures. Well, it’s a good way to promote cultures as well as for tourism advertisement 😀 But honestly, without those videos, I know I’ve always wanted to go to Japan. Now I’m so going to Japan. Hopefully next year. Amen. (But actually I wish they didn’t play the video that much since we can watch it ourselves at home. I’d prefer the class to be used to learn the language…)
