elmerfudd
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Your Japanese school really does suck
It's not your imagination. Your school sucks. I've got about six years of classes at four different schools under my belt, and every one of them was better than your school sounds. Granted, my classes weren't full of Korean and Chinese students, which I admit would change things a bit, but still...grammar should be explained in a rational fashion.
If I were you, I'd be looking for another school.
And about "norikaeru"...that's actually _two_ separate verbs. A compound verb, if you will, composed of "noru" which means "to ride" and "kaeru" which means "to change" (transitive). Your school is doing you a disservice if they haven't made this clear.
Note that this compound verb then conjugates as any normal Japanese verb: norikaeranai, norikaeritai, and so on.
As far as the past tense of "big," what about "Rome was really big"? "Romu wa ookikatta" Of course, if you get into "Rome was a big empire," the waters get muddied. I think you would say "Romu wa ookii teikoku datta", but who really knows for sure.
Don't get discouraged - it does take time, but with good instruction, Japanese is very learnable.
And thanks for the *****ing blog. I think you're putting out the best writing about Japan that I've seen in years.
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2/18/2004, 7:25 am
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damagedmoderator
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Re: Your Japanese school really does suck
thanks for the sympathy.... changing schools is hard because the visa ministry hates students. you can't just switch schools, you have to go back to your home country and start the months-long visa application procedure all over again from scratch. which will, don't worry, be fully ranted about in TDR in due time. but really i SHOULD get off my ass and check out other schools anyway.
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2/18/2004, 1:40 pm
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elmerfudd
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Re: Your Japanese school really does suck
Oh...they do have you over a barrel with the visa thing, I guess. I think. I've heard that once you get a work visa issued, you keep it even if you switch jobs. Are you sure that's not the case w/ student visas as well?
Do you know about cultural visas? You might want to look into that - you just need to find a sensei who will claim that you're taking 20 hours/week of classes in their traditional Japanese discipline (ikebana, tea, martial arts...), and you're golden (can go to school wherever you like, change when you feel like it). Or of course, you could actually take 20 hours/week of iaido classes or whatever.
But it's definitely time to change schools. No homework doesn't make sense. If at all possible, find a school with mainly Western students (maybe explore taking classes w/ exchange students at a university?).
It's true what you said today about Chinese/Korean students. Studying Japanese for a Korean speaker is about as hard as studying Spanish is for an English speaker. And both Chinese and Koreans have a big advantage in kanji. Studying w/ those guys will be very demoralizing.
But just to let you know...Japanese is a big pain in the butt. It took me 5 years from zero to passing level 1 of the JLPT. The consolation prize is that your pronounciation will probably be much better than all those Chinese students that pass it in 1 or 2 years.
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2/20/2004, 5:06 am
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