Elucidating Questions

This is one of the sucky parts of self study

I want to say something

I have a word

The word feels like it’s wrong

Google says it’s right but I still feel like it’s wrong in this context

I can’t get Google to register it

頼む？

それの方が

Now I’m stuck on ほうs

I don’t know if the 方法 is 方 or 法

I actually do know I just thought that sentence sounded fun

No one to ask

Sometimes I say things and know it’s not quite right but translation only goes so far

Everyone translates everything differently

If the two translations between my translators more or less feel the same I’m probably right

But 注文

Feels different

Learning alone

I’ve had many mistakes

勘違い

It’s hard to form a language from nothing

No foundation

At least I have the foundation now

Still I find myself wandering aimlessly through vocabulary

The ravens are crowing

The crows in Japan were bigger than our ravens

And I got to talk to one

I want to go back

I try so hard to keep the language real and malleable in my mind

If everything I’ve ever said I worked hard at before was a lie, this would be the truth

I’ve worked my hardest to create and keep Japanese in my life

It’s the one thing that no one could convince me otherwise

I worked my ass off for Japanese

And this is in no way saying it wasn’t worth it

I’d do it again

And languages deserve hard work

They are what has been passed to us

Generation to generation

From the first being who used vocalization as communication

I think that’s what my strange overdose dream thing was telling me

Language is sacred

It’s also fluid

Ever changing

Like a substance unknown to the Universe

From one thing into the next

Sometimes having almost no remnant of what was before

We don’t know what words our ancestors spoke

We know their feelings

Their emotions

The human experience and the words that we attach to them now

And everything is different now

I can’t just hop on a boat and go disappear into the Japanese countryside

But with Japanese, at least, I can feel the tongues of millions who spoke these same words before me

Japanese, other than the past 80 years or so, has mostly stayed very similar

I speak words ancient

Japan’s peculiar preservation

It’s just cool

Knowing another language is cool

Becoming intimately aware of the culture of words

That was weird I feel like someone just unplugged and replugged in reality for a second

Strange neurological symptoms

Don’t mind me

Language is a doorway

Many people choose to stand in it and never go through

Language is a doorway that toddlers are ushered through with celebration

But it’s seldom the same for children, or adults

Treated instead as an obligation

You must have gone through the door

Japanese was a door I found by myself

Maybe it found me

It has always been in my life

I remember so vividly saying サヨナラ at the end of piano class

I can’t remember the teacher

Or her race

I was so small I didn’t even register stupid stuff like that yet

This was either during or before grade 1

I feel like it was well before though because I distinctly remember the approach from the car and we’d moved by then

Memories from so long ago

Yeah, there’s Japanese

One of those chance meetings I guess

I seem to get those with everything but humans

Difficult

But I’ll figure it out

I hope anyways