Into the Woods

日本語のクラスはきのうテストの後できょうかしょの「chapter 1] 「は｜が] さいごに始はした。
日本語のクラスはきのうテストの後できょうかしょの第一章やっと始まりました。

学期（がっき）のちゅうとでです。
さいしょにひらがなとかたかなを学びました。

今漢字を勉強します。
今から漢字の勉強を始めます。

そしてクラスメートがこうふんしたです。
そしてクラスメートがわくわくしています。

私はたくさん漢字の本があります。

でもむすこの本がいちばん大好きです。

彼は亀川小学校の五年生のときは本をもらいました。
彼は亀川小学校の五年生のときに本をもらいました。

本の名前は「漢字の森の散歩」（さんぽ）です。

じきに日本語のクラスメートは漢字の森でみちにまよった。
じきに日本語のクラスメートは漢字の森でみちにまようでしょう。

Generally Speaking

Yesterday, after our test, my Japanese class finally began Chapter 1 in our textbooks. We are halfway through the semester. Before we could "begin," we (first) had to learn hiragana and katakana.

Many of the students are excited because now we are starting to study kanji.

I have many books on kanji, but my favorite is one given to my son when he was in the fifth grade at Kamegawa Shougakkou. It's called "A Walk in the Kanji Forest".

I find it amusing to think that soon my whole class will be wandering lost in the kanji forest.

New Vocabulary

• chapter:
• semester: 学期　がっき　
• halfway through:「中途で（ちゅうとで）｜半分だけ（はんぶんだけ）｜不十分に（ふじゅうぶんに）」
• excited: こうふんした
• soon:「じきに｜まもなく」
• lose one's way: 迷う（まよう）

質問とコメント

1. I've decided to stop trying to use conjunctions and complicated sentence patterns I haven't studied yet and write the Japanese portion in the simple sentence patterns that we are studying in class. Who knows...I will probably become impatient with this strategy and change the format again next week. (In fact, I could hardly resist the temptation in this entry.)

2. I'm also putting each sentence on a separate line, so that I can enter the corrections in a format that should be easier to read.

3. Although the computer makes it easy to enter kanji, I only use kanji I already know. It's very interesting when y'all comment back in kanji, but most helpful when you put the reading in hiragana. This helps me look the word up in the dictionary.

4. Because I'm just learning Japanese, it takes me a couple of hours to put together these few sentences. Sometimes, I just want to communicate and not look up every other word. But then, you'd get entries like "Today, movie see. Very interesting. Restaurant go. Food good." (Maybe that's how it sounds to you anyway.)

5. In Texas, you sometimes hear the saying "I'm fixin' to" instead of "I'm going to". So, I might have translated "we're starting to study kanji" with

"we're going to (gonna) study kanji"

"we're beginning to study kanji" (sounds British)

"we're fixin' to study kanji" (definitely Texan)

"Fixin to" means "getting ready to" do something, but not yet actually doing it.