Japanese Pronunciation Gone Wrong
October 9th, 2008 § 10 Comments
I heard about edufire through this blog post by koichi at tofugu.com. I created an edufire account and finally today I decided to ‘browse’ the videos there. The very first one I clicked at is such a disaster that I felt compelled to write about it. Here’s the link.
“You might know… how to say you like something…” [long awkward pause] “but today…” [insert more random awkward pauses every other word].
I found the video to be too slow paced when speaking English, which doesn’t really make sense unless you assume that you’re teaching Japanese in English to people that don’t understand English well, in which case you just fail anyway.
Now that didn’t bother me too much [I'm lying, I almost killed someone during that first minute], but then the worst part came around. At around 1:03 he says: “Now, are you ready?”; I was thrilled, so excited I could barely keep my excitement hidden, but then it happened.
He tried to say: “コーヒーがすきです” [Koohii ga suki desu] which does express that the person likes coffee, but the way it came out of his mouth was more like ‘kooHII ga SUki DESU‘ (with stress on the CAPS parts) and my brain melted instantaneously. I cried a little bit inside when I heard that, ran to the bathroom and let cold water run over my head until I couldn’t remember what had happened, then I revisited the video and died inside just a little bit more. Bella (my cat) was pretty pissed after having to listen to it twice.
And the reason I’m describing this in detail? Just so you know how bad his pronunciation was. I’m not saying this to criticize him since I still find that the video is good at teaching the sentence structure it intends to teach [although it doesn't explain it], but I do want to discourage people from simply watching such videos and going out repeating things the same way. There are many people out there that have learned Japanese without a tutor/teacher and their pronunciation is far from correct, and in such cases it would be unwise for you to learn from them.
Use EduFire,I do think is a very good tool, but do take your time to find good videos and tutors. There are plenty, but as you can see, it can also go wrong.
If you want to watch another bad video from the same guy, there are others. As I said, the pronunciations in pretty much every sentence he said in Japanese is wrong. If you want to compare the differences in his pronunciation with correct Japanese pronunciation, just listen to some of Koichi’s videos like this one which I like. You can notice that the way the language sounds is very different from what you were hearing before in these two videos.
-Omar
Learning from my (several) mistakes.
October 4th, 2008 § 11 Comments
As a Junior in college, there are some things I have to think about. First, what am I going to do with my life once I graduate? Although there are still two more years before I graduate, there are things that I would like to do that require long term planning. The most realistic options I have are:
- Go to graduate school.
- Get a job.
Both of this require me to do many different things, but there is something that they have in common. No matter how things turn out, it is to my advantage to have a good GPA. Although this will be more relevant in certain situations, I can’t think of a single time someone has come to me and said: “The reason I had this amazing opportunity was because of my bad GPA in college.” Some people do have awesome success stories (think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs), but there’s a reason they are mentioned every single time people talk about school and doing well in life… there’s not many cases like theirs.
That being said, my GPA is quite in bad shape at this point. At a B almost B- average, there are many things that I can apply for, but would be only be considered as a candidate under special circumstances. Although I always think about doing significant changes in order to improve my situation, I always go around repeating the same (or very similar) mistakes.
As a freshman I decided to take a set of classes first term that proved to be completely manageable, getting an A average during my first term and IAP (the January ‘Term’ at MIT). With this confidence I tried out a set of classes my second semester that proved to be much harder, and no A’s showed up on my record at the end of that semester. In the fall term things were a bit more smooth but in the end just one A gracefully came my way. Spring term sophomore year I decided I had to kill myself by taking a class combination that was not pretty, not at all, and I successfully killed my GPA in the process.
A recurring theme in every term is the ending of it. Spending my vacations wondering ‘why didn’t I do such and such when I had a chance?’, such and such being perfectly legitimate things I could have done to make my life more manageable. Even though I always think about improving this situation, this term I had decided at first to take 5 classes, something that is a bit of a stretch for many people. This is particularly strenuous if you consider the amount of time I also dedicate to Taekwondo…
Although people may say to me ‘why don’t you just stop doing Taekwondo, that would free up enough time for you to do X or Y’, what people don’t understand is how much happier I feel when I do taekwondo. Not only I feel better about myself because I’m physically active, taekwondo also challenges me to improve in ways I would not be challenged otherwise. It really pushes me to improve in many more ways than I originally thought it would, and the way I feel when I do taekwondo is just… unique.
Now, that being said, I finally decided by registration day not to take 5 classes, and instead I registered for 4 classes, but then I added a UROP. I successfully registered for 60 units. Why didn’t I limit myself to 48 units? Well, I can’t answer that question very well. But now that I’m feeling the effects of all my commitments, getting on average 3 hours of sleep this past week, and, thanks to my sleep-deprivation underperformed at my first exam, I decided to really not just think about it, but actually executing it. I’m dropping a class.
For some of you this might seem like something trivial. ‘Sure Omar, go drop your class, whatever‘, but you simply don’t understand. Deep down, ingrained somewhere in my brain/heart, there is a need to prove to myself that I can handle more than what people expect from me. I feel a need to prove that I deserve my spot at such a prestigious institution, and that I can handle what others can handle, and even more. And this is all something I feel the need to do for myself, even if no one else cares. Other than that, I also feel a need to help people when they need it. For this reasons I always go around over-committing: to classes, extracurricular activities, and many other things. In the end, I feel very satisfied with what I’ve accomplished, except that as implied by my use of the word ‘over-commit’, there are adverse effects which tend to be an under-performance in academics.
If I want to change the trend I need to start by giving up on bad habits. I started out by dedicating more time to my classes this term, but the next step is to admit to myself that I cannot handle as much as other people around me do, and that it is just fine. There is absolutely no need for me to take more than 48 units per term for the next 4 terms, I can even graduate taking less units than that! I just have to realize that, even if everyone else goes on and take 60 units and get straight A’s, that’s not what I want for myself. I was pretty much what you would consider a ‘slacker’ in high school, I never had to work as hard as many other people did in their high schools before coming to MIT, and two years might just not be enough for me to catch up with the work rate of people who had been working extra hard for 4, 5, 6 years before coming here. I accept that: “hard work pays off”. Implied in that saying is the fact that the hard work everyone else has done for many years more than I have, has to pay off for them somehow. Because of this I might not be able to get a double major as some people will, or even a minor, but I can at least leave MIT having successfully completed a degree and getting the most out of it. By successfully completing a degree I mean making sure that I’m well prepared in my field of study so that I can be admitted to graduate school, or at least be successful at getting a job and performing well in it. And this is what I intend to do…
I’m sorry if I bored you with this long post, but it is something I had to write. It is through writing that I concrete what runs through my mind, and this is something that needed to be concrete. All of this having been said, my family is visiting tomorrow! I should be ready to receive them with a heart and a mind more at ease now that I’ve ‘settled’ some of my problems. At least in my head I have.
-Omar
