essay2-03b;language story

I have learned four languages by now, and now I am studying language. So I want to review about my language learning stories.

Japanese is the first language that I learned, because of all I am a Japanese. Japanese is my mother tongue. So I use Japanese all the time. The people around me are Japanese speakers, may be I was learned Japanese from family, neighboring people and so on. However, my Japanese is not the standard language. I speak a Kumamoto dialect. My family are speaks this dialect. Sometimes, I cannot understand my grandmother’s speed. She speaks Kumamoto dialect too, but it is little different from mine. I think that language is very interesting. Grandmother’s dialect is old language. There is good communication between other old persons. When they talk, they look so happy. But she cannot understand language that use of young person. Language is changes all the time.

Now, we can always watch TV, listening radio or music and so on. When I was child, I always watch TV. Especially, I watched cartoons. Characters speak not Kumamoto dialect. May be they speaks a standard Japanese. It was different language for me. And my family always read books to me. So I like books very much. Always I had many books in my bag. I think these things were helped to learn Japanese. I can understand standard Japanese, but I cannot speak clearly.

I learned Japanese letters: Hiragana and Katakana from my family. A table of the Japanese syllable stick on the wall in my room. Everyday I was practice to write letters. And then, my family checked. It was interesting for me, but I don’t know why. When I entered elementary school, I take lessons at the calligraphy once a week. I learned how to write too.

When I was about ten years old, I was started to study English. There is a small English school in the neighborhood. I went to there with my brother. I learned the alphabet and simple conversation. Same time, it started the English class in my elementary school. However I cannot understand English. It was very difficult for me. Sometimes I took a conversation test of English in the English school. I spoke with a native speaker. I was so nervous in front of the native speaker that I had difficulty expressing my opinion. I was remembering that an interesting story about this test. The native teacher asked me, “Can you swim??” but I couldn’t understand and I couldn’t say anything. And then he spoke with gestures. He was very kind for me. In my junior high school days and high school days, I was studied English too. However, English was my weak point. Because of grammar is difficult to understand for me and I didn’t have a very large English vocabulary. I went to English school in junior high school too. So that English school’s teacher taught grammar and vocabulary for me. Now, I am English major. But I don’t use English frequently. I have to study more. The reason that I started study English is to live in the other country is my dream. I want to go various countries.

Last year, I took Korean class. I like Korean drama and Korean stars. I was fourteen years old, I visited Korea and I participated in a home stay program. So I thought I want to study Korean and then I want to write a letter for host family with Korean. Korean is very interesting language. It was little easy to understand for Japanese. Because that grammar similar to Japanese. Korean letter has very clearly rule. I was practice to conversation alone in my room.

I took Russian class too. The reason why I chose Russian that I thought the person who can understand Russian are not so many in Japan. Russian is interesting too but very difficult. There are the neuter gender, the masculine gender and the feminine gender in grammar. It was difficult to understand for me. So when I studied Russian, I can write only to memorize.

Language is very important and interesting. I want to study four languages more.
[693 words]