Whew! Japanese.

[icarus]

Thank goodness.

My Japanese instructor let me (and another person) take the test we missed. She was astonished when I told her I was going to reduce my work study schedule - she had clearly assumed I was going to drop the class.

No way, I'm not giving up.

If I do Japanese, I'll be able to make a great case for my intention to minor in Sanskrit at UW. I will have studied two Asian languages already (Tibetan and Japanese) as well as German and French. Plus I have the foundation in Buddhist studies from Nitartha Institute (not to mention over a decade as a Buddhist nun, study at the monastery in India, etc, etc).

Then I would major in English.

You see, when you apply to UW, you need to make a case that the U has something you can't get anywhere else. So tell me, how many Universities offer Sanskrit? My original hope was to major in Tibetan and minor in Sanskrit, but while the Sanskrit remains, the Tibetan program (alas) was cancelled.

She's invited me to attend the early morning class instead, on whatever days I can. Apparently I'm in the "quiet" class, the people who don't participate and speak, while the early am class has a lot of eager vocal participation. I admitted to her that I am not an early riser (wildernessguru howls with laughter at this vast understatement) but hmmm... I think I'll see if I can make it to that class a couple days a week. I'd prefer to really hear and use the language: I learn much better that way. When I learn from reading, I can never get the words out of my mouth.

Besides, a lively class makes all the difference.

I'm a couple assignments behind on my Philosphy homework, but it is a great, and I mean Great class. Vibrant participation, an energized environment, an open-minded approach. I'll get those done this weekend.

I love the tutoring, and I'm sorry to reduce my hours. But in all practicality, my grades need to stay in that upper range, and from a mercenary point of view if I say "I tutored English for three semesters" it doesn't matter much how many hours per week that was.

Comments

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Don't mind at all. I'll friend you back.

I really need to change that friend-only screening on my journal. I only became so draconian when I exposed a con-artist who was asking for donations under false pretenses for her Harry Potter site. It got kind of ugly for a bit.

I'm thinking about how different Tibetan is from English, et al. Tibetan actually makes a good bridge between European and Asian languages, because it was so strongly influenced by Sanskrit. Their alphabet was even created based upon the Sanskrit script rather than the pictographic "Kanji" you see in Chinese and Japanese, and their grammatical structure isn't too different from German in that they toss the verb to the end of the sentence. I'm told by a linguist that Tibetan is actually most closely similar in form and grammatical structure to Finnish. Which is odd.

Icarus

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm no linguist... All I know about Tibetan is that linguistic maps make it part of the "Sino-Tibetan group". I'm a culture historian. And a Catholic and a loudmouth. So you're warned.