Studying

[mereilin]

I'm really foolishly excited about becoming kind of literate. The tempo on this one is almost right for me to read along, and there's a LOT that I'm comprehending. Also I downloaded a free book on Kindle that turned out to be a version of Snow White in Japanese. The description said it was intended for 3rd to 5th year students (I'm assuming elementary school) so I figured I could probably handle it. Also it helps that I kind of know the story so I'm not surprised to see 七人小人 (seven - counter for people - small - person).-- hell, even if I don't know how to read the kanji I can figure out that's the seven dwarfs.

It's a little confusing; her friend is シンデレラ, and Snow White (white-snow-princess) seems to think that boys like Cindy better because she has blond hair. Also there was something about borrowing a dress, and a poison spider who shot thread out its butt and used it to fly back to the castle or something. I haven't seen these concepts in any version I've previously read, but I'm reading! And when 継母 told the 魔法の鏡 that she would smash it to pieces if it lied to her, and the 鏡 basically informed her that would be murder, I thought that was pretty hilarious. It also swore on its life that she was 用の中一番きれい. Except for 白雪姫, but the mirror didn't mention that until after the king promised to buy the stepmother some new clothes or something.

This is totally a variation I have not seen before. But there does seem to be a poison apple. And I have a lot of pages left to get through still.

Actually I got kind of excited because I saw a TED video where the speaker was asserting that any adult could learn to speak a foreign language fluently within six months. He shared six methods to achieve this, and I realized I've actually been doing at least four and maybe five of them. And I am sort of starting to understand stuff I hear. I can't surround myself with it because there aren't a lot of native Japanese speakers in the part of the world where I live, but the internet is a pretty amazing place. I expect it to take a little longer to achieve literacy considering I didn't even understand the writing system before last summer, but comprehension would be pretty awesome.

Chris Lonsdale's talk below. Pretty cool stuff.