Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Sprechen zie Nihongo?

In my never-ending litany of Stupid Parlour Tricks, I would like to remind all and sundry that Japanese language correspondence courses are meant to be studied over lengthy periods of time (say, oh, a month or so), with preparatory work done along the way in order to be able to better master the material. This will ease the pain of the test that will inevitably be due at the end of each section. Otherwise you will spend the last two days before it is due running around like a chicken (niwatori - I don't know why I know that - it wasn't in the materials - but I do) with its head cut off, stuffing your brain with little bits and pieces of grammar rules that you probably will not now remember since you didn't feel it important to reinforce these rules with practice and hence lost the chance to internalize them.

Anyway, the test is done except for one question on the listening portion about which I remain clueless (I know, I know - you're all shocked). The question is: "If the conversation were to continue, what would the receptionist say next?" There are four possibilities on the question sheet, each of which I duly translated and was therefore able to eliminate two on slim technicalities. But I cannot choose between the other two. So I listened to the first part of the receptionist's conversation about 43 times and tried to write it down. I came up with the following:

Niji no yakushita meijiroshoji no sakai tomoshimasu.

Otherwise translated as: I've not the foggiest what you are babbling about.

So unless enlightenment strikes me (dead?) between this evening and tomorrow evening (when I am reviewing it and preparing to mail it off), I will simply flip a coin and choose between A and C).

In the meantime, I'm off to see if Rollercoaster Tycoon has anything to add to my kanji-edification.*

* What? I promised myself that if I finished the test tonight (a whole day early), I could play some Rollercoaster Tycoon before bed. So I'm obligated to now do so!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't they have a Japanese version of Rollercoaster Tycoon, so that you can learn and play at the same time?

julie said...

*droooool* I wish.