Podcasting

People outside of my Japanese class, if you are wondering why I am writing about podcasting, it is because this is a blog assignment.

I have never listened to and participated in any podcasts. At first, I thought it's nothing more than normal broadcasting except we can store podcasting files onto our computers. But then I found out there is a new technology that can automatically filter out all the umms and uhhs and coughing and sniffing and slurping noises from our podcasts. I don't know why, but they call this "writing"!?

Podcasting is going to make it easier for people to receive information they need by listening to podcasts in specialized areas as they can multi-task when they are listening to podcasts instead of just browsing articles online. However, it is much harder for the podcasters to produce a listenable podcast than for them to write a comprehensive note and post it online. Therefore, you have to know what you are saying before you actually say it in order to be a good podcaster.

Podcasting is going to make digital storage of lecture and meeting information much more useful and achievable. One thing I am worried about is whether it will make inappropriate contents more accessible to children.

Midterm Period Updates

Midterms と senior design projects　はとてもわるいです。　

でんしゃおとこわおもしろいですが、ビッザレです。

Even though gender-neutral languages like Chinese and Japanese seem to be more politically correct in a lot of ways, gender-specific pronouns in English can be very useful in distinguishing the gender of discrete characters in news articles and other reading materials whose contents with which we are not always familiar. However, I don't really understand why there are gender-specific verbs in French, German, Latin, and other Latin/Greek-derived languages, the gender-specific verbs simply confuse people and serve no apparent purposes.

Wako Tawa's Talk

When I was little, I started my violin lessons with the Susuki Methods. I found those drills extremely boring, and cursed at my violin teacher for making me practise them over and over again every day. It is surprising even to myself that I never realised how useful the Susuki Method is until recent years when I look back to the areas in which the method itself has prepared us. Concentrating in one area of training at a time is indeed the most effective way of learning musical instruments and languages from my experience.

Just curious, does anyone know why Tawa san says it takes an average native English speaker longer to learn Japanese than to learn Chinese or Korean? I would think Chinese has more characters and different ways of using the language for different situations, so it would be harder and more complicated to learn. Anyway, I would never know the difference since my native language is Chinese, but I am always interested in what native English speakers think about when they pick up more than one Asian language.