New Term Started!

Last Week, Tuesday 13th, The new term started. Most of the students are the same, but we moved on the 3rd floor. 80% of the class made it from A class to C class. We basically skipped B class. I hope we will get more chances of reading real texts and not have only grammar.

It's actually getting difficult. Now we are studying the level of politeness. There are many in Japanese. So far we have seen 4 levels:

1) Speaking to friends
2) Speaking Polite
3) Speaking Honorific (i.e. talking to your boss)
4) Speaking Humble (say things about yourself to your boss)

The interesting one is the 4th one. With this way of speaking, you talk about yourself in a lower level compared to the person you are talking to. For instance: You will use level 3 if you ask the person if he had lunch, but to the same person you will use 4 to say that you had lunch.

It's kind of difficult, because the vocabulary changes dramatically. The word for "eat" is for the respective levels:

Level 1) Taberu
Level 2) Tabemasu
Level 3) Meshiagarimasu
Level 4) Itadakimasu

As you see, is like learning a full new vocabulary for about 50 words (for now) and remember which one goes where ;)

Here a picture of me at the lesson:

Well, you might wonder what happened to my hand. The interesting thing is that the class on the 3rd floor belongs to the Medical School in the same building ...

Besides hands, there are legs, various body organs, skulls, heads and brains for disassembling. This class will last until April 2010 ...