日本語を習っています - Learning Japanese

Along with an interest in biochemistry, my other primary interest in Japanese (if you didn't tell from my previous post). Right now, I'm on my third year of Japanese and I really love just about every moment of it. I listen/watch/read Japanese music/video/news everyday for quite a lonnnnnng time now, and it's become very standard nature that is rooted inside me, as well as exchanging the latest music with my friend back-and-forth on Gmail who shares in the same exact interests as me. While most people may connect Japanese learners with those types that dress up in cosplay costumes and watch every single episode of , you'd be surprised to find out that the people whose main goal to learn Japanese because of that drop out after the first year, very quickly. Having a latch to learn a language because of that fails all too quickly, because it doesn't connect you with a deeper, more important link to learning the language. The language itself I find fasciniating because of its organization, its simplicity in structure, and the meaning associated behind the characters. Japanese consists of three different systems, Hiragana (ひらがな), Katakana (カタカナ) and Kanji which are Chinese characters that were integrated into the Japanese Language (日本語). The grammar follow a Subject-Object-Verb structure (SOV) which most language do follow except for a few ones like English and Chinese. If I were to say "I am studying Japanese", it would be

僕は日本語を勉強しています

lit: I Japanese studying

A more complicated one would be:

外は寒いので、去る時はドアを閉めて下さいませんか。

lit: Outside cold because leave time door close please (very polite)

Translated: Can you please close the door when you leave because it is cold outside?

In the previous examples, I ignored the grammar, the "glue" of Japanese that specifies the different elements of a sentence. These grammatical elements are called "particles". In both examples, you see a は: This particle specifies the topic of a sentence ("I" in the first, "Outside" and "The time you leave" in the second). を specifies a direct action ("Studying Japanese" in the first, and "Please close the door" in the second). There is also か, where when it is added at the end of a sentence, it turns that question into a question. There are many more, but I don't want to get into it now. If you have an interest in learning it, I would be more than happy to talk about it with you ^_^. My friend sent me this video yesterday (one out of the MANY that are shared) from this J-Drama. I hope you'll like it as I do.