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In a message dated 1/8/03 12:05:33 AM, witchmama@... writes:

<< Japanese isn't a hard language to learn, and I LOVE to tell Japanese people
that I think English is harder, speaking as someone who has taught English
to nonnative speakers for >>

Hi :) ( brace yourself, taking highly of PS for a sec) In the 9th grade I
went to a huge public high school. we are very lucky to live in a very
"culturally diverse" town. each of our public elementary schools has a
different language for students who's first language is not English and if
you come to our town (speaking that lanaguge)you can go to whichever school
that is regardless of which district you are in. (I believe, though not
entirely positive, that they are Japanese, Chinese, Korean and French) ( mine
was Korean) and in addition to that (and for that reason) our (high) school
offers more Language's then others, because students are offered the chance
to study these language's at an earlier age.unfourtatly, while my school was
great for the Korean kids. they didn't ooffer anything other then French or
Spanish to us. when I got to the high school, I learned that I had the
opportunity to take Japanese (as one of the first classes). I Immediately
jumped at the chance. My dad (who's American) lived in Okinawa Japan on the
army base when he was little. And my mom traveled to Japan and studied the
tea ceremony. ( they actually met though a mutual love of Japanese culture).
While neither of my parents Actually speak Japanese (in about 4 weeks I
surpassed my dad's knowledge lol) they were very glad I would get the
opportunity to study it. I was very nervous at first, because I had heard
that Japanese was quite hard. I actually found Japanese not to be any harder
then French after my initial struggle to learn the alphabet (s) ( hiraganga
and katakana) and my teacher was absolutely fabulous. ( actually, she was not
Japanese and Japanese was her second language but she was highly proficient)