Why I chose to study Japanese

Why I chose to study Japanese...

Ever since last year, I have been fascinated by language. I took "Spanish for Native Speakers" last semester in which my professor focused on the varying manners of speaking Spanish with a particular focus on how people transform language when it can no longer express their sentiments or their culture. Taking this alongside Natural Language Processing (NLP) allowed me to work with tools and algorithms that are used to process language while analyzing the use of language itself.

This semester I decided to dive deeper. It was fascinating to delve into the theories and philosophies of language using Spanish as a case study. However, I wanted to look at it from the lens of a culture and language that I am much more unfamiliar with.

Japanese is a culture that has always fascinated me. I love to watch Anime and have a deep appreciation of a culture that so highly values discipline and respect. I was also intrigued by the fact that 2 of the Japanese alphabets were phonetic and one was not. I am very interested to learn how this affects means of expression.

Within these past few weeks, I have been challenged and inspired by my Japanese course. I am excited to sit in a classroom with such bright students who challenge me to be better, as well as, invite me to learn from their own backgrounds and their approach to this new language and culture.