The off-topic topic

[romerojpg]

By then you have no teeth, so you are fine, unless you swallowed them.

[gasteropod]

If anyone's interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy

[saltysam]

Off to Benidorm tomorrow,see you guys in a couple of weeks

[Markgway]

Don't get sunburn!

[grim_tales]

I'm thinking about going on a performing arts course soon. I got a sheet about a course people aged 16+, with AS/High Functioning Autism (while I'm not actually autistic I probably have mild AS though I dont like to say it) and you can perform music/sing or act etc, it sounds fun so might be good

[gasteropod]

I start Japanese class tomorrow evening at the college I used to go to, I'm quite excited! I've been listening to Pimsleur audio CD lessons for the past few days and finding them really effective, so I will go into the class actually knowing things

[grim_tales]

Cool! What level is it?
I did Japanese classes some years ago.

[gasteropod]

Beginner, they'll be teaching me some stuff I already know, but it'll go towards reinforcing it even more. Also I don't know any Kanji at all so if they teach us some of that in the lessons then that'll all be new to me.

How did you get on with the lessons? Can you still remember what you learnt?

[grim_tales]

In 2002 I did "Beginner" and in 2005 I did "Further Steps" and got a certificate, so maybe not, TBH The exam in Further Steps was quite easy though, and you had to recognise some kanji (I had a very easy one - De-guchi (Exit)

[gasteropod]

Have you ever been to Japan and utilised it? I really want to go, it's just a matter of saving up I guess, but I always spend all my earnings lol

[grim_tales]

I want to go to Japan too but it's very expensive I bet (I've never been BTW).

[gasteropod]

My first lesson was all right overall. Our teacher, Hiromi, was really lovely and my classmates all seem nice too. But I was feeling a bit bewildered when she was showing us the Hiragana and its different forms, and also some of the phrases she was teaching us didn't seem absolutely correct translations to me.

For instance, she taught us that 'O-namae wa?' means 'What's your name?', but anyone who knows anything about Japanese knows that for it to be a question, you need 'ka' on the end. I've looked it up and found that that's an abbreviated version of the question, which should be 'O-namae wa nan desu ka' which makes much more sense to me, and surely should be the version taught to students. Another example is that she said that 'thank you very much' is 'arigato gozaimasu', well it's not is it, 'domo' means 'very' so it should be 'domo arigato gozaimasu' for thank you very much, gozaimasu just makes it polite.

At the end of the lessons, she gave us all fancy pieces of paper and was trying to teach us to make some origami, she had to help everyone because most of us were useless but in the end you blew air through a little hole in the top and it turned into a little box, cute!

I've just been practising writing out the Hiragana for 'A' 'I' 'U' 'E' and 'O', and managed to write 'lie' (no)

[Shingster]

Sounds like she's teaching you real world Japanese and not the rigid formalised version you're looking up on the internet. If you're going to use search engines to 2nd-guess everything she's teaching you then you might be better off sticking to self learning techniques tbh Gastero. It's probably best not to get too hung up on every detail and trust that she knows what she's doing, either that or have a word with her after class I guess.

For what it's worth I have no "real world" experience with speaking Japanese, but I've lost count of the times I've heard "O-namae wa" and "arigato gozaimasu" in films and TV shows (instead of the longer more formal statements).

[Markgway]

Shingster's right. I did a little Japanese in Uni (should've kept it up) and our teacher told us the proper phrases and then the alternates. In any language what natives say varies from the 'correct' version. Having said that if I were your teacher I would start with the textbook version first and when you're no longer a beginner go for the abbreviations, etc.

[grim_tales]

I've heard "O-namae wa?" means "What's your name?" too and it sounds fine to me. "O-genki desu ka?" means "Are you well?" but you can also just say "Genki desu?"
I've also heard "Arigato" many times without "Domo". Our teacher, Miyuki, would use it. She was a nice lady
I've wanted to try the 3rd stage Japanese class sometimes but not everyone wanted to do it.

[gasteropod]

Yeah what I'm saying is, if you're going to teach a class in their first lesson that all questions must end in 'ka', but give them an example that doesn't with no explanation, that's not very good. I only looked it up online because it looked fishy to me, I've been learning from Pimsleur audio CDs which are brilliant.

[grim_tales]

Japanese people are so nice Miyuki was lovely and as you say, the rest of the class seemed nice too

[romerojpg]

Japanese people are so nice

Even when they were splitting babies heads open during WW2

[EvaUnit02]

So my older brother strong armed me into doing his wife's film studies university assignment, write a 2500 word essay comparing the pacing in two different films. I'll be moving in with them in a few months so I did it to curry favours. Unethical I know, but I'd say that having a roof over your head and a chance at cheap board takes priority.

My mother and her partner are both university academics and naturally they were both pissed when they found out.

[bradavon]

A mate of mine helped me loads during programming lessons at college (even doing small parts of it for me) but by far the bulk of it was my own work. I'd not want him to have done it for me.

[romerojpg]

Cheats deserve everything that comes to them

[Markgway]

Eva: Your sister-in-law should be ashamed... I'd rather fail than take credit for someone else's work. You should've held your integrity on this one and said 'no'. What kind of brother only lets you move-in if you cheat on his wife's behalf?

[EvaUnit02]

What kind of brother only lets you move-in if you cheat on his wife's behalf?

I'm moving in with them regardless, part of their new house is in my name so they can't kick me out so easily. It wasn't a condition of me moving in. I just did it to curry favours, ya know, people will be inclined to gimme a hand more readily since I've helped them in the past (and I don't mean in cheating academically, I rather fail.). I've scratch your back, so you scratch mine.

It won't happen again though.

[Yi-Long]

Everyone knows by now the troubles I've had with my pc the last year and a half.

Anyway, I complained about it the last few times, and called them again last tuesday to speak with someone from customer-support. The woman on the line said she agreed with me and said she'd do her best to fix the problem for me...

Today I was called by the same lady, who told me they've sent out a new PC to me today, and hopefully it will arrive next week

Ofcourse, I'm still a bit cautious in my excitement, cause I don't know what they're sending me. For all I know they're sending me a cheap PC with worse specs than my old PC, which I certainly hope they won't, cause I appreciate them sending me a brand new one where other companies might have just kept the whole drama going with the broken PC (although obviously all the transport and manhours in trying to fix that travesty has probably already cost them much more than they ever earned by selling me that PC in the first place(!) ) until the gueranty would run out next february...

So hopefully it has the same specs as the last PC (or even better).

At least I'm very glad I won't be seeing that crappy system again, and hopefully next week I have a fully functional en dependable system again

[grim_tales]

I scored 82 and 138 in bowling this evening
I won the 2nd game in the group we were in, thanks to 2 spares (I think) and a double strike.