Tuesday, January 27, 2009

How are you?

I am learning Japanese. I am planning to move to Japan when I finish my phd. Japan is a beautiful country, I am really looking forward to moving there and so I am trying to learn Japanese. In the fall I took an introductory Japanese class at my university. I feel it gave me a solid introduction to the language. This semester, though, I need to focus wholeheartedly on my research so that I can actually finish within the next few months. Therefore I am not taking the second part of the introductory Japanese class, but I am continuing to learn on my own. One way I found to squeeze some Japanese into my day is to listen to podcasts while I walk to work. The podcasts I am listening to are from JapanesePod101.com. Although it is subscription based, it is not very expensive and offers a variety of supplementary materials in addition to the podcasts.

Today I learned a new phrase. It is a way to answer the question: How are you? How are things going? The phrase is ぜっこうちょう ですin hiragana, and it is read zekkoochoo desu (絶好調です).
It means "great! wonderful! on top of the world"

Somehow even saying the phrase lifts my mood. So, can you guess how I'm doing today? ぜっこうちょう です!

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