I’m a language enthusiast from the United States. I’ve studied Japanese, French, Chinese, and Korean. I took French I high school and have forgotten quite a bit but can still manage conversation. My Mandarin is limited to simple conversations.
Japanese has been my primary focus for the last 30 years. I lived in Aomori, Tohoku (青森県) for three years during high school and college. I picked up a lot of the Tohoku and Tsugaru dialect from friends and coworkers.
I have an affinity for scripts, especially Japanese, Mandarin, and Korean. I recently started teaching myself the Arabic script. I also have a talent for mimicry which I think helps me navigate language learning and pronunciation
My language goals are maintain and expand my abilities in my current languages and I would love to learn Arabic, Hindi, and Vietnamese. I look forward to many interesting conversions here.
I have limited opportunity to speak Japanese here. I used to work for an energy company here that captures carbon dioxide and we had interest from around the world. I took a Japanese news crew on a tour of our facilities. I tend to use Japanese at home in short snippets, like ちょっと待って whenever my son asks me to do something. I also have an extensive library. I use mainly Japanese language source material like 国語辞典 and 漢和辞典 and avoid English source materials whenever practical. I also use Duolingo to practice vocabulary.
My name is Chris and this is my second year attending conference. I currently study Japanese and dabble in Korean, Mandarin, and Arabic. Y original post from last year is below.
Since the 2020 conference I’ve started a new job with NationalDayCalendar.com, which celebrates unique and interesting celebrations like National Ice Cream Day or National Shwarma Day. We also celebrate international days, so I’m interested in learning more from everyone about regional holidays. I also manage their radio station where we have listeners from Singapore, Taiwan, Ghana, and South Africa.
I look forward to meeting all of your during the conference.