Studying how to teach Japanese is as fun and hard as studying Japanese

Two weeks ago, I started taking a course of in teaching Japanese. It is offered by my city's international association, and the lecturer is an active Japanese teacher.

She always gives us a chance to think about things that we have never even thought about and it makes us realize how complicated the Japanese language can be.

I had never deeply thought about (or paid attention to) words of a unit unit descriptor words before. For example, we count plates, CDs and sheets of paper with "枚 (mai)". When to counting people, we use "人 (ri, nin)," and for books, we use "冊 (satsu)." I thought it was funny and strange when I realized that we also read numbers differently according to the unit that is used. With "枚 (mai)," we count things using ichi mai, ni mai, san mai, yon mai, go mai, roku mai, nana mai, hachi mai, kyuu mai, jyuu mai, etc. We count people using hitori, futari, san nin, yo nin, go nin, roku nin, nana (or shichi) nin, hachi nin, kyuu nin, jyuu nin, etc. We count books using issatsu, ni satsu, san satsu, yon satsu, go satsu, roku satsu, nana satsu, hassatsu, kyuu satsu, jyussatsu, etc.

After I finished the last lecture, I got more interested in teaching Japanese than ever before. and Also, I wondered what would be the most difficult thing to understand in Japanese for people who are studying it as a foreign language.  :)



Your English is awesome! I was trying really hard to find things wrong, but only a few slight mistake that anyone might make when writing such complicated sentences. Remember to use periods more often. Too many commas can quickly turn a sentence into a run-on, and it sounds more like a ramble.

Overall, it was very nice. Congrats!