A new attempt Around fifteen years ago I learned Japanese for a while but lost my interest because I will never fly to Japan. During the last years I often thought that it was a pity to "forget" a language but I was too lazy to keep on practising. A month ago I decided to learn hiragana just for fun. Although I had forgotten a lot, I was surprised that there was still something left in my mind after all those years of not doing anything with Japanese. (Only katakana is still an obstacle for me. It has always been one.) A few days ago I started with radicals. This time I want to do everything right. I once knew approximately 300 kanji but I fear there is not much left but ten to twenty. Writing hiragana and kanji makes me happy for some reason. Perhaps it is because I haven't had a hobby in a while. If learning Japanese works well, I would like to have a small conversation in around six month. And I'm writing this notebook entry to motivate myself.

Simple novelle voor beginners Hoi! Ik zoek een simple novelle voor de beginners, die het Nederlands leren en lezen willen. Mijn Nederlands is niet zo goed. Ik denk dat een boek voor het niveau A1 of A2 zou leuk zijn. Heeft iemand een goede suggestie voor mij? (Ik lees graag misdaadromanen, maar andere interessante romanen mag ik ook.)

Inappropriate behaviour Most of the time I really enjoy italki. Here are many nice people who want to learn languages. I love to participate in their learning progress, answering their German related questions, helping them to understand my native tongue. The majority of the people on italki probably think the same way as I do. I'm thankful whenever someone is kind enough to correct my entries. I am also happy when someone is politely asking me (after having read my profile) if we could be language(!) partners (Standard British English/French/Dutch - German). In this way learning languages is a lot of fun. But some people seem to misunderstand italki as a dating platform. They offensively obtrude themselves upon you and don't accept a "no". No matter how often you explain that you are NOT looking for friends. That you do NOT want to talk to strangers per skype. Most of the time I delete that kind of messages and block their "creators" at once. Strangely enough, it is noticable that those messages usually come from ... let's call them "southern people" even if they don't necessarily live in the south. While I can't complain about the women, some men don't seem to truly follow their religious values even though they invoke lauds on their god in their profiles. I mean there are idiots in every society. But why are 99% of the idiots who feel a need to obtrude themselves upon me followers of a particular religion? How can I stay open-minded if a common prejudice proves itself again and again and again?

A Woman's best friend This journal entry is inspired by Markus' cat story. :) I love cats. They're funny. But our cats, we've got two of them, are pretty lazy. During the winter, a mouse often comes into our kitchen. Sometimes I can hear it crunching in the rubbish bin. Since it never touches anything else but the empty yoghurt pots, we let nature take its course. Good for the little mouse in the rubbish bin. Our cat (number 1) sleeping not far away from it... maybe half a meter on the window bench, does not even react. She's more interested in birds. This year she was a very skillfull hunter. But maybe there were only enough stupid birds. One day I went upstairs. When I passed a window, a dishevelled bird suddenly landed on the sill angrily twittering at me. Maybe it wanted a revenge. Later I noticed the cat lurking around nearby. It seemed as if those little bluetits often hanged around on the sill this summer. Good for the other cat (number 2) which is too lazy to walk downstairs. This evil thing prefers terrorising me by clawing the door to my room. I haven't seen her hunting yet, but one day I found two angry cats in my room. I wonder who of them caught the bird of which was not much left but a bunch of feathers. Cats are so incredibly funny. The funniest fact about my cats is their eternal love-hate relationship. By day they hate each other, by night they share one sofa. Snoring full of fevour. (Sometimes I think something is sawing the roof beams...) Of course, they don't huddel up to each other... Actually it's my cat's (number 2) place. She just tolerates the other cat which accepted a while ago that she would never conquer more than the backrest of the sofa. You probably wonder what the cat's names are. Well, it's pretty simple: "cat". Sometimes I add some attributes like "terror cat", "beautiful cat", "fat cat", "lazy cat", "fine cat"... Who cares about names. Cat number 1 came into our house one day. She was so hungry and thin that she munched our dog's food. She stayed with us. My sister wanted to adopt her and called her "cutie" or so. I (trend-setting as usual ;D) renamed this animal "cat". Cat number 2 is from the animal shelter. She was older than the other cats and an arrogant beast. It was love at first sight. I took her home. She's very unique... When she walks downstairs, she mews with every step she takes. Sounds like a broken record. Oh... And we've got two huge dogs. But that's another (funny) story about cats.

Motivated One of my favourite moods is to feel inspired and motivated. A few month ago, I bought a book called "Get rid of your accent" in order to... guess what... yes, in order to get rid of my (German) accent. But after two lessons I forgot to continue. I had many other things to do. Good pronunciation is a hobby of mine. Today I have booked another lesson on italki and I have so enjoyed it. Too bad that I don't have much time to concentrate a little more on my goal but it is phantastic to talk in a language that is not your native tongue. And people understand what I want to say! That's the best motivation for learning, isn't it? Languages are so fascinating. I wished I had more time to improve my French and to get on with Russian. And I wanted to start with Swedish... and, and, and...

My first English lesson on italki Weekend. Usually, I prefer sleeping until noon or even until afternoon relaxing from an exhausting week full of university stuff and work. But today I stood up "early" for my very first (British) English lesson on italki. I was too tired to be excited although I had feared stammering and floundering the day before. Well, in the end I did better than I thought. A few grammar mistakes made me sad though. And my active vocabulary was not as varying as I hoped. I know so many English words and even some idioms but they are all scattering the moment I open my mouth, just leaving some boring friends behind... Maybe it'll get better with some practise... Hope dies last.

First notebook entry: Introducing myself I'm learing languages because I want to understand the people whose country I'm visiting. At the moment, I study communication design in Germany. After my graduation in B.A., I would like to go to England for my M.A., but I'm not sure about it yet. It depends on the money. Nevertheless I want to learn the British Standard Accent because it sounds so nobel to me. If I ever get the chance to study abroad, I want to show the English people how much I love their language. Of course, I know that I'll never completely get rid of my German accent, but it would be great if it was less strong.