“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.” – Mohatma Gandhi
There’s a lot to practice here, considering all the exceptions going off left and right. A lot of this is going to come down to experience moving forward. Every time you see a date in Japanese (or English) translate it into the Japanese reading. This sort of practice will take you from struggle-sauce to being comfortable with dates more quickly. If you just let it naturally happen instead of actively seeking out dates to read, you’ll go much slower. You have to go through the pains a certain amount of times, so you might as well get it all done in a short period!
Exercise 1
This first exercise is going to feel a bit boring, but it’s going to help a lot. Simply try to name all of the dates of the month, 1-31. Then, after you’ve said them all out loud, go back through the list and see if you in fact got everything right. Take note of anything you got wrong and try again. It will seem like forever, but this shouldn’t take more than 10-15 minutes, and it will be extremely helpful to you in the long term.
If you don’t get everything right the second time around just try to identify what you did wrong and then try again tomorrow. A little time (I’d say １日間, or so) between doing exercises like this can do wonders for your memory!
Exercise 2
Now I want you to think more on your feet. Translate the Japanese to English. Instead of just being dates, there will be months in there too. Make sure you can read each date out in Japanese too. Refer to previous chapters if you need help.
a １月１日
Reading: いちがつ ついたち
Date: January 1
a ３月１５日
Reading: さんがつ じゅうごにち
Date: March 15
a １２月２５日
Reading: じゅうにがつ にじゅうごにち
Date: December 25
a ４月４日
Reading: しがつ よっか
Date: April 4
a ６月９日
Reading: ろくがつ ここのか
Date: June 9
a １０月２３日
Reading: じゅうがつ にじゅうさんにち
Date: October 23
a ９月１３日
Reading: くがつ じゅうさんにち
Date: September 13
a １１月５日
Reading: じゅういちがつ いつか
Date: November 5
a ２月１４日
Reading: にがつ じゅうよっか
Date: February 14
a ５月２０日
Reading: ごがつ はつか
Date: May 20
How were those? I tried to trick you a few times, so make sure you weren’t tricked.
If you were okay with those, come up with a few dates that are personally important to you. Your birthday, your family members’ birthdays, your anniversary, today’s date, and more are all game. Try to come up with 5-10 important dates and make sure you know how to say them in Japanese. Say them out loud.
Exercise 3
Now that you’re okay with the dates, let’s go over some of this in sentence form, seeing it in action. Your goal here is to be able to read all these sentences and understand them. If you’re able, translate them before looking at the translation.
a １日に３０キロメートル運転します。
I ride thirty kilometers a day.
a この３日間英語を勉強しました。
I studied English these three days.
a この５日間何もたべていない。
I haven’t eaten anything these five days.
a ８月２３日名古屋に行くつもりです。
On August 23 I plan to go to Nagoya.
a １月１日は正月だよ！
January 1 is New Years, you know!
a 今日は８月３１日です。
Today is August 31.
a 昨日マクドナルドで食べた。
Yesterday I ate at McDonalds.
a 明日はお母さんのお誕生日だ！
Tomorrow is (my) mom’s birthday!
We’ll go into more depth with this as we hit hours and minutes (good to know what time to do something on what day, after all!). Focus mainly on knowing all the days and dates. If you can do that, everything else will fall into place.
Exercise 4 (Optional)
This one is optional because there isn’t a ton you can do with this. Still, I’d try anyways. Just because you won’t be able to mention too many of the things you practiced here doesn’t mean it’s not good practice. Here are some ideas for a Lang-8 journal entry for you:
- What you did / will do today.
- What you did yesterday.
- What you will do tomorrow.
- What you’ll do on a specific month+date.
- What your favorite day is and why.
Give it a shot, learn from your mistakes, and apply it to the next chapter. Time to move on to the other date-related chapter.