Thursday, January 10, 2008

Calligraphy [at Aka school]


[Minus a few students lost in the corners of the photo,
this is the entire Aka elementary and junior high.]

We used third and fourth period as a school-wide calligraphy practice in the gym. I studied [Roman] calligraphy for two years in college, so I was pretty excited about this. I got a chance to use a student's brush and ink to learn to write my name correctly (though it still comes out pronounced as Debeedo). I was prepared to sit down and amaze them with my secret calligraphy skills, but I was shown up by the brush, a much harder writing instrument than pen and nib.



3 comments:

nchan said...

hey dave! i suck at japanese calligraphy too. my japanese penmanship is awful.

out of curiosity, how do you write your name in japanese? i would suggest: でーびっど (in hiragana) or デービッド (in katakana).then people might actually start pronouncing it a little bit closer to the english pronunciation.

Dave said...

Hey Naomi, I'm still not exactly sure how I write my name as it depends on who is telling me which is the right way. But I do write it in katakana, that being the 'foreign' alphabet. The question lies in which and how many of the little e's and tsu's I use. But here is what I think I am settling on (for this week anyhow..):

デイビッド

The funny part for me is just the Japanese inability to end my name with a sharp 'd' sound since that sound doesn't exist in their alphabet. It will always be Deibiddo.

nchan said...

oh yeah, that works too. デイビッド
that's probably your best bet. and there's no way to get around the "do" sound at the end. you could maybe maybe try
デイビッドゥ
which would make the last syllable more of a "du", but that's really kinda weird. hahahaha. this is fun.