Note:
inspire:〈人を〉鼓舞する，激励する;
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The Shimadai foreign language speech contest took place on February 16. It was the first time that the contest was held and I took part in the Chinese contest. The reason why I didn’t make a speech in English is because many people can speak English now, and I imagine that this number will increase more and more each year. So being able to speak English is perhaps becoming more natural for young Japanese people these days. Hence my speech was made in Chinese.
Listening to the other speakers I was impressed by their fluency. Also their speeches greatly inspired me to become even better. Anyway, I had great time and I came away thinking that I need to study English, Chinese, and other languages more.
(witten by student Mr. Kajitari, edited by Prof. Simon Smith)
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Notes:
comprehensible: 理解出来る、分かりやすい;
article: 冠詞;
declension 語形変化
inflect 語形変化する;
adjective 形容詞;
Holy cow! なんてこった！(驚きを表す表現);
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Every student must take a second foreign language class in the first year at Shimane University. German, French, Chinese, and Korean are optional courses. Which language did you choose to study? I chose German because I would like to visit Germany in the future. I enjoyed studying German: the teachers are good, and the textbook is comprehensible; however, there are too many grammar rules to remember. For example, German has complicated article declensions (English has only two types of article; “a” and “the”). Also, adjectives inflect according to article declension. In other words it is a very complicated language! Thus, I had a lot of difficulty studying it. By the way, surprisingly, I heard that Russian has an even more complicated declension system. Holy cow!  (written by student Mr. Harada, edited by Prof. Simon Smith)
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