Wednesday, December 10
cloudy
lunch: kalbi sauté bento

So far, no self-referential personal pronouns used. Still, “No Boku” challenge – terrible idea. I’ve realized that I use an unfortunate amount of English at work and don’t talk with my roommates enough. Also have realized this challenge is far too easy – personal pronouns close to completely unnecessary. Unlikely to remember when I use the first personal pronoun as they are so few and far between. Maybe challenge will pick up on the weekend.

Present progressive form of 思う – extreme useful.

I’ve wanted to do this for a while now. Starting today, I will attempt to go for as long as possible speaking Japanese without using a personal pronoun to refer to myself! No 私, no 僕, no 俺, no 自分, and definitely no あたし or おいら. I might make an exception for 家. Nah, none of that either.

I’ll call it the “No Boku” Challenge because boku is my current personal pronoun of choice, and it sounds better than the “No Personal Pronoun” Challenge. Feel free to join in and see how long you can hold out!

I think the three keys to this challenge will be:

1) constant vigilance

2) passive tense

3) giving and receiving verbs

I think this will be a great exercise, especially for students of the language in the intermediate / advanced-intermediate levels; that’s when you start to break free from the English grammar patterns that bar you from true Japanese phraseology.

I’ll do my best to log my progress. Boku will soon be my pink elephant, so I’m sure there will be many harrowing and hilarious tales of near self-referral. Ha ha. (Joke.)