Welcome to Gaia! ::

There's a group of people working on getting a Japanese course at my school. This is very exciting since our university only has Spanish and French. Basically, if 15 people are interested in taking a course, they can offer it. They already have 20, and since there were people at our unofficial Japanese lesson group signing up as well, we're probably closer to 30 now. They prefer 30 people.
If we can get more people than they need for one class, they can offer it again in the fall (so we can keep it going). The goal is to eventually make a Japanese minor available. *does a happy dance*
Maybe it's a good thing I'm going to be around here longer than I expected.
Now if only I could fit in the classes I'm actually supposed to be taking for my majors, both of them.
Anyway, I just had to find somewhere to post and celebrate. xd

I wish you luck. ^_^

What's the approx size of your uni? mine has been in the 15-16k range for many years and only just a year or two ago had sufficient interest to offer an entire minor (of course, it was right after i graduated : [ sometimes i wonder if i could go back and finish out the coursework for a post-degree minor...). if you're just now working on getting a single class or two together, it'll probably be a little while before you get an actual certifiable degree program together, but don't stop! Getting people interested now is a great thing!


the hardest thing about attracting people to Japanese is the writing system. It's a horrible idea to teach a language in romaji, but the people who need second languages the most are the students who have the least brainspace for another "alphabet"... engineers, business majors, people who would actually someday interact with native Japanese speakers and would benefit most from doing so without a translator. (on the other hand, if you're a fine/lib arts person, studying to /be/ that translator is hard but pays nicely in the end...)

so anyway, good for you for getting that started ^___^