Other skills...

That last post really wasn't so good. There were kind of a lot of different ideas rattling around in my head, and I don't think I was able to express any of them as well as I would have liked. In summary, I am not nearly as satisfied with this course as I would like to be, and last Wednesday was repeatedly unsatisfactory in a number of different ways.
However, one thing that did come up in the writing class last week was a point about Japanese language. Another guy in my class happens to have spent a couple of months working for a Japanese company, and even got to spend a couple of weeks in Tokyo for a job. So he wrote a short piece that involved a person trying to negotiate with a person speaking broken English with a heavy Japanese accent. One of the verbal tics he gave the Japanese character, in addition to the whole L/R thing, was the interjection of the syllable "ka". As in "you are funny person-ka." So when the lady who was ostensibly running the workshop asked what that meant I was volunteered by the author to give an explanation.

"'Ka" is generally a sentence final particle indicating a question. In this case he's using it to elicit assent from the listener, much the same as 'y'know?' in casual English."

As I said last time, the lady running the workshop really didn't demonstrate much in the way of listening skills, so she had to ask me to repeat myself. I spent four years as a grammar teacher, and one of my strong points was explaining stuff like that. It was my job to be able to answer those questions. Go ahead, try me. What is the function of a subjunctive verb? How do I use a semicolon? When is it okay to use "alright" in a sentence?

The subjunctive is used to indicate an action that is not presently true, as in a wish, desire, command for action to be taken in future, or a hypothetical situation. The semicolon is used to link a subordinate, explanatory or elucidative clause to an independent clause, or to separate a list of comma-heavy clauses. And you should not bother using "alright"; you should either use "all right" or else re-write your sentence and use something else.

But I digress. She seemed somewhat surprised at my rattling that off without much in the way of warning, and I was somewhat surprised at her needing the explanation twice. So yes, I could summarize the general use of "ka", but I declined to point out that he actually should have used the conversational question marker "ne" instead.
But lest you think that I have a higher level of competency in another language than I really do, I oughta come clean and admit I've tried, on and off, to post stuff in Japanese too. There are, no doubt, numerous mistakes. Proving once again that those who can't do, teach.