Japanese Language Culture

I love the fact I am learning lots about how the J language works, yet can't really speak it/read it.

You know how in California, if someone can't speak Spanish and is kind of pretending to, they just say the English word and end "o" to the end, as if that makes it Spanish? Well, I was finding it REALLY amusing for a while that there are a lot of "Japanese" words that are English with an "o" or "u" at the end which then makes it "Japanese." But then I started getting frustrated, because in class I would say a word...for example let's use "private jet." My students would start talking to themselves-"private jet? private jet?" I would then start dancing around the room trying to act it out/thinking of any and every other way to say it...drawing it....finally the students would say "OH! Private Jet-O!" And my jaw would drop in disbelief because I did NOT understand why they did not understand "private jet" but understand "private jet-o" ?!? I finally brought this up at a work dinner and it was explained to me that 1. These are not "Japanese words"-- they are Western words basically just repeated in Japanese 2. Pretty much every Japanese word/name in existence ends in a vowel, so they just naturally attach a vowel, which I guess changes the pronunciation/sound and then makes it easier to understand?

I have also gotten to the point of wanting to strangle students for forgetting articles in simple sentences. They sound like cavemen and it drives me insane. No matter how often I correct them, if they are medium level-low level they will simply revert back to no articles the next time they speak. I was venting about this to my Japanese coworker the other day and she explained she understood how annoying it must be for me, but assured me it's SUPER hard for them, because in Japanese there are no articles at all. Ok...makes more sense.

Oh...and I have been recently forced to learn the Japanese alphabetical order. Not as easy as you think.

So there you go, little by little I am understanding more and more...................yet I completely suck at learning the language for myself. Ha. I am learning random kanji though due to forced survival reasons and what not. Somehow this will hopefully all mesh into eachother and make me somewhat survivally (is that a word?) OK in this crazy language.