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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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by
on 2007-01-11 17:29:58 |
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Hah...when I started reading the essay, my thoughts were as follows: *WTF??? NO WAY! YOU CAN'T MAKE FUN OF JAPAN JUST LIKE THAT! THAT'S DISRESPECTFUL! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT! IT'S THEIR CULTURE! I'LL SMACK YOUUU ACROSS THE FACEEE WITH A FRYPANNN! FWEE!* ^-^ But I'm glad the author posted that final note at the bottom of the essay, the one saying to take it as a joke. Hah. Yeah, real funny... *silence* *no one's laughing* *cough* Anyways, English is supposed to be the hardest language to learn, so I don't feel bad for myself trying to learn Japanese. I feel bad for them trying to learn our language. XD Our language is difficult, with so many rules and exceptions to the rules and stuff. I take Spanish and was writing to my hispanic pen pal and asked if he thought English was hard. His answer: ...most deffinately. Well I don't like the nature of the essay, as it neglects the Japanese language and culture. To the Japanese, it's simple, just like English is simple to us. Of COURSE it's going to be difficult in some areas and possibly all over at first because it's new. Nothing new is easy. Think about learning a new sport. It's like that. But to the pros, it's as easy as tying their shoes. XD To anyone who reads this: don't give up. I think we should all work for it. ^-^  |
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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by アイザック (Isaac)
on 2007-01-12 08:13:15
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The article is quite obviously sarcastic in nature. I found it humorous, especially since the things he noted really are based in some sort of truth. It's not an article to think about seriously or take offense to, just something to read and enjoy. |
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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by
on 2007-01-12 10:01:58 |
What?!?! I learned Korean in 30 minutes from my mom!! I already know how to speak it fluently and write it pretty well! All in all, Korean is the easiest Asian language to learn! Then it's japanese then the Horrible Chinese language...I can NEVER get that. Hard as I might try! XD  |
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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by
on 2007-01-18 06:22:47 |
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To start off, let us live by this wise saying. All generalizations are false. Well, including that one, but what the heck... Truth be told, the essay was entertaining. But it should not be taken seriously. At some point, it teeters at being offensive, but barely saves its arse by being funny. If you truly have the inclination for learning the language, then by all means, go for it. Nothing is impossible if you're determined. So what if it isn't exactly "could pass as a native" levels? The Japanese people are appreciative of foreigners who exert effort to learn their language. Back in college, I could speak in Nihonggo, I could understand what I hear, albeit slowly in uptake. But after graduating and being immersed in the English-dominated world of medicine, my skills dwindled from lack of use. The point being, it's possible. My mum has never been to Japan, but she could speak it beautifully and fluently, and all the basics, I learned from her. Do not be deterred by stuff like that. It's just an essay made to poke fun at the difficulty of learning languages other than your own. beauseant! |
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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by
on 2007-02-07 13:30:53 |
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i found a pretty good site to learn kanji if any one is interested: http://nihongo.3yen.com/category/beginner/ it has interesting learning tips and helpfull links to other sites. the best way i have found for larning japanese verbally(sp?) is to watch the anime and learn songs and their meanings. and i think i am doing pretty well. :D 
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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Hmmm.... That article... is scary. How should I say it. It makes Japanese people look a bit scary and that really makes me think twice before trying to type any romanji here. Hahhahaha. I'm such a scaredy cat! Anyway.... I think I still wanna learn Japanese. I'll start by learning romanji though instead of jumping into the whole lot of kanji! Hahahhaha.  |
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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by
on 2007-02-12 06:42:31 |
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I recommend Japanese in Mangaland!
ANIME TRAILER!
Lunar Knights Cinematic Trailer
1up Rates Lunar Knights 9.0!
Lunar Knights Trailer
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin Trailer
!!(FREE GAMES,ANIME,WALLSCROLLS, AND MORE!) |
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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by
 
on 2007-02-18 10:09:35 |
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I currently recieved a copy of the Japanesse Rosetta Stone and am currently trying to learn something, other than how to pronuce romanji(?). Two questions though... 1) Anyone know if RS is a good way to learn a language (considering Span. and Fren. are my only options in High School). 2) When I use RS, I have a choice between symbols or letters (Kanji and Romanji right?) when I'm learning it. Does every symbol correspond to a word or to a "part" of a word, like our letters? 
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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Gotaclue, kanji can stand for a whole word OR part of a word! Japanese uses 4 types of writing, kanji, hiragana, katakana and romaji. Kanji are the most complex, and represent a meaning and a sound, eg. 上 means above or on top and is said "ue", 手 means hand and is said "te". Often 2 or more kanji are put together to make a different word, which may have a different sound than when they are separate, eg 上手 means "good at" or "skilled" and is said "jouzu". It's all a bit complicated! Hiragana and katakana: these both do the same thing and are much easier. Each character has a fixed sound and like Western ABC's doesn't have a meaning, its just a sound. However, each one is a syllable so (apart from vowels) each character represents 2 letters in the ABC alphabet, eg ra, ri, ru, re, ro. For example わたし which means "I" or "me" and is said "watashi". As watashi only has 3 syllables it needs only 3 characters in hiragana: わ (wa) た (ta) し (shi). However that word only needs one kanji 私 which means "I" and is said "watashi". Katakana work exactly the same as hiragana, but the symbols are different. They are used for foreign words, mostly. So the word America is spelt in katakana in Japanese, it looks like this: アメリカ four syllables, four characters A-ME-RI-KA. Romaji I've already used, and is very simple. It's a way to write Japanese in the Roman (ABC) alphabet. Real Japanese uses Kanji, hiragana and katakana altogether in the same sentences. It will take quite a while before you understand how they all work together. Beginners usually use romaji or hiragana only, as kanji is difficult to learn, and you need to know at least 2000 of these to read real Japanese, and that takes a while! You should start with hiragana, as they aren't difficult to learn. A site like http://japanese.about.com/blhira.htm will give you more details, and complete lessons, on hiragana, but there a plenty of sites giving lessons on this, and katakana.  |
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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eh... just a non relavent post that won't help or hinder but... Chinese is 3x harder than Japanese. People complain about Kanji, or chinese characters; however the Mandarin language has more "kanji" than its Japanese counterpart. I'm learning Japanese right now, I've already learnt Mandarin. My sister's room mate started learning Japanese 5 years ago; and he is almost fluent in speaking it and excellent in reading and writing. What he says is as long as you have interest and is willing to work at it, you can get the Japanese language down in 5 or so years. So, don't give up for those who are learning it! |
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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by
on 2007-02-23 12:17:17 |
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@NaruAC: Just a slight correction on your comment. Mandarin is 100% Kanji. Japanese can be 50% or more Kanji. I too just started learning Japanese. I fluent in chinese and english. I was born a chinese, so I had to suffer through all the memorization of Kanji characters. Anyone who is learning Kanji know what a f%@king pain in the ass it is to memorize all the 5000+ characters. Not to mention the multitude of combinations that are possible. Japanese, on the other hand, is difficult in that there are 4 languages rolled into one, as Rokuemon mentioned. I just got done memorizing the Hiragana. Now I have to start the Katakana. And then make the link between the two in my brain. It is tough.  |
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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by
on 2007-02-23 15:07:45 |
The guy may be writing that as a Japanese major himself, and it was meant as a joke, but I have to say. The only thing that did was piss me off.  |
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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@ every1 As reading that essay, as many of u say, it was a gr8 piss up for learning a language. What he sed is both true and false, as mainly the exaggeration which he/she caused is obviously false, but some fact of which he said like "politeness" and "kanji" they r very hard. I mean i had education in jap for all my Primary and secondary years, but i still stuff up the politeness, kanji, yet alone how to read it i still make mistakes. The bottom line about learning a secondary language is "MOTIVATION" without this ur in a deep trouble. The other thing which i want to say is that if ur gonna learn it, dont learn it 50% go for it all the way. I really hate people who loves japan, tries to learn japanese off from anime and etc.. results in this VERY VERY VERY irratating language, w/heavy accented really hard to understand japanese. DONT BE LIKE THAT, DO NOT LEARN A SECOND LANGUAGE JUST BY UR OWN, GO GET SOME EDUCATION FOR THIS THING, TRUST ME, ITS NOT WORTH UR WHILE.
引きこもりたいが引きこもる部屋がない...orz
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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re: learning hiragana and katakana Here's a trick. Think of katakana as regular block writing and hiragana as script. (or even lowercase and uppercase letters) This is how it's taught in Japanese schools. Young kids are taught katakana first, because it's easier to write, it's more angular and blocky, like english. In later years, they are taught hiragana because it's harder to write because it has more curves and the symbols are more complicated. But both writing styles have the same pronunciations and number of symbols. It's still あいうえお in hiragana and it's still アイウエオ in katakana. Don't think of them as being totally separate, they aren't anyway. Think rather that they are different STYLES of writing, like uppercase/lowercase or block/script writing. It's exactly like learning that "a" and "A" are the same thing, just written differently. re: kanji While Chinese uses kanji exclusively, and therefore uses more symbols that Japanese does, there are kanji that are have multiple pronunciations in Japanese. Each Kanji has at least 2, the Chinese and the Japanese pronunciation. Some kanji have more than those 2 basic pronunciations. So while you may learn 5000+ kanji in Chinese, you must learn the equivalent or more in Japanese because of the multiple pronunciations. And Japanese does use 5000+ kanji as well, but most literate, adult Japanese only need to use about 2000+ to read a newspaper. The other 3000+ kanji are often for specialized study (sciences for example) or history (ancient use of kanji that nobody bothers with anymore) and translation. |
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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by shiseiten_no_akira
on 2007-02-28 08:14:22
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Whatever language, it's up to the person who's studying it whether he/she's going to learn or not. As many people have said before, it's all about motivation. CASE IN POINT: That guy's a Japanese major. I'm a SPANISH major. I took Spanish 'cause people told me it's easy and with all the cognates in English and many Spanish words in my native language put together, Spanish is relatively easy to comprehend. I don't even have to study a whole new alphabet/syllabary and the culture is not that different too. I started serious language study when I was 16, studying both Spanish and Japanese at the same time. BUT, while I had intensive Spanish classes every day at school, I took Japanese only as a crash course (4 hours of intense information dumping every other Saturday). I studied at a private school 'cause my department won't let me study another non-European language :( My main goal was just to be able to understand my manga, song lyrics, and maybe a bit of anime. It was purely just for fun. Spanish, however, was not just for fun. I was pressured to get high marks, there wasn't much stuff available in Spanish that are even half as interesting as anime and manga. I was studying Spanish day in and day out, but my heart was in Japanese. Needless to say, after 5 years, my Japanese ability is waaay better than my Spanish which is The difficulty of Japanese is way OVERRATED in my opinion. It's just the people making it difficult for themselves! -_-  |
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Re: So you want to learn Japanese...
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I don't know how far I'm going to get in my Japanese studies (I just started about 4 months ago), but I agree that keeping your motivation up is key. I jump around a lot in my self-study, skipping to a different aspect of the language whenever one gets too much like work. I try to push aside the thought of how much I *don't* know, and probably never will, but try to have as much fun as I can nibbling off another piece of it. It's a fascinating subject, really a FOREIGN language, I liken it to a different set of axis in a Cartesian coordinate system: the endpoints are the same, but how you get there in Japanese is completely different than English. One interesting thing I've found is that Kanji is turning out to be a lot more useful than I'd thought. I initially figured I could get by a long time just knowing the kana, but I've discovered that Japanese written exclusively in kana is fairly hard to parse because there aren't enough markers (at least until you have more of the language under your belt) to figure out how to break out words or decide which of the many possible parsings is the correct one. Having the Kanji in there really helps you to pick out word breaks and disambiguate synonyms. Getting some material in furigana seems to be the best compromise, and it's a big help to put the Kanji characters in context and to build up your character vocabulary. |