learning Japanese?

thank you for correcting my nihongo ^^
I've just started my formal education so I've got tons of stuff to learn but I'm improving evrytime.
 
The particles are probably the most difficult part to get down - I've seen fourth year Japanese students who still have trouble getting them all right.
 
I agree, the particles are kind of difficult, but the kanji man the kanji... how much kanji does a normal japanese know, I doubt they use all 2k+ of them?
 
Well, when a Japanese graduates from High School, they are supposed to know the 1945 in the Joyo Kanji, the list drawn up by the Ministry of Education as needed for 'everyday use'. (Reading newspapers, general magazines, signs etc.)
 
davenuci said:
I agree, the particles are kind of difficult, but the kanji man the kanji... how much kanji does a normal japanese know, I doubt they use all 2k+ of them?
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From what I've heard you need to know around 3000 kanji to be able to read a newspaper or whatever. I know something like 60 or 70 kanji at the moment, so only 2900+ to go. Fuck yeah! The total number of kanji goes as far as around 50000.

rabaxik said:
does anyone know what this
guy is saying in japanese? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNtXL65fbB8

lol!
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lulz! Don't think he says anything, actually. Just keeps repeating "shintomenasai", or something, over and over. Pretty funny, though.
 
i finished first year japanese, what we practically learn at first was learn how to read katakana and hiragana, then a few basic kanji
i too recommend you use wakan as your japanese dictionary
and go to japanesepod101.com to learn some survival phrases =]
thats all i can think of, good luck when you're in japan
 
I would guess Chinese; partly from the complete lack of kana and partly from the link to city.china.com at the bottom...
 
balala said:
From what I've heard you need to know around 3000 kanji to be able to read a newspaper or whatever
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Whoa! Take it easy. You only really need to know about 800 kanji to get by. Japanese are supposed to have learned all 1945 jouyou (common use) kanji, as well as some other kanji used in names, by the time they graduate high school. If this is true, then a huge majority of high school graduates should be able to get a passing score (80%) on the Level 2 Kanji Aptitude Test. But a 2005 study by the Nihon Kanji Nouryoku Kantei Kyoukai ("The Japanese Kanji Aptitude Test Association") showed that less than 0.3% of first-year college students and only 5.5% of new college graduates can pass that exam! :dizzy: The average score was a dismal 39.8% for first-year college students, and an embarrassing 60.7% for new college graduates. And yet, remarkably, the sky has not fallen. :evillaugh:

I suppose Japanese teachers still emphasize memorizing how to write kanji by hand, but the dirty secret they don't want you to know is that in modern Japan, people don't really have to write by hand all that often, and when they do, they can easily check how to write a kanji by punching it up on their cell phone. Without digital support (or at least a dictionary), most Japanese below the age of say 35 can't write even 1000 kanji properly, even though they can read them when they see them. I can read probably 3000 kanji, but I can only write a few hundred of them "cold," without looking them up. This is true of most Japanese today. If you can learn to read a 1000 kanji, and know how to look up those you don't know, you're in good shape. As someone who can write Japanese well enough that it can be published in Japan, without need of any corrections, I hereby give you permission to not worry about learning to write more than a few hundred kanji by hand. :bingo:

0405 said:
"日本語は勉強します。" is correct, as well.
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Um, actually it's not. Strictly speaking, it's a grammatical sentence, but it's unnatural and I can't think of a context in which it could be used naturally, unless it was a conversation like this:

Aさん：日本に行って色々したいと思います。(I would like to go to Japan and do various things.)
Bさん：日本語は？ ([What about] Japanese?)
Aさん：日本語は勉強します。([As for] Japanese, I will study it.)

Yes, the particles are tricky. But not as tricky as "the" and "a" are in English. I rarely make a mistake with Japanese particles anymore, but I know people who have near-native fluency in English, yet still don't always know when to use "the", when to use "a", and when to use neither. (Hell, even in the Anglophone world, usage varies from region to region. Brits say "He's in hospital" whereas Yanks say "He's in the hospital," yet both say "He's in school." :dunno:)
 
I just finished Remembering the Kana, looking for children's books sources/recommendations to practice (or anything written mostly or only in kana to practice, since I know very few kanji yet.)

Also doing the Pimsleur serie. By itself it may not that great but if you look up the vocabulary introduced and combine with reading a grammar book to learn the rules and writing properly too it seems good for speech and practice. Just starting out, but hopefully this will work out.

One thing I find scary though... many (most?) words I look up have 5+ different written variants in kanji. Seems there's a single popular variant for most, but are they actually used and must be learned anyway? Another thing is the different fonts and styles which often seem to vary more for a single kata/kanji than there are variations between different ones... hopefully practice will make it seem more natural, but I'm having a hard time reading even kana especially in small size so imagining handwriting and kanji is pretty scary. Anyways I'm pretty encouraged for now, some of it is easier than I expected at least.
 
Don't worry about those kanji variants yet. As you noted, there is usually one main one, and you rarely encounter the others. When you do, it's usually not to hard to find them in a kanji dictionary. And these days, you don't often have a need to read handwritten Japanese. The handwriting that's hardest to read is that which is considered to be the most beautiful (like skilled cursive writing in Western languages), but the only people who can really write that way are all over the age of 60. :goodboy: The handwriting of younger people is (usually) much easier to read. Ganbatte kudasai ne. :bingo:
 
I carry a starter's guide book with me and read it occasionally if my discman runs outta batteries. It's pretty helpful because it has scenarios like If you're looking for a restroom, what do you say or the airport, or catching a cab, basic conversation has a separate section in the book and then there's the dictionary of English to Jap and vice versa.

http://pepper.idge.net/japanese/ ;)
 
I've heard that the Rosetta Stone software is good for learning Japanese. Anyone have any experience with it?
 
Astb said:
I've heard that the Rosetta Stone software is good for learning Japanese. Anyone have any experience with it?
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Back in my day (when we had to walk ten miles through the snow to learn Japanese in a one-room schoolhouse heated with one potbellied stove :evillaugh:), there was pretty much no such thing as software for learning Japanese, so I don't know beans about what's available or what's good, but I checked out the reviews on Amazon.com. It seems to be pretty good, but it seems to be "immersion style" (i.e., no English!), and judging from the reviews that can be both a good and bad thing. Generally the reviews were pretty positive, but one of the more intelligently written reviews recommended "An Introduction to Modern Japanese" by Richard John Bowring and Haruko Uryu Laurie.

I wonder if this is a revised edition of one of the texts I used ____ years ago in college? :puzzled: If you read the reviews of both the Rosetta Stone software and the Bowring/Laurie book carefully, you'll find what look to be good recommendations for other materials.
 
Yeah that piece is hilarious Zoro ;) Not discouraging because "I'm different", of course :lol:

Thanks for the encouragement indreamsiwalk. I always wanted to learn at least one Asian language and understanding Mayumi should be motivation enough, so I don't plan on giving up :goodboy:

Rosetta Stone looks good... catchy name in any case. But while an immersion class is a great way to learn (been there), it requires feedback to work and I'm not entirely convinced the software can provide enough. The demo is convincing but how hard is understanding 'the girl is eating' in a language not that far from your own? Japanese particles for example seem like something you want to study formally to get right if you're used to a completely different system. It's not like French kids learn 21 verb tenses through intuition either :constipation: Just knowing I wont have to learn hundreds of irregular verbs in a shitload and a half tenses is enough to make me swallow politeness levels and other oddities... And things like certainty levels sounds like a great idea to me, having an interest in things like how language affects thought and "L'art de se persuader (des idées fragiles, douteuses ou fausses)"... Also it's not true that you will always end up translating in your head if you don't learn through immersion as some of the comments say. Once you get fluent enough thinking in the language becomes just as natural.

Anyway I already got more materials than I can use and I think I just need to keep at it for now... I'm also using AOTS's French course material (it's probably not the best but it's good, they have it in many different languages and I was able to borrow it from someone...)

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/ also is a really great multi lingual guide that seems better than most expansive books.

Also at least worth mentioning, the MIT has an online Japanese course with some downloadable content. Unlike some of their other Open Course Ware stuff, it doesn't seem that good though...
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Foreign-L...nning-Japanese-IFall2004/CourseHome/index.htm
 
Although it's important to learn the basics of using polite language, you don't have to be too worried about getting it perfect all the time. As with writing kanji, a lot of young Japanese these days frequently misuse polite language. I, a foreigner, have actually had to correct the Japanese of young Japanese colleagues. For example, within the office, a younger person would naturally speak of a superior (say, a 課長 "kachou", "Department Head") using polite language that places the superior above him/herself. But when speaking to a client or someone outside of one's own group, you must refer to the same kachou humbly, putting the kachou below the person you are talking to. This is a situation in which a lot of young Japanese make mistakes. They get a call from a client or outsider asking to speak to the kachou, and the person responds 課長は今いらっしゃいません ("Kachou wa ima irasshaimasen" "The kachou is not here now"). That would only be appropriate if the person asking was someone with your own department. Speaking to an outsider, you should say 課長は今おりません ("Kachou wa ima orimasen" "The kachou is not here now"), or, more commonly, 課長はただいま席を外しております ("Kachou wa tadaima seki o hazushite orimasu" "The kachou is away from his desk [the office] at the moment"). More than once, I've had to tell a young colleague who just hung up the phone, "You know, you just screwed that up. You should have said [....]" :exhausted:

It's the relative aspect that confuses even young Japanese. You can say the same thing about the same person, yet have to say it differently depending on who you are talking to.

Just today, I got a message from somehow who won an auction of mine that contained this kind of error. I had sent him a message saying I would be out of the country for two weeks starting Saturday, so if I couldn't confirm his payment by Friday afternoon, he might have to wait two weeks for me to ship it. He replied that he would pay as soon as possible, but if I couldn't confirm it by Friday afternoon, he did not mind waiting two weeks. The problem was the way he said that last part:

２週間ほどお待ちしてもよろしいです。("Ni shuukan hodo omachi shitemo yoroshii desu.") By using "yoroshii" (good, fine) to refer to his own situation, he was being unintentionally rude. "Yoroshii" is reserved for asking about the other person's situation, e.g., よろしいですか ("Yoroshii desu ka" "Is [that] all right [with you]?"). When referring to your own situation in polite speech, you use the word 結構 ("kekkou" "good, fine"), e.g. これで結構です ("Kore de kekkou desu." "This is fine [with me]").

Obviously, I'm not going to point out this error to a guy who's buying something from me, but if he was my subordinate at work, I would. :goodboy:

But this is a pretty common error. People instinctively respond to a question using the same wording as the question, but in Japanese that can get you into trouble. In this case, after explaining the situation, I had asked よろしいですか ("Yoroshii desu ka" "Is [that] all right [with you]?"), and he reflexively responded よろしいです ("Yoroshii desu" "[That] is fine [with me]"), instead of saying 結構です ("Kekkou desu" "[That] is fine [with me]"), as he should have.

Now, if that little introduction to some of the more confusing aspects of Japanese hasn't discouraged you, I don't know what will. :evillaugh:
 
Although it's important to learn the basics of using polite language, you don't have to be too worried about getting it perfect all the time. As with writing kanji, a lot of young Japanese these days frequently misuse polite language. I, a foreigner, have actually had to correct the Japanese of young Japanese colleagues. For example, within the office, a younger person would naturally speak of a superior (say, a 課長 "kachou", "Department Head") using polite language that places the superior above him/herself. But when speaking to a client or someone outside of one's own group, you must refer to the same kachou humbly, putting the kachou below the person you are talking to. This is a situation in which a lot of young Japanese make mistakes. They get a call from a client or outsider asking to speak to the kachou, and the person responds 課長は今いらっしゃいません ("Kachou wa ima irasshaimasen" "The kachou is not here now"). That would only be appropriate if the person asking was someone with your own department. Speaking to an outsider, you should say 課長は今おりません ("Kachou wa ima orimasen" "The kachou is not here now"), or, more commonly, 課長はただいま席を外しております ("Kachou wa tadaima seki o hazushite orimasu" "The kachou is away from his desk [the office] at the moment"). More than once, I've had to tell a young colleague who just hung up the phone, "You know, you just screwed that up. You should have said [....]" :exhausted:

It's the relative aspect that confuses even young Japanese. You can say the same thing about the same person, yet have to say it differently depending on who you are talking to.

Just today, I got a message from somehow who won an auction of mine that contained this kind of error. I had sent him a message saying I would be out of the country for two weeks starting Saturday, so if I couldn't confirm his payment by Friday afternoon, he might have to wait two weeks for me to ship it. He replied that he would pay as soon as possible, but if I couldn't confirm it by Friday afternoon, he did not mind waiting two weeks. The problem was the way he said that last part:

２週間ほどお待ちしてもよろしいです。("Ni shuukan hodo omachi shitemo yoroshii desu.") By using "yoroshii" (good, fine) to refer to his own situation, he was being unintentionally rude. "Yoroshii" is reserved for asking about the other person's situation, e.g., よろしいですか ("Yoroshii desu ka" "Is [that] all right [with you]?"). When referring to your own situation in polite speech, you use the word 結構 ("kekkou" "good, fine"), e.g. これで結構です ("Kore de kekkou desu." "This is fine [with me]").

Obviously, I'm not going to point out this error to a guy who's buying something from me, but if he was my subordinate at work, I would. :goodboy:

But this is a pretty common error. People instinctively respond to a question using the same wording as the question, but in Japanese that can get you into trouble. In this case, after explaining the situation, I had asked よろしいですか ("Yoroshii desu ka" "Is [that] all right [with you]?"), and he reflexively responded よろしいです ("Yoroshii desu" "[That] is fine [with me]"), instead of saying 結構です ("Kekkou desu" "[That] is fine [with me]"), as he should have.

Now, if that little introduction to some of the more confusing aspects of Japanese hasn't discouraged you, I don't know what will. :evillaugh:
 
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