日本語

Neurotic · Jul 16, 2010

People always seem to get nervous at the prospect of learning kanji. But don't forget, little kids learn it in Japan just fine.

What I do is make up a bunch of flash cards. Makes me sound like a super-dork, I know, but I'd rather be a dork than fail my exams. Once I have my flash cards, I can use them during ad breaks when I'm watching TV, take them on the bus with me or whatever. Repetition. Seriously.

And remember, it could always be worse. For Chinese I have to remember about 5 times the number of characters I do for Japanese. Chin up.

mario_c · Jul 16, 2010

Neurotic said:
People always seem to get nervous at the prospect of learning kanji. But don't forget, little kids learn it in Japan just fine.

Thanks, I feel better about that now.

What I do is make up a bunch of flash cards. Makes me sound like a super-dork, I know, but I'd rather be a dork than fail my exams. Once I have my flash cards, I can use them during ad breaks when I'm watching TV, take them on the bus with me or whatever. Repetition. Seriously.

And remember, it could always be worse. For Chinese I have to remember about 5 times the number of characters I do for Japanese. Chin up.

Flash card studying is a long and noble practice. Great way to spend a boring lunch break at the job. Keep it up!
I've been playing with this online reader thingy. It's sort of a lame cheat program, but it's nice casual practice - I do have actual books on Kanji / Hiragana / Katakana and a Japanese/English dictionary that I peruse to try to look up the odd character but damn, it's stressful.
OT?: The Chinese version is here. Also got a few books on that...

bookbuyer · Jul 16, 2010

I also use the flashcard system, and I'm getting a head start on learning the kanji before hand. I hope that this will help me in the end.

Neurotic · Jul 16, 2010

Any time.

Yeah, looking stuff up character-by-character can take forever. I have a little widget on my computer which, while it doesn't give the smoothest translations possible, it's good enough to give me the general gist.

Something I keep meaning to get my greedy hands on are children's books. They tend to be pretty simple, and they're good practice for comprehension in context.

Liosse de Velishaf · Jul 16, 2010

This program will take you through the kana, and then the first 80 kanji they teach first-graders in Japan:

http://www.youtube.com/user/HIDETCHI#g/c/2199D5FD36782640

You can start wherever you want.

Also, for learning kanji with flashcards: http://ichi2.net/anki/

You'll have to find and download the proper decks, but it's not hard. The application is based on the theory of spaced repetition, which says that there's a most effective time period between each use of an individual flashcard. There's lots of customizable settings, and you can pick your speed. Most of the kanji decks associate the kanji with its english meaning, and not the Japanese word in kana. That may or may not be advantageous for some people. It's not so good for writing, though.

This is a good guide to basic grammar, and once you've got kana down, it's also useful for learning to read kanji, because it puts very few words in romaji.

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar

Here's a reasonably cheap program that teaches kana, and all the other basics on bookbuyer's list plus more and some culture lessons. It's one of the better applications out there for beginners, and it includes spoken Japanese in the vocab quizzes, and all written Japanese in the program can be clicked on to hear a native reading.

It's quite impressive for the low price: roughly $20. Unfortunately, it's only available for Windows or ipod/iphone. Also, I've talked to the developer, and he's a pretty nice guy. There's supposed to be a second installment coming out sometime soon.

http://www.humanjapanese.com/home.html

Neurotic's kanji converter is also pretty cool. (Bookmarked).

kaitie · Jul 17, 2010

I wish they'd always teach kanji from the beginning. People would be a lot less intimidated, especially by the first few hundred you learn. They're pretty easy.

Anyway really, don't let it worry you. Kanji is actually a lot of fun and makes it easier to read, believe it or not.

Something that really helped me was always writing with kanji even when I didn't need to. That was just me, though. I also used flashcards. You can also get kanji games on the DS if you happen to have one.

shawkins · Jul 17, 2010

kaitie said:
私日本語話せるよ!　上手じゃないけどできるよ。読むほうが上手だ。実は、話せることが一番難しいことだ。私の日本語がちょっと高校生っぽいということだ。。。漢字が全然大丈夫なのに。

Would you believe I'm doing this at the moment? You can have the first few pages if you'd like. I probably won't do the whole novel, though, and certainly not the entire trilogy, not unless someone's paying me to do it. I'm turning the first chapter into a translating sample, though.

Totemo kinshoo desu.

Watakushi wa daigakkoo de gogakkimei nihongo o benkyoo shimashita. 1990 goro kara san hyaku kanji ga wakarimashita. Kyoo wa, san kanji ga wakarimasu. 'Sigh' wa nihongo de nan too iimasu ka?

kaitie · Jul 17, 2010

Sigh wa tameiki wo tsuku da. ja, sore ga doushi. meishi wa tameiki dake da.

I want to say there's another, simpler way to say that, but I can't for the life of me remember right now. It's something I heard not all that long ago and remembered thinking, "Hey that's useful." Then I apparently forgot. :tongue

Liosse de Velishaf · Jul 17, 2010

There's too many different transliteration systems for japanese. For insatnce, I'm used to long vowels being "ou" and "ei", but shawkins seems to be most familiar with "oo" and "ei".

Bartholomew · Jul 17, 2010

Romanji is handy when you have no other way of doing it.

私は日本語を話すなあ。 Sigh.

Liosse de Velishaf · Jul 17, 2010

Bartholomew said:
Romanji is handy when you have no other way of doing it.

私は日本語を話すなあ。 Sigh.

Romaji is handy, except there's about eight different transliterations in circulation.

Bartholomew · Jul 17, 2010

Liosse de Velishaf said:
Romaji is handy, except there's about eight different transliterations in circulation.

Hence what I said...

kaitie · Jul 17, 2010

I have a really tough time reading romaji. Then again, even when I first started we didn't use romaji. We did hiragana pretty much off the bat. I have to sit down and figure out which kanji goes with the romaji before I get it lol. Yeah, I'm kinda weird like that. Then again, I do that in general. When someone's speaking to me they can give me a word I don't know and I'll be so confused until I figure out the kanji for it, then it just clicks.

Liosse de Velishaf · Jul 17, 2010

kaitie said:
I have a really tough time reading romaji. Then again, even when I first started we didn't use romaji. We did hiragana pretty much off the bat. I have to sit down and figure out which kanji goes with the romaji before I get it lol. Yeah, I'm kinda weird like that. Then again, I do that in general. When someone's speaking to me they can give me a word I don't know and I'll be so confused until I figure out the kanji for it, then it just clicks.

Sound it out.

Liosse de Velishaf · Jul 17, 2010

Bartholomew said:
Hence what I said...

To be honest, I'm not really sure what "naa" means in that context.

Or did you meant to type "hanasanai"?

shawkins · Jul 17, 2010

Bartholomew said:
Romanji is handy when you have no other way of doing it.

私は日本語を話すなあ。 Sigh.

kaitie said:
I have a really tough time reading romaji. Then again, even when I first started we didn't use romaji. We did hiragana pretty much off the bat. I have to sit down and figure out which kanji goes with the romaji before I get it lol. Yeah, I'm kinda weird like that. Then again, I do that in general. When someone's speaking to me they can give me a word I don't know and I'll be so confused until I figure out the kanji for it, then it just clicks.

Liosse de Velishaf said:
There's too many different transliteration systems for japanese. For insatnce, I'm used to long vowels being "ou" and "ei", but shawkins seems to be most familiar with "oo" and "ei".

Fair point, and sorry. I still read hiragana OK, I just couldn't find a good way to type it in. Where are you guys getting your Japanese word processors?

kaitie · Jul 17, 2010

No worries.

I can deal with romaji, it's just harder.

Windows comes automatically with a converter. If you tell me which kind you have, I can try to help you set it up. It isn't hard. I haven't had to do it in years, but I should remember.

Fulk · Jul 17, 2010

shawkins said:
Fair point, and sorry. I still read hiragana OK, I just couldn't find a good way to type it in. Where are you guys getting your Japanese word processors?

You don't need a Japanese word processor to type it, just follow the instructions here: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=185976

日本語が楽しいです。

Liosse de Velishaf · Jul 17, 2010

What OS are you running? I've got Windows, so I used the same method described in the sticky thread at the top of the forum to install it.

shawkins · Jul 17, 2010

kaitie said:
Windows comes automatically with a converter. If you tell me which kind you have, I can try to help you set it up. It isn't hard. I haven't had to do it in years, but I should remember.

< boggles > No kidding? Heh. I had absolutely no idea. You kids today with your new-fangled technology.

Liosse de Velishaf said:
What OS are you running? I've got Windows, so I used the same method described in the sticky thread at the top of the forum to install it.

Proving yet again that you're never too old to RTFM. My bad, sorry.

shawkins · Jul 18, 2010

Argh. I'm running Vista home premium, which has apparently been intentionally crippled by the jerks at Microsoft to prevent their product from being useful. No Japanese support without an upgrade to Vista ultimate.

Edit: あえいおう - Linux FTW!

Liosse de Velishaf · Jul 18, 2010

shawkins said:
Argh. I'm running Vista home premium, which has apparently been intentionally crippled by the jerks at Microsoft to prevent their product from being useful. No Japanese support without an upgrade to Vista ultimate.

Edit: あえいおう - Linux FTW!

Where are you getting your info, because as I said in the sticky, I've got Home Premium, and you've seen me use Japanese support.

shawkins · Jul 18, 2010

Liosse de Velishaf said:
Where are you getting your info, because as I said in the sticky, I've got Home Premium, and you've seen me use Japanese support.

Erm...microsoft.com?

Liosse de Velishaf · Jul 18, 2010

I don't know then... Maybe I downloaded a service pack, or something... But I know I didn't pay anything.

Dawnstorm · Jul 18, 2010

Let's see if it works:

たぬき

Yay! That was quite an odyssey, though. First, I had to install the support to make the keyboard settings show up. Then they did, and I set the keyboard, all excited to type a little hiragana (even though my Japanese is abysmally bad to non-existent). Nothing.

I checked all the settings, and it should have been okay. It took me a while to find out that the "JP" sign in the task bar wasn't all I get. I expanded that and found that "input mode" was set to "direct input" instead of "hiragana", even though the settings specifically say that it should be set to "hiragana" (googling says that it's a bug under Windows XP, which I am running).

And while I'm at it, the word I typed ( たぬき) does not translate to "racoon" (even though I see this translation very often). It's "racoon dog"! I can understand that people translate it as "racoon", since few westerners know that animal and western "racoon" fits the trickster figure pretty well. It still annoys me, though. (Then, what's "racoon" in Japanese? I have a hunch it might just be ラクン　or something like that, since it's not a native animal.)

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