Learning Japanese

[Raiga]

Originally Posted by technomo12

um guys i need a small help it seems like my mozilla japanese language has been fixed but some how my google chrom shows onyl boxes

Try going to the little folded paper icon next to the address bar, and selecting "encoding" from the menu there. Play around with it. I have it set on "auto-detect" and it's worked so far for me, but some sites I do need to manually change the encoding.

Did you have to install something Mozilla-specific (like a plugin or something) to get Japanese to work on Mozilla? If you have the language pack installed on your computer (as in, operating system as a whole) it should work fine from any browser you run, assuming you have the proper encoding settings.

... or you could just use Mozilla. I prefer Chrome for various reasons but FF is still a good browser, and heck anything's better than IE.

[lixuelai]

I like Firefox mostly for the add-ons. Furigana injector and Rikaichan are enough reason to use Firefox.

[suiryoku]

Kono hito wa ano hito yuri kawaii desu <-- Is that right?
I'm trying to say "this person is prettier than that person over there"

[iLney]

Hmm, I think it's "yori" and most of what I've seen so far are things like "kono hito no houga (ano hito yori) kawaii da yo"

[Mystique]

Yep yep, what iLney said.
We all know that yuri is now

[mendokusa]

kono hito ha ano hito yori kawaii desu.
=(ano hito yori) kono hito no houga kawaii desu.
=(this person is prettier than that person.)
I think it's "kawaii yo"or "kawaii desu yo".

[nikorai]

百合じゃないっ！ (c) なじみ.

[Yuutsu]

Ouch. Seems like learning Japanese isn't as easy as I hoped it would be. I had assumed - I have no clue why - that if I applied myself, I would be able to learn enough Japanese to be able to read fairly challenging seinen manga or light novels in two years or so. I memorized both the kana charts in about 2 days, and was pretty confident. Then I realized that knowing the kana is almost exactly the same as knowing the English alphabet. It only gives one the ability to write the words, and not much else.

In addition, those who would like to learn the language not as a native tongue, would have to learn all the vocabulary from scratch. It also doesn't help that one's ability to memorize decreases as one ages. Finally, when a person has already learned a language, it's hard to think without referring to that language. As a result, learning the grammar of a new language can be more confusing than necessary because it goes against what you have been taught to think.

*sigh* At this moment, I can't help but think, "No pain, no gain."

[lixuelai]

After about 2 years of Japanese study in college (we have class every day), pretty good kanji knowledge and some study abroad in Japan I can barely read manga. I tried some novels and while I can read it, it is not very enjoyable as the reading speed is just too slow. To be fair though a Korean friend of mine spent a summer studying Japanese by himself and he can read light novels. It depends on how much effort you put into it on a daily basis.

[Yuutsu]

Yeah, I'd have to agree with you, lixuelai. It really depends on how much effort a person is willing to put into learning a new language. Obviously, people with great memory are gonna have an easier time, too. As for me, personally, I've started learning Japanese this week so I know pretty much next to nothing. I have, especially, trouble with the kanji because I don't know how to go about learning it. As far as I know, there are on and kun readings to each kanji word. Obviously there are exceptions as some may have several on, or no kun readings etc. Therein lies the problem. Whenever I search up a new kanji, I can't just 'memorize' is as I can with a new English word. For example, if I search up the word 'abase', the dictionary states that the word is a verb that means to be lowered in rank, or to lower something in rank. However, if I search up a word as simple as 生, I can't just simply memorize how to say it or what it even means because that can change depending on the context. Thank god I can't read or write too many Chinese characters, because that would make things even more confusing.

[Raiga]

Originally Posted by Yuutsu

Thank god I can't read or write too many Chinese characters, because that would make things even more confusing.

Why? Knowing some Chinese made learning Kanji unimaginably easier for me. Most Kanji are the same as unsimplified Chinese, and the sort of "idea" behind how they're written, i.e. character components, radicals, the basic strokes, etc, are all the same. Not to mention lots of on readings sound nearly identical to the modern Chinese readings. The "kawaii" everyone is so familiar with is "ke ai" in Chinese, for example, and the word for love, "ai," is pretty much the same pronunciation except for the fourth tone in Chinese.

[Yuutsu]

Yeah, Raiga. When I think about it now, I agree with you. I guess part of the reason why I said that knowing the Chinese characters would add unnecessary confusion was probably because of all the different pronunciations and meanings one kanji could have. If I add in the Chinese, that would be another way to pronounce and interpret one ideogram. Then again, I'm not exactly great at Chinese. I'm fluent in the sense that I don't really have to 'think' when I'm speaking; however, at the same time my ability to express myself in Chinese is rather limited because I probably only know about 1000 words or so in addition to being able to read (not write) 500.

[Doraneko]

Originally Posted by Yuutsu

Ouch. Seems like learning Japanese isn't as easy as I hoped it would be. I had assumed - I have no clue why - that if I applied myself, I would be able to learn enough Japanese to be able to read fairly challenging seinen manga or light novels in two years or so. I memorized both the kana charts in about 2 days, and was pretty confident. Then I realized that knowing the kana is almost exactly the same as knowing the English alphabet. It only gives one the ability to write the words, and not much else.

It is certainly too quick to decide that a language is too difficult to learn if you have only spent less than one week on it . Some light novels are full of dialogues, and only require middle-school-level Japanese knowledge. It took me like 1 year before I started reading light novels. The first book I read was Shinigami no Ballad, an example of the said kind of light novels that is filled with simple dialogues with little descriptive content.

For the time it takes to master Japanese, I think it completely depends on interest and dedication. Someone I know started from zero and passed JLPT1 in 6 months. And no, he is not a genius. He is just a neet who failed the university entrance exam and ended up playing Japanese games and reading manga everyday in his room. Of course he is still shutting himself in his room after getting JLPT1 . There is another person I know who have sat through daily Japanese classes for 5 years, stuck at JLPT2, with his speaking and writing much worse than me and the neet guy, simply because he treated Japanese as class exercises and future income instead of present enjoyment.

For me, after getting disappointing results in my first year college exams, I tried to develop an alternate talent so as to avoid becoming jobless upon graduation, and I chose Japanese. It is both my love of anime and my fear of becoming jobless that made me got through JLPT2 in that year and JLPT1 in the subsequent year, as well as landing on an internship in a major listed company in Tokyo. And guess what, I still failed to secure any job after graduation and stuck at the lifestyle of the neet guy. Heck Japanese is apparently only useful in the 2D dreamland, but it is the perfect language for us anime/manga lovers.

My advice is that if you are into Japanese for future job prospect, pick another language instead, as (1) you will take much longer time to master the language due to a lack of genuine desire to master it in a short time, and (2) it will not add much value to your CV when compared to some truly major languages like Chinese. But if you want to learn Japanese simply due to a desire to better appreciate anime/manga, get yourself truly addicted to these medium first and pick up the language on the way. After swallowing the basic grammar/vocabulary by rote memorization, make grammar/vocabulary lists for each anime episode and manga chapter and make sure you know every single word. Then translate the whole thing back to English. Do this everyday, and I assure you that you can at least get through JLPT2 within one year by this approach. .

As for Chinese knowledge, it is both a gift and a curse to Japanese learners. You can get through the kanji writing part much quicker than the others, but you tend to mix up your Chinese pronunciation of kanjis with the Japanese ones.

[technomo12]

Originally Posted by Raiga

Try going to the little folded paper icon next to the address bar, and selecting "encoding" from the menu there. Play around with it. I have it set on "auto-detect" and it's worked so far for me, but some sites I do need to manually change the encoding.

Did you have to install something Mozilla-specific (like a plugin or something) to get Japanese to work on Mozilla? If you have the language pack installed on your computer (as in, operating system as a whole) it should work fine from any browser you run, assuming you have the proper encoding settings.

... or you could just use Mozilla. I prefer Chrome for various reasons but FF is still a good browser, and heck anything's better than IE.

i know that various reasons and well i just installed a Japanese language pack and well Mozilla is the only one that can see japanese character and also tried the wrench option in Google chrome

[Mystique]

Originally Posted by Doraneko

For the time it takes to master Japanese, I think it completely depends on interest and dedication. Someone I know started from zero and passed JLPT1 in 6 months. And no, he is not a genius. He is just a neet who failed the university entrance exam and ended up playing Japanese games and reading manga everyday in his room. Of course he is still shutting himself in his room after getting JLPT1 . There is another person I know who have sat through daily Japanese classes for 5 years, stuck at JLPT2, with his speaking and writing much worse than me and the neet guy, simply because he treated Japanese as class exercises and future income instead of present enjoyment.

For me, after getting disappointing results in my first year college exams, I tried to develop an alternate talent so as to avoid becoming jobless upon graduation, and I chose Japanese. It is both my love of anime and my fear of becoming jobless that made me got through JLPT2 in that year and JLPT1 in the subsequent year, as well as landing on an internship in a major listed company in Tokyo. And guess what, I still failed to secure any job after graduation and stuck at the lifestyle of the neet guy. Heck Japanese is apparently only useful in the 2D dreamland, but it is the perfect language for us anime/manga lovers.

My advice is that if you are into Japanese for future job prospect, pick another language instead, as (1) you will take much longer time to master the language due to a lack of genuine desire to master it in a short time, and (2) it will not add much value to your CV when compared to some truly major languages like Chinese. But if you want to learn Japanese simply due to a desire to better appreciate anime/manga, get yourself truly addicted to these medium first and pick up the language on the way. After swallowing the basic grammar/vocabulary by rote memorization, make grammar/vocabulary lists for each anime episode and manga chapter and make sure you know every single word. Then translate the whole thing back to English. Do this everyday, and I assure you that you can at least get through JLPT2 within one year by this approach. .

That's unfortunate in your example, that you've gone as far as getting a JLPT lvl1, which literally is the golden ticket to job securing and working around Japan, but I wouldn't say to give Japanese up as a purpose for finding work, I’ve turned, confuzzled and perplexed quite a few people when they check out my CV or hear what I’m studying since I jumped on the bandwagon, it’s still a pretty impressive subject and a heavy feat to undertake.

It's also still a language and a culture where English being the international language of the world at present fails to reach most of the population, so interpreters, teachers or translators at the very least are always needed.
And then corporate jobs of foreigner companies with branches in Japan always need new talent.
The job market is still active there and to have an high literacy increases your chances no matter the field.
It's worth it, the only thing that lacks me landing something amazing is my literacy level or no special ability to be able to speak fluently despite the knowledge stored in my head.

It's persistence, blood, sweat and tears for those who struggle with languages at worst. For those who advance easily academically, the job searching becomes easier, just look around a little closer and network well

However having passion for whatever you wanna achieve does give the edge to people more than others who merely study/practice something for the sake of it, that much is essential in life for most things

[-Sho-]

Omg , i think i should have continued to learn japanese (stopped 3 years ago lulz) I was so lazy to learn all the hiraganas/katakanas , it seems easy though .
I'm still a novice even though i understand some words when Japanese talks .
Now , i don't have the time for that . Maybe later .

[MitsubishiZero]

Originally Posted by Doraneko

As for Chinese knowledge, it is both a gift and a curse to Japanese learners. You can get through the kanji writing part much quicker than the others, but you tend to mix up your Chinese pronunciation of kanjis with the Japanese ones.

Well, I think having Chinese as a basis gives you an advantage in learning and mastering Japanese. IMO Chinese and Japanese share a similar language basic system, i.e. grammar, sentence structure. Also, some Chinese words are used in Japanese, so I find it quite easy to understand the sentence structure. For those of you who LEARN Chinese or Japanese, it would be harder because of potential mixing up of the pronunciations, but not really the case for me...........therefore Chinese-Japanese conversion is easy for me, but many times i find sentences in English or Chinese unable to be best converted to the other form.....its like you have to express the same meaning with more words but not expressing as well.........

[Raiga]

Originally Posted by MitsubishiZero

Well, I think having Chinese as a basis gives you an advantage in learning and mastering Japanese. IMO Chinese and Japanese share a similar language basic system, i.e. grammar, sentence structure. Also, some Chinese words are used in Japanese, so I find it quite easy to understand the sentence structure. For those of you who LEARN Chinese or Japanese, it would be harder because of potential mixing up of the pronunciations, but not really the case for me...........therefore Chinese-Japanese conversion is easy for me, but many times i find sentences in English or Chinese unable to be best converted to the other form.....its like you have to express the same meaning with more words but not expressing as well.........

Really? I don't think grammar and sentence structure are all that similar. Vocabulary, yes, but grammar? I mean Japanese verbs inflect, and verb endings carry a lot of meaning in them; Chinese verbs don't inflect at all and rely on helper words, like English. Chinese is in a general sense subject-verb-object, like English, while Japanese is usually subject-object-verb. There are no particles or anything of the sort in Chinese, which has implicit grammar (我踢球 has a different meaning from 球踢我), whereas they play a vital role in Japanese, which has explicit grammar (私が球を蹴る has the same meaning as 球を私が蹴る), more similar to a language like Latin.

I mean, there's grammatical similarities when it comes to forming kanji compounds and certain other things (the particle の is remarkably similar to the Chinese 的) but in general I don't think there's any more grammatical similarity between Chinese and Japanese as between English and Japanese.

[LeoXiao]

but you tend to mix up your Chinese pronunciation of kanjis with the Japanese ones.

While this is definitely true for me, I think it is only because I am used to automatically seeing any given character as a phonetic rather than a meaning, since I am more used to reading alphabet-based languages. But for someone like my mother who is used to automatically perceiving a meaning rather than a thought, it is easy for her to switch between the Chinese and Japanese reading.

but in general I don't think there's any more grammatical similarity between Chinese and Japanese as between English and Japanese.

Really? While the word order is often different, there are a lot of expressions and sentence structures that Chinese and Japanese seem to have in common taht don't exist the same way in English.
I tend to think that Chinese is often to Japanese as English is to German, grammatically speaking. There are differences in the word order (Japanese and German seem to have more degrees of freedom) and level of linear complexity (verb conjugation/form and case), but other, core elements are very similar.

[Raiga]

Originally Posted by LeoXiao

Really? While the word order is often different, there are a lot of expressions and sentence structures that Chinese and Japanese seem to have in common taht don't exist the same way in English.
I tend to think that Chinese is often to Japanese as English is to German, grammatically speaking. There are differences in the word order (Japanese and German seem to have more degrees of freedom) and level of linear complexity (verb conjugation/form and case), but other, core elements are very similar.

Expressions and idioms, yes, because of the cultural exchange, they'll be similar, but IMO that's more superficial. When it comes to the fundamental structure of the language, though...

I mean, English was more or less directly descended from ancient Germanic languages, with French thrown in, but there's no real evidence that Japanese came from Chinese, rather that an existing native tongue came in contact with and was heavily influenced by Chinese. I'm not denying that it'd be easier to learn Japanese if your native tongue is Chinese than if it were English, but I still think the Chinese influence on Japanese was mostly on the superficial level: vocabulary, expressions, sayings, perhaps certain ways of thought. As I mentioned in my previous post, though, there are loads of strong differences in the more basic grammatical structure.