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Old 2013-01-13, 08:16   Link #3561
NK141
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Join Date: Dec 2012
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You might also want to consider getting a tutor that way you can make sure that your pronunciation etc. is correct or acceptable. I find it is alot easier learning from someone face to face so they can give their perspective and pointers as well than just listening to audio and books from software. But whatever works for you better in ways of learning is always the best method.
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Old 2013-01-13, 08:25   Link #3562
Lawfer
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NK141 View Post
You might also want to consider getting a tutor that way you can make sure that your pronunciation etc. is correct or acceptable. I found it is alot easier learning from someone face to face so they can give their perspective and pointers as well than just listening to audio and books from software. But whatever works for you better in ways of learning is always the best method.
I live in a tiny village inside of a small city, the people in this country are pretty much unilaterally monolingual and they suck at teaching easy fellow indo-european languages like english, just to give you an example would you recommend a guy from Malta or Bosnia-Herzegovina to get a tutor in japanese?
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Old 2013-01-13, 08:38   Link #3563
Lawfer
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Also I want to mention, I now have lots of free time and I can finally concentrate 100 percent on learning japanese, so I dont care if it takes 2 or 3 years to learn it, I wanted to learn it for 15 years now but never had the time available to be able to dedicate myself unto learning that complicated language. I just need to find a good software that teaches japanese... I looked on amazon and there is Rosetta Stone, Transparent Japanese, Human Japanese etc. I have no idea which one I should get though.

Last edited by Lawfer; 2013-01-13 at 08:48.
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Old 2013-01-28, 15:53   Link #3564
jcdietz03
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japaneselevelup.com

Delete if this is considered an ad. There are some articles on there like: "Are you really sure you want to learn Japanese?" that you should read before doing anything else.

Your first step is to learn hiragana. There are many sites available. I liked (and learned from) thejapanesepage.com.

English is hard to pronounce compared to Japanese (at least "standard Japanese," i.e., Tokyo dialect). If you natively speak English then you don't need pronunciation help. Not sure about other languages.
What makes Japanese hard is kanji. Literally everything else about Japanese is dead simple. I think Japanese grammar is much simpler than English grammar and I'm a native English speaker. I can't be the only one who thinks this.

You will of course run into some of the same problems when you learn any language like proverbs.

The software you need to learn Japanese is Anki (google it) and it's free.

Last edited by jcdietz03; 2013-01-28 at 16:08.
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Old 2013-01-28, 17:52   Link #3565
Kudryavka
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jcdietz03 View Post
japaneselevelup.com

Delete if this is considered an ad. There are some articles on there like: "Are you really sure you want to learn Japanese?" that you should read before doing anything else.

Your first step is to learn hiragana. There are many sites available. I liked (and learned from) thejapanesepage.com.

English is hard to pronounce compared to Japanese (at least "standard Japanese," i.e., Tokyo dialect). If you natively speak English then you don't need pronunciation help. Not sure about other languages.
What makes Japanese hard is kanji. Literally everything else about Japanese is dead simple. I think Japanese grammar is much simpler than English grammar and I'm a native English speaker. I can't be the only one who thinks this.

You will of course run into some of the same problems when you learn any language like proverbs.

The software you need to learn Japanese is Anki (google it) and it's free.
I also feel this way. For a native English speaker, the only really hard part of Japanese for me is writing. Grammar is somewhat simple compared to English (not way simple like Mandarin, but still more simple).
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Old 2013-01-28, 18:12   Link #3566
NoemiChan
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kudryavka View Post
I also feel this way. For a native English speaker, the only really hard part of Japanese for me is writing. Grammar is somewhat simple compared to English (not way simple like Mandarin, but still more simple).
True.... Writing in hiragana then katakana then kanji....
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Old 2013-01-28, 18:20   Link #3567
LeoXiao
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When I read Japanese, I
- Look at the kanjis for meaning. In this phase the kana just looks like scribbles in comparison.
- look for grammatical particles in the hiragana, as well as nouns that weren't written in kanji
- look at the katakana and try to figure out what it says.
- scratch my head over kanji that I am unfamiliar with (i.e. the usage is different from Chinese or it got simplified out of recognition)
- put the whole thing through google translate if it still isn't clear

basically I am not reading it so much as deciphering it. In a weird way the kanji are my best friend and worst enemy, while the katakana are just annoying.

I like hiragana because they are easy to tell apart, but I wish Japanese was more like Korean where the words were more compact so that it would be easier to tell nouns/verbs/adjectives apart from supporting words. When reading hiragana I can't help but think that a bunch of space is being wasted. I think it would be best if the Japanese would only use kanji for on-yomi and hiragana for kun-yomi (because having more than one syllable per character is really confusing), but they will probably do it only when my proposal that the Chinese start using the zhuyin phonetic for loanwords is adopted, i.e. never.
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Old 2013-01-28, 20:04   Link #3568
erneiz_hyde
18782+18782=37564
 
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LeoXiao View Post
basically I am not reading it so much as deciphering it. In a weird way the kanji are my best friend and worst enemy, while the katakana are just annoying.
Agreed. Often, I can guess what a sentence says without actually knowing how to read it, if it has kanjis that I know of. Katakana and hiragana are just as annoying for me if a sentence consist wholly of them.
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Old 2013-01-29, 06:22   Link #3569
Kudryavka
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LeoXiao View Post
When I read Japanese, I
- Look at the kanjis for meaning. In this phase the kana just looks like scribbles in comparison.
- look for grammatical particles in the hiragana, as well as nouns that weren't written in kanji
- look at the katakana and try to figure out what it says.
- scratch my head over kanji that I am unfamiliar with (i.e. the usage is different from Chinese or it got simplified out of recognition)
- put the whole thing through google translate if it still isn't clear

basically I am not reading it so much as deciphering it. In a weird way the kanji are my best friend and worst enemy, while the katakana are just annoying.

I like hiragana because they are easy to tell apart, but I wish Japanese was more like Korean where the words were more compact so that it would be easier to tell nouns/verbs/adjectives apart from supporting words. When reading hiragana I can't help but think that a bunch of space is being wasted. I think it would be best if the Japanese would only use kanji for on-yomi and hiragana for kun-yomi (because having more than one syllable per character is really confusing), but they will probably do it only when my proposal that the Chinese start using the zhuyin phonetic for loanwords is adopted, i.e. never.
That is what happens when you force a cube into a circle hole, forcing the hanzi to fit the syllables and nuances of the totally unrelated Japanese language, which is not similar to any Chinese language at all. A lot of ways they use kanji are counterproductive and make no sense, like multiple syllables per kanji or more than one reading per kanji...

Last edited by Kudryavka; 2013-01-29 at 07:38.
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Old 2013-01-29, 07:31   Link #3570
erneiz_hyde
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kudryavka View Post
That is what happens when you force a cube into a circle hole, forcing the hanzi to fit the syllables and nuances of the totally unrelated Japanese language, which is not similar to any Chinese language at all. A lot of ways they use kanji are counterproductive and stupid and make no sense, like multiple syllables per kanji or more than one reading per kanji...
Hmm, peculiar...Japanese is the third language I learned and I have no knowledge of any kind of Chinese before so the Japanese use of kanji never really strike me as "strange". Though if I remember right, doesn't Chinese use multiple syllables per character as well?
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Old 2013-01-29, 07:34   Link #3571
Kudryavka
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Quote:
Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde View Post
Hmm, peculiar...Japanese is the third language I learned and I have no knowledge of any kind of Chinese before so the Japanese use of kanji never really strike me as "strange". Though if I remember right, doesn't Chinese use multiple syllables per character as well?
No, the vast majority have only one syllable per Chinese language. So reading Chinese is very very straightforward and simple if you know the characters.
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Old 2013-01-29, 07:36   Link #3572
hyl
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Quote:
Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde View Post
Hmm, peculiar...Japanese is the third language I learned and I have no knowledge of any kind of Chinese before so the Japanese use of kanji never really strike me as "strange". Though if I remember right, doesn't Chinese use multiple syllables per character as well?
Some characters have multiple meanings in Chinese as well. But I never think it was strange seeing that even in the English language the same words can have multiple meanings as well.
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Old 2013-01-29, 10:56   Link #3573
Cosmic Eagle
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LeoXiao View Post
When I read Japanese, I
- Look at the kanjis for meaning. In this phase the kana just looks like scribbles in comparison.
- look for grammatical particles in the hiragana, as well as nouns that weren't written in kanji
- look at the katakana and try to figure out what it says.
- scratch my head over kanji that I am unfamiliar with (i.e. the usage is different from Chinese or it got simplified out of recognition)
- put the whole thing through google translate if it still isn't clear

basically I am not reading it so much as deciphering it. In a weird way the kanji are my best friend and worst enemy, while the katakana are just annoying.

I like hiragana because they are easy to tell apart, but I wish Japanese was more like Korean where the words were more compact so that it would be easier to tell nouns/verbs/adjectives apart from supporting words. When reading hiragana I can't help but think that a bunch of space is being wasted. I think it would be best if the Japanese would only use kanji for on-yomi and hiragana for kun-yomi (because having more than one syllable per character is really confusing), but they will probably do it only when my proposal that the Chinese start using the zhuyin phonetic for loanwords is adopted, i.e. never.
Ugh...no way. Japanese grammar with pure kanji is a nightmare I don't ever want to face. And I'm speaking as someone who is racially Chinese...

A different sound has so many different meaning differences, Japanese grammar is closer related to a phonetic language than a symbol based one like Chinese

At this stage you just need to do it more often and with greater immersion including other aspects like listening and writing (ideally speaking too but yeah..chances for that are hard unless you are in Japan). "Deciphering" would then become so natural once you are familiar enough with the grammar and vocab that it would become proper reading soon enough
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Old 2013-01-29, 13:59   Link #3574
LeoXiao
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kudryavka View Post
That is what happens when you force a cube into a circle hole, forcing the hanzi to fit the syllables and nuances of the totally unrelated Japanese language, which is not similar to any Chinese language at all. A lot of ways they use kanji are counterproductive and make no sense, like multiple syllables per kanji or more than one reading per kanji...
"Totally unrelated"? The kanji at the worst have different cultural references behind them like "面白" is literally "white face" but in Japanese it means "interesting" (from theater makeup), but once you learn the reasoning it makes sense. There are also some characters that don't appear so often in Chinese (mostly in classical texts), like 逢 (to run into) but are common in Japanese. This isn't "counterproductive", it's just a matter of localization. If anything it is the Japanese themselves trying to fit the cube into the circle hole with things like かみかぜ (kamikaze) for 神風 instead of "shin-fuu" (which I imagine it would be in on-yomi), which is why I suggest that they might use hiragana for anything that isn't in on-yomi form.

Quote:
Ugh...no way. Japanese grammar with pure kanji is a nightmare I don't ever want to face. And I'm speaking as someone who is racially Chinese...
Oh no, the grammar should certainly remain in hiragana, otherwise it would just be classical Chinese with Japanese readings. What I don't like is when non-grammar words are written in hiragana, or worse, katakana.

Katakana is the worst part about Japanese. Even when it is "English", it is often a bitch to figure it out. Take the word 加速度 (acceleration), for instance. If I see that I go "ah, kasoku-dou" and carry on. Now let's say some scientist spent too much time in the States and decided to write アックセラレシオン (akkuserareshion), I do not see the word, instead my brain explodes. Disregarding the fact that 加速度 takes only three spaces to write while that thing needs ten, it is also harder to read. If I encountered that word out of the blue I would probably spend more than a minute at least figuring it out. What's worse, you can't just pronounce "acceleration" the correct English way or else they won't understand you, you have to add the mistakes to make it "Japanese". I know the Japanese themselves find this sort of thing rather trendy but it's a real pain to try to learn it.
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Old 2013-01-29, 14:58   Link #3575
Kudryavka
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LeoXiao View Post
"Totally unrelated"? The kanji at the worst have different cultural references behind them like "面白" is literally "white face" but in Japanese it means "interesting" (from theater makeup), but once you learn the reasoning it makes sense. There are also some characters that don't appear so often in Chinese (mostly in classical texts), like 逢 (to run into) but are common in Japanese. This isn't "counterproductive", it's just a matter of localization. If anything it is the Japanese themselves trying to fit the cube into the circle hole with things like かみかぜ (kamikaze) for 神風 instead of "shin-fuu" (which I imagine it would be in on-yomi), which is why I suggest that they might use hiragana for anything that isn't in on-yomi form.
I'm talking about the languages themselves, not the characters. Japanese is not related to Chinese, so kanji are used in ways strange to how they were originally meant to be used (and that make kanji harder to read than hanzi because of that).

For starters, Chinese (I'm talking Mandarin here, but the others are similar I'd assume) sentence order is SVO mostly, but Japanese is SOV. Japanese conjugates verbs all the time, but Chinese doesn't do so nearly as much except for past tense. And most notably, Japanese is in the Japonic language family, but the Chinese languages are in the Sinitic family, which is in the Sino-Tibetan family. Heck, you know more Chinese (and Japanese?) than me so you know the first two already I'm sure.

How are those two languages fundamentally similar at all??

Last edited by Kudryavka; 2013-01-29 at 15:54.
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Old 2013-01-29, 15:48   Link #3576
LeoXiao
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Oh, I thought you were talking about the function of the hanzi. The languages themselves are quite different.
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Old 2013-01-29, 15:56   Link #3577
Kudryavka
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Yea, that's all I say.
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Old 2013-01-29, 17:40   Link #3578
DonQuigleone
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Personally I find Characters to be clunky at best. It's not even a perfect system either, in Chinese the meaning of the characters often has no direct correlation to the meaning of the word, they're just put together in a quasi phonetic fashion. So you don't even get the benefit of people being able to read Chinese without being able to speak it.

Japanese should certainly have ditched characters in favour of Hiragana (much like Korea ditched Hanzi in favour of Han'gul).

Whether China should have done away with characters I don't know, but they certainly could have done a better job of reforming them when they went to the trouble of switching to "simplified" characters.
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Old 2013-01-29, 18:41   Link #3579
LeoXiao
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You can't ditch characters unless you want to ditch most of the language's literary vocabulary. I'm not sure how the Koreans manage (my guess is a full-on vernacularization, but I've heard that Hanja are still used in some circumstances), but I know for a fact that Japanese is full of phrases that sound exactly the same but mean totally different things on account of the characters used. You see this kind of joke in anime and Jdramas quite a bit actually - someone will make a pun, usually based in a pair of some higher-level terms, that in normal usage would be written and read instead of spoken and heard.

Sure, characters take quite a bit of time to master, but the Chinese whose entire language is made of them seem to have no real trouble with it. There is the question of expedience - it is true that an English speaker is theoretically fully literate after second grade (in comparison to a Chinese who reaches the same level probably a couple years later) - I say, why bother? There is culture in the characters. You can still read the texts of the ancients even though the spoken language is now completely different. Using a phonetic system it would be impossible to understand their words as every tenth one would have the same reading. There is no hindrance other than to people used to alphabets complaining about the learning curve.
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Old 2013-01-29, 18:45   Link #3580
Sumeragi
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Originally Posted by LeoXiao View Post
You can't ditch characters unless you want to ditch most of the language's literary vocabulary. I'm not sure how the Koreans manage (my guess is a full-on vernacularization, but I've heard that Hanja are still used in some circumstances), but I know for a fact that Japanese is full of phrases that sound exactly the same but mean totally different things on account of the characters used. You see this kind of joke in anime and Jdramas quite a bit actually - someone will make a pun, usually based in a pair of some higher-level terms, that in normal usage would be written and read instead of spoken and heard.
The main difference between Japanese and Korean is that Korean uses only the sound of the character in regular speech, while Japanese has the difference with On'yomi and Kun'yomi. Taking 東 as an example:

Korean: 東 is read only as "Dong".
Japanese: 東 can be read as "Tou", "Higashi", and "Azuma".
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