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Advice on Learning Japanese?
Piroca asks: "During the last years, a huge amount of (modern) Japanese culture has invaded the Occident, mostly in the form of anime, video games and TV shows. Part of that content can't be understood completely due to the complexity and subtleties of the Japanese language. Due to that, it seems the interest on learning Japanese is steadily growing, specially for anime addicts. Much of the problem stems from the fact that Japanese is not an easy language, being classified as very difficult by most standards (of course, this depends on one's native language). I'm searching for courses and material that can help me to learn Japanese without attending to classes or hiring people to teach me. I've found things like Pimsleur and japanesepod101 but I wonder if other people in the Slashdot crowd have not passed through this process before and have useful hints to share."
Advices on Learning Japanese?
How's abouts ya learn English first?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
This is definitely my reccomended first reading. Beware ;-)
In the inmortal words of Dave Barry, the best way to learn japanese is to be born japanese and raised by japanese parents in Japan.
No sig
Do not try to learn anything from games or anime. You -will- pick up bad habits if you try and learn that way that will be both hard to drop and impede your progress.
The best way to learn is to take formal classes, preferrably as intense as possible. It helps if you can memorize the two basic character sets first, as any good class will start with rote memorization of those and drop romaji as quickly as possible. Beware the teacher that doesn't push or task you, as you can spend years in classes and learn nothing. Also, SPEAK. Speaking helps master the language faster than anything else and if you don't, oddly enough, even if you go to Japan no one will push you to speak. I learned first hand that they don't expect you to speak, and as such there's no push (or need) to do so unless you force yourself.
As for your interest I share many myself, however:
Anime - good for practicing listening, although technical/fantasy jargon will interfere. Live action shows are better, since they speak more naturally in those and are more difficult to understand, speech wise. Beware slang. Also, most shows drop keigo (polite speech,) which is ESSENTIAL to learn.
Games - good for reading, but suffers from the same problems as above.
Novels are better since you're forced to memorize kanji to move faster. Focus on things with furigana so you can get a handle on the readings of kanji and words, as they'll show them once for a kanji/word every few pages, which lets you pick it up faster. Also, consider browsing Amazon Japan for books on verbs and particles, since those will be the first problematic things you encounter, among amassing a vocabulary and kanji literacy.
And to promote a site that is -not- mine but is nonetheless excellent, http://www.nihongoresources.com/ -- be gentle on the site, but it's a great help.
The Rosetta Stone. Language learning software that is based on the way you learn a language naturally. I've used it for a couple of months to teach myself German,
it's fantastic.
Pimsleur and other courses of the like teach you through memorization; TRS uses photographs and the language, without ever translating anything. You have to match up each photo with the words given to you, and the connection is something you actually learn, not just memorize. verstehen Sie?
You type using Windows's Input Method Editor. You just type in romaji. Like you'd type in "watashi", then hit the space bar. As you're typing, it shows up as hiragana (), then after hitting space, it becomes Kanji ().
And no, I can't read Japanese or understand at all, but it's still fun to play with the Japanese IME tool.
At least from a speaking and listening point of view, which is what you want if you are going to just watch anime. Most of the verbs and nouns are regular, the grammar is not often too complex, pronounciation is straightforward on the whole, etc. It only gets hard when you need to master reading and writing, or when you need to understand the cultural issues behind the language, which is not a thing a course is going to teach you very well.
I'm sure this thread will get lots of references to things like Tae Kim's grammar guide or Heisig's book, both of which have as many rabid fans as an average Linux distribution, although I personally don't rate either very highly.
My chosen route to polish my Japanese skills is my blog, which in fact has a related entry about why people learn Japanese, although "To understand comics and cartoons" was not one of the reasons given.
1) Anime is not a good place to learn Japanese. A useful anecdote for this would be to imagine a Japanese person learning English from episodes of Simpsons and Family Guy. While such thoughts are no doubt filled with hillarity, they do prove just how silly Anime-bin Japanese would seem to native speakers...
That said, I'm not totally ripping on Anime. Watch it if you want to, but mix it up with some live action Japanese films (Ringu is one of my favorites).
2) If you're into video games, I suggest downloading an Emulator and some ROMs of old Japanese video games. Ones that have a decent deal of text (SNES era RPGs), but not ones that require to much reading. Also, pick games that you may be somewhat familiar with. I'm a big Front Mission 3 fan, so I got the Japanese SNES (or should I say Super Famicom) ROM of the original. Fun times!
3) Get a good dictionary. You'll need it for everything.
4) Also, get a Grammar guide. Japanese Grammar is crazy compared to English, and is, IMHO, comparable to some programming languages.
Well, formal Japanese grammar may be difficult. Casual Japanese is more forgiving when it comes to particle usage.
Othe rthen that, all I can recommend is taking some actual Japanese classes. It's a hard language to learn, but not impossible. It will take a great deal of time before you get any good at it, but after 2 years of studying it myself... I'm still learning, but I have no regrets!
From personal experience (been studying Nihongo for over six years; and I'm far from fluent):
Yokoso! Welcome to the club. Japanese is a very interesting language. It is much more challenging than the Romance languages (it took me only a year to develop near-fluent Spanish skills, in comparison). However, you will gain access to another culture and will allow you to translate all of that anime. I got interested in Japanese through Pokemon, by the way.
JWPce http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html
Kanji Gold http://web.uvic.ca/kanji-gold/
Pera Pera Penguin http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/columns/0002/
Kanji Trainer Penpen http://www.coolest.com/penpen/
Get Dragonball Z on DVD. Start watching in Japanese with English subtitles. About half-way through the battle with Freeza (episode #5259) turn off the subtitles.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I know you said "without attending to classes", but I'd suggest you reconsider. I'm taking a class at the local community college and finding it well worth the time and money. (A class at a community or commuter college may be much better suited to the part-time student - the intro Japanese class at UMCP is six credit hours, which would be difficult to fit into my schedule, while the one I'm taking is only three.)
I was motivated to finally take a class after my second trip to Japan last fall. After meeting one Spanish woman who spoke four langages, and a Polish woman who was there teaching English and studying shodo, I was embarassed that after twenty years of karate training in a Japanese style, and shiatsu training, and two brief trips to Japan, I knew only enough Japanese to say "thank you", "excuse me", and "please bring me a beer". (Well, and "roundhouse kick to the neck", but that's not a phrase that comes up much in polite conversation.)
The class is sociologically interesting, though - a bunch of 18 and 19 year old anime fans, and me at 36.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I found this: http://lrnj.com/ to be a fun way to help me learn the characters (although probably writing them repeatedly is the best for drilling them into your brain)
If you want to learn Japanese solely on account of games and/or anime, I can tell you now to not bother. It's not worth the effort, nor is it a particularly useful language. That said, if you're insane like me, your best bet is to find a college with a good Japanese program, study a few years, then go live in Japan for a while. No matter how much you study, you'll never reach any useful level of fluency if you don't go over there for a while. Learning Japanese inherently requires you to learn Japan as well. GLHF
I've been told by a fellow traveller that most Japanese taught to foreigneers is woman's Japanese. He found this out while living in Japan. He was talking to a local in a bar and the local told him that he speaks Japanese very well for a woman. My understanding is that the two sexes have either their own words or mannerisms/inflections in the language. Maybe this is something you don't have to worry about in the beginning or are only interested in a certain level of understanding.
Can anyone verify this?
So while it's always good to learn another language, A) you're not going to learn Japanese anywhere but in Japan, and B) you're never going to be that good at Japanese (I'm at least at the point where I can tell the gaijin personalities on TV who may even know more about Japanese culture speak with strange accents and have strange word usage).
On a side note, I loved anime in America, but coming here, it really is rather obvious how childish it is. If you're caught watching it here, girls will be screaming "AKIBAKEI!" and shit at you. A gaijin even saying the word "anime" here makes me feel hiku (umm.. like embarassed, sorta).You are about to learn a difficult language. The basics, and even the way of thinking can be quite different than English. I studied for about 3 years, took 2 years off and forgot a lot of it, then studied another year, and now I work a tech job in Japan.
:). If you can't take a course, try and get "Communicating in Japanese" by Hiroyoshi Noto. Make sure you get the tapes, too. It's an excellent book, and will take more time but teach you more than, say, "Japanese for Busy People."
At the same time, don't let Japanese scare you. The best asset for learning a language is confidence. If you don't have any confidence, you won't be able to communicate or learn any language.
1) If you can, take a course at your University. This is the best way to start learning. If you're lucky, you'll get a rigorous course. If you're unlucky, you'll get a very easy course that uses romaji. The key to learning the language is to push yourself. I learned at University of Chicago, which has one of the best (and most difficult) Japanese programs (I did terribly
2) Learn Kana right away. You will be sorry if reading kana doesn't come as second nature to you after a year. Make sure you begin at least studying Kanji, too. The sooner you start learning Kanji, the less scary it will be later. (check out the book "Kanji and Kana"!)
3) Be prepared for a long road. You should ideally spend at least 2 years studying the language before you can even think about being "fluent." Then, if you want to be able to speak the language, you should spend a good amount of time in Japan. Maybe you'll learn faster (some people have a natural ability for picking up languages), but you might learn more slowly, too. If you have the time and resources, there are many schools in Japan where that you can study Japanese for anywhere from 4 weeks to a year.
4) a) If you want to learn Japanese because of anime, don't worry about it. Getting interested in learning a language just because you enjoy something that country produces is no worse than getting interested because you want to make money, or something. Just make sure you realize there are other interesting things about Japan. Get involved in really learning about the whole culture. I find talking with Japanese people is much more revealing than reading about it somewhere.
b) If you want to read manga or watch anime, first off, realize that ou need a very strong Japanese base to understand them in the first place. There's a lot of stuff you're just not going to get unless you really have a strong background in Japanese. It'll probably be a year or two (at least it was for me) before you'll actually be able to use the simplest anime or manga for practice. But if you do use it to study, don't worry about ruining your skills somehow. Major universities use Miyazaki films to teach courses. Just be aware that they do use some words or phrases that will get you laughed at in everyday conversation. For example, you may end up sounding either like a little girl or a stupid high school kid.
So other than that, the most important advice is of course, Practice, Practice, Practice. If you do go it on your own, I wish you best of luck, and I warn you that you will need much self-motivation to get anywhere, because it will take a lot of time.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Technically, any character that is valid Hanzi (Chinese character) is valid Japanese too. Old "comprehensive" multi-volume dictionaries used to list around 50000 characters; of course when it came to usage statistics, the majority of characters was only ever used in the dictionaries themselves, and never anywhere else.
So there is a standard set of characters defined today - about 2200 general Kanji and another 2-300 that are used only in names. These are the ones learned in school, and I believe that "state-supported" texts, like official documents, signs, textbooks and so on (and perhaps newspapers too?) are limited to this set only.
But then there are a lot of subject-specific characters in use, especially in academia. Someone said that the typical well-educated Japanese will know around 3-5000 characters total. On the other hand, about 800 characters are considered the minimum for literacy, and with the first 1100 - learned by sixth grade - you're going to be able to parse most general texts (you may not recognize everything, but you'll have enough context to figure out the meaning).
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I learned some Japanese 30 years ago while stationed in Japan in the Navy. I was mostly self taught originally and took some courses after I got out, and have been back for several month long vacations since. My biggest problem as a tourist is that it takes several days to get my accent back and remember the body language, and then somewhere in the 2nd or 3rd week, I remember them too well, and the locals assume I know more than I do about social norms in general.
:-), and I got so used to my dictionary that I could open it to within 5 or ten pages of the kanji in question. But I was forgetting kanji as fast as I was learning them, and evetually gave it up. 500 kanji is probably around 4th or 5th grade level. Not very impressive.
There's a book which I unfortunately do not have with me now, Tuttle Press I think, possibly called Basic Japanese Grammar. Looking around the Amazon web site, I found a book, ISBN 0804819408, which looks close, but I won't swear it to be what I have at home. If you respond to this and leave a request, I can look it up this weekend and post it. It is not perfect, but it is an excellent cheat sheet. It is almost like a tech sheet for hardware, a basic summary of grammar rules with simple explanations of how to use them, when, and why.
OK, the good. Japanese grammer is incredibly regular, almost mathematical. I believe there are only three irregular verbs in the entire language, and then only in how they form their root for further conjugation. The verb you find in the dictionary is the familiar present tense. There is no distinction between singular or plural, first second or third person. Purists will cringe, but the dictionary form is perfectly acceptable for starters. Natives will be so surprised that you are even making an attempt at their language that the lack of politeness will not matter a whit.
I believe that anyone wanting to get along as a tourist can learn real Japanese, not pidgin, in a week of nightly study with this book. You will have crap pronunciation and almost no vocabulary, but you will be able to speak complete sentences, slowly.
I recommend this as the initial course, a week, a month, not to master it, but to see if you can grok it. The grammer may be very regular, but it is different, and you will have to think differently to make any headway. If you persist in thinking in your native language patterns, you will make no headway and had best give it up. This book will give you an excellent background in seeing if you can rewarp your mindset. You will not learn any useful reading or writing. Forget those for now. The purpose here is to introduce you to the thought patterns behind Japanese. Nothing else matters at first. If you can't get your brain into the Japanese mode, there is no point going any further.
If you want to continue, take college courses, community college courses, private school courses, or whatever you can. Here you will learn reading and writing, complete grammar including politeness levels, etc.
Reading and writing is both easy and hard. There is a pattern to the kanji, and there are only (I think) 212 basic kanji. All other kanji are built from those, and dictionaries are organized around them also. This will help considerably in memorizing them and in possibly (possibly!) understanding the meaning of kanji you have never seen before. Pronouncing kanji is another matter. There is almost no clue in the characters themselves as to their pronunciation. Here you rely on dictionaries and rote memorization.
I got to the point of around 500 kanji before I stopped trying to learn more. I was only going to class twice a week, it took me an hour to read a single page in a book (including waga hai wa neko de aru for you who snicker
On the other hand, once you get into the pattern of kanji, you can draw them in your hand for natives, and you can make a lot more sense of maps and bus signs. Traveling is a lot easier when you can memorize kanji long enough to find
Infuriate left and right
large keyboard like this: http://world.std.com/~jdostale/kbd/KanjiTablet.htm l
DISCLAIMER: Sweeping generalizations of Japanese people and culture ahead based off biased personal and anecdotal evidence!
Seriously guys, DON'T DO IT!
I spent a good deal of my life living in Japan, learning Japanese, teaching English, working in a Japanese IT company, speaking Japanese all day, using chopsticks, etc... and at the end of doing all that I am now what you guys hope to become and I am not proud of myself.
First of all, Japanese is freaking hard. I have learned easier languages that have taken less time and actually been more useful. The time taken up is considerable given the benefits (or lack thereof as I will explain).
On that topic, Japanese is essentially USELESS. The reason for its uselessness is dictated by the fact that you can already speak English. Yes, believe it or not, English is superior in the minds of Japanese people (owing to WW2 perhaps), so if you speak Japanese with them, you actually bring yourself down to their level. It is almost as if you give up your status as an exotic gaijin, and you lose respect in their minds immediately. Who would want to be Japanese?
I have found that my conversations with Japanese people actually go much better when I force English upon them. As soon as I speak Japanese, the people here seem to want to start treating me like a non-human piece of crap... I will not speculate as to how Japanese feel about dealing with other Japanese people they do not know... but given the look of it, *shudder*.
This also explains why English is so popular in Japan. If it wasn't the status one gains from being able to speak it, it's also a chance to escape from a Japanese company (who treat their employees as a low-wage serfs) and work for a foreign company who belives in human rights. Unfortunately for the many English teachers in Japan who are wondering why the Japanese never seem to learn English, a lot of it has to do with certain interests in Japan who deliberatly want to stifle English education so that they can achieve two things: 1) So that the Japanese people never escape from their Japanese company low-wage serf-dom and see the better opportunities. That could have disasterous economic effects. 2) So that the yakuza run NOVA, and other English schools can get rich quick by "teaching" students rubbish so they never get good and keep coming back for more lessons.
Learning Japanese is hard enough if you can actually find someone who wants to speak it with you. The problem is, most Japanese people have poor social skills and really don't like speaking much at all.... (even to other Japanese) so unless you're speaking and teaching them English.... good luck. If you are ever able to find someone to practice with (best bet is a drunken old man who reeks and wants company), you end up with really boring conversations about food or the weather or something anyway. Furthermore due to the reasons above, your attempts to speak Japanese are usually further insulted by certain Japanese people who would just wish you spoke Japanese properly the first time instead of trying this "learning" thing.
Not many people are anime freaks in Japan, so please remember that if you wnat to have "interesting" conversations with Japanese people, that you talk about something really benign like the food, the weather, travel, and how learning English is fun. Do not confuse them by asking their opinion on deep topics. They only know how to communicate in a few safe topics to avoid giving offense... and this means that asking for an opinion on anything is a no-no.
Also do not get offended when Japanese people rudely brush you off for no reason. You're getting a valuable cultural experience here! Namely, a full understanding of what it's like to be "Outside" rather than "Inside". Unless you yell at them and get angry at them, and slap them upside the head to show that you are not Japanese and not interested in their culture, they will stop acting like primadonnas and like you, and laugh at all your jokes.
Want to get a Japanese gir
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
As my Japanese professor once said in College: You can study Japanese every waking hour of every waking day, struggle through the hardest classes you have ever taken, and after 10 years emerge from the other side with a PHD in the language and a 1st grade speaking level.
Seriously. The question is not how do you learn Japanese without taking classes, the question is how many classes and lectures and tutors and other resources do you need to get to a basic Japanese comprehension level. How many years until you can chat with a kindergartener. And forget reading newspapers.
Let's start with Kanji. I believe 5 year-olds in Japan average about 500 of these, and the number just gets higher from there. You need to know A: the somewhat random symbol, B: the stroke order (Very important!), and C: about 6 different contexts within which each can be used, because the meaning and pronunciation changes constantly. And don't be foolish and think one kanji equals one thing... Kanji can be their own words, or they can be put next to eachother to create certain bigger words. It is like a second langauge, but one basically devoid of pronunciation clues. Each Kanji needs to be appended with a certain number of hiragana characters to complete the word and or change the ending. Except when they don't. And don't forget: no spaces between words!
Let's move on to how to count. No, no, don't start counting yet, because the numbers you use to count with change by the shape of the thing which you are counting. If you are counting people, you use different numbers than if you are counting big boxy things, or pencils, or days. In fact, there are hundreds of these variations. Are those place settings you're counting? Years? Stuffed Animals? Gallons of water? Are you counting all of these 'freaking counting systems? Don't worry, you'll NEVER get it quite right.
Ok, how about saying hello? Thankfully, there is only about a dozen ways of doing this, depending upon if the person you're talking to is high above you, above you, at your level, below you, or really below you. Of course, there are variants for if there is a big age gap, or you're related, or you're a girl. Or any of a million other variants.
The grammar is cool, but completely alien and quickly compounding. Early sentences are simple and fun. For example, (my) Car is old is. However, real sentences are quite ugly. Tomorrow's Party in prep for breakfast since (your) Roommate (my) Car is.... Yes, that ellipsis is in the sentence. It would be impolite to finish a thought, even though it would be helpful for figuring out what the sentence means.
Really, Japanese is just insanely difficult for not a lot of payoff. In order to learn enough to be at all useful, you have to be totally dedicated to the language. You also have to accept the fact that you will never speak well, you will never read a newspaper correctly, and you are pouring your heart and soul into this thing which you will never be good at simply because you weren't born into it.
Just get subtitled Anime, and find something better to do with your life. There are millions of people who speak spanish, or german, or french... learn all three of the languages in the time that it would take you to get a kindergarten proficiency at Japanese.
The ______ Agenda
I think people are overestimating the effectiveness of immersion.
I'm bilingual. I speak English, and French. Why? Because I have spent my entire life in Quebec, a province in which the primary language is French. I've taken innumerable French courses (since they're mandatory by law), and graduated from "french immersion" schools (This is where the government forces English speakers to take things like geography and history in French).
Can I speak French? Yes. Can I understand it? Yes. Can I read it? Yes. Can I write it? Horrible grammar, but yes. Am I good at it? Hell no! After having had French education since kindergarten, and being immersed in a French culture my entire life, I am still nowhere near fluent. People talk about taking a few years to become fluent. Now, maybe I'm just not good at learning languages, but my 20 years says that's unlikely.
I'm sure there are mitigating factors. There are differences between living in a French province, but an English community (where most of my friends speak English), and living in Japan where you have NOTHING but Japanese to communicate in. For me, French is just something that I am exposed to daily, not something that I need to use on a daily basis. My verb conjugation in French is still guesswork. Thank goodness so many verb endings in French are pronounced the same, so that I can speak French much better than I write it!
So what am I trying to say? Well, immerse yourself and take lessons all you want, chances are the best you can hope for even after decades is merely to be able to communicate with relative ease. Forget about fluency.
I'll be honest, I'm interested in learning Japanese as a third language. But what has stopped me so far is a nagging voice in my head that says "If you've spent your entire life taking French courses and living in a French culture and still suck at it, what makes you think you can ever learn Japanese, idiot?".
Maybe I just suck at learning other languages.
pretty biased piece of crap.
speaking to japanese is much like speaking to english people. they're polite. therefore they avoid touchy subjects. but once you've built trust, they'll speak about things like anyone else.
learning japanese is anything BUT useless, for several reasons:
a) you learn how to communicate with people who communicate differently from what you're used to. you'll learn a lot about people that way. people skills are useless... since when?
b) you learn a language that works differently from your own. compare that to learning a pure functional programming language when your work requires object oriented programming only. you learn to think outside the box.
c) japanese might think it odd that you want to learn japanese, but most japanese are pleased at your effort. while that might not be the case with executive-type people, the average japanese will like you if you stammer a few japanese words and concede that you tried but failed. then switch to english because it's easier for both of you (don't persist). this goes for any culture, some more, some less. (interestingly enough, especially english speaking cultures seem to _expect_ that people speak their language)
d) learning a language as complex as japanese (and it isn't really complex, just different, as i pointed out it a previous post) will make it somewhat easier to learn other languages, because you've understood more completely _how languages work_.
e) if you're really that much into anime and manga and all that, you can't understand it unless you understand japanese.
japanese people are anything but socially inept. it takes a socially inept person not to recognize that. they communicate differently, altogether more subtly, but they communicate.
it's true that japanese want to speak english, and the reasons given for that are probably true as well. as for the rest of the post, i wonder where all that "information" comes from.
yeah, i had to vent a bit, now mod me down if you want.
Speaking as an ESL here, had to learn both english and japanese as non-native tonges (native tonge is a romance language):
;-)
Japanese is not intrisically hard. The problem is - it is very difficult to come across situations where japanese is required to do something - or at least very useful.
First, lear katakana and hiragana by yourself (just copy it from somewhere on the internet) spend a week or two memorizing it, and using it to write all sort of stupid stuff: your name, your your favorite anime char's name, your dog's name, etc.
Then get into a formal japanese course.
Seriously - you should get off the ground by yourself, but you'll need help at this point or the learning curve will hit you hard on your face.
After you're reasonably sure you can say anything you need to that can be construed with one sentence - go to japan, and take intensive courses here.
AND don't let yourself be sucked into the "english bubble" here. Foreigners - specially english native speakers, can get by in japan with only english by hanging around with other foreigners - cultural shock helps that - but then you'll go back bitter and without really knowing japanese (that's another reason why you should have a basic grasp of japanese before coming).
For materials, once you have the hang of the basic grammar, I would reccoment NES RPGs... NES RPGS, specially the final fantasy series, do not use kanji, which is helpful for the beginner. Mangas are also quite nice to read with a dictionary by your side, but avoid "weekly jump"-like compilations, and go for one-series books (tankohons), specially if you can get your hands on the first of the series (so you don't get lost).
Anime is nice, but you must listen to it with the goal of learning japanese: i.e. - go back and forth listening the phrases over and over again, repeating yourself as needed.
But your main material for learning japanese should be talking to japanese people - everyday. If coming to japan is not feasible in the medium future, I would reccomend that you check with your nearby "kenjinkai" : association for japanese emmigrants - there should be some of those wherever there are japanese abroad.
Talking about websites, you could try:
http://mixi.jp/
It is a social network all in japanese, but with a growing foreign userbase. It is more friendly than 2ch.
Last but not least:
http://www.slasdhot.jp/
with Moji (firefox extension)
Indeed. That didn't stop them from trying, though - prior to the introduction of computers, Chinese typewriters for a long time had more than 2,000 individual characters on their keyboards. Take a look here:[http://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/phase-trans/2004/HI T4/HIT4-Images/25.jpg%5D and here: [http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts /chinlng2.html%5D (at the bottom of the page).
Interestingly, the typists still had to stop and manually write in about every 10th character.
Gotta give them points for tenacity, if nothing else.
Hello, I'm an otaku (anime and manga addict) turned Japanese language student. I'm an older student returning to school to study Japanese.
Before we begin, I'd like to address the "hard language" meme. This depends on your definition of a "hard language", so YMMV. Unlike German, French, or other western languages that English is related to, you won't get any "freebies" in Japanese. In German, "house" is haus, "mouse" is maus, "brown" is braun, etc. There's a lot of words that are either near-identical, or close enough that you can "recycle" your English. On the other hand, though, every noun has a gender; as I recall from High School German, the walls, ceiling and floor each have different gender, even though they actually have none. You have to memorize those genders, because you can't derive them from looking at reality.
Now, looking at Japanese; loanwords from English aren't easily recognized, and rarely have the same meaning. Examples are wapuro, which is from the English "word processor". Or feminisuto, which comes from "feminist", but only took the meaning of "being nice to women" (and thus comes to be closer to the English word "gentleman"). My favorite is baikingu (pronounced like "biking"), which means "smorgasbord"! (dirived from the word "viking", as in "viking-style meal".)
What you get in exchange is regularity. Japanese has only two irregular verbs, and a handful more with an irregular form. There's a number of different verb forms, but they are regular. The sounds are regular, the vowels "a i u e o" being pronounced as in "ah, we soon get old", and for diphthongs you can just take the two sounds written and pronounce them together in sequence. You have to learn about 100 phonetic symbols (two sets of about 50, think of them as upper and lower case, though their usage of the secondary set is much closer to that of italics in English). There's 2000 ideographs (kanji), which will get you through about 90-95% of a newspaper. That sounds daunting, but if you consider that English uses over 1000 letter combinations to represent 40 sounds, and those letter combinations don't have any meaning of their own to guide you, the 2000 kanji don't seem so bad. (Tip: I recommend Henshall's "A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters" for those interested in kanji and/or etymology.)
As for learning, I started with the excellent Japanese for Busy People books. They provide functional Japanese intended for business use, rapidly and easily. The "fatal flaw" with the books (for me) was the lack of an included native speaker of Japanese; without a practice partner, I was finding that what I learned didn't stick. The more language practices you use (producing spoken, producing written, interpreting spoken, and interpreting written), the faster you will acquire the language. Thus, I found classes to be essential for progressing past a certain point.
Second, take a general linguistics class, one that covers the mechanical (as opposed to the social) aspects of language. You will be better able to understand the regular mechanisms of what's going on in Japanese, simplifying the rules you have to remember. Well, that's how it's working for me at least, but I'm also Majoring in Linguistics.
Third, avoid learning from anime and manga until later in your studies (around 2 years of college level Japanese). a.) They are filled with countless variants and contracted forms, but you won't understand them until you know what they are varying or contracting from. b.) They are filled with slang, archaic forms, excessive formalism, dialects, gender-marked speech, and you won't ever learn what they are and when they are appropriate from anime or manga. For example, Tomoyo from Card Captor Sakura uses extremely polite and feminine speech...with her best friend; this is -not- normal usage for polite speech (it tends to be distancing), and the feminine forms are less common among younger women, but Tomoyo is go
Bullshit! English spelling is retained because we're used to it. Period! Everyone is used to seeing "night" and "through" and see no reason to change. It's not logical, and it drives learners crazy, but we're used to it. I ASSume it's the same with Japanese. They don't care that it makes things harder for the gaijin, THEY are used to it, and that's all that matters.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I'm a second grade tutor in a Japanese Junior High School in Hokkaido, but I am originally from the UK. I am exactly the same as all the other Japanese teachers in the school except for the fact that I have a different nationality. All of my work, meetings, communications and everything I do daily is in Japanese (I'm the only non-Japanese staff in the school). 5 years ago, I barely knew a word. Now I work in an entirely Japanese environment.
Let's start with Kanji. I believe 5 year-olds in Japan average about 500 of these
Firstly, take it from me (as a professional educator), most 5 year olds do not know 500 kanji. In fact none do. I'd love to know where you got that figure from. Japanese children are taught approximately 80 kanji in 1st grade Elementary School (about 6 years old). At 5 years old they are still struggling to learn Kana.
You need to know A: the somewhat random symbol,
You really don't know anything about the language do you? Kanji are not "somewhat random symbol[s]". Common kanji generally contain 1 or more basic elements known in English as 'radicals' of which there are 214, which themselves have their own meanings. This also has the advantage of providing a basic method for sorting kanji (for example in a dictionary). If you don't believe me, take a closer look at a page of kanji and you'll start to notice that a lot of the characters contain similar looking parts.
B: the stroke order (Very important!)
Yes, there is a school of thought that says stroke order is important, and yes Japanese students are taught stroke order. But then there is also a popular TV quiz show in Japan where adult contestants have to identify the stroke order of (fairly common) kanji. At a rough guesstimate they get it wrong about 25% of the time. Stroke order is only VERY important in Japanese calligraphy, which is a different issue altogether.
How many years until you can chat with a kindergartener.
Study every day for an hour or more, and you'll be able to hold quite a decent little conversation with a kiddie within 6 months or so.
And forget reading newspapers
Oh, ok. Maybe I should cancel my daily delivery then.
don't be foolish and think one kanji equals one thing.
Go find yourself a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary and look up the word "set". You'll find it has 126 different definitions. Japanese is hardly unique in having its characters take on more than one meaning.
Ok, how about saying hello? Thankfully, there is only about a dozen ways of doing this, depending upon if the person you're talking to is high above you, above you, at your level, below you, or really below you. Of course, there are variants for if there is a big age gap, or you're related, or you're a girl. Or any of a million other variants.
There are basically main 3 speaking forms (or levels of respect if you like) in Japanese, not "millions of variants". Teineigo, sonkeigo and kenjo~go, as well as a basic plain form. As a non-native speaker, you won't be expected to use anything more than teineigo. While it's certainly more complex than English, it's attainable with a little study. As for a dozen ways of saying hello, 99.99% of the time you'll be using just 3 different words (the ubiquitous ohayo~(gozaimasu), konnichiwa and konbanwa) to anyone you meet, regardless of rank or status. Just think about English for a moment - Hey, Hello, Hi, What's Up?, How's It Going?, Yo! well... I could go on, but you can quickly see just how many different greeting forms we have, without even taking into account whether we're being polite or not.
You also have to accept the fact that you will never speak well, you will never read a newspaper correctly
That would be why I meet numerous foreigners every week who speak excellent Japanese then. Making a blanket statement like "y
Gee a topic about which I can speak with authority.
Japanese is the easiest language to learn. Also the hardest.
The grammar is extraordinarily simple. You can learn most of the basic grammar you need in a few weeks of intensive memorization.
Pronunciation is so easy for an English speaker you hardly even have to work at it.
Vocab works the way English works: combine some parts to make a whole. So once you learn a core set of words you can generate new ones relatively easily.
The writing system is extraordinarily difficult. Kana - you can memorize the entire hiragana/katakana system in a day if you really want to. But kanji! Count on spending years working at it.
Colloquial, socially appropriate speech - extraordinarily difficult. You can get the basic concepts from a book or class, but this level you can only really learn in-country, from native-speaker informants, and even then you may not get it completely.
In sum, you can learn enough J to communicate effectively verbally, and to understand manga, etc. pretty easily. Practical advice: find a Japanese bookstore or website - I'd bet there's more good printed material for students of J than for any other language. Memorize, memorize, memorize, and actually make the sounds. And find a native speaker to help you. And don't be intimidated. And don't waste your time if you're not serious about it. And if you _really_ want to learn the language, plan on a stay in Japan of at least one year. There's no other way to do it.
(I've studied J for years, Japanese wife, etc. but gave up trying to really master it since I've not lived in Japan. If you want to try a *truly* difficult language, try Arabic. I'm pretty fluent - 2+ years in Egypt, not enough. *Everything* about Arabic is *very* difficult. Makes Japanese look like a walk in the park.)
good luck.