i'm learning japanese, sharing what i'm learning!

[test84]

is those 300 kanjis enough for you to live there? or play games? I heard that you require around 1000 kanjis to read news papers.

P.S. How did you learn those 300 kanjis? tell me about first 80, did you use mnemonics? or books? what about vocabularies, did you use flash cards (the paper ones, not DS ones!)

 

[kikuchiyo]

is those 300 kanjis enough for you to live there? or play games? I heard that you require around 1000 kanjis to read news papers.

P.S. How did you learn those 300 kanjis? tell me about first 80, did you use mnemonics? or books? what about vocabularies, did you use flash cards (the paper ones, not DS ones!)

Yes and no (though I probably recognize closer to 350-400 kanji). Japan is English friendly (for example - road signs are in Japanese in English so that most signs list either a town or official town building, like a town hall, in English and Japanese). That said I don't want to live like most of the foreigners here (especially the military people from the base in Misawa). I want to know Japanese, read like an adult, etc. So I need to know more, which is why most of my free time at school is spend learning kanji (kanjis sounds sub-standard to me - Japanese does not always plural and so words like samuraiS, etc., directly imported and then pluralized sound substandard in standard English).

As for games - depends on the game, like anything (books, manga, etc). I've made it through Dragon Quest Slime Mori Mori and Final Fantasy Tactics A2 pretty much just fine. But those games are meant to be easily accessible. I can get through Gyakuten Saiban because I know a lot of legal and mystery terms (from lessons in another Japanese book, the class I am taking now here in Aomori) and from my thesis research. This actually refers back to an earlier point - most stuff meant for older people (like adults) is less accessible, like xXxHolic.

You need 2,000 odd kanji to be a competent adult and to be able to read newspapers, etc. One of my exes was a self described kanji nerd (she took a class on Genji in the original old Japanese in high school and then Chinese in college) and so she knew 3,000+.

As for learning, I used the textbook you have right now to learn most of them. Use that. Seriously, you need a teacher (or a girlfriend - Kaoru and Rieko taught me a lot of kanji as I studied and they pointed even more out to me), but without one, that book is the best resource you have. I have said it many times before and I will say it again: that book is the single best intro Japanese textbook there is. USE IT. Right now I'm using PG O'Neil's "Essential Kanji," which is NOT a good first kanji book or reference book. But it's a list of 2,000 kanji in rough order of difficulty and usefulness, which is what I need; I want one big list to work through. It doesn't offer much in the way of mnemonics, and it uses an old list of kanji (toyo, versus the current joyo) so some of the harder kanji are not much help for me.

Use the book. Use flashcards to reinforce what you're studying. Then test yourself (Genki even has self tests in each lesson! It will give you a compound and ask either the pronunciation or the meaning or both).

What I do know is I go through O'Neil and write the kanji, the listed compounds, and readings over and over. Muscle memory is a good thing here, so kanji that I don't know or can't write off the top of my head I write over and over again until my hand knows what to write and the character looks reasonably good. Writing the compounds as you learn more kanji is good because the compounds will contain characters you are supposed to know so it is a good review. Just go through Genki and you learn a lot many kanji and (more importantly) a ton of radicals. When you've learned those (studying like you would for any other subject / any other class) start worrying about learning more kanji. The way people learn is different from person to person and Japanese isn't some magical subject. Learn it like you learned anything else in school.

 

[Son of Science]

I wish i could learn japanese... I live in New York and I honestly cannot find anywhere to learn :'(

 

[test84]

Wow, Thanks Kikuchiyo.
As elegant and helpful as always.

I'm studying Genki and have some minor problems that I'll post. (like つ at some words or pronouncing　は vs. わ )
the only way that I currently know how to replay your helps is by studying.

Thank you guys for helping.
I really appreciate it.

 

[kikuchiyo]

If it makes you feel any better, one of my first graders wrote me a card where he used the wrong wa わ　instead of は。

 

[Raisingod]

**Sorry for the lack of Hiragana in this post I am currently not at home and this PC doesn't have japanese input**

Wow, Thanks Kikuchiyo.
As elegant and helpful as always.

I'm studying Genki and have some minor problems that I'll post. (like ? at some words or pronouncing?? vs. ? )
the only way that I currently know how to replay your helps is by studying.

Thank you guys for helping.
I really appreciate it.


you will get the [wa] -[ha] thing when you start the (sort of)guided text reading ( reading a text while hearing it ). I fail to see the problem with tsu as its one of the easier syllables in japanese ( except for the whole small tsu thing that some student find hard but its easy to master once you understaned the cause for its existence )

If it makes you feel any better, one of my first graders wrote me a card where he used the wrong wa ??instead of ??

First graders have problems with irregularities in writing so I guess this isn't that rare

 

[test84]

If it makes you feel any better, one of my first graders wrote me a card where he used the wrong wa ??instead of ??


As I understood, you have to use ? when you want to say "wa" but it acts as a particle and in other situations, you have to use ?. and there are some exceptions as ??????

QUOTE(Raisingod @ Feb 15 2008, 02:58 PM)you will get the [wa] -[ha] thing when you start the (sort of)guided text reading ( reading a text while hearing it ). I fail to see the problem with tsu as its one of the easier syllables in japanese ( except for the whole small tsu thing that some student find hard but its easy to master once you understaned the cause for its existence )

yeah, i have that problem too, whats the reason behind that small ??

 

[kikuchiyo]

As I understood, you have to use ? when you want to say "wa" but it acts as a particle and in other situations, you have to use ?. and there are some exceptions as ??????

whats the reason behind that small ??


Raisinggod is right - you will get it when you actually start reading material (there should be an early lesson in Genki about this - the books are on my shelf but my fish is napping and his tank's on the top end of the shelf, so I'll look it up later - just follow the book's example!). I think you are making it more difficult than it needs to be. You are thinking of the romanized sounds and then trying to assign kana to them. Think of the kana first and then the sound. ??is the particle, put it in where it needs to go and say wa. When spelling a word, use ??That's the problem my first grader ran into. He was thinking about the sounds and so obviously ? makes the wa sound so he used that to say ???????

??????????
Wa(?)tashi wa (?) wa(??gamama desu. The subject is watashi. The particle marking it is wa (?). And I just threw wagamama in there.

????? is not an exception as it does, technically follow the rule - it's just become such a formulaic expression that the actual point of the ? has become somewhat obscured and it looks like normal vocab (this drove me nuts with ????? because I thought it was one word for the first year I started Japanese with my friend and there shouldn't be any single WORD with an ? sound). Some people (girls especially) on text messages, e-mail, etc. DO spell it ????? or ????? to be cute. You'll just look stupid if you do it, though. Moreover there is a particle ?, that some women use at the end of their sentences. You don't have to worry about this at all (you're not going to hear it anytime soon and you certainly won't be using it) though I think there is a sidenote about it in Genki somewhere.

??(read wa) is a particle that marks the subject of a sentence, does some contrastive functions, etc. You will always recognize it in a real sentence. Until then, don't worry about it too much. Just lean how to write the vocab in genki as its written.

The little tsu ? simply elongates a consonant sound????? is commonly romanized as suPPai (I added the caps for emphasis). The little tsu before ? means the p part gets an extra beat. It itself isn't pronounced. Keep in mind that words that otherwise look the same in kana but one has a small tsu are different words with different kanji and different meanings (I am sure there a billion examples but I don't feel like looking it up).

It has one or two other uses but nothing you need to worry about now. You can type it in by typing x then tsu when you're in a kana mode in the IME.

QUOTEFirst graders have problems with irregularities in writing so I guess this isn't that rare

I know! I thought it was cute

And I was trying to make test feel better

 

[test84]

 

[Raisingod]

As I understood, you have to use ? when you want to say "wa" but it acts as a particle and in other situations, you have to use ?. and there are some exceptions as ??????

whats the reason behind that small ??



????? is not an exception as it does, technically follow the rule - it's just become such a formulaic expression that the actual point of the ? has become somewhat obscured and it looks like normal vocab (this drove me nuts with ????? because I thought it was one word for the first year I started Japanese with my friend and there shouldn't be any single WORD with an ? sound). Some people (girls especially) on text messages, e-mail, etc. DO spell it ????? or ????? to be cute. You'll just look stupid if you do it, though. Moreover there is a particle ?, that some women use at the end of their sentences. You don't have to worry about this at all (you're not going to hear it anytime soon and you certainly won't be using it) though I think there is a sidenote about it in Genki somewhere.
....


The little tsu ? simply elongates a consonant sound????? is commonly romanized as suPPai (I added the caps for emphasis). The little tsu before ? means the p part gets an extra beat. It itself isn't pronounced. Keep in mind that words that otherwise look the same in kana but one has a small tsu are different words with different kanji and different meanings (I am sure there a billion examples but I don't feel like looking it up).

Also its importent to note that small tsu isn't an emphasis (at least not a full one) as it doesn't change the "strengh" at which the consnant is spoken but just ( sort of) lengthen it

.

I have seen this whole ????? and I do think it will only get worse in years to come. Currently its being done in conscious state ( they know they make a spelling /gramatical mistake yet they do it) I think it will become less and less conscious cause most people don't understand that the ? is actually a ? ( which actually change the whole grammatical precaption of this words).


About ????? : I've actually seen text books that write its english transcript with 'O' its a big mistake because even if you pronounce the 'WO' is 'O' it will not make it clear that this is a compound word (of a sort)

 

[kikuchiyo]

I have seen this whole ????? and I do think it will only get worse in years to come. Currently its being done in conscious state ( they know they make a spelling /gramatical mistake yet they do it) I think it will become less and less conscious cause most people don't understand that the ? is actually a ? ( which actually change the whole grammatical precaption of this words).


About ????? : I've actually seen text books that write its english transcript with 'O' its a big mistake because even if you pronounce the 'WO' is 'O' it will not make it clear that this is a compound word (of a sort)

Point 1: I hope and pray it remains a stupid little women's text message thing. I think most people (adults) understand why it's ? (or I've been lucky enough to date uncommonly bright girls) but I see this slipping into the mainstream and it brings a tear to my eye. Then again, Japanese is old, and there have been any number of shifts in it and this small one is not such a huge deal (there are phonetic characters in both Japanese and Bengali that aren't used any more, for example, let alone polite language in both and kanji in Japanese).

Point 2: That's why early on I settled on Hepburn romanization as the way to go when one must romanize. But yeah, writing wo instead of o makes it much clearer (though of course the best thing is to read the kana - but when I was just started by speaking with Rieko, my first two years of college, and not taking a class with a reading and writing component, that was much less clear).

And the last bit: on somewhat of a side note for test; I was reading some of the reports some of my other first graders wrote yesterday. My baby (I say that, but I think I caught a cold from them, so I'm willing to kick them in the face now

) Yuka wrote ??? and then had to cross out the ??and change it to ?. So no worries, you're going through an issue many Japanese kids have to learn around (if that makes sense).

 

[Gman 101]

わあ。。。日本語はむずかしいです。日本語はべんきょうしました。

I had a terrible Japanese teacher at school last year. I didn't learn a single thing. This year all my whole class could remember was the stuff we learnt in the year before last year... =__=

 

[Raisingod]

Blah justed Looked at my {old} みなの日本語　and realized how elementary it is (nothing complex in there ) yet it gave me such a solid base that it was a better investment then my (precious) Grammar dictionary .

 

[--JoCa--]

whats the reason behind that small ??



The little tsu ? simply elongates a consonant sound????? is commonly romanized as suPPai (I added the caps for emphasis). The little tsu before ? means the p part gets an extra beat. It itself isn't pronounced. Keep in mind that words that otherwise look the same in kana but one has a small tsu are different words with different kanji and different meanings (I am sure there a billion examples but I don't feel like looking it up).

I got an example for you:
?? = ??? = ITAI = painful. it pronounces like the way you write it (at least in portuguese)

?? = ???? = ITTAI = party. it pronounces like i (ee) little pause tai, with a strong T

hope it helped

 

[Mangofett]

???????????????????????????????

I had a terrible Japanese teacher at school last year. I didn't learn a single thing. This year all my whole class could remember was the stuff we learnt in the year before last year... =__=

I hate those kind of teachers. I had the same situation in French, and I complained enough to switch out of it, and into another French class.

 

[Eyedunno]

I haven't posted in this thread in a while, but I'll give it a shot.

So orally, if someone gives you a bouquet of "hana", you have to guess
Not in most dialects, you don't. The accent is different, in that (for Kanto-ben) pitch accent is lost after the "na" in flower, but carries on to the next syllable (usually a particle or copula) in the case of nose.

So sometimes, you can understand a kanji without even knowing how it is read!
Or, even more commonly, sometimes you can know how a kanji is read without understanding it!

except for the whole small tsu thing that some student find hard but its easy to master once you understaned the cause for its existence

Oh? What is the cause for its existence? I know that in older texts, it's written as ? (regular tsu), which actually doesn't make them THAT much harder to read, but why tsu? Why not some other kana, or a totally new character?

QUOTE(zajoao @ Feb 20 2008, 02:29 AM)

I got an example for you:
?? = ??? = ITAI = painful. it pronounces like the way you write it (at least in portuguese)

?? = ???? = ITTAI = party. it pronounces like i (ee) little pause tai, with a strong T

hope it helped

I'll come up with some myself.
?? = ?? = KOKO = here (almost never written in kanji though)
?? = ???? = KOUKOU = high school
?? = ??? = KOKKO = (national) treasury

??? = ???????? = both KATA = person (very polite) / shoulder
??????? = ????????? = both KATTA = win (past tense) / buy (past tense)

? = ??? = HONOO = flame
?? = ???? = HONNOU = instinct

? = ?? = SAKA = slope
?? = ??? = SAKKA = (professional) writer

 

[Raisingod]

except for the whole small tsu thing that some student find hard but its easy to master once you understaned the cause for its existence

Oh? What is the cause for its existence? I know that in older texts, it's written as ? (regular tsu), which actually doesn't make them THAT much harder to read, but why tsu? Why not some other kana, or a totally new character?

The reason they picked tsu was that there is no partical that you write as tsu.

Basicly the reason for its exsitense was that the japanese realized that in a syllabary system you cant write long consonants and since japanese use it there was a need to add this to the writing language , this need only arrouse as katakana(as it was intreduced as an official writing system before hiragana { used by females only at that time}) became an official writing system . The problem was that by the time that katakana was considered an official writing language the common solution was to write a tsu to indicate a long consonants fallows .

It probably would have been different if it was up to the administration to decide what to use to indicate that.

 

[test84]

A question about KANA:
I saw recent FF XIII VERSUS trailer and in the beginning, I could read the word "KORE" (meaning THIS) in the trailer, Isnt it supposed to be a Kanji for KORE? and generally, when they use KANA?

 

[Raisingod]

A question about KANA:
I saw recent FF XIII VERSUS trailer and in the beginning, I could read the word "KORE" (meaning THIS) in the trailer, Isnt it supposed to be a Kanji for KORE? and generally, when they use KANA?

Kore, Sore and Are(all meaning THIS or THAT just with the variation of the location {Close to the speaker,Close to listener and not far from both[or non existent for theortical questions]}) and the likes are written in kana ( hiragana to be precise) only/


Kana is used in few different places:

1) Grammatical parts of the sentence ( conjuration of verbs, particals, and object indication {that , this etc))-Hiragana
2) "borrowed " words from languages beside Chinese - Katakana
3) When there is no kanji for a specific word ( its exist) -Hiragana
4) Some verbs and figures of speech replace kanji with the hiragana transcript


There are other things you use KANA for but 1-3 are the majour reasons and 1-2 is what KANA is mostly used for

 

[test84]

I was solving an exercise from Genki and I got a problem with Katakana:
how do you write these in Katakana: (I was going to write my name)
Ai
Di
Gh
Dr
with katakana? (seperately)