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



## test84 (Jul 14, 2007)

hi!

i'm going after some lessons at nhk.or.jp and i wanted to share what i'm learning to other ppl like me.
i dont think u might need these since u can get/download stuff and get from ur universities but since i dont have these resources, i'm trying learning this atleast.

its not about writing/kanji/hiragana/katakana, its just about talking and stuff and since i dont know writing japanese, i'm gonna use romanja (or roma-ji), sorry if using romanji offences J people here.

another thing is that when i post a new lesson, any J people here can comment on them and point out some notes and stuff, if they are willing.
so plz to get rid of confusion, plz qoute the post that contains the lesson and comment on it, or plz note what lesson you are commenting on. thnx in advance.
------------
so, *the first lesson*:

A:Sumimase, Toire Wa Dokodeska? 
(excuse me, where is toilet?)

B: Ano Kaidan no ushiro desu.
(its behind that staircase)

Aumo
(thnx).

so, what i learned is that when you wanna ask what an object is or where somewhere is, you put it before "X wa dokodeska?".

Dumo is less formal and more friendly than Dumo Arigato.
-----------
i'm trying my best to post here every day or at most, every 2days, to get discipline.
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Next Lessons so far:
Lesson 009 (Does this bus leaves to Shinjuku?
Lesson 010 (What time is it?)
Lesson 011 (Havent seen you in a while!)
Lesson 012 (How are you?)
Lesson 013 (How long it will take?)
Lesson 014 (So glad to meet you!)
Idioms 02   (Lets forgive!)
Lesson 015 (Are you a student?)
Lesson 016 (Its in the closet)

Numbers in Kanji by Kazuki_pl


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## Linkiboy (Jul 14, 2007)

Its domo...

DOMO ARIGATO, MR. ROBOTO


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## test84 (Jul 14, 2007)

no, its Dumo. 
DOMO is like DAAMO like in Doctor.
but its Dumo, like in Cope.


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## Glacius0 (Jul 14, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 14 2007 said:


> hi!
> 
> i'm going after some lessons at nhk.or.jp and i wanted to share what i'm learning to other ppl like me.
> i dont think u might need these since u can get/download stuff and get from ur universities but since i dont have these resources, i'm trying learning this atleast.
> ...


I'll lend a hand

A:Sumimasen, toire wa doko desu ka? 
(excuse me, where is toilet?)

sumimasen = excuse me
toire = toilet
wa = a word (particle) that makes clear that the word before it is the subject, it's actually written as "ha" in hiragana
doko = where
desu = can be placed at the end of a sentence after a noun, has no meaning but makes it polite
ka = Polite way to make the sentence into a question. You should make it sound like a question with intonation

B: Ano kaidan no ushiro desu.
(its behind that staircase)

ano = it means "that", but only for objects that are not near you and your conversation partner (it's different when you use it for people)
kaidan = staircase
no = particle, links the noun before it with the noun behind it. example: doubutsu no mori = animal forest (the forest of animals)
ushiro = back
desu = same as before

Aoumo
(thanks).
This word is spelled with ou but is pronounced as a long o: "doomo"

Hope this helps a little.


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## Linkiboy (Jul 14, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 13 2007 said:


> no, its Dumo.
> DOMO is like DAAMO like in Doctor.
> but its Dumo, like in Cope.


ARE YOU CALLING SONG LYRICS WRONG

OR INSULTING DOMO-KUN

well i dont really care go ahead


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## cdr (Jul 14, 2007)

in romaji it's domo >> not dumbo or whatever lols


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## zoharmodifier (Jul 14, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 13 2007 said:


> no, its Dumo.
> DOMO is like DAAMO like in Doctor.
> but its Dumo, like in Cope.



Um, no. Why would an "o" make an "aa" sound? Why would a "u" make an "o" sound? It just doesn't make sense.

Japanese sounds are ALWAYS the same.
a = "ah"
i = "ee"
u = "uu"
e = "eh"
o = "oh"

And it's "doumo." It can be written as "domo" because the "o" syllable is elongated, but I've never seen it as "dumo."


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## Hanafuda (Jul 14, 2007)

well, ganbatte.


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## test84 (Jul 15, 2007)

ok! i'm back.
the last lesson is officially number 8th, so this lesson is number 9.
i'll post previous lessons if there is request, but for now, let us continue to 9th lesson.

*Lesson 009: Kono Basu Wa Shinjuku e ikimasu.(Updated/Corrected)
(Does this bus go to Shinjuku?)
*

*a. Kono Basu Wa Shinjuku e Yukimasuka?*
(Does this bus lead to Shinjuku? (its a place in Tokyo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjuku%2C_Tokyo )

b.*Iie, Yukimasen,*
(no, it doesnt go)
*Shinjuku-yuri wa, san-ban nariba desu.*
(the bus that leaves to shinjuku, leaves from 3rd platform)

a.*Doumo Arigato Gozaimashita.*
(thnx alot)
--------
what i learned:
a. 
Kono == this
basu == bus
wa == shows the subject of sentence, whatever is behind wa is subject of sentence, so here Kono Basu is the subject of conversation.
shinjuku e == to shinjuku -> a place + "e" == to that place
yukimasuka == it really pronunced ikimasuka, i doubt about it, anyway it means "going to" and "ka" made it politely.

note about "ka":
Using ka after desu/masu makes the sentence into a question and is polite. You should basically always use it when speaking politely. Careful however, since using it when you're not speaking politely sounds rude in some cases.
(Thnx/Credits to Glacius0)

B.
Iie, yukimasen.
Iie == no.
yukimasen = the "mas" in yukumasu is turned to yukiMASEN  and turned it into negative.

Shinjuku-yui == destination of shinjuku, here it means the bus that goes to shinjuku.
san-ban = san is 3 and ban means its order, so it means 3rd.
noriba == platform (it was nariba,corrected, thnx to Glacius0)
desu = is.

A.Gozaimashita = the past of gozaimasu, i donno why this guy used the past form of gozaimasu.
---------
i have another question and its about "ano", in past lessons, there was a sentence when the man at exchanging his money, asked the lady to give him 1000yen papers and asked her:
Ano, sen-en satsu mo onegaishimasu. (it was sansu, corrected to satsu, it means paper money, thnx to Glacius0)
what does Ano mean in that sentence? i believed it means "this" since the last lesson  Ano means "this" (when refering to staircase : Ano Kaidan No Ushiro Desu)
thnx.

*Solved : *
1-The english "uhm" when you don't know something, or when you try to get someone's attention is "eto" or "ano" in Japanese. 
(credits and thanks to Glacius0)

2- 'Ano' is also the equivalent of 'Um', and is great to use to
sound more natural.  eg. "Ano, sumimasen" (Um, excuse me).
(credits and thanks to Kyuketsuki_M)

----
if u have comments, plz feel free to add 'em!
----
*added bonus grammer by Glacius0:*

Bonus grammar:
ikimasu = go (future)
ikimasen = don't go (negative)
ikimashita = went (past)
ikimasen deshita = didn't go (past negative)


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## test84 (Jul 15, 2007)

so, lesson 010.

*Lesson 010: Ima, Nanji Desuka.
what time is it?*

A.Sumimasen.
(excuse me)

B.Hai.
(yes)

A.Ima, Nanji Desuka[?]
(what time is it?)

B.Choudo, San-ji Desu.
(exactly at 3 o'clock)

----
Ima = Now
Nanji = what time, its used to ask time.
Desu = make it polite.
ka = makes it questionaly.

Choudo = exactly
san = three.
Ji = hour (it is used after time like "three o'clock")

there are some exceptions in numbering the hours:
for number 4, we dont way Yon-Ji, we say Shi-Ji
for number 7, we dont way Nana-Ji, we say Shichi-Ji
for number 9, we dont way Kyu-Ji, we say Ku-Ji
------
*SOLVED:*
i used to learn to count at our dojo, but we said shi for 4, instead of Yon and Shichi instead of Nana, whats their difference?

warbird:Not much. shi/shichi is the Chinese reading and yon/nana is the Japanese reading of the word. When counting numbers, the Chinese ones are usually used, while yon/nana is used when just saying 1 number or when used with counter words like ji, mai, satsu and the likes. (you would say yonmai but never shimai when counting flat objects like paper/pages.)

-----
numbers by delta123 (thnx!) 

1 ichi
2 ni
3 san
4 shi/yon
5 go
6 roku
7 shichi/nana
8 hachi
9 kyuu/ku
10 juu
11 juu ichi
12 juu ni
etc.

20 ni juu
30 san juu
etc.

100 hiyaku
200 ni hiyaku

1,000 sen
2,000 ni sen

10,000 ichi man
20,000 ni man

100,000,000 oku


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## mthrnite (Jul 16, 2007)

What I say before I go all Chuck Norris on some dirty shnook:
*
"Anata no gosenzo sama ni kao o awase rare masuka!"*

(Get ready to meet your ashamed ancestors!)


Thanks for the lessons guys...
*.. HEY! THERE'S HANAFUDA!*


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## Linkiboy (Jul 16, 2007)

Actually, these are quite cool. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




Keep posting them!


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## warbird (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 15 2007 said:


> i used to learn to count at our dojo, but we said shi for 4, instead of Yon and Shichi instead of Nana, whats their difference?



Not much. shi/shichi is the Chinese reading and yon/nana is the Japanese reading of the word. When counting numbers, the Chinese ones are usually used, while yon/nana is used when just saying 1 number or when used with counter words like ji, mai, satsu and the likes. (you would say yonmai but never shimai when counting flat objects like paper/pages.)

And im surprised that nhk teaches you to say "yuku" instead of "iku" since this is kantou dialect and not considered "standard" japanese afaik. You hear it often in songs tho.

Good luck tho, and check out japanesepod101.com for a free podcast. Got Japaneses native speakers so you can practice pronunciation


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## test84 (Jul 16, 2007)

if u are intrested to learn in ur language, this is the english site :
http://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/index.html
and it has lots of native speakers to teach in ur own language 
----
i donno about numbering, i was just happy to know that i know numbering atleast, now i dont. : (
-----
i'm on dial up, it means no podcast but i have some anime and tried to listen to them to match what i already know, but when i expect them to say something (based on subtitles), it differs and it makes me sad.
sometimes even when saying yes or no, they say different things than standards that i know, even konnichiwa is sometimes changes.

so i think hearing the native speakers is kinda so soon for me.
-----
thnx to all who look at these lessons.
if you have any suggestions on formatting the lessons, tell me.

would moderators please delete spams to have a clean topic? TIA.


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## Blebleman (Jul 16, 2007)

Trust me, this is the easy part, people.

The language itself is very easy. Then you get to the reading/writing thing. Still not so bad, two "alphabets" that represent sounds.

Then you get to the ocean of fun called "Kanji". 2000 characters you should know by heart, and that could either represent a sound, or an entire word.

That's what you spend years on. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 I've done it. Can you?


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## test84 (Jul 16, 2007)

i think since "you've done it" and seems that you are from Japan, its better if you help and guide us and not try to slow us down!

you know the way, give us tips and tricks.


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## Blebleman (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 15 2007 said:


> i think since "you've done it" and seems that you are from Japan, its better if you help and guide us and not try to slow us down!
> 
> you know the way, give us tips and tricks.



Honestly, if I have a single thing to say to you guys, it's that you guys should read up on Japan and its social problems and everything *before* you decide that "Hey it's probably the best country in the world! I'ma live there in da futurr!".
Trust me, Tokyo is awesome, but come here unprepared, and this city is going to eat you. I've gotten here about 3 weeks ago, and even with many years of Japanese training, I'm doing OK, but still, I need more. I've got a bunch of weird-ass german otaku in my hotel as my neighbors. Poor kids don't even speak Japanese, or English. But they still have the time to cosplay and go parading. Sounds good for the time they're here, but little more. And they also look really ridiculous and probably don't realise it.

Seriously, 90% of you will give up. That's a good thing. Foreigners are not rejected, but people definitely stare at you a lot. This is a place where you have to show your individuality without crossing the very thin line of being marginal. 

Oh, and test84, I interpreted your message as being slightly disrespectful. Really feel like helping you now. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




[EDIT] Then again, 10% of you are really serious about it, and know what they're getting into. To you people, I encourage you fully. This is going to be one of the hardest things you will ever do, but it can also be one of the most rewarding. I'm practically living the typical Otaku's dream here, but the reason why, is because I'm not an Otaku. Otakus are heavily frowned upon. And don't even think of getting a girlfriend, unless she's one too. (I don't think I've met any yet.)
???????


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## Extreme Coder (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE said:
			
		

> Honestly, if I have a single thing to say to you guys, it's that you guys should read up on Japan and its social problems and everything before you decide that "Hey it's probably the best country in the world! I'ma live there in da futurr!".


/me is thinking to himself: Hey it's probably the best country in the world! I'ma live there in da futurr! but me doesn't know how to go there yet


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## delta123 (Jul 16, 2007)

hey i`ve lived here for 1 1/2 years now, and i have gotten buy with absolutley no japanese skills. well my students kinda force japanese onto me, but other than saying relly? and or course. i really havent had to use the language at all in my small town. i say if you want to live in japan all you really need to know to start off with is numbers and greetings. other than that you can sort of learn on the fly like me.

and japan isn`t the best country in the world. its just a very exciting place to be. with lots of sparkly stuff. expensive sparkly stuff. but i love it. kinda sad that i leave this place next year in march. my students want me to stay. (T_T). damn students they make it really had for you to live.

and otakus are not frowned upon anymore since densha otoko became a huge hit and girls were looking at akihabara as a source of their next boyfriends in the hopes to find a guy like him. they have become accepted as main stream people. not rejects.

and numbers
1   ichi
2   ni
3   san
4   shi/yon
5   go
6   roku
7   shichi/nana
8   hachi
9   kyuu/ku
10 juu
11 juu ichi
12 juu ni
etc.

20 ni juu
30 san juu
etc.

100 hiyaku
200 ni hiyaku

1,000 sen
2,000 ni sen

10,000 ichi man
20,000 ni man

100,000,000 oku


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## deathfisaro (Jul 16, 2007)

I was never taught Japanese, I self taught and now I'm at the point where my girlfriend is watching subbed anime on my desktop, and I can lie down on bed, close my eyes, listen to the anime and laugh when something funny comes up.
Think Kanji is hard? I learned Chinese in simplified form, and Hong Kong uses traditional form. I was saying "Holy crap what in the world is that monster sized picture of maze doing in a neon sign?"

Now I can tell wether a Chinese character is simplified, traditional (I think Korean also imports traditional Chinese besides Korean, just like how Japanese also has Kanji besides hiragana/katakana. I couldn't tell the difference between traditional form Chinese and the Chinese characters used in Korean), or kanji (Well although it means Chinese character, kanji has changed shape over the course of history, so not all kanji still look the same as Chinese characters).


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## Kyuketsuki_M (Jul 16, 2007)

Hey guys...don't be so negative 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





I've been here for six years (do I win any prizes!) and when I came here it was for one reason only!

THE TOKYO GAMESHOW!

I knew hiragana and katakana and some basic phrases...that's about it.   Fair enough,   I came in fresh faced but because I wanted to learn Japanese to aid my HOBBIES and not business etc. I advanced quickly...

The best way to language acquisition is to the WANT to learn it...not the NEED.  The people who want to learn because they love anime, games, J-pop etc. are the ones who flourish, in my opinion.  In my classes, the students who love Western music or Hollywood movies learn faster than my business clients.

Also, Japanese people love to meet foreigners who are interested in their own country.

Don't listen to any negativity....if you want it, you've got it. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




KYU

P.S.  'Ano' is also the equivalent of 'Um', and is great to use to sound more natural.  eg. "Ano, sumimasen" (Um, excuse me).


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## unr (Jul 16, 2007)

This is a great thread.

Learning can actually be fun. Just don`t stress yourself and do it on your free time, as a hobby. You shouldn`t care if it takes 20 years, important thing is that you`re improving. Just stay motivated and don`t overdo it.

For example I learned basic english in a couple of years (2-4th grades) while I still don`t understand sh*t in russian (6th-10th grades).

Best way to convert what you learn into long-term memory is to actually use it. Watching anime comes to mind (use `I am learning` as an excuse for doing so).


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## Glacius0 (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 15 2007 said:


> ok! i'm back.
> the last lesson is officially number 8th, so this lesson is number 9.
> i'll post previous lessons if there is request, but for now, let us continue to 9th lesson.
> 
> ...


Alright, nice going with the explanations! You got most things right, but I'll help ya out on the things you're not certain about for as far as I know them:

-It's ikimasu, and it also sounds like ikimasu. It's never yukimasu.
-Using ka after desu/masu makes the sentence into a question and is polite. You should basically always use it when speaking politely. Careful however, since using it when you're not speaking politely sounds rude in some cases.
-I don't know what you mean by yui/yuri. Do you mean "e"?
-It's noriba, with an o. 
-I have a tough time with gozaimasu/gozaimashita myself. I'll ask around to make sure, but it's something in the lines of using gozaimashita when the person has done something for you which took some effort.
-The english "uhm" when you don't know something, or when you try to get someone's attention is "eto" or "ano" in Japanese.
-It's satsu, not sansu.

Bonus grammar:
ikimasu = go (future)
ikimasen = don't go (negative)
ikimashita = went (past)
ikimasen deshita = didn't go (past negative)

Maybe you could edit your posts so people don't get confused?


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## test84 (Jul 16, 2007)

thnx Glacius0,Kyuketsuki_M,Warbird,Delta123 (last but not least) i really love when i see you guys post in here. 
(visitors are doubling on this topic everyday)

thnx , i added your solutionion nd credited your names.

i added your editory to the respective #009 lesson and credited to you.

we still need correction of lesson #010 (Ima, nanji desuka, what time is it?)

i would like to have a clean topic without spams and stuff so people who just want the lessons can easily navigate and omit the comments/spam/argue/etc, would you think if i dedicate this topic to comments about lessons (corrections, argue, comments) and make another topic just for lessons so when you guys comment something, i'll edit it in that topic OR it is ok this way to you? i personally prefer first methid.

thnx guys.


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## Scorpei (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 16 2007 said:


> thnx Glacius0, i really love when i see you posted here.
> 
> thnx Kyuketsuki_M, i added your solution too and credited your name.
> 
> ...


I'm more then willing to allow this in my Wiki. I'm also trying to learn Japanese, so maybe this is a good way for you all to add things (pages could be protected from edititing to only registered users)?

[edit]I also wouldn't mind placing a wordpress blog for this online if that seems easier then a wiki.


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## test84 (Jul 16, 2007)

i accept what moderators believe. 
1-if the want it to be as it is now
2-if they want to seperate this topic into two topics, one for lessons, one for comments/edits/ideas
3-if they prefer to move it somewhere else
4-maybe in wiki of gbatemp?

(even this post is comment and it is not about what the title is, that irritates me since people will come to see the lessons, not our comments and when they see its two pages topic, they donno there is 3 posts about lessons and rest is editory/moderating/etc.)


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## Scorpei (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 16 2007 said:


> i accept what moderators believe.
> 1-if the want it to be as it is now
> 2-if they want to seperate this topic into two topics, one for lessons, one for comments/edits/ideas
> 3-if they prefer to move it somewhere else
> ...


Hence my suggestion of my wiki or a blog for whoever is writing these items. That way the articles themselves will be separate from comments 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




. Feel free to contact me.


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## solarsaturn9 (Jul 16, 2007)

まだ上手じゃないけどがんばってね～


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## Scorpei (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(solarsaturn9 @ Jul 16 2007 said:


> ?????????????????


haha, sorry for being a pain I just want to help. My Japanese skills are very low, I simply don't have a lot of time on my hands to study but I do want to help out anyone who does things to help out others. It is quite hard to find good study materials here in Holland, especially if you want them to be in Dutch so anything helps 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




.


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## solarsaturn9 (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(Glacius0 @ Jul 16 2007 said:


> QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 15 2007 said:
> 
> 
> > ok! i'm back.
> ...




Actually, using ano ( ?? ) and eto ( ?? ) are like saying "umm" in english... you say them when you're speaking to someone only. Meaning they aren't used in writing ( especially since it isn't terribly formal ). You generally say these when you are trying to think of what to say next... it's used like "um" or "uh" in english.

Also, Gozaimasu ( ????? ) is used when someone has done something and will continue to do things for you in the future. Gozaimashita ( ?????? ) is the past tense, as you have stated, and is used when someone has done something for you and you will probably not have the pleasure of receiving favors from them again. It is normally used with strangers and with aquaintances that you will not see for a very long time / ever again.

Also, I would recommend that you DO learn hiragana and katakana as they are not hard to learn ( Just make flash cards and quiz yourself ). The really hard part about Japanese is the Kanji and the vocabulary. Grammer is easily learned in about two years in a classroom.

Good luck!

??????????


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## unr (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 16 2007 said:


> i accept what moderators believe.
> 1-if the want it to be as it is now
> 2-if they want to seperate this topic into two topics, one for lessons, one for comments/edits/ideas
> 3-if they prefer to move it somewhere else
> ...


How about keeping as it is now and linking to next lesson at the end of previous one?

E.g. Lesson 009: Kono Basu Wa Shinjuku e ikimasu.(Updated/Corrected)(Does this bus go to Shinjuku?)


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## solarsaturn9 (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(Scorpei @ Jul 16 2007 said:


> QUOTE(solarsaturn9 @ Jul 16 2007 said:
> 
> 
> > ?????????????????
> ...



No no, I was in your position not long ago. But I'm definitely willing to help a fellow student out. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.

PS learn katakana / hiragana pleeeeeeeeeeeeease! you won't regret it!


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## Glacius0 (Jul 16, 2007)

test84: Ah sorry, lesson 10 is pretty much correct. Except for hiyaku which should be hyaku. This might not seem like a big deal but it's very important you pronounce this correctly because a Japanese person will not understand you. As for the lessons...you should edit your first post of this topic and put all the lessons there. That should solve it, right?

Scorpei: Since I studied in the Netherlands, is there anything you'd like to know? I studied at Leiden University (actually I still am).


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## mthrnite (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 16 2007 said:


> i accept what moderators believe.
> 1-if the want it to be as it is now
> 2-if they want to seperate this topic into two topics, one for lessons, one for comments/edits/ideas
> 3-if they prefer to move it somewhere else
> ...



When I did something like this (Hello, Goodbye, Please, Thanks!) a while back. I used my first post to hold the content and notified by post to the topic as to when the first post had been updated. This, along with Scorpei's blog suggestion would be a good way to keep the comments coming (good or bad, you can't stop 'em) and yet have a clean primary goal. So, edit your first post to point to another page or blog or wiki (you could build a sub-page in your own "user" wiki on the GBAtemp wiki.)

Moderators do not like to prune topics for users, so don't expect that, plus it hinders the popularity of the topic since even a throwaway post by a wise-ass will bump the thread...  ..and that's a good thing.

Keep up the good work!


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## solarsaturn9 (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(warbird @ Jul 16 2007 said:


> QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 15 2007 said:
> 
> 
> > i used to learn to count at our dojo, but we said shi for 4, instead of Yon and Shichi instead of Nana, whats their difference?
> ...



Actually there is a reason that Japanese people avoid using Shi whenever they can. Shi sounds exactly like death ( also, shi ) and therefor is considered unlucky. So people tend to use yon instead. Especially when counting.


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## Scorpei (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(Glacius0 @ Jul 16 2007 said:


> Scorpei: Since I studied in the Netherlands, is there anything you'd like to know? I studied at Leiden University (actually I still am).
> 
> No nothing specific thanks
> 
> ...


Working on it 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




.


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## solarsaturn9 (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(Blebleman @ Jul 16 2007 said:


> QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 15 2007 said:
> 
> 
> > i think since "you've done it" and seems that you are from Japan, its better if you help and guide us and not try to slow us down!
> ...



Also, Anyone can do Japanese.... 

And Tokyo is overrated... especially that cosplay / harajuku crap... all those tools ever do is shop for crazy clothes and then wear them on that bridge next to Meiji shrine. What an exciting life. And Roppongi has some of the sadest excuses for clubs I have ever seen. I only got one day's worth of experience so I'm sure I haven't seen the best of Tokyo but I wasn't impressed with what I saw.

If any of you DO go to Japan, definitely go to Kyoto. The people there are among the nicest people in the world especially if you speak japanese. Even if you try, they will be sure to help you out


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## Glacius0 (Jul 16, 2007)

QUOTE(Scorpei @ Jul 16 2007 said:


> QUOTE(Glacius0 @ Jul 16 2007 said:
> 
> 
> > Scorpei: Since I studied in the Netherlands, is there anything you'd like to know? I studied at Leiden University (actually I still am).
> ...


I'm pretty sure they don't have internet courses. You could consider taking up conversation classes though, and if you are really serious about it also "Moderne Teksten" which is basically translating Japanese sentences. Assuming you're gonna study at a university you can do these things for free but you're still gonna have to come to Leiden 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 While you're still in high school I don't think it's possible though.


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## solarsaturn9 (Jul 16, 2007)

For any of those in the states close to South Carolina, Clemson University in the upstate of SC has one of the greatest Japanese Language Programs in the states. Please consider it~


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## test84 (Jul 19, 2007)

i'm feeling so bad so i didnt update here.
i read one hour japanese but i couldnt remember a word.
i'll update as i get better.


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## test84 (Jul 29, 2007)

*Lesson 011 : Ohisashiburides
(Havent seen you in a while!)
(Long time, no see!)*

*A. Aa, Satou-san, Konichiwa, Ohisashiborides.*
(oh, Hello Mr. Satsou! havent seen you in a while!)

*B.Yoku, Irashimashta.*
(welcome)

*A.Omokae, Arigato Gozaimas.*
(Thanks for coming to greet me)
----
nots:
the "san" after Satou-san is to make polite and is used after male/female/single/married/etc.

all the "O"s here are to make polite such as *O*mokue, *O*hisashiboridesu,etc.
----
anyone knows found out whats difference between Gozaismasu or Gozaimashta?
----
sorry for delayed time.
hope these are useful.


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## VmprHntrD (Jul 30, 2007)

Dude you got to keep this stuff coming...you must.  I took a year of Japanese in college, scored A's in 101 and 102 back in 2000.  Loved it, found it easy and not hard like all those crybabies have claimed it to be.  Staying out of confusing kanji land and learning the rest really isn't all that bad.

Of all the crap I kept from college which is little, I got the JP books still, even moved east with them.  Funny enough recently at a garage sale this chick gave me 2 Japanese (hiragana/katankana with kanji(hiragana over it)) books of Peter Pan and Snow White for kids.  It was a hell of a trip scanning it over.  My stuff is so shitty disuse I'm enjoying this thread... kill to have this STICKIED and updated often.  I really would love to get back into some form of practice with this stuff.  I will definitely try out that site, bookmarked even a couple at work on my PC there for if I get the itch on break and this one will get forwarded.

Doumo arigatou gozaimashita.


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## test84 (Jul 30, 2007)

i'm happy that u liked this topic my friend.
Ogenki Deska.
--
after a while, I'll make a topic so we will USE the stuff that we learn here.
like talking about very very simple stuff and each person has to talk or ask questions and following poster should answer it and go on.
but its still soon.

tomorrow, we'll have Ogenki Deska (guess what it means ...)


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## tetsuya (Jul 30, 2007)

A. Aa, Satou-san, Ko*n*nichiwa, Ohisashib*u*rides*u*


B. Yoku, Iras*s*h*a*imash*i*ta

A. _Omokae_? isnt it mukae, Arigato*u* Gozaimas*u*


San has the same meaning as Mr., Mrs., Ms, and Miss in English

Os makes it more of a japanese origin thingy

Gozaimasu or Gozaimashita the shita makes it past tense

EDIT : genki genki, omae wa


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## VmprHntrD (Jul 30, 2007)

Vol 1 and 2 in JPN 101 was this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let's_Learn_Japanese

Then Vol1 and 2 of Learn Japanese New College Text I did in JPN 102.  My professor was a Japanese native who worked out there for Tokyo TV for a great many years and relocated stateside.  She was damn good and very effective with her work...small class size helped well.  And no I'm not an otaku, cosplayers are laughable, anime cares are a minimum.  I did it out of curiousity, the ability to read the small bit of stuff I do use/come across in Japanese, and mostly for the bloody challenge which it was.

That Learn Japanese one has this insane copy of part of the book scanned legally into google books if you wish to see how that worked out, at least it has some study materials:
http://books.google.com/books?id=iMxHb7unv...121V0p8#PPP1,M1

HAHAH this is so bad...here's Ep 1 of that LLJ series, 80s cheese at its finest.
http://www.veoh.com/videos/e121738maBPK9ZB


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## test84 (Jul 30, 2007)

tetsuya said:


> A. Aa, Satou-san, Ko*n*nichiwa, Ohisashib*u*rides*u*



i used to type des*u* instead of des but i realized they pronounce it des not desu, so i started to type des instead of desu, i dye to hear your answer about it.



tetsuya said:


> B. Yoku, Iras*s*h*a*imash*i*ta


i corrected 'em.



tetsuya said:


> A. _Omokae_? isnt it mukae, Arigato*u* Gozaimas*u*



its mokua but isnt its polite version, Omokua? or you are talking about m*o*kae versus m*ou*kae?



tetsuya said:


> San has the same meaning as Mr., Mrs., Ms, and Miss in English


I added ur comment, thnx!



tetsuya said:


> Os makes it more of a japanese origin thingy


but the guy said its about making it polite. (you are talking about the O in the beginning of verbs, right?)



tetsuya said:


> Gozaimasu or Gozaimashita the shita makes it past tense


so where you use which one?



tetsuya said:


> EDIT : genki genki, omae wa


genki genki == good good?
omae == greeting thing?
wa == watashi?

---
its so nice to see someone's caring about this topic, even when its 5:21am here!


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## test84 (Jul 30, 2007)

QUOTE(Vampire Hunter D @ Jul 30 2007 said:


> Vol 1 and 2 in JPN 101 was this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let's_Learn_Japanese
> 
> Then Vol1 and 2 of Learn Japanese New College Text I did in JPN 102.Â My professor was a Japanese native who worked out there for Tokyo TV for a great many years and relocated stateside.Â She was damn good and very effective with her work...small class size helped well.Â And no I'm not an otaku, cosplayers are laughable, anime cares are a minimum.Â I did it out of curiousity, the ability to read the small bit of stuff I do use/come across in Japanese, and mostly for the bloody challenge which it was.
> 
> ...



thnx!
whats otaku?
"anime cares are a minimum"? does it mean that u didnt learn japanese for anime?
i still dont get where/how u learned japanese! my badddddddddd!
that video? gosh, i'm on bloody dial up!
i saw some pages of that book, seems kinda next-level for me! since i donno hiragana/katakana yet and i want to learn some verbal stuff first then have something to write with them.  
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





love you guys!


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## VmprHntrD (Jul 30, 2007)

I got 10pm here, and umm... may want to use this site as it could help:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html

Perhaps this as well, lots of studies:
http://www.manythings.org/japanese/

I'm lucky and have my books and dictionary still, though that first link still is quite useful on my end.  If I were you and you wanted to drop $50 I'd look into those 4 books I mentioned and order them off amazon or something.


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## test84 (Jul 30, 2007)

thnx, i cant buy from amazon, i live in Iran.
its not impossible for me tough, but i would love to finish these lessons first and not get distracted.
thnx again.


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## test84 (Jul 30, 2007)

so, guess what? you're right, its ...

*Lesson 012 : Ogenki Deska
(How are you?)*

so our Mr.Tehrani is finally meeting his friend in Airport and they are greeting.
(my bad, theses lessons are story of Mr.Tehrani which goes from my country, Iran to visit his friend Mr.Satou in Jaopan.
in previous lessons we witnesses some previous events and now they are meeting, maybe i'll add this story too to previous lessons, if anyone is intrested but i'll keep u updated for latter lessons so the theme of lessons will be more understandable and reasonable.)

*B.Ogenki Desuka*
(How are you?)

*A.Hai, Arigato Gozaimas, Genkides.*
(Yes, Thanks very much, I'm Good.)

*A.Ichi-nen buridesne.*
(its been a year since we saw each other.)

*B. Hai, Mata, Omeni Kakarate Ureshiides.*
(Yes, I'm happy/glad to see you again.)

----
notes:
1- we can ask "Ogenki deska" (which means how are you) and its answer can be "Watashimo Genkides" (i am good too).

2-
Ichi == 1
nen == year
ichi-nen == one year
buri == shows long time waiting's emotions/missing.
if you supper on "ne" (pronounce it harder and press on it) in end of Buridesne it shows your  wonderness (the "!" in metal gear solid !)

mata == again
Omeni Kakarete == being able to see you again
Ureshiidess == i am happy/glad

3-when you are asking, you should/can say "*O*genki Desuka" but when answering, you should never place big O in your answer such : Genki Desu (i'm good).
-----
would someone plz answer:
*A- what does "mo" in "watashimo" mean?*
mo means also. In watashimo it means ''me too''. (credits to tetsuya)

*B- would someone translate "Omeni Kakarate" word by word?*
omenikakarate means exactly what you wrote in the skit translation. To see someone or meet someone. (credits to tetsuya)


*C- what does Ureshii mean? (i'm not sure what i said is to be correct since she translated Ureshiides to "I'm glad" but its one word and its english is 3 words)*
again with ureshii, you already have it down. Its means happy, glad, or pleasant.  (credits to tetsuya)
---
plz if you are commenting or something, use assigned numbers to refer to any part you wanna refer and alphabets for questions to ba answerd.
TIA.


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## tetsuya (Jul 30, 2007)

A. mo means also. In watashimo it means ''me too''.
B. omenikakarate means exactly what you wrote in the skit translation. To see someone or meet someone.
C.  again with ureshii, you already have it down. Its means happy, glad, or pleasant. 
Japanese is an implied language. One word can pretty much sum up a whole sentence.


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## test84 (Jul 30, 2007)

thnx, i added ur comments and credited them to ur name.
again some questions arises:



QUOTE(tetsuya @ Jul 31 2007 said:


> B. omenikakarate means exactly what you wrote in the skit translation. To see someone or meet someone.
> 
> 
> so "Omenikakarate" is one word or its composite of Omeni && Kakarate ? if the second, would you please translate both?
> ...



the problem is in "Hai, Mata, Omeni Kakarate Ureshiides." there is no reference to the speaker's self.
so its (i think so far) "yes, happy being able see you again". where is the "I" ?

one other thing about these lessons, do i have to memorize them? or learn the words?
i kinda can tell most of them if you ask me but i didnt memorize them.


----------



## test84 (Jul 30, 2007)

would someone please answer unanswered questions in 
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=552...ndpost&p=720902 
please?


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## tetsuya (Jul 31, 2007)

O me ni kakaru (two words) O is the japanese origin thingy. me means eyes. kakarate has so many meaning, but in this case it means "able to"

The I is missing because the speaker already expect the listener to know.

Memorizing is a good idea. Learning the words is a form of memorizing.

genki genki = fine fine
omae = you
wa = a particle ( however in this case, its one of those implied thingy of the question how are you.)


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## test84 (Jul 31, 2007)

doesn O make a verb, polite too?

what does "ni" mean in Omenikakarate?

whats difference between Kakaru and Kakarate?


----------



## test84 (Jul 31, 2007)

doesn O make a verb, polite too?

what does "ni" mean in Omenikakarate?

whats difference between Kakaru and Kakarate?


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## linus (Jul 31, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 31 2007 said:


> doesn O make a verb, polite too?
> 
> what does "ni" mean in Omenikakarate?
> 
> whats difference between Kakaru and Kakarate?



hi, i just finished 1½ years of language studies in japan. that makes me in no way an expert, but i wanted to share some thoughts. however, i hate romaji, and all the romaji in this thread is making my eyes bleed so i probably won't stick around for long. my advice to all of you is to first properly learn to read at least hiragana. partly because you won't get very far using romaji, and partly because i think that knowing hiragana gives you a better understanding of how words and sentences are constructed. you need to learn to think of the spelling in syllables, not roman letters.
i did not read this entire thread, but one thought on it is that trying to teach someone something is a really good way of getting better, because you need to learn the subject better in order to be able to explain to someone who knows nothing. that being said, i'm not sure if it's a very good idea for the learner to learn from a beginner, even if it is easier than trying for yourself. if you are serious about learning you should do more than read a thread on a forum. the only thing i really did before going to japan was listen to pimsleurs sound tapes, and i found them quite good. i would listen to each chapter several times until i knew it by heart, and then move on to the next chapter when i felt confident enough. timeconsuming, yes, but i felt like i was making progress. i think i covered 16 chapters, and what i learned from them, i belive we covered in class in the first two weeks when i came to japan, still it helped a little to have studied by myself.
a forum can still be a good place to get help though.

with my little rant being done, i thought i'd answer the questions at the end of the thread:
adding o (?) at the beginning of some nouns and verbs does make it more polite, but you can't add it as you please. before some nouns you add go (?) instead of o (?), and when adding o (?) in front of a verb, you have to conjugate it for everything to be correct. however, by conjugating and adding o (?) or go (?) in front of a verb, it will become very polite, a form of speaking known as keigo (???), and apart from the occational word or phrase, this is not something that we covered in class until we had studied intensly for almost six months. i recommend just using normal verb forms for now. masu (??) form and dictionary form is sufficient, and there are a couple of other forms too that you use for different grammar patterns.

ni (?) is a particle that can have several meanings, usually indicating a direction (can not think of another meaning now). the ni (?) in ome ni kakaru (??????) (or "ome ni kakarimasu", "ome ni kakaru" being the dictionary form) would indicate the direction towards, but is not translated. ome ni kakarimasu is an expression that means meet, and it is quite a polite way of saying it. i am not a good teacher so i won't try to directly translate the phrase, but knowing what it means is enough. according to a dictionary the english translation is [see; meet; have the honor/pleasure of seeing]. the normal way of saying meet would be aimasu (????). most selfstudy material for learning japanese starts with very polite stuff, and it's not wrong to remember it, but i think just using the masu form would be easier to begin with.

in the last question i believe the spelling is a little off, i read the earlier posts and i belive it's supposed to be kakarete (????) and not kakarate.
just knowing what the phrase ome ni kakarete ureshii desu means is enough for now, but i can try to break it down. don't worry if you don't understand the following cause i'll be brief, and it covers like three grammar points.
kakaru (???) is the dictionary form
kararete (????) is the te-form of the potential form of kakaru (conjugated twice: kakaru - kakareru - kakarete)
kakareru (????) would be the potential form in normal (dictionary) form

ome ni kakarete ureshii desu (potential form) would literally mean "i'm glad to be able to meet you" (or "able to meet, glad" if you translate directly, leaving the i and you out as it is understood in japanese).
if you instead say
ome ni kakatte ureshii desu (kakatte being the te-form of the dictionary form: kakaru - kakatte) it would mean "i'm glad to meet you" (or translating directly: "glad to meet"). notice how the "be able to" is left out from the translation when not using the potential form. that's really short on potential verbs.

the last thing is the te-form, it is used in this phrase because an emotion is expressed and is a grammar pattern you use instead of dividing the sentence into two sentences, which would be weird. another exampel would be using the verb moraimasu (?????), meaning recieve:
morau (???) is the dictionary form
moratte (????) is the te-form
purezento wo moratte ureshii desu (????????????????) meaning "i am happy to recieve a present", or directly translated "recieve present, happy"

phew, this turned out a little longer than expected, not sure if anyone will benefit much from it.
i'm not sure if my explanations makes much sense if you don't know how the conjugation is done, but a good way to begin is just to learn the phrases and their meanings that you read, and worry about the conjugations later, when that step comes.

i realized when writing this post that some of you might not even be able to read japanese symbols on you computers at all. i would recommend installing japanese fonts if that is the case.


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## tetsuya (Jul 31, 2007)

Damn it. I knew it was kakarete, but was confuse with the potential form. I haven't taken a japanese lesson since high school and thats like 4 years ago.


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## JacobReaper (Aug 1, 2007)

im learning Japanese too!!! awesome..


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## test84 (Aug 3, 2007)

*Lesson 013 : Donokurai Kakarimasuka
(How long does it take?)*

cont. of story: So Mr.Tehrani(A) visited his friend Mr.Satou(B) and they are leaving airport to mr.Satou's house.

*A.Uchimadewa Donokurai Kakarimasuka.
*(how long does it take to your house?)

*B.Daitai san-ju ppun desu.*
(about 30 minutes)

*A.San-ju pun deska.*
(30 minutes?)

*Chikai desune.*
(near, eh?/isnt it?)
*
B.ee.*
(yeah)

-----------
Uchi = your home.
made = till (remember bus lesson?)
donokurai kakarimasuka = how long does it take.

Daitai = about.
san-ju ppun = 30 minutes.

deska -> made the sentence to question form.

chikai = about. note that its polite since there is des after ir.

if you press on "ne" in "chikai desune" it will have the question tag form.

"ee" is like yeah, less polite form of Yes which is "Hai".
-----
questions:
its written as donokurai but J people pronounced it donogurai, which one is true?


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## Retal (Aug 3, 2007)

There is nothing worse than teaching something incorrectly. It's very dangerous and irresponsible. I do not approve of this thread at all. Oh, and what's this?



QUOTE(test84 @ Jul 30 2007 said:


> QUOTE(tetsuya @ Jul 30 2007 said:
> 
> 
> > A. Aa, Satou-san, Ko*n*nichiwa, Ohisashib*u*rides*u*
> > i used to type des*u* instead of des but i realized they pronounce it des not desu, so i started to type des instead of desu, i dye to hear your answer about it.


I suppose by your reckoning, then, we should all start spelling _honor_ as _onor_ now that your crusade to purge silent letters has begun. Fucking pillock.


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## Glacius0 (Aug 3, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Aug 3 2007 said:


> *Lesson 013 : Donokurai Kakarimasuka
> (How long does it take?)*
> 
> cont. of story: So Mr.Tehrani(A) visited his friend Mr.Satou(B) and they are leaving airport to mr.Satou's house.
> ...


Please be careful with spelling mistakes. I don't mind helping with some of the Japanese, but don't spell every word differently  the second time you write it. At least make an effort in spelling stuff correctly or what you think is correct, because it seems you have gotten a little lazy.

Really, just read it again. You only made spelling mistakes. Most notably "daitai". The rest you should be able to find yourself.

Also, it's better to put spaces between words and particles for clarity. Example:
Uchimadewa Donokurai Kakarimasuka
Uchi made wa Dono kurai Kakarimasu ka

As for kurai/gurai. You can use both. I personally prefer gurai though and it seems to be more commonly used where I live.


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## bajibbles (Aug 3, 2007)

QUOTE(Retal @ Aug 3 2007 said:


> There is nothing worse than teaching something incorrectly. It's very dangerous and irresponsible. I do not approve of this thread at all. Oh, and what's this?
> I suppose by your reckoning, then, we should all start spelling _honor_ as _onor_ now that your crusade to purge silent letters has begun. Fucking pillock.
> 
> 
> ...


i doubt anyone in the thread cares less. for your information, while there are two types of romaji which are formally constructed, and you are emulating the character 'su' even though its pronounced as simply 's'. it's writing a language in the letters/characters of a DIFFERENT language... therefore there's nothing wrong with spelling it phonetically. It basically IS japanese represented phonetically in english characters... that's the only reason romaji exists.

P.S. there are no such thing as silent letters in japanese... you're the pillock if you're trying to use the grammatical rules of one language on another, or even compare them.


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## test84 (Aug 3, 2007)

Glacius0 said:


> Please be careful with spelling mistakes. I don't mind helping with some of the Japanese, but don't spell every word differentlyÂ the second time you write it. At least make an effort in spelling stuff correctly or what you think is correct, because it seems you have gotten a little lazy.



it was 5am in my local time and i just wanted to post a new lesson, just posting it to stay in the line of discipline.
I even didnt study Japanese yesterday but I didnt want to get it from people who are coming to this topic when I'm taking myself from it.



Glacius0 said:


> Really, just read it again. You only made spelling mistakes. Most notably "daitai". The rest you should be able to find yourself.


i corrected Daitai, but for instance, i try to stay loyal to original text for more so-called spelling mistakes. For instance in original text, they spelled one time "ppun" and another time "pun".
Since i'm not expert in Japanese, So i cant decide for myself that "ok, they are identical ...", since maybe i'm missing something and if i'm not helping here, lets not to damage anyone.
thnx for your 



Glacius0 said:


> Also, it's better to put spaces between words and particles for clarity. Example:
> Uchimadewa Donokurai Kakarimasuka
> Uchi made wa Dono kurai Kakarimasu ka


As again, i'm trying to stay loyal to original text and they typed them this way.
And I personally think that this way is better since its more easily to differentiate "words" and if you are following from start then you should not have problem telling words. One other thing is, when a word is complicated I usually ask other people about its parts to understand how the word is made up (something that is not in original text, they just say learn this and that most of times).



Glacius0 said:


> As for kurai/gurai. You can use both. I personally prefer gurai though and it seems to be more commonly used where I live.


is Kurai the written form and gurai what they really pronounce? like Island in english?




ben88 said:


> Retal said:
> 
> 
> > There is nothing worse than teaching something incorrectly. It's very dangerous and irresponsible. I do not approve of this thread at all. Oh, and what's this?
> ...



...


----------



## test84 (Aug 3, 2007)

QUOTE(Retal @ Aug 3 2007 said:


> There is nothing worse than teaching something incorrectly. It's very dangerous and irresponsible. I do not approve of this thread at all. Oh, and what's this?
> I suppose by your reckoning, then, we should all start spelling _honor_ as _onor_ now that your crusade to purge silent letters has begun. Fucking pillock.



hey, "mate"
we are here just learning "how to talk" (read pronunciations) and not how what typing is, so stop showing your "..." by comparing the "Honor and onor" and this topic, ok m8?

and * TRY * to understand that this topic a not your right and you didnt pay for it. its a privilege for you. (not offending anyone else).
and as i said in first page, if you cant help, try not to damage/harm. ok?
(refer to first page for more polite form)

gosh, i cant believe how these people react, there is no debt to be paid back or anything by me. why you are so sarcastic? is it that hard to help or atleast not to damage?

this whole thing is about learning (as the topic name implies), so try to move in that direction and i'm sure there are plenty of topics and sections for these type of sarcasm.

if your having problem understanding my post (which i predict you have), my concern is not what you said, is what made you say that.

would someone delete all these stuff please?


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## test84 (Aug 3, 2007)

Glacius0, I uploaded it, so you can see the misspelling in original text and i just followed it for the said reason.


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## OSW (Aug 3, 2007)

I'm not here to flame, but i know anonymous hates weeabos and u sound like one.

in fact anonymous waged war against someone doing a similar thingo on youtube.


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## test84 (Aug 3, 2007)

and i donno why they let this crap stay in topic.


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## test84 (Aug 3, 2007)

ok, we still have unaswered questions, but I post new lesson, whenever I get previous lesson's answers, i'll post em.
so, here we are at

*Lesson 014: Hajimemashte, Douzoyoroshiku.
(So glad to meet you/How do you do, I'm glad to make your acquaintance)
*
Story mode[!] :  So alas they reached Mr.Satou's house and they are at his door.

_Legend:__
A == _Mr. Tehrani
B == _Mr.Satou_
C == _Kento_

*B. Saa, Douzo.*
(So, come in please)

*A.Arigatogozaimasu, Ojamashimasu.*
(Thank you very much, Excuse me)

*B.Kore, Musko no Kento desu.*
(this is my son, Kento.)

*C.Hajimemashte, Kento Desu.*
(So Glad to meet you/How do you do, I am Kento.)

*A.Hajimemashte, Dozoyoroshiku.*
(How do you do, I'm glad to make your acquaintance.)

-----------
*Notes:*
A-"no" in "Musko no Kento desu" means "that".
depending on the sentence the meaning of it varies.

B- Mr.Tehrani(A) says "Ojamashimasu" When he is entering the house to mention his politeness.

C- here in the east, we have lots of these conversations that shows kindness and politeness and as I noticed they dont use these much in west.
(correct me if i'm wrong)
------------
*Questions:*
1- Do we say Hajimemashte just first time when wii meet someone? 
-----------
hope this is helpful.
----------
even if no one comes here and its visitors doesnt increase, I'll do it till the end.


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## unr (Aug 3, 2007)

This is great stuff. Even if I`m not serious about learning japanese and neither I want to invest time into it yet, I still learn a couple new words from time to time from this thread. I`m sure even such basic knowledge will come in handy later.



			
				QUOTE said:
			
		

> 1- Do we say Hajimemashte just first time when *wii* meet someone?


I think Nintendo might have left some permanent marks on you


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## test84 (Aug 4, 2007)

that was a easter egg for people who read it 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




edit: new lesson comming up in next few hours.
stay tuned!


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## PeaCe (Aug 4, 2007)

Good Luck My Friend : ) خیلی چاکرم-ایول-:دی


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## test84 (Aug 4, 2007)

so, this lesson is different from others.
every 5 or so lessons we check Japanese proverbs to study their culture and their minds.
here we are at ...
*Idioms 02 : Mizuni Nagasu.
(let the water cleans it away ...)*

This proverb is used when two guys want to forget the problems and start all over again and forget/forgive misunderstandings.

*Mizuni nagasu.*

Mizu == Water
ni == means "to" or "in"
Nagasu == washing with water or when water takes something away.

*Mizuni Nagasu.*
let water takes it away and forget the past.

What do you think? do you forget people or take grudge? I hope you Miznuni Nagasu them.
----
Questions:
1-Nagasu means "let water takes it away" and i think its like a "to" form of the verb (its raw and original form) like to-eat and to-go. But when she used it she said like let water taking it away. dont they have to change the verb in order of the sentence?
----





 !


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## Overwhelming (Aug 5, 2007)

It makes me remember another proverb (and excuse me my lousy english): "past waters don't move the mill's wheel"

That would mean that you should not worry with something that already happened, so let the water go away.


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## test84 (Aug 5, 2007)

thnx, i'll add it.
is it from your country/culture ?


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## Overwhelming (Aug 5, 2007)

I don't know if this proverb exists in other countries/cultures, but it's an old proverb here.

But what amazes me about proverbs is that there's similar pieces of wisdom in most cultures. And many times, they even use very similar alegories, although they don't have the same origin!


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## blackjack (Aug 5, 2007)

????????I & II?cover that and you can easily pass JLPT 4 & 3 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




'.


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## PeaCe (Aug 6, 2007)

QUOTE(blackjack @ Aug 5 2007 said:


> ????????I & II?cover that and you can easily pass JLPT 4 & 3
> 
> 
> 
> ...



didnt get you there.


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## PeaCe (Aug 6, 2007)

its test84 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 !  borrowing my friends account, since my account has problems, i'm keeping here up with his account.
-----------------------------
So, after that proverb lesson, here we are at ...

*Lesson 015 Gakusei deska. 
(Are you a student?)*


*Legend:*

(you know the legend is Solid snake! BTW!)


A.Mr.Tehrani
B.Kento (Mr.Satou's son)

*A.Kento-san wa Gaksai deska.*
(Mr.Kento, Are you a student?)

*B.Iie, mou gaksai ja arimasen.*
(I'm not a student anymore.)

*shikaijin des.*
(I'm a fulltime employee now.)

*A.A, Soudeska.*
(Oh, I'm sorry.)

*Sorewa shitsurei shimashita.*
(Excuse me.)
---------------------
*Notes:*
1- In Japanese conversations we dont usually use "YOU" to address the person 
we are talking to, instead we use their names, in our case, Kento-san.

2-Negative form of "desu" is "Ja Arimasen"

3- the reason behind last sentences excuse is that mr.tehrani thought it was 
unpolite for him to miscall mr.kento a student when he is more mature.

---------------------
*Questions:*
1- very unsolved problem till now is the "desu" or "des" ?
if they write "desu" and read it "des" should we write des or desu?
its strange since in all these lessons, they write desu and read it des, 

there are other examples such as writing Gakusei and reading it Gaksei.
please clear us!

2-whats difference between "mashta", "des","shimas" and when we should we use 
which one.

3-please someone translate the last sentence "Sorewa Shitsurei Shimashta" 
since i cant map ot to given translated sentence.

4- "sore" means that, so why in last sentence mr.tehrani refered to himself 
with sore? why not watashi? atleasn "kore" (which means this)?


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## PeaCe (Aug 6, 2007)

would an admin please edit the first page and address this lesson too?
appreciated!


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## tetsuya (Aug 10, 2007)

Questions:
1- very unsolved problem till now is the "desu" or "des" ?
You should write it as　desu because in japanese its です    でーde　　すーsu
you write and read it as gakusei. Its just that you will tend to hear it as gaksei.

"Sorewa Shitsurei Shimashta"

This sentence is translated in to "excuse me for that"


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## PeaCe (Aug 10, 2007)

thnx man, its so nice to see your help here.
i'm feeling so down these days, i'll post new lessons.


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## PeaCe (Aug 11, 2007)

i found this great small tutorials, check it out.
http://weblog.randomchaos.com/japanese/?show=all


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## Glacius0 (Aug 13, 2007)

QUOTE(PeaCe @ Aug 6 2007 said:


> its test84
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Sorry that I haven't been keeping up with the entire thread. My time is limited so I just decided to respond to the last lesson if that's ok, as I'm gonna be visiting my girlfriend in Korea soon (I met her in Japan, and we speak Japanese with eachother, to clear up any confusion 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




)

Correct spelling of misspelled words:

gakusei
shakai-jin (you don't need the -, but it's for clarity)

Wrong translation:

a, sou desu ka = "oh, is that so?" it's implying that you didn't know 

Notes:

2. you are correct, but there's also a second alternative: ja nai desu (example: gakusei ja nai desu)

Questions:

1. It's written as desu, and pronounced as des. That's just the way it is. Reason is that it's easier to pronounce. Note that it's the same way with masu, which is pronounced as mas (example: ikimasu).

Sounds like "ku" and "shi" in the middle of a word often become "k" and "sh". This is also for easier pronunciation. 
gakusei is pronounced as "gak-sei"
shimashita is pronounced as "shimash-ta"

2. This question is a little more complex. Basically in Japanese there's 3 (technically 4) types  of words that are treated differently. To keep it simple I'll explain two. Verbs and nouns. To make those kinds of words politely, there's two different systems.

Verbs:  (I) go = ikimasu (comes from iku + masu) (note: yuku / yukimasu = a dialect)
Nouns: (I am) a student = gakusei desu (comes from gakusei + desu)

As you can see, nouns are easy, but with verbs the original word changes. In the case of adding masu, the original non-politely written word "iku" changes to "iki" when adding "masu". Also, there's two types of verbs that are treated a little differently, but that would be going into too much detail at this point I think.

To make verbs and nouns past tense you have to change "masu" to "mashita" and "desu" to "deshita"
Verbs: (I) went = ikimashita (comes from iku + mashita)
Nouns: (I) was a student = gakusei deshita (comes from gakusei + deshita)

And finally, your question about "shimasu". This comes from suru + masu. The word means "to do". Following the rules, this should become "surimasu" BUT, that's wrong. A few (maybe 6) very common words like this one are exceptions. In this case it becomes "shimasu".

3 and 4. I think the same guy that said "a, sou desu ka" is now excusing himself for "that" mistake. Since the sentence still strikes me as weird, can you perhaps check if it shouldn't be "soredewa shitsurei shimashita" (which is a way to end a conversation)?


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## test84 (Aug 21, 2007)

i started learning Hiragana, this is a very good page at wikipedia to help us remember the alphabet:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese/Hiragana/Lesson_1
-----
for the lessons, since i forgot the first lessons, i stopped learning the new ones, but maybe i start it again tonight.


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## test84 (Aug 28, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Aug 21 2007 said:


> i started learning Hiragana, this is a very good page at wikipedia to help us remember the alphabet:
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese/Hiragana/Lesson_1
> -----
> 
> for the lessons, since i forgot the first lessons, i stopped learning the new ones, but maybe i start it again tonight.



Minasan Konnichiwa, Test84 desu!
Ogenki desuka?  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




as mentioned above, I used that URL for learning Hiragana and its very good.
Highly recommended.

the next step is learning Katakana and learning some words IN HIRAGANA!

I'm gonna use the approach I used for learning English with Japanese and thats gaming.
Gonna find a simple Japanese game, maybe a Final Fantasy or a simple one and try to progress that way.

I think the Hiragana will finish in next 2 days, I'm almost done with lessons 1 till end of 6.

there are two games that are meant for learning Kanji, one is an RPG and another is kinda same but for Kana too:
http://www.kicl.info/
http://lrnj.com/

one of them is free and another is demo. Beside these there is Kanji_Sonomama_Rakubiki_Jiten which seems to be very good but its just for Kanji, I'm gonna learn some reading first.

If you have any opinion over games for starting (GBA, DS ,NES ,GB games are preffered, no SNES since its emulator is in 0.5) to learn Kana better or any experience of thoses online games, would appreciate posting it here.


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## Jarvik7 (Aug 29, 2007)

Wow, this whole thing is riddled with errors. Please stop trying to teach people Japanese until you get a better grasp on it, you are only going to hurt people's progress. There are already plenty of sites for learning basic Japanese on the internet.


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## test84 (Aug 29, 2007)

1)what errors?
2)no one is forced to come here! so you can always go to other sites
3)no one said i'm an expert at Japanese, if you read the topic's name, it says "sharing what i'm learning", it means that i am currently learning and a student is no prone to mistakes (i still dont see any mistakes here, but to make you less .... here)


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## leetdude_007 (Aug 29, 2007)

I think I'm learning japenese, I think I'm learning japanese, I really think so.


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## Jarvik7 (Aug 29, 2007)

1) many many many spelling errors in the Japanese, as well as some incorrect translations
2) I never said I was using these, however others might try learning from your posts, which can't be a good thing
3) You are formatting these as lessons, thus trying to teach people, despite the topic title

I can appreciate the sentiment, but I can't see how these "lessons" will teach anyone. It's just error filled sentences with translations and no explanations.

The misspelling of extremely basic words like doumo or gakusei suggests that you are just typing in what you are hearing in a podcast or something. Wouldn't it be better just to share links to the podcast and have a discussion about that? I just can't see what the use of this is.

Sorry about insulting your Japanese ability, but I think you're just getting way ahead of yourself.


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## test84 (Aug 29, 2007)

QUOTE(Jarvik7 @ Aug 29 2007 said:


> 1) many many many spelling errors in the Japanese, as well as some incorrect translations
> 2) I never said I was using these, however others might try learning from your posts, which can't be a good thing
> 3) You are formatting these as lessons, thus trying to teach people, despite the topic title
> 
> ...



1)my main source is NHK's official lessons and even if there is still errors, people will notice it and i'll correct it, as you can see if you browse previous pages there are several corrections.

2) there are plenty of hits for this topic and it means people are using it and if they think these are not helpful they'll stop using.

3)these lessons are meant to be an introduction to Japanese speaking, as said in first post of topic, not teaching grammer, kanji, etc. 
you take these too seriously, this is not JLPT1.

its obvious that you havent read even the first topic since if you've read just the first topic you would see that i stated the source of lessons.
i even emailed them and told them that i'm using their lessons here.

if you have anything else about this topic, pm me, dont post your helpful comments here, you are not allowed to post here your opinions. (see the topic name)


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## PingPongPang (Sep 6, 2007)

がんばって　テストさん

Don't let that one spoiled egg in a dozen or more ruin　what you are trying to do. Helping others learn another language, that's a plus. 

何年間を勉強しましたかった？


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## test84 (Sep 6, 2007)

thnx man for cheering up but my current concern is not that egg, 
1)i've heard lots of bad things around Japan and i'm currently realizing/re-evaluating the situation here. 

you can follow the conversations at my other topic which is in my sig (questions about living in Japan).

I'm thinking if all these really does mean that much to me or not.
i dont want to discuss that matter here since this topic is for Learning Japanese, but wanted to tell that i didnt just forget about this topic and all.

i'm thinking and waiting for some peace to come (which i know will not).

2)have lots of lots of lots of stress and shit at home and cant concentrate and i cant even remember last lessons, hope after one week that next semester starts, it will get better since i'll be away from home atleast some days.

one funny thing!
i was watching TOkyo DRinft again (and again, and again ...) just to get into the FEEL of JAPAN and in some point, a old woman says Ohayogozaimasu! to the protagonist and i was like WOW ! I GOT THAT WORD ! HEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeya!
and when the teacher was talkin to protagonist and it meant to be so hard, i could tell when she is asking stuff and not ! (better than nothin'!).

pray for me.

edit: we have 2,405 visitors till now! hooooooooray! 
we are currently second in the first page of General Off-Topic chat 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 (that free usenet account beat us! but they will go down after some day 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 )

edit: lesson #15 will come 2nite.


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## Jarvik7 (Sep 9, 2007)

QUOTE(PingPongPang @ Sep 6 2007 said:


> ???????????
> 
> Don't let that one spoiled egg in a dozen or more ruin?what you are trying to do. Helping others learn another language, that's a plus.
> 
> ??????????????



Teaching people incorrect Japanese isn't helping them, which was my whole point.

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


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## Osaka (Sep 10, 2007)

its DOMO. the O will always make the "oh" sound. it doesnt change. a good thing to remember with japanese is that its always read how it looks and the sounds usually dont change (things like TA do sound differant depending on if they are in the beginning or the in the middle, but the rule always stays the same.)

A: is like "ah"
I: is like "ee"
U: is like... I dont know of an example XD
E: is like saying the letter "A"
O: is like saying "oh"



Oh well, im sure no one cares ToT; im kinda late anyways...


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## Jarvik7 (Sep 10, 2007)

大阪：誰かがもうそれを言った
彼は「どうも」ぐらいしらないのに日本語を教えてる！信じられない！


Oh, and test is watching Tokyo Drift to get a feel of Japan? ahahahaha


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## BrianTokyo (Oct 26, 2007)

Lol @ feel of japan with tokyo drift; that doesn't have much to do with japan


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## test84 (Oct 26, 2007)

it gives me the sense.


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## OSW (Oct 26, 2007)

rofl, that movie was funny.


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## BrianTokyo (Oct 26, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Oct 26 2007 said:


> it gives me the sense.



try j-dramas


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## Linkiboy (Oct 26, 2007)

I'm probably never going to Japan but I am still learning it. And I'm having fun.

Nothing is hard if you do it right. Except physics.


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## Glacius0 (Oct 26, 2007)

QUOTE(Jarvik7 @ Sep 9 2007 said:


> QUOTE(PingPongPang @ Sep 6 2007 said:
> 
> 
> > ???????????
> ...


Do you feel offended by this somehow? Sure he's making some mistakes but I think you're overreacting when you say it's a bad thing. The best way to learn a language is to use it. Being scared of making mistakes and not using the language because of that is about the worst thing you can do. 

By the way, you messed up your particles, buddy. It's ?, not ?. Maybe you should stop using Japanese in this thread because someone might try to learn something from it 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





I hope this thread doesn't die out, because learning Japanese can be a lot of fun. Keep it up, guys!


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## test84 (Oct 27, 2007)

thnx man!
i stopped learning cuz of my Masters exam in 3 months but watching BLEACH kinda helped in some little ways!

maybe I should start a thread and start talking japanese there with whatever you can but english, Romaji/Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji is allowed but english, 
how is that?


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## Glacius0 (Oct 27, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Oct 27 2007 said:


> thnx man!
> i stopped learning cuz of my Masters exam in 3 months but watching BLEACH kinda helped in some little ways!
> 
> maybe I should start a thread and start talking japanese there with whatever you can but english, Romaji/Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji is allowed but english,
> how is that?


Sounds like a fun way to learn. Why not give it a try? Although you might just want to start it in this topic, since else this one will just die out. Better to have all the Japanese-related stuff in one thread, right?


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## test84 (Oct 28, 2007)

right but i have plans to keep this going! (i know its been gathering dust for a while, but i will finish it up to the last, as said in first post!)


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## KizunaIatari (Oct 28, 2007)

I'm trying my best to teach myself japanese but its making my head spin... 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 I try my best though...


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## Ace Gunman (Oct 28, 2007)

~Learning Japanese, I think I'm learning Japanese, I really think so!~ I admire anyone who takes it upon themselves to learn an Asian language. Sure most people end up giving up due to the level of difficulty, but it's still a noble pursuit. Nothing wrong with trying to better yourself. The reading/writing seems to be the most difficult, so many symbols/character, ugh. The speaking part seems relatively straight forward however. Good luck to all of you who attempt this.


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## BrianTokyo (Oct 28, 2007)

You just need good motivation to learn:


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## tetsuya (Oct 28, 2007)

Got plenty of those kind of motivation, but only picking up iiya, kimochi, iku!... haha


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## Eyedunno (Nov 4, 2007)

QUOTE(Jarvik7 @ Sep 10 2007 said:


> ????????????????????????????


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


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## test84 (Nov 4, 2007)

て == donno
の == n?
も == donno
お == 'a' (its a sound)
か == ka
し == shi
い。 == its ee but with that circle, is it tii?

would someone talk a little about Kanji? what are they and why there are there? and talk about kanjis in last post too?


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## BrianTokyo (Nov 4, 2007)

私輪日本語話ますか


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## BrianTokyo (Nov 4, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Nov 4 2007 said:


> ? == donno
> ? == n?
> ? == donno
> ? == 'a' (its a sound)
> ...



? == te
? == no
? == mo
? == o
? == ka
? == shi
?? == i.

?= .


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## Linkiboy (Nov 4, 2007)

Is there a Vista alternative to MS' Global IME for Japanese?


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## test84 (Nov 4, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Nov 4 2007 said:


> would someone talk a little about Kanji? what are they and why there are there? and talk about kanjis in last post too?



lets start this way,
why they dont just write their words in Hiragana/Katakana ? isnt it their alphabet like other languages (beside of course, chineese) ?
and still they are not words, some of them are sounds still, and some work like expansion when they get beside other Kanjis, like numbers or floor, ceiling.

and you all ppl USING kanjis here, how did u learn it?

EDIT:
can u read this plz?


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## BoneMonkey (Nov 5, 2007)

domo arigoto mr roboto !


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## test84 (Nov 5, 2007)

no, seriously, what does the say?


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## Eyedunno (Nov 5, 2007)

QUOTE(BrianTokyo @ Nov 4 2007 said:


> ?????????


?????????????????????????… 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




Okay, I'll participate semi-seriously.  Kanji (hanzi in Chinese) are some several dozen thousand characters borrowed from Chinese for use in Japanese writing.  Maybe 3000 or so of them see reasonably common use, though n00bs will tell you that number is 1,945, cuz that's the number the government has officially established for use in public schools, in government publications, and in major newspapers (with exceptions all over the place, however).

They exist because Japanese got writing from the Chinese, and the kana are just simplified/abbreviated forms of the kanji (? is cursive ?, ? is abbreviated ?, etc.).

They continue to be used today for a few reasons:
1) Japanese doesn't use spaces, so kanji, which represent meaning, make things easier to sort out.
2) They've been used for so long they've become part of the Japanese cultural identity, and besides, they're damned interesting.
3) There are a lot of words that are pronounced exactly the same, and even more where the accents are different, but the kana would be exactly the same, and kanji make those words very easy to deal with in writing, and also allow you to summarize in a few characters what would take a long sentence to say and be understood (useful for signs, newspaper headlines, and a lot of other stuff).
4) Conservative politicians have encouraged a trend toward increasing the number of kanji for common use.

As for kanji being words/sounds/pictures/symbols, well, all of these are kind of the wrong way to think of them.  The oldest kanji were pictures or symbols representing ideas.  But these became simplified to where most of them don't look like the thing they represent.  And today (and heck, for the last couple thousand years), MOST kanji are in a category where part of the character is the basic category of meaning and another part of it stands for the pronunciation.  I like to use ? (prefecture, specifically Kyoto/Osaka), ? (like a seal or a symbol, originally one made out of wood or bamboo, but now means all kinds of seals and symbols), ? (rotting), and ? (attaching) to illustrate this.  All are pronounced ? (fu) in the Chinese derived pronunciation (Japanese pronunciations include "tsuku" and "kusaru") and ? shows the pronunciation.  ? has "bamboo" as part of it, ? has "meat" as part of it, etc.  So there's a logic to memorizing many kanji, but that doesn't mean it's easy, because you have to learn the logic, and there are tons of weird exceptions.

How did I learn kanji?  By studying hard.  And anyone who tells you there's another way to do it is full of it, period.

As for what Jarvik7 and I said, well, he said that "Shimashitakatta" is wrong and it should be shimashitaka. Personally, I was confused, and wasn't sure if that person wanted to say "benkyou shimashitaka" (did you study? - polite) or "benkyou shitakatta?" (with the question mark there, did you want to study? - politeness needs a suffix, like maybe "no desu ka").

Anyway, I replied that "nannenkan wo" (????) is also strange, because it makes "nannenkan" (how many years) the object, in other words, "how many years" is the thing being studied, which doesn't make any sense.

Finally, that kanji.  I can't see all of it, so I'm not sure.  It might be ?(ho/tamotsu, preservation), but I doubt it.  It could also be an incorrect ? (kei, promise/contract) or ? (also kei, but a very rare kanji that means carving characters with a blade, which would be ironic, yet retarded as a tattoo).  It might not even be a real kanji, however.  Kanji tattoos are a very bad idea, as, outside East Asia, few people in tattoo parlors know what the heck they're doing (and in East Asia, it would just be like tattooing letters on your skin!).  I even saw a U.S. tattoo show where they had a Japanese guy in the shop to help with kanji tattoos, and HE messed up a girl's tattoo!  It was due to poor English.  She wanted "peace of mind," and he gave her ?? meaning "peace," but as in no war (and it's ?? in Chinese, so Chinese people will think she got it backwards, haha).  ?? would have been the proper kanji, but still a lame tattoo.

Okay, way more info than you need, and it took me forever to type this, so I'm out.


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## webyugioh (Nov 25, 2007)

QUOTE(Eyedunno @ Nov 5 2007 said:


> Â Kanji tattoos are a very bad idea, as, outside East Asia, few people in tattoo parlors know what the heck they're doing (and in East Asia, it would just be like tattooing letters on your skin!).Â I even saw a U.S. tattoo show where they had a Japanese guy in the shop to help with kanji tattoos, and HE messed up a girl's tattoo!Â It was due to poor English.Â She wanted "peace of mind," and he gave her ?? meaning "peace," but as in no war (and it's ?? in Chinese, so Chinese people will think she got it backwards, haha).Â ?? would have been the proper kanji, but still a lame tattoo.



Both Japanese Kanji AND Chinese Hanzi get misused very often. 

Check out Hanzi Smatterthis site for a bunch of examples of what i am talking about.

http://www.hanzismatter.com/


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## test84 (Nov 25, 2007)

thnx for ur info.
since ur a teacher, i was expecting more! *got greedy*


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## iffy525 (Nov 25, 2007)

QUOTE(Linkiboy @ Nov 4 2007 said:


> Is there a Vista alternative to MS' Global IME for Japanese?


hm. im not quite sure what you are talking about but for japanese i use japanese and microsoft IME
control panel -> control panel home -> change keyboards or other input methods -> keyboards and languages -> change keyboards -> general -> add -> and then  i selected japanese, and the under keyboards, i selected japanese, and microsoft IME
dont know if thats what you mean


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## kazuki_pl (Dec 6, 2007)

it's useless to learn japanese without learning kana (hiragana/katakana) and kanji...

i hope everyone got japanese fonts! cause here we go with numbers...

??/?? - (rei/zero) - zero, there are two ways for zero... one is "rei" and sceong one is just "zero", first you write in hiragana(there is also a kanji fo it) and secong on you write in katakana ( cause it's borrowed from english)
? - (ichi) - one
? - (ni) - two
? - (san) - three
? - (yon/shi) - four ( japanese ppl don't like numer "4", cause "shi" means also "death")
? - (go) - five
? - (roku) - six
? - (nana/shichi) - seven
? - (hachi) - eight
? - (kyu~) - nine (there is long "u", so you read it "kyuu")
? - (ju~) - ten ( here is also a long "u" so you read it "juu")

ok now higher numbers...

to say in japanese, for example 24 you say "???”(nijuuyon), the first one is "ni" that indicates how many "juu" we have... and at the end is "yon"

???(kyuujuuroku) - 96
???(nanajuuichi) -71

and so... hope you all understand... :b

now other "kanji's" for numbers :b

? - (hyaku) - 100
? - (sen) - 1,000
? - (man) - 10,000

the method of creating higher numbers is the same as before

?????(nihyaku/sanjuu/go) 235 (first you say how many of hundreds, next how many tens)

???????(yonsen/gohyaku/nijuu/ichi) 4521

????????(hachiman/nisen/*sanbyaku*/juu/go)82315 - as you se there are some irrlegularities...

#note1 - don't write like this : ??(juuhyaku), ??(juusen) IT'S WRONG!

the exception is ????????(juuman,hyakuman,senman)

CHEERS!!

PS. I HOPE EVERYONE UNDERSTAND MY ENGLISH ^^

EDIT: and so... i didn;t read the entire topic (just first page) and now im lookin' as na idiot... oh well :b


Edit: Posts edited together, duplicate deleted. Don't double post. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 - Ace


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## test84 (Dec 6, 2007)

thank you for your help.


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## kazuki_pl (Dec 6, 2007)

no problem, i can write something more about japanese gramatic


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## superkris (Dec 6, 2007)

QUOTE(kazuki_pl @ Dec 6 2007 said:


> ? - (yon/shi) - four ( japanese ppl don't like numer "4", cause "shi" means also "death")



Just out of curiosity...

Does this affect some aspect of the life in Japan?

Ex. Here some building don't have a 13th floor (they actually do but they don't show it, it goes from the 12th to the 14th floor)


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## Linkiboy (Dec 6, 2007)

QUOTE(iffy525 @ Nov 25 2007 said:


> QUOTE(Linkiboy @ Nov 4 2007 said:
> 
> 
> > Is there a Vista alternative to MS' Global IME for Japanese?
> ...


Yeah, I already found out it was preinstalled on Vista.


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## test84 (Dec 6, 2007)

QUOTE(kazuki_pl @ Dec 6 2007 said:


> and so... i didn;t read the entire topic (just first page) and now im lookin' as na idiot... oh well :b



Kazuki-san, what we need the most is info/tutorial on Kanjis and grammers.
you could also use sentences from older lessons and parse them for your examples when you talk about grammers.

and about Kanjis, It would be nice if we start a thread about Teaching them, like talk about 10 kanjis per post and give as much as info possible in order to make them remembered easily.

and since you havent read the whole topic, i was going to make a topic in order just to talk in Japanese, that wouldnt be important that you type Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji or Romaji, the important part was to talk japanese and no english, no exception, i think you would/could help in that topic too.
(mainly in order to USE the stuff we learn here since i believe thats the only way in learning a language, as i did for english)

EDIT:
I updated the first post and linked your lesson about Kanjis.


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## kazuki_pl (Dec 6, 2007)

sure! im positive! but the topic should be "Sticky"!!!

so it won't lost in others!

ohhhh

contact [email protected]

username#okami_irc


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## moshii (Dec 18, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Dec 6 2007 said:


> Kazuki-san, what we need the most is info/tutorial on Kanjis and grammers.
> you could also use sentences from older lessons and parse them for your examples when you talk about grammers.
> 
> Maybe you could buy a Japanese grammar? For English speakers Oxfords Japanese verbs and Grammar is pretty good..
> ...



If you want to talk in Japanese opposed to just looking like a gaijin using ???????, then you'll probably have to spend a couple months in Japan or something. The stuff you'll learn from sites etc is far to strict and bookish.


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## test84 (Dec 18, 2007)

thnx mooshi but where i live, we cant buy stuff off internet.

would you explain why there is Kanji? isnt it possible with Kana to express all ideas? like english? since Kanjis are also words, sounds, verbs, etc ! 

i'm so lost.


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## test84 (Dec 22, 2007)

*015 Gakuseidesuka
(Are you a student?)*

*A. Kento-san wa gaksei desuka.*
(Mr. Kento, Are you a student?)

*B. Iie, mou, gakusei ja arimasen, Sakaijin desu.*
(No, I'm not a student anymore, I'm a full time employee)

*A. A, Soudesuka.*
(Oh, So its like this)

*A. Sorewa Shitsurei shimashta.*
(Please excuse me/ Please forgive me)

_Notes:_
1- We usually say the persons name and dont usually use "You" in conversations.
2- Negative form of "Desu" is "Ja Arimasen"
3 - "Wa" in first sentence shows that Kento-san is subject of sentence.
4- "Mou" means "no longer"
5- "Shakaikin" is a special word and Japanese love it and it means that the person is a helpful member of the society.


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## test84 (Dec 22, 2007)

*016 Oshiireno nakani armimasu
(Its in the closet)*

*B. Saa, douzo.*
(so, welcome(implicitly means "get inside") )

*A. Waa, Tatamino heya desune.*
(Wow, this room is tiled with tatami, isnt it?)

*B. Futon wa, Oshiireno nakani arimasu.*
(the blanket is in the closet)

*A. Arigato Gozaimasu.*
(Thank you alot)

_Notes:_
1- "no" in second sentence makes tatami a property for the room's floor.
2- Desu as we had in pervious lessons, is question tag form.
3- "ni" in 3rd sentence used to show that something is somewhere.
4- "wa" as we had in las lesson shows the subject of sentence.

_New Words:_
Heya = Room
Oshiire = Closet
Futon ~= Bed (its not bed, its blanket and pillow that most Asians use to sleep, instead of bed and dont express the "u" too much)
Imasu = "IS" for live people/animals.
Arimasu = same as above but for non-living stuff(, such as a Wii or DS  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 !)


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## DarkAura (Dec 22, 2007)

Damn, how'd I miss this topic?  I'm taking japanese at school, maybe I can help?


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## test84 (Dec 23, 2007)

QUOTE(dark_aura @ Dec 23 2007 said:


> Damn, how'd I miss this topic?Â I'm taking japanese at school, maybe I can help?



Sure, you could answer some still-not-answered or i-'m-not-satisfied-with-that-answer ones, correct lessons OR TELL ME WHY THEY USE KANJI WHEN THEY CAN USE KANA TO EXPRESS ALL WORDS LIKE ANY OTHER SANE PEOPLE ! phew.


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## Cermage (Dec 23, 2007)

With number 15 you missed a space i believe. 

Gakusei Desuka? 

anyway, i could probably get by in japan with what i know but when i comes to reading hira/kana my brain explodes. I can help out with the romaji but thats it. i should get back to reading my Genki I book, i gave up because its and ebook and reading from the monitor burns my eyes.


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## test84 (Dec 23, 2007)

QUOTE(Incomplete @ Dec 23 2007 said:


> With number 15 you missed a space i believe.
> 
> Gakusei Desuka?
> 
> anyway, i could probably get by in japan with what i know but when i comes to reading hira/kana my brain explodes. I can help out with the romaji but thats it. i should get back to reading my Genki I book, i gave up because its and ebook and reading from the monitor burns my eyes.



Thanks, I didnt understand much of your post but using an LCD monitor really helped me for reading ebooks, still I prefer printed formats.

oncoming lesson 017!


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## DarkAura (Dec 23, 2007)

Hiragana is not that hard to read, it's just that why the hell are there so many characters?  There's over 100 in hiragana alone, and there is still katakana.  It's so much too remember.


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## BrianTokyo (Dec 24, 2007)

Hiragana is very quick to learn.. but somehow I keep forgetting katakana


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## test84 (Dec 24, 2007)

Would please someone answer my question over Kanji?

Why there are Kanji when you can have all words expressed through Kana?
like you can treat Japanese like English and use Kana as alphabet alone, so why bother using special characters for special names/objects/etc?


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## kikuchiyo (Dec 25, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Dec 24 2007 said:


> Would please someone answer my question over Kanji?
> 
> Why there are Kanji when you can have all words expressed through Kana?
> like you can treat Japanese like English and use Kana as alphabet alone, so why bother using special characters for special names/objects/etc?



Because A) kanji break up sentences.  There are no spaces in standard written Japanese.  You can see how a setence works by the kanji.  All the grammatical information is in the kana sections.  It's extremely difficult to smoothly read a sentence totally in hiragana.  Someone competent with kanji can easily glance at the first sentence and understand it, while reading the second would be trying to read English totally phonetically (i.e., George W. Bush style).

????????vs ?????????????(which is still a weird sentence - far more kansai like to use ?).

B) It promotes literacy.  Japan has an extremely high literacy rate and part of that is because kanji with a syllabic alphabet is a good, logical writing system, even if it doesn't seem like it.

C) Because the range of sounds in Japanese are less than in other languages, there are many (many) many homophones.  Kanji can help you decided whether one is talking about a turtle or a vase?or the te-form of to say and to go,  ????vs ????for example.



As for katakana, the key is using it.  Not just typing it but writing it.  Even I sometimes have to think a second before writing kana as I don't nearly use them as much as hiragana or the kanji I know (which sadly is far less than I should).


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## kikuchiyo (Dec 25, 2007)

QUOTE(Incomplete @ Dec 23 2007 said:


> With number 15 you missed a space i believe.
> 
> Gakusei Desuka?
> 
> anyway, i could probably get by in japan with what i know but when i comes to reading hira/kana my brain explodes. I can help out with the romaji but thats it. i should get back to reading my Genki I book, i gave up because its and ebook and reading from the monitor burns my eyes.



1. There are no spaces in Japanese.  
2. Genki is an excellent textbook.  They were my intro books.  At $20 or so a pop, it's worth getting 1 and 2.  Though I would point out the philosophy behind those books is that you can never learn Japanese well using romaji. 
3. After being a jerk at my college, ????? sounds suspiciously like a pick up line


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## GH0ST (Dec 28, 2007)

Thanks ! Very nice thread it remembers me how deep we dive in culture  when looking for a translation. _I'm the catcher in the rice_ ;-)


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## vincom2 (Dec 28, 2007)

QUOTE(test84 @ Dec 24 2007 said:


> Would please someone answer my question over Kanji?
> 
> Why there are Kanji when you can have all words expressed through Kana?
> like you can treat Japanese like English and use Kana as alphabet alone, so why bother using special characters for special names/objects/etc?


Historical legacy and inertia. There's nothing really magical about kanji (unless you consider ridiculously high levels of unnecessary difficulty magical)

There's this very important principle to remember when arguing about writing japanese phonetically:
_If something can be understood spoken aloud, it can be disambiguated when written phonetically._

I never forget hiragana, but there are moments, when I'm presented with a katakana or face the prospect of having to write one, where it takes me seconds of consideration before I can recognise / recall said katakana.

p.s. I realise that what I have just espoused above does not seem to be the most popular of viewpoints, but if you're questioning the existence of kanji in the japanese writing system, I would recommend you visit http://pinyin.info/ Very interesting (imo) reads they have there.

p.p.s. In no way am I advocating your not learning kanji. If you wish to learn japanese, currently at least, knowledge of kanji is essential. Learn it; just don't get caught up in the belief that it's a blessing or the greatest thing since sliced bread.


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## test84 (Dec 28, 2007)

thnx vincom2 for your answer, but whenever I start to learn it, I found lots of info just for one of them, different readings, different meanings, different meanings in compunds, etc.

There is so much data just for "one" of the Kanjis.

And since I dont know much Japanese words, Do you suggest learning Kanjis first or learn Japanese common words in Kana/Romaji?


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## kikuchiyo (Dec 29, 2007)

QUOTE(vincom2 @ Dec 28 2007 said:


> QUOTE(test84 @ Dec 24 2007 said:
> 
> 
> > Would please someone answer my question over Kanji?
> ...



I disagree strongly.  

Japanese does not parse well without using kanji.  There are too many homophones.  And visually it's much easier to understand a sentence when the kanji breaks it up - for someone who KNOWS the kanji they present a lot of information quickly.  Not using kanji would require a lot of changes to written Japanese that frankly has no point.  Finally, kanji contributes to the richness of the language.  Having read many Japanese stories and novels, there are interesting ways authors use kanji to make their writing beautiful.

Anyone with more than a basic knowledge of Japanese can see this easily.

During the Meiji era there was talk of either moving to kana or even romaji as the standard writing system.  It doesn't make sense to move to something else.  Spoken Japanese has evolved with kanji.  Secondly, if you have ever read Japanese poetry, or the history behind it, especially waka, there are complete poems that when read can have totally different meanings based on what kanji they were written with (sometimes authors would exploit this so poems in kana would carry totally different meanings).

Secondly, if you know the kanji, it is easy to understand a word, even if you can't read it.  ?? is a great example.  If you know the two kanji that make up that word, it is easy to understand what it means.  There are much more complex examples (??? is one I read about).

If every single child in this country can learn kanji (no -S, Japanese has no plurals, except in specific cases) and if Japan has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, then there is something that makes sense with with this system.  Heisig says that Japanese as is with kana and kanji, is the only logical part of the language [EDIT: Written Japanese is the only part of Japanese that makes logical sense, that is].

People who say there should be no kanji should be advocating all latin based words should be taken out of English.  Of course they don't because it doesn't make sense and the fallacy of that argument is apparent when you view it through that prism.


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## vincom2 (Dec 30, 2007)

Korean and vietnamese seem to have done it very well.
There's no reason for kanji to be processed especially fast. Afaik they're very much processed like more phonetic scripts: common ones without much recourse to phonetic information, the rarer words with far heavier utilisation. The difference, of course, is that even in such a badly phonetic script as the english one, phonetic information is far easier to reference than in kanji. In reading chinese, it's like using a millenniums-out-of-date, ultra-large syllabary, and the same information can come in handy somewhat when reading kanji in onyomi. But kun'yomi? Absolutely no recourse to the phonetic component of a character is possible, which does nothing to make the script easier on the users! And you can't reasonably say that a person, upon being confronted with, say, ?, would exclaim, "Gosh! That looks so much like a river!" Sure, after the word's been explained, all the "hey it looks like running water" will come out, but it's just one of those things that seems obvious after someone's explained it and really wouldn't have been had it not been explained.
Interesting ways? Like using arbitrary kanji and annotating with furigana so the poor reader can figure out what's going on? Interesting, maybe, but torturous. It's not worth keeping kanji just so authors can do this.

Like I said already, if something can be said, it can be understood. Even homonyms can generally be disambiguated by context. Most people would, I believe, interpret _Tanaka-san ha kontesuto ni seikôsita_ as "Mr Tanaka succeeded in the contest", not "Mr Tanaka had sex in the contest".

Is this an aspersion on my level of japanese? If you read original-language japanese novels for entertainment, there's no doubt your japanese is better than mine, but that in no way disqualifies me from making observations about the unnecessary difficulty of kanji I think.

Nobody's suggesting anything like "burn the waka". The full corpus will still be there, available for all who wish to read it. I don't see many people nowadays bemoaning the loss of commonplace latin education in schools, or the lack of old english classes. I don't see texts in those languages being destroyed either; they're available for any who wish to peruse them. It's not even as though a person competent in ????? will find it easy to understand waka without special training.

I wouldn't call ?? a good example. ?? Cheap? Safe? Calm? Peace? Or something totally off like ??? How about things like ateji? And you can't be telling me things like ?? or ?? make a lot of sense just from the kanji put together? I'm sure lots of examples can be found both for compounds that are the sum total of their parts and those that aren't.

Japan's literacy rate? Sure. Let's see now... http://whatjapanthinks.com/2007/07/19/kanj...ren-and-adults/
Not many of them have much faith in their own literacy in kanji, huh?
When you speak of the "extremely high literacy rate", I assume you mean the commonly quoted 99% figure?


			
				QUOTE said:
			
		

> Complete illiteracy among Japanese is extremely low, but the number of people who possess full literacy is also extremely low, only 6.2%. (p. 426.)
> 
> Questions requiring the writing of kanzi from dictation produced the poorest results, and in all groups tested produced significantly lower scores when compared with other problems. It can be said that the burden of written language for the Japanese depends largely on this skill (p. 426.)
> 
> The hypothesis, advanced by those who have studied problems of the national language and script, that "the literacy of today's Japanese is inadequate for conducting a full social life", was confirmed.... In particular, the ability to write kanzi from dictation was remarkably low, and clearly inadequate for a full social life. (p . 425.)


I believe that's from the same survey that gives the oft-quoted 99% figure. The US supposedly has a 99% literacy rate too. Dare you say the figure is anywhere near reliable for drawing conclusions, or that english orthography is a great system?

Of course it doesn't make sense! I'm not advocating the removal of sinitic words from japanese. Your analogy is false.

tl;dr
I disagree strongly.

This is going offtopic anyway. Maybe we should just let it rest here and resign ourselves to the fact that I'll have my view and you'll have yours?


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## kikuchiyo (Dec 30, 2007)

QUOTE(vincom2 @ Dec 30 2007 said:


> This is going offtopic anyway. Maybe we should just let it rest here and resign ourselves to the fact that I'll have my view and you'll have yours?



'spose so


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## test84 (Jan 12, 2008)

I probably will not post new lessons duo to the fact that whenever I listen to lessons and listen again and again, They are not so clear, I have prepared two lessons for this topic but I still dont know some of the sentences since they dont talk about it and just ignore it and that doesnt satisfy me. 

for example take a look at this line:

"Yorosiku onegai simasu", she just tells the meaning of whole sentence, not talking about its grammer or even one by one translations (she does for some but it seems that she doesnt for more advanced sentences) and I dont want to just memorize them, that will lead us nowhere.

or another example:

"Demo Asawa kotoriga nigayaka desuya".

I will try these two lessons again but if they dont demystify, I'll start something else.


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## kikuchiyo (Jan 20, 2008)

There's no good translation for よろしくお願いします or よろしくお願いいたします.

It's like please, or please treat me well and is used in a variety of situations.  I used it when meeting someone new, when getting off the phone with my 課長, or after having asked someone to do something.  

I read somewhere, way back in the day, that this one phrase is the best way to weasel your way into people's good graces.

I don't know what you mean by the second one.  Are you sure the romaji's the same as the site?


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## test84 (Jan 25, 2008)

you can check them out if you want (tell me so I can provide link for u), its not good enough for my needs, I dont want to memorize some sentences and she will not talk about grammer or anything as I predicate (since lessons are too short and there is no such thing even promised).

In this week I learned Hiragana with help of Wikibooks which provided great mnemonics for them but I have problems with abour 5,6 of them but thats ok.

And then continuing with Genki book which suits my needs better.
I'll try to find some kind of usage over this topic and continue adding stuff but I have to think about that.

and last but not least, Sumimasen kikuchiyo for delay on your response, Thats because I get online only once a week.


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## test84 (Feb 8, 2008)

there is this question about Kanjis that makes my brain buzy for some time.

As I understood, each Kanji represents one word or a combination of words and each kanji represents some meanings, the questions is, when on some boxshots there is a difficult kanji, they help the reader by posting Kana tha shows its reading, thats ok and that shows the reading BUT the question is how you should know which meaning of that Kanji is intended? like if you know which meaning is intended, you should already know how to read that Kanji, right? (sorry for grammer errors, i cant do it anymore)


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## Blebleman (Feb 8, 2008)

QUOTE(test84 @ Feb 8 2008 said:


> there is this question about Kanjis that makes my brain buzy for some time.
> 
> As I understood, each Kanji represents one word or a combination of words and each kanji represents some meanings, the questions is, when on some boxshots there is a difficult kanji, they help the reader by posting Kana tha shows its reading, thats ok and that shows the reading BUT the question is how you should know which meaning of that Kanji is intended? like if you know which meaning is intended, you should already know how to read that Kanji, right? (sorry for grammer errors, i cant do it anymore)



There is rarely multiple *meanings* per kanji. Kanji is what lets you differenciate multiple words with the same sound.
?(hana - flower)
?(hana - nose)

So orally, if someone gives you a bouquet of "hana", you have to guess, but if it's in writing, you spot that little "flower" kanji and it makes it all clear. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




The hard part is not as much the reading as it is differentiating between when to use the on/kun readings of a kanji. Especially in names. Most of the time, it's pretty much a "when it sounds weird, it's wrong" thing. But when you're foreign, that rule takes time to get used to.

But there's so much to say about kanji that makes it both easy and hard to learn. Learning the first 100 is probably the hardest.
After that, they start making composite kanji. I love those.
?(ki - tree) (this is one of the first 100)
?(hayashi - grove)
?(mori - forest)
Get it? More trees = more trees!
So sometimes, you can understand a kanji without even knowing how it is read!

That kind of stuff. I love grinding those weird-ass kanji games no one comments about


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## test84 (Feb 8, 2008)

wow, that was fast, thnx!


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## test84 (Feb 9, 2008)

QUOTE(Blebleman @ Feb 8 2008 said:


> QUOTE(test84 @ Feb 8 2008 said:
> 
> 
> > there is this question about Kanjis that makes my brain buzy for some time.
> ...



that was really good stuff! thnx!!!!!

but still I dont get it my answer, think like you dont know how you should read ? and I provide additional Kana to tell you to read it as "hana", but still how you should figure out it means "nose"? All I'm saying is that you should know both and knowing just one of them is not enough to understand the Kanji (knowing the reading AND the meaning). hope I could show what I mean.

-Regards.


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## kikuchiyo (Feb 10, 2008)

QUOTE(test84 @ Feb 9 2008 said:


> that was really good stuff! thnx!!!!!
> 
> but still I dont get it my answer, think like you dont know how you should read ? and I provide additional Kana to tell you to read it as "hana", but still how you should figure out it means "nose"? All I'm saying is that you should know both and knowing just one of them is not enough to understand the Kanji (knowing the reading AND the meaning). hope I could show what I mean.
> 
> -Regards.



? is (admittedly upper) elementary school kanji.  Very rarely will you find it _not_ written out.  More so for ? which is first year elementary school kanji.  

If you find ???just written out (or you hear it) you will have to figure it out from context.  If someone says
???????????? chances are good they mean flower and not nose 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




More fun stuff: 

? - bridge
? - chopstick
? - edge
all can be read ??

?
?
?
?
?

The woman radical in action.  The first kanji is read ?? or ??? and means woman
The second one is woman and child - for good or like (the goodness between mother and child)
The third is ? sakura, cherry blossom/tree (woman underneath the tree)
Fourth is anger - ?(oko)?  My third year teacher explained it as the slave (upper right) angry (bottom ?) at the woman (upper left)
Last is princess,??? with the woman radical on the left.



Edit: reading your post, maybe my explanation was the opposite of what you wanted:
You are saying I don't know the kanji ? but I am given the kanji and the reading, how should I know it's nose?  Like I said it's an early kanji but given those circumstances you probably wouldn't know.  You can't always tell what a kanji means just by looking at it.  ? is a good example - if you already know what it means its not hard to figure out but if you don't, how could you figure out from its components, woman ? and child???  You couldn't.  It's not common to be able to just look at a kanji and know what it means. Sometimes you can guess, but it's not always common (????? is a really good example).  Once you learn the common radicals it becomes easier to guess??(?) for example - the first kanji is made up for person and mountain.  A person living in the mountains...a hermit.

Once you have a good understanding of kanji it IS possible to look at longer words and realize what they mean based on the kanji they are made up of.  Last night one of the teachers I work with gave me this example;???.  We were ordering appetizers at a Thai place and three of us were decided what to get.  The two kanji for zensai are before (????, etc.) and the second character in vegetable ??.  Before vegetable.  Appetizer.

Anyway, back to the point: if you could just look at a kanji and know what it meant, well, that would make life a lot easier, no?  Sadly, that's not the case.


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## test84 (Feb 10, 2008)

Wow, having you guys long and precise answers is such invaluable to me.
I can't thank you enough.

on topic: @Kikuchiyo: so why they provide you with the reading? like in Japanese (JAP JAP JAP! HAR HAR HAR!) version od Zelda Phantom Hourglass or on cover of Houkago Shounen:






so how its gonna help readers? makes remembering it easier?


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## TLSpartan (Feb 10, 2008)

This thread is a constant reminder I need to install Japanese character support


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## Blebleman (Feb 10, 2008)

QUOTE(test84 @ Feb 10 2008 said:


> Wow, having you guys long and precise answers is such invaluable to me.
> I can't thank you enough.
> 
> on topic: @Kikuchiyo: so why they provide you with the reading? like in Japanese (JAP JAP JAP! HAR HAR HAR!) version od Zelda Phantom Hourglass or on cover of Houkago Shounen:
> ...



Usually that's for the younger crowd, who are learning their kanji. It also helps every foreigner out there. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




By the way, don't worry too much about the hordes of Kanji. Because by the time you get to the part where you really start learning 300+ of them, you can use a japanese dictionnary. And then looking up kanji is really easy. (and if you're like me, you can spook Japanese natives with your knowledge of them 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




)


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## test84 (Feb 10, 2008)

so its just an aid for people to remember it, yes?


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## kikuchiyo (Feb 10, 2008)

Sort of; even for adults, there are words that are either not commonly written with kanji or not common at all and the reading is necessary for them to know it.  Check a newspaper - unusual words will have furigana.

Looking up kanji is easy, but it's a pain in the ass when you actually want to read something.  I'm around 300 kanji right now (unf.) and that's nowhere near enough to get through adult level text.


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## test84 (Feb 10, 2008)

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!)


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## kikuchiyo (Feb 11, 2008)

QUOTE(test84 @ Feb 10 2008 said:


> 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.


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## Son of Science (Feb 11, 2008)

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


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## test84 (Feb 11, 2008)

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.


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## kikuchiyo (Feb 15, 2008)

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。


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## Raisingod (Feb 15, 2008)

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



QUOTE(test84 @ Feb 12 2008 said:


> 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. ? )
> ...


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


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## test84 (Feb 15, 2008)

QUOTE(kikuchiyo @ Feb 15 2008 said:


> 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 ??????
> ...


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


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## kikuchiyo (Feb 15, 2008)

QUOTE(test84 @ Feb 15 2008 said:


> 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 ??
> 
> ...


I know!  I thought it was cute 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




  And I was trying to make test feel better


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## test84 (Feb 17, 2008)




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## Raisingod (Feb 17, 2008)

QUOTE(kikuchiyo @ Feb 15 2008 said:


> QUOTE(test84 @ Feb 15 2008 said:
> 
> 
> > 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 ??????
> ...



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)


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## kikuchiyo (Feb 19, 2008)

QUOTE(Raisingod @ Feb 17 2008 said:


> 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 ?Â is actually aÂ ? ( 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).


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## Gman 101 (Feb 19, 2008)

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... =__=


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## Raisingod (Feb 19, 2008)

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 .


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## --JoCa-- (Feb 19, 2008)

QUOTE(kikuchiyo @ Feb 15 2008 said:


> QUOTE(test84 @ Feb 15 2008 said:
> 
> 
> > whats the reason behind that small ??
> ...




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


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## Linkiboy (Feb 19, 2008)

QUOTE(Jerro123 @ Feb 19 2008 said:


> ???????????????????????????????
> 
> 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.


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## Eyedunno (Feb 22, 2008)

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



QUOTE(Blebleman @ Feb 9 2008 said:


> 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_.
> 
> 
> ...


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


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## Raisingod (Feb 28, 2008)

QUOTE(Eyedunno @ Feb 22 2008 said:


> QUOTE(Raisingod @ Feb 15 2008 said:
> 
> 
> > except for the whole small tsu thing that some student find hard but its easy toÂ master once you understaned the cause for its existence
> ...




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.


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## test84 (Mar 11, 2008)

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?


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## Raisingod (Mar 11, 2008)

test84 said:
			
		

> 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


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## test84 (Mar 15, 2008)

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)


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## Bob Evil (Mar 15, 2008)

test84, what is your name? ... I'll write it in katakana for you.


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## solarsaturn9 (Mar 15, 2008)

test84 said:
			
		

> 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
> ...



Ai = ??
for Di it depends on the pronunciation of the word it is being used in
(ex: Dai sound as in Diagonal, or Di as in Digital, etc... )
for the Dee sound = ??
for Gh it depends on the pronunciation of the word it is being used in
(ex: ghost, and ghastly would be written using different Katakana, ???? and ????? )
for the Dr sound it depends as well
(ex: Drain and Drama.... ???? and ??? )
in general for Dr it would be ? followed by an R/L sounding katakana ( ????????? )

You cant really write out two letters and assign them katakana because it depends on what the context of the letters. Katakana is an alphabet to either emphasize words originally from the Japanese language or to write foreign loan words like ????? ( arubaito ) which means a part time job coming from the German word Arbeiter ( ? not sure how to spell the German word )


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## Bob Evil (Mar 15, 2008)

solarsaturn9 said:
			
		

> You cant really write out two letters and assign them katakana because it depends on what the context of the letters. Katakana is an alphabet to either emphasize words originally from the Japanese language or to write foreign loan words like ????? ( arubaito ) which means a part time job coming from the German word Arbeiter ( ? not sure how to spell the German word )



I tried to tell him that


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## kikuchiyo (Mar 16, 2008)

thebobevil said:
			
		

> solarsaturn9 said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Well, that said there are two footnotes:
A) It's English romaji that's irregular, not katakana (that was unclear from the posts).  Katakana is super regular (that's why, as I said elsewhere, it's easier for me to read katakana Bangla as opposed to romanized Bangla).

B) If you live here, katakana is for a lot of different reasons; some people like signing their names in katakana because it's the easiest to write (an ex was like this).  It is often used in novels and mail to not to emphasize, but to break up would otherwise be a long string of hiragana.


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## solarsaturn9 (Mar 17, 2008)

kikuchiyo said:
			
		

> thebobevil said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I can dig that. Katakana for names is also easier to read because sometimes handwriting + kanji = chicken scratch..... sometimes even native speakers have a hard time reading chicken scratch kanji =P


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## Unchi-san (Mar 18, 2008)

I can dig that. Katakana for names is also easier to read because sometimes handwriting + kanji = chicken scratch..... sometimes even native speakers have a hard time reading chicken scratch kanji =P
[/quote]

I totally understand.  I can't read my mom's writing alot of the time.  I prefer big, bubbly hiragana and kanji rather than "caligraphy"-looking words.


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## Jarvik7 (Mar 24, 2008)

Raisingod said:
			
		

> 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.




That's some nice reasoning, but it's wrong. It was written as a ? and later as ? because the ? sound is what normally triggers a geminate in compound words. Take for example these:

?? ????????=??????? (this also undergoes ??)
????????????
???????????????????

The premodern writers were simply writing out the separate ???? for each ?? with the ?? shorthand. The shrinking of it to ? is a much later development.

I haven't taken the time to search my ???? but I have an inkling that ?? lacks geminate sounds altogether and that they are a carryover from Chinese. Any/most exceptions to the above are probably a result of borrowing/coining after the use of ? was established as general practice for geminates. There are many other examples of pre-modern ?? usage not being phonetic by sticking very closely to the grammar. Japanese grammar actually became less logical (in that much was hidden) due to the ???? & post-WWII reformations that made reading itself simpler.

Keep in mind that Japanese never had an "official standard" of any sort until the late 19th century. The closest thing would be writing in classical Chinese, which was what was used for official documents of state for the majority of Japan's history. Writing in the vernacular (aka Japanese) was the reserve of bored aristocratic women and poets up until the ????, at which point some ?? started writing fiction. The writing of Japanese varied widely person to person (see "hentaigana" on wikipedia or similar for one example).


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## Zombie_X (Mar 24, 2008)

I took Japanese for 4 1/2 years and I ain't that good at it.


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## Raisingod (Mar 25, 2008)

Jarvik7 said:
			
		

> Raisingod said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



My old japanese teacher reasoning not mine  but thanks for the explantion.


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## yzx571 (Apr 4, 2008)

??





			
				solarsaturn9 said:
			
		

> ?????????????????


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


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## kikuchiyo (Apr 9, 2008)

yzx571 said:
			
		

> ??
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I think you mean ?? not ??
I often make that mistake when typing quickly.


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## Helix94 (Aug 17, 2009)

How do you guys type in these characters? Is there some type of English AND Japanese keyboard?


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## Cermage (Aug 17, 2009)

Helix94 said:
			
		

> How do you guys type in these characters? Is there some type of English AND Japanese keyboard?



as far as i know, the japanese use a keyboard with the english lettering as well 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 for windows you can install the japanese language pack which will allow you to write out the romaji in word or another program and it will change it into characters as you type it.


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## Vidboy10 (Aug 17, 2009)

A person from Iran wants to learn Japanese? 
What a small world.


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## Digeman (Aug 17, 2009)

Vidboy10 said:
			
		

> A person from Iran wants to learn Japanese?
> What a small world.


Because people from Iran can't have the same interest as other people around the world right? Their only interest should be bellydancing yea?  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




(note the sarcasm)


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## Vidboy10 (Aug 17, 2009)

Digeman said:
			
		

> Vidboy10 said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


They can.
Just I find it awkward how somebody in the middle east could Like japan.
And having a member from Iran on the Temp is kinda awkward when you think about it.


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## warbird (Aug 17, 2009)

Jarvik7 said:
			
		

> I haven't taken the time to search my ???? but I have an inkling that ?? lacks geminate sounds altogether and that they are a carryover from Chinese. Any/most exceptions to the above are probably a result of borrowing/coining after the use of ? was established as general practice for geminates. There are many other examples of pre-modern ?? usage not being phonetic by sticking very closely to the grammar. Japanese grammar actually became less logical (in that much was hidden) due to the ???? & post-WWII reformations that made reading itself simpler.



Never studies classical japanese, but I'm pretty sure sure gemination existed long before modern times in Japanese. E.g. when conjugating verbs, like kiru -> kitta. Unless I'm misunderstanding you..


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## test84 (Oct 24, 2009)

Can I plz haz teh topic back?


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## iPikachu (Oct 24, 2009)

topic is yours?


			
				QUOTE said:
			
		

> Just I find it awkward how somebody in the middle east could Like japan.
> And having a member from Iran on the Temp is kinda awkward when you think about it.


how would it be awkward?


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## OmerMe (Oct 24, 2009)

iPikachu said:
			
		

> topic is yours?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Haven't you heard? Everyone in the middle east live in the desert, rides on a camel, lives in a tent and does nothing but smoke and trade women.

Or whatever people think about the middle east.


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## test84 (Oct 25, 2009)

I wasn't around much lately and thus dont know why this topic is just 2 pages, if possible, please bring back the topic, I need the material I posted here.


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## d.d.d. (Dec 3, 2012)

Of course it's my opinion but, for those of you learning Japanese, don't bother with Romaji. It's nearly useless and kana is so easy to learn. You can learn both in a few weeks if you try hard. ファイト！


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## DrOctapu (Dec 3, 2012)

d.d.d. said:


> Of course it's my opinion but, for those of you learning Japanese, don't bother with Romaji. It's nearly useless and kana is so easy to learn. You can learn both in a few weeks if you try hard. ファイト！


This topic is from 2009. And you can learn both sets of kana in a day or two.


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## d.d.d. (Dec 3, 2012)

DrOctapu said:


> This topic is from 2009. And you can learn both sets of kana in a day or two.


Missed the date. Coulda sworn it came up on the 2nd page after hitting "what's new" on the forum page...

And kana in a day or two? Maybe. Not master though.


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