02-01-2012, 03:34 PM | #1 |
時の彼方へ
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日本語アドベンチャー!
So you want to learn Japanese. How do you go about doing it?
There as many answers to that question as there are people who ask it. People have different learning styles. People have different drives. People are at different stages in their life when they decide they want to learn Japanese. So the advice I'm going to give below is going to be for a specific kind of student. Curtail it to your needs. |
02-01-2012, 03:35 PM | #2 |
時の彼方へ
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Resources for all levels:
Dictionaries: WWWJDIC Spoiler: show Resources for beginners: Textbooks: Nakama Vol 1 and Vol 2 Genki Spoiler: show Learning your ABCs: Beginners start with hiragana and katakana and then move on to learn the first two levels of the Jouyou kanji. Hiragana Katakana Kanji Spoiler: show Resources for intermediates: (to be edited in later) Resources for advanced students: partial but extensive list of Japanese onomatopoiea Onomatopoiea flashcards (more stuff to be edited in to all parts of this post later) |
02-01-2012, 03:35 PM | #3 |
時の彼方へ
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Advice for Beginners
Q. I want to learn Japanese! Where do I start? A. Learn your hiragana. That's where I would start. Q. Okay! I learned them! Now what? A. Already our adventure can go in one of several different directions. Personally? I'd encourage you to go ahead and learn your katakana too. But if you want to move right on into learning words, go for it. Q. What does JSL mean? A. Getting this one out of the way early since I use the term a lot since it's a convenient abbreviation. In Japanese linguistics discussions, JSL stands for "Japanese as a second language." In special needs discussions, JSL can also mean "Japanese sign language." And of course any acronym might mean any number of things in this great big world of ours. When I use the term, unless otherwise specified, I'm using it to mean "Japanese as a second language." Q. Vocab before grammar? Or grammar before vocab? A. Learning a foreign language is always a tricky business in the very beginning. That's because you know absolutely nothing about the language and you just have to rote memorize some things so you can get started on your adventure. Therefore, I'd say that for the first few weeks of your studies, you should just focus on rote memorizing core expressions and words. Things like how to say "My name is ____" or "I am __ years old" or "Hello!" Those sorts of things. In fact, you'll find that most JSL textbooks are organized with this philosophy in mind. Q. So ... I don't want to spend any money on this. Do I have to? =\ A. No, you don't have to. In fact, most of your advanced learning will be done on your own at little to no direct financial cost to you. But in the beginning, it certainly helps to have someone guide you through the process. And who better to do that than someone who has the knowledge necessary and devoted the time and emotion necessary to craft a JSL textbook? I would advise against purchasing a JSL textbook initially -- tools do not make the craftsman, after all -- but if you stick with this long enough to learn the alphabet (a.k.a. 2-3 days ), then I would say that it's probably worth it for you to look into getting some kind of textbook, be it a free one like a Wikibook or be it a commercial text. Q. Can you post some samples from the beginning of your textbook so I can decide if I want to buy it or not? A. I don't have a scanner. However, I do have ridiculously thorough study guides. Sure, I can post a sample below from Chapters 1-3 of the first volume of Nakama to give you an idea for what they want you to learn. (Numbers in parentheses at ends of sentences indicate corresponding page numbers in my version of the text.) Grammar: Spoiler: show Vocabulary: Spoiler: show (writing more as I go; check back later for more)
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Last edited by Talon87; 02-01-2012 at 08:13 PM. |
02-01-2012, 03:54 PM | #4 |
時の彼方へ
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General Advice
Q. How do you recommend I learn kanji? A. Everybody learns differently. Q. Yes, but I want to hear how you did it. A. Long answer is long. Spoiler: show Q. How do you recommend I learn words? A. "If you don't use it, you lose it." There's little point in starting with words you don't encounter frequently. By all means, learn rare words that you like for some pet reason. But I would encourage you to learn "dog" and "chair" before learning "angioplasty" or "debacle." (still writing; will add more as I go)
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Last edited by Talon87; 02-01-2012 at 05:48 PM. |
02-01-2012, 04:57 PM | #5 |
Aroma Lady
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I'm actually learning Chinese now. Just a question for if I ever want to learn Japanese as well. Do the Kanji in Japanese have the same meaning as they have in Chinese?
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02-01-2012, 05:24 PM | #6 | |
Night Man
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Quote:
thanks for this talon btw, I've been meaning to brush up on my Japanese
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02-01-2012, 06:24 PM | #7 |
我が名は勇者王!
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Talon, if you have connections to kanji cards (either for purchase or online) I would love those, as I discussed with you before (with Japanese pronunciations).
I'd also like to know how to properly write the kanji, so when I look at the character, I could break apart how it was written. I doubt this would be advised for most people, but complete dissemination is usually how I gain mastery of concepts.
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02-01-2012, 06:37 PM | #8 |
Night Man
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i have a bunch of kanji flash cards, ill let you know what company made them when i find em
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02-01-2012, 06:39 PM | #9 | ||
時の彼方へ
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Quote:
Quote:
"While kanji are essentially Chinese hanzi used to write Japanese, there are now significant differences between kanji used in Japanese and Chinese characters used in Chinese. Such differences include (i) the use of characters created in Japan, (ii) characters that have been given different meanings in Japanese, and (iii) post-World War II simplifications of the kanji. Likewise, the process of character simplification in mainland China since the 1950s has the result that Japanese speakers who have not studied Chinese may not recognize some simplified characters."For an example of #1, 働 as used in the common verb hataraku "to work" (as in, to perform a job). For an example of #2, 鮎 (a species of salmon in Japan, but used to describe catfish in China). For an example of #3, 気 "spirit, essence, nature" which before WW2 was written in both countries as 氣 instead. In the vast majority of cases, though, the meanings of isolated Chinese characters are largely preserved. Things start to get trickier once you start introducing compound nouns (e.g. 度胸, 大根, 戦争) since in some cases the compound words were imported while in other cases the isolated kanji were put together to form a neologism that described something either unique to Japan or else common to both countries but written in some other way in China. In the first place, though, ... are you studying classical Chinese or modern Chinese script? The modern, or simplified, script won't be of much use to you in your studies of Japanese. I have as much a chance of making heads or tails of that as I would Hangul (the Korean alphabet).
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02-01-2012, 06:53 PM | #10 |
Trying to send Christmas cards
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JSL WAS MENTIONED
JSL is great. I obtained a massive JSL dictionary which has some extremely useful pictures and explanatory notes. Here's a potentially important example from the entry for "older brother" (兄):
手の甲を前にした手の中指を立てて、上にあげる。アメリカでは「fuck you!」のタブーサインになる。
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02-01-2012, 07:40 PM | #11 |
Trying to send Christmas cards
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I HAVE BOOKS ON DERAILING THREADS TOO
Doppleganger is on the right track with wanting to break down the finer details of handwriting. Unfortunately, printed text is a little confusing when trying to learn how to write by hand. Talon, do you know any good beginners' books that instill proper handwriting?
For an intermediate learner, searching for books on "handwriting improvement" (字がうまくなる) will yield some highly useful results, even if they are intended for Japanese adults. Sadly, I don't have access to a scanner, or else I would provide some excerpts. And perhaps the "fuck you" older brother sign as well. Also Hangul is pretty easy! You can probably learn it in a day if you ever become interested. |
02-01-2012, 09:09 PM | #12 |
プラスチック♡ラブ
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Hi! I'm Jerichi and I've been seriously learning Japanese for the past 6 months, partly through a standard University Beginner's Japanese Class and partly on my own.
My best suggestion for making Japanese go a LOT faster: the Heisig Method. I did this over winter break, and even though I didn't get all the way through it (only about 3/4ths), it's increased my kanji vocabulary immensely and allowed me to be able to interpret unknown kanji much easier since I am now able to break down their form much easier. This book makes kanji shitloads easier to deal with even if you only get as far as learning the methodology. It doesn't, however, give you readings, compounds or even really reliable meanings, but it does give you good approximations which help in your learning of vocabulary and general comprehension of kanji-heavy text (which is pretty much everything outside of preschool children's books). I've only had a month or so after doing this and my reading and writing have improved greatly in that short of a time. It also makes me feel much more like I'm producing actual Japanese instead of producing a long string of unreadable kindergarten kana. The actual book for this is kind of expensive, but there are TONS of PDFs floating around the Internet (a Google search will pull up one, often as the first link). If you can commit some time to it on a fairly frequent and steady basis, it's totally worth it. It makes kanji a lot easier. >Dopple It's not really a fast and easy way, but Heisig really helps you be able to interpret and break down the kanji as Heisig teaches them to you by giving you small, manageable chunks to remember and building up more complex kanji from there. |
02-01-2012, 09:24 PM | #13 | |||
時の彼方へ
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This reply took forever to write. @_@ By the time I submit it, watch there be ten new posts.
Quote:
The answer continues within. Quite lengthy! But you asked for it, so here it is ... Spoiler: show Quote:
Quote:
Step 1. Go to the Kanji Lookup section. Step 2. Paste the kanji and hit search. Step 3. Click on the paintbrush icon to the right of the English meanings. That's more calligraphic and less appropriate for pencil and paper, but they have resources like that as well. It would take me time to find those for you right at this moment. Maybe next time?
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02-01-2012, 10:30 PM | #14 | |
時の彼方へ
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On the other hand, I fear that this Heisig Method isn't really helping you to learn the language at all but instead is encouraging you to apply English meanings to ancient Chinese orthography. This is one portion of the epic battle we call "learning my Chinese characters" ... but it's not the whole story. Not even close. And there are some worrying pitfalls that may be associated with a method like this. Jeri encouraged me to Google for this method and so I did. The second hit I got in Google is a blog entry written by a fellow JSL student. He sums up my criticisms of the method as follows: "My beef is that recognising is not reading, and writing is not using. After 6 weeks/months of dedicated study to Book 1, you may feel a great sense of achievement, but you've really learned next to nothing. You've internalised even less. Your Japanese skills will have progressed not even slightly.Now, Jeri and others who swear by the Heisig Method may take issue with this blogger's criticisms. However, from where I'm sitting, the blogger seems to be spot on and the Heisig method sounds like a scam. "Tell people that something they want to achieve but which is difficult to achieve will become very easy to achieve if they pay you $$$." Con Artistry 101. "How to lose weight eating all of your favorite foods and not exercising!" "How to make a million dollars from home surfing the Internet!" "How to learn to read the Mainichi Shinbun (Japanese newspaper) in just six months!" That's what this sounds like to me. Heisig Method students may be able to recognize the English meaning of stems like 根, 鏡, 肥, and 狂, but without actual words to put them to, you've not really learned much of anything. And like the blogger points out, learning the meanings to the characters is the easy part. It's learning the readings and the pairings that's the hard part. For instance ...
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02-01-2012, 10:35 PM | #15 | |
プラスチック♡ラブ
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A) I paid nothing for this. I found a PDF on the Internet and used that. B) There's a great community built around the method that gives a lot of resources. C): Quote:
It's not perfect, but it's helpful and a hell of a lot less to memorize. This way, you have a good idea of what you're looking at and how to break it down so when you actually go and learn the vocabulary, it is a LOT easier to remember how the kanji break down and it take a step out of learning the words. Trust me, I did a lot of research on this method after it was suggested to me; and I agree, there's a lot of pitfalls that you can get trapped in, but at some point you move beyond the association of characters with words and start to learn the characters individually as having general meanings and as parts of compounds. It's not really a way to "learn" kanji - note that the book is entitled "Remembering the Kanji", not "Learning" - but it's a good way to get started, get an idea of what they're like and help you learn how to break down the characters in a way that will help you remember how they're composed. The idea isn't to learn everything about them at once. It's more to demystify their complexity and give you an idea of what each of them mean before you go on and learn the vocab so that the kanji stick a lot better when you do actually learn the readings. If you think that you're gonna get through this book and magically know kanji, then you're totally wrong and have misunderstood the idea behind the book in the first place. It's a way to build up a base and a starting point to facilitate your learning down the road. EDIT: Oh, and also, Heisig DOES provide another volume that concentrates on learning the readings. A lot of people consider it to be unnecessary, however, as by the point you've chugged through the Joyo and have started to break down native texts, you are learning through context and such fast enough that you don't really need to spend the time breaking down each individual kanji into their readings.
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Last edited by Jerichi; 02-01-2012 at 10:42 PM. |
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02-02-2012, 02:03 AM | #16 |
大事なのは自分らしいくある事
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MY BRAIN.
IT HURTS. HELP. ;_; Need a bit of clarification, since I'm currently staring at the Hiragana's page and going "Wait, which of these are letters, and which are, like, letters with accents on them? @_@" What exactly do the yoon do? @_@ And, am I right in thinking that the non-handakuten lettters are more 'soft' sounds, and that the letters with handakuten are more 'hard' sounds? |
02-02-2012, 02:31 AM | #17 | |
時の彼方へ
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Take the word Kyoto for example ...
INCORRECT: Kee Oh Toh or Kee Yoh Toh (three syllables) CORRECT: Kyoh Toh (two syllables with a monosyllabic glide in the first position) The youon follow letters ending in i (so, き, し, ち, に, ひ, み, and り) and turn them into monosyllabic glides with the respective Y letters や ya, ゆ yu, and よ yo. So for example ... (in each pair, the top example is without the youon and the bottom example is with it):
Quote:
For letters which take a dakuten, the default form is phonologically voiceless. What that means in layterms is, you don't make any noise with your voicebox when making that consonant. (Make a "tuh" sound and put your hand over your throat as you do it. Now make a "duh" sound! See?) The dakuten diacritics indicate the change from voiceless to voiced. For voiced and voiceless paired consonants, your tongue makes the exact same shape inside your mouth for both letters, the only difference is your voice box's activity. So the voiced version of K is G, the voiced version of T is D, and so on. The H family (は ひ ふ へ ほ) is a special exception as it covers for three consonants instead of the regular two or one. The dakuten makes H turn into B (e.g. は ha --> ば ba) and the handakuten makes H turn into P (e.g. は ha --> ぱ pa).
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Last edited by Talon87; 02-02-2012 at 02:43 AM. |
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02-17-2012, 03:42 PM | #18 |
大事なのは自分らしいくある事
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Is the Japanese 'o' sound pronounced like 'o' or 'O'?
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02-17-2012, 04:04 PM | #19 |
時の彼方へ
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I have no idea what you mean. O and o are both the English letter O. ^^; Also, when you say the Japanese letter 'o', there are two different letters that can cover that role. So the answer to your question depends on what you're trying to ask me.
Are you asking about お vs. を? (different letters that produce the same sound) Spoiler: show Or are you asking about お vs. おお/おう? (short vowels vs. long vowels) Spoiler: show Or are you asking something completely different? Regardless, 'o' in Japanese is pronounced the same way we say it (no uniquely Japanese enunciation or anything, unlike with some other shared sounds). So if you can say words like "over" or "only," then you are making the same vowel sound in words like onegai or kuro.
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02-17-2012, 04:27 PM | #20 |
The Path of Now & Forever
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So is Japanese 'wa' pronounced like WA or wa?
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02-17-2012, 06:33 PM | #21 |
Pokemon Trainer
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こんにちわータランさん!私は日本語を話すことについて問題があります。毎日漢字と読むことを勉強していま すが、しかも喋るのが良くないです。何をしますのか?
(又、悪い文法はごめんなさい!ww) Japanese 'wa' would be pronounced like water, watt, and wasp. Also, to everyone: If you're studying straight kanji, I would recommend using the Kanjidamage method. In my opinion it works A LOT better than Heisig's because you learn the ON and KUN readings as you learn the kanji. A warning though; it's like PG-13 rated so watch out if you're a youngin'. |
02-17-2012, 06:36 PM | #22 |
The Path of Now & Forever
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Sorry, that question was a joke. Unless you actually think ALLCAPS WORDS are pronounced different from lower case letters.
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02-17-2012, 07:36 PM | #23 |
Pokemon Trainer
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Lol sorry. I wasn't really paying attention to the preceding posts.
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02-17-2012, 08:15 PM | #24 | |
時の彼方へ
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Quote:
しかも, "furthermore" --> I think you intended しかし, "however" here Anyway, if I'm reading you right, you're asking for speaking tips? You mentioned studying how to read kanji, so I'm a little confused as to what you may be really asking for. Are you ...
I'll go ahead and tackle the question as though you were just wondering about tips for improving oral communication. If it was something else, please feel free to clarify. Tips for Improving Oral Communication: In general, there are four basic skill sets to learning any foreign language. These are ...
So you want to improve your oral communication. Here's what you're going to have to do ... 1. Find a native speaker. This can be daunting, especially if you are shy or if you live in a rural area. However, it's important to try and find a native speaker of the language with whom you can communicate on at least a semi-regular basis. (more details, click to expand) Spoiler: show 2. Don't be afraid to try new things. With a native speaker for your talking partner, you should take advantage of that opportunity and try using words or expressions that are new to you -- as well as asking them, in Japanese, how they say their equivalent of particular English expressions or idioms. Remember: you can't just translate expressions from English into Japanese word-for-word and expect them to make sense! But that doesn't mean you shouldn't test things out for yourself anyway! Try testing things out and relying on your speaking partner for feedback. (Again, this is why it's important to have a native speaker for your speaking partner!) 3. Practice! Originally, I had written many more things. But I realized that only #1 and #2 were things I needed to convey to you for certain. The rest, really, is entirely up to you and your learning style. Some people benefit from many hours of time invested while others do not benefit as much. Some people take their JSL studies very seriously while for others it's a more casual affair and some of the recommendations I might make would seem excessive. I was even beginning to suggest things that I myself have never done and would probably not be good about keeping up with because they'd just be too much effort. ^^; But the one thing I can finish this advice off with is to say: practice, practice, practice. You have to remember: listening to a lot of anime and Japanese music is not the same thing as getting speaking practice in! Listening is listening, speaking is speaking. If you want to become a better speaker, you have to practice speaking. One of the challenging things about oral communication is that it's instantaneous. Without looking awkward, you don't get much time to think about how to say next what it is that you want to say next. Wait even five seconds and already that's an awkward pause. Consistently wait 10+ seconds in between sentences and yeah, it can be socially awkward for both parties. But that's okay at first! With practice, you will get better at spontaneous conversation. I guess what it all really boils down to then in the end is practice.
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02-17-2012, 09:36 PM | #25 | |
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Quote:
For my original paragraph I did mean to say that I am having trouble in my oral communication, so you were right in your assumption. First, I suppose I really should find a native speaker! Spring 2011 was the last semester the local college offered Japanese, so it's really been almost a year since I've had anyone to talk to! I'll look around for some places to connect online with someone. Since I'm both shy and live in a rural community with virtually no international diversity, this is probably the only choice I have at the moment. I'll keep an eye out though for someone irl though! I'm not quite sure what my learning style would be to be honest. Generally I will study between classes or when I'm bored, which would equate to about an hour every day at best. Currently my main sources for studying are my Real Real Japanese book, which has the original Japanese text on one page and the English translation on the other, and Kanjidamage. In the case of Japanese, these have really helped my kanji recognition for readings and meanings. (Strange to admit, but more times than not I can remember the readings but not the meanings!) So you can see where most of my experience is with the receptive component of language learning you discussed. As for the listening component, I guess my constantly listening to J-Pop and watching anime don't count lol. Since I have no speaking partner at the moment, I'm not really sure how to practice this effectively. I've tried some things like Japanese podcasts where I listen to the dialogue and I have access to the Japanese and English translations of it. This hasn't really worked out for me because even after listening to the same track 10 times I still haven't picked up that many new words! When I used to speak during class, I would often say "ちょっと待ってください!" while either thinking between sentences or looking up a word. I suppose if I can get into the habit of speaking more frequently this problem will slowly dissipate! c: Again, thank you for your response. I've been studying Thai and Korean on the side, so your advice is definitely going to help with those as well. Wish me luck. c: |
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