# So I am learning Japanese.



## Ze Kink (Sep 19, 2008)

Second course starts tomorrow. Our teacher rules and I'm sure it'll be fun. First course was mainly learning katakana and hiragana, so hopefully we'll be learning to actually communicate in Japanese in this course. Feel free to post in Japanese, but I probably can't read it! The fact that my laptop doesn't show Japanese text might be a reason too though... I guess I'll have to find my XP cd.


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## Xtremevillan (Sep 19, 2008)

WTF I was going to start this thread when I started to learn Japanese! 

I have yet to even buy a book or anything in Japanese, Naren told me to learn precisely what you did (1st Hira then 2nd Kata)  

I will be in this thread a lot in the future


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## Naren (Sep 19, 2008)

Post in Japanese? This is the first chance I get to post in Japanese. With that 200 page German thread and the 400 page French thread, I felt left out! Wheee... Of course, I doubt there's anyone here who can read it.  Here we goooo! Since this is Ze Kink's thread, I'm gonna write to you. 

&#12381;&#12398;&#26368;&#21021;&#12398;&#23398;&#26399;&#12399;&#12402;&#12425;&#12364;&#12394;&#12392;&#12459;&#12479;&#12459;&#12490;&#12384;&#12369;&#12434;&#32722;&#12358;&#12383;&#12417;&#12398;&#25480;&#26989;&#12384;&#12387;&#12383;&#12398;&#65311;&#12354;&#12426;&#12360;&#12394;&#12356;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;&#12392;&#12356;&#12358;&#12392;&#12289;&#19968;&#30058;&#21336;&#32020;&#12394;&#34920;&#29694;&#12392;&#12363;&#12418;&#25945;&#12360;&#12394;&#12363;&#12387;&#12383;&#12398;&#65311;&#12381;&#12428;&#12384;&#12387;&#12383;&#12425;&#27005;&#12375;&#12356;&#20808;&#29983;&#12376;&#12419;&#12394;&#12367;&#12390;&#12289;&#24608;&#12369;&#32773;&#12398;&#20808;&#29983;&#12384;&#12424;&#12290;&#20840;&#12367;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;&#12414;&#12354;&#12289;&#27005;&#12375;&#12369;&#12426;&#12419;&#12356;&#12356;&#12387;&#12390;&#12371;&#12392;&#12384;&#12429;&#12358;&#12397;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;&#28450;&#23383;&#12399;&#20309;&#12418;&#35501;&#12417;&#12394;&#12356;&#65311;&#25968;&#23383;&#12392;&#12363;&#35501;&#12417;&#12394;&#12356;&#65311;&#19968;&#23398;&#26399;&#12384;&#12387;&#12383;&#12425;&#12381;&#12428;&#12399;&#35501;&#12417;&#12427;&#12399;&#12378;&#12384;&#12369;&#12393;&#12397;&#12290;&#20840;&#12367;&#12290;&#24608;&#12369;&#32773;&#12384;&#12424;&#12290;&#12354;&#12398;&#20808;&#29983;&#12290;&#19968;&#20307;&#20309;&#32771;&#12360;&#12390;&#12435;&#12384;&#12429;&#12358;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;&#27578;&#12379;&#12400;&#12356;&#12356;&#12384;&#12429;&#12358;&#12290;&#27578;&#12379;&#12400;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;


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## JJ Rodriguez (Sep 19, 2008)

&#12358; is the only character that showed up in Naren's post (other than the English of course) for me


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## Xtremevillan (Sep 19, 2008)

All these squiggles ANGER AND CONFUSE ME!


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## arktan (Sep 19, 2008)

Just out of curiosity: Naren, how many different ways of writing are you using in that post? It looks like you have some letters/combos (for example this: &#26399 AND sounds (like this &#19968; or this &#12539; , those are sounds, right?).


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## Paul Malmsteen (Sep 19, 2008)

JJ Rodriguez said:


> &#12358; is the only character that showed up in Naren's post (other than the English of course) for me



Yeah same  Is there a way to fix that?


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## Naren (Sep 19, 2008)

arktan said:


> Just out of curiosity: Naren, how many different ways of writing are you using in that post? It looks like you have some letters/combos (for example this: &#26399 AND sounds (like this &#19968; or this &#12539; , those are sounds, right?).



3. Japanese is made up of 3 forms of writing: hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

However, all of your examples are kanji - except for the last two which are punctuation (part of an ellipse and a comma).

hiragana = &#12402;&#12425;&#12364;&#12394;
katakana = &#12459;&#12479;&#12459;&#12490;
kanji = &#28450;&#23383;



Paul Malmsteen said:


> Yeah same  Is there a way to fix that?



If you're using XP, then install East Asian language support from the XP DVD. If you're in Vista, I believe it should already be installed by default. That will fix it.

If it is installed and it isn't showing up, that's weird. But you can probably fix it, by clicking on the "View" tab ("Display" tab? My Internet Explorer is in Japanese) and going down to "Encoding" and then selecting "Japanese (Automatic)." I have mine set for Western European, but I'm using a Japanese computer, so it reads Japanese regardless of the encoding.


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## arktan (Sep 19, 2008)

Naren said:


> 3. Japanese is made up of 3 forms of writing: hiragana, katakana, and kanji.
> 
> However, all of your examples are kanji - except for the last two which are punctuation (part of an ellipse and a comma).
> 
> ...





thanks mate.


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## Metal Ken (Sep 19, 2008)

Naren said:


> &#12381;&#12398;&#26368;&#21021;&#12398;&#23398;&#26399;&#12399;&#12402;&#12425;&#12364;&#12394;&#12392;&#12459;&#12479;&#12459;&#12490;&#12384;&#12369;&#12434;&#32722;&#12358;&#12383;&#12417;&#12398;&#25480;&#26989;&#12384;&#12387;&#12383;&#12398;&#65311;&#12354;&#12426;&#12360;&#12394;&#12356;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;&#12392;&#12356;&#12358;&#12392;&#12289;&#19968;&#30058;&#21336;&#32020;&#12394;&#34920;&#29694;&#12392;&#12363;&#12418;&#25945;&#12360;&#12394;&#12363;&#12387;&#12383;&#12398;&#65311;&#12381;&#12428;&#12384;&#12387;&#12383;&#12425;&#27005;&#12375;&#12356;&#20808;&#29983;&#12376;&#12419;&#12394;&#12367;&#12390;&#12289;&#24608;&#12369;&#32773;&#12398;&#20808;&#29983;&#12384;&#12424;&#12290;&#20840;&#12367;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;




&#12399;&#12356;&#12289;&#20693;&#12398;&#19968;&#30058;&#23398;&#26399;&#12399;&#12402;&#12425;&#12364;&#12394;&#12392;&#12459;&#12479;&#12459;&#12490;&#12289;&#20108;&#36913;&#38291;&#12414;&#12391;&#12395;&#32722;&#12387;&#12383;&#12290;&#12288;&#12381;&#12428;&#12363;&#12425;&#12289;&#21313;&#20843;&#12368;&#12425;&#12356;&#28450;&#23383;&#12434;&#32722;&#12387;&#12383;&#12290;

&#65323;&#65353;&#65358;&#65355;&#65293;&#12393;&#12371;&#12391;&#32722;&#12387;&#12390;&#12356;&#12427;&#65311;&#12288;&#22823;&#23398;&#65311;

i'm stating my second year now at UF, so my grammar's a bit shaky, but yeah &#12288;


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## Naren (Sep 19, 2008)

Metal Ken said:


> &#12399;&#12356;&#12289;&#20693;&#12398;&#19968;&#30058;&#23398;&#26399;&#12399;&#12402;&#12425;&#12364;&#12394;&#12392;&#12459;&#12479;&#12459;&#12490;&#12289;&#20108;&#36913;&#38291;&#12414;&#12391;&#12395;&#32722;&#12387;&#12383;&#12290;&#12288;&#12381;&#12428;&#12363;&#12425;&#12289;&#21313;&#20843;&#12368;&#12425;&#12356;&#28450;&#23383;&#12434;&#32722;&#12387;&#12383;&#12290;
> 
> &#65323;&#65353;&#65358;&#65355;&#65293;&#12393;&#12371;&#12391;&#32722;&#12387;&#12390;&#12356;&#12427;&#65311;&#12288;&#22823;&#23398;&#65311;
> 
> i'm stating my second year now at UF, so my grammar's a bit shaky, but yeah &#12288;



Yeah.  "Shaky" might be a good term for it. You've got some different leveled speech mixed together too.

&#23041;&#24373;&#12427;&#12388;&#12418;&#12426;&#12399;&#12394;&#12356;&#12369;&#12393;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;&#20474;&#12399;&#19968;&#26085;&#12391;&#12402;&#12425;&#12364;&#12394;&#12434;&#32722;&#12387;&#12390;&#19968;&#26085;&#12391;&#12459;&#12479;&#12459;&#12490;&#12434;&#32722;&#12387;&#12383;&#12290;&#12418;&#12358;&#65297;&#65297;&#24180;&#38291;&#20197;&#19978;&#26085;&#26412;&#35486;&#12434;&#21193;&#24375;&#12375;&#12390;&#12427;&#12371;&#12392;&#12395;&#12399;&#12394;&#12427;&#12369;&#12393;&#28450;&#23383;&#12399;&#12414;&#12384;&#12414;&#12384;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;&#12399;&#12399;&#12399;&#12290;&#22810;&#20998;&#65298;&#65301;&#65296;&#65296;&#65374;&#65299;&#65296;&#65296;&#65296;&#12368;&#12425;&#12356;&#12398;&#28450;&#23383;&#12375;&#12363;&#35501;&#12417;&#12394;&#12356;&#12392;&#24605;&#12358;&#12290;&#12465;&#12531;&#12399;&#32080;&#27083;&#28450;&#23383;&#35501;&#12417;&#12427;&#12415;&#12383;&#12356;&#12384;&#12397;&#12290;&#12393;&#12428;&#12368;&#12425;&#12356;&#35501;&#12417;&#12427;&#65311;&#65298;&#24180;&#30446;&#12398;&#22987;&#12417;&#12395;&#12375;&#12390;&#12399;&#32080;&#27083;&#35501;&#12417;&#12427;&#12415;&#12383;&#12356;&#12384;&#12369;&#12393;&#12290;


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## Zak1233 (Sep 19, 2008)

woot!! finally a learning japanes ethread maybe this will aid me in my studies of learning japanese 

@Naren, why did u put ?'s in the thing you wrote in japanese? dont you just write &#12363; instead?


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## D-EJ915 (Sep 19, 2008)

Zak1233 said:


> woot!! finally a learning japanes ethread maybe this will aid me in my studies of learning japanese
> 
> @Naren, why did u put ?'s in the thing you wrote in japanese? dont you just write &#12363; instead?


because ? is one key press


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## Naren (Sep 19, 2008)

Zak1233 said:


> woot!! finally a learning japanes ethread maybe this will aid me in my studies of learning japanese
> 
> @Naren, why did u put ?'s in the thing you wrote in japanese? dont you just write &#12363; instead?



You generally only use &#12363; in formal speech.

For example:

Is it tasty?

Regular polite speech: &#12362;&#12356;&#12375;&#12356;&#12391;&#12377;&#12363;&#65311;
Casual speech:&#12288;&#12362;&#12356;&#12375;&#12356;&#65311;

And there's a little bit of an inflection at the end of the casual version. You can write a question ending in &#12363; without a question mark, but it seems that about half the time, people write a ? and the other half, people don't.

This isn't the kind of stuff you'll learn in a classroom, though...

A note about the above example, though. If you add &#12363; to it, it'll sound really masculine and much more straight-forward, harsh, and sometimes even rude.

Masculine casual (sometimes rude) speech: &#12362;&#12356;&#12375;&#12356;&#12363;&#65311;


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## Zak1233 (Sep 19, 2008)

ahh i see, thats interesting i didnt know that! thanks for clearing that up


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## sakeido (Sep 19, 2008)

My brother is learning Japanese at school right now and I'm borrowing his textbook and trying to read it. It is hard  but I will learn it! I want to watch anime and movies without subtitles, no waiting for crappy fansubs!


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## Xtremevillan (Sep 19, 2008)

some company when I start! one thing that'll kill me is no spaces. Well my phone has the option to draw characters so I can get better at drawing. 

Sakeido if it's anything like german it won't be for a very long time... I watched a show I like in german and was dumbfounded! Lot more comicated than I thought!


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## Metal Ken (Sep 19, 2008)

Naren said:


> Yeah.  "Shaky" might be a good term for it. You've got some different leveled speech mixed together too.



Particles ruin my day. Easier is definitely easier than writing it


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## Naren (Sep 19, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> Sakeido if it's anything like german it won't be for a very long time... I watched a show I like in german and was dumbfounded! Lot more comicated than I thought!



Well, Japanese is the last language on Earth I would compare to German, but yeah, it's gonna take a long time before you can watch a movie without subtitles and understand most of what's said (and that's assuming you stick with heavily studying Japanese).

The good news for sakeido is that Japanese animation has the most easily audible clearly pronounced Japanese ever. If you were trying to learn off of arthouse films (which I used to subtitle), you'd have a lot more difficulty, because they have dialogue that's mumbled, muttered, yelled almost incoherantly, slurred, and multiple people talking at the same time. You NEVER get that in animation. It's clearly the result of 2, 3, or 4 people in a recording booth, talking to each other in very easy-to-understand clear well-recorded speech. 

How soon you can start understanding depends solely on how much you study and how much you practice/put effort into it.



Metal Ken said:


> Particles ruin my day. Easier is definitely easier than writing it



 I was just talking to someone about an hour ago. He was having trouble distinguishing between wa and ga, ni and e, de and to, and didn't understand how to use o. 

Particles are one of the hardest things to learn at the beginning, but it's absolutely necessary that you understand them all inside and out if you want to participate in communication. Because if you use the wrong one, oftentimes instead of being nonsense, it will just take on an entirely different meaning. There is that famous example of switching particles where you go from "Mr. Tanaka will use it" to "I will use Mr. Tanaka" just by switching "wa" to "o" (and a lot of other examples).


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## Xtremevillan (Sep 19, 2008)

> I was just talking to someone about an hour ago. He was having trouble distinguishing between wa and ga, ni and e, de and to, and didn't understand how to use o.



Was it me in the future?!

Also, if I'm not learning Japanese for the anime, any tips on what I can watch to get my hearing up? Seriously, only thing I watched that was Japanese and not subbed was like Advent Children or maybe Digimon.


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## Ze Kink (Sep 19, 2008)

Naren said:


> Post in Japanese? This is the first chance I get to post in Japanese. With that 200 page German thread and the 400 page French thread, I felt left out! Wheee... Of course, I doubt there's anyone here who can read it.  Here we goooo! Since this is Ze Kink's thread, I'm gonna write to you.
> 
> &#12381;&#12398;&#26368;&#21021;&#12398;&#23398;&#26399;&#12399;&#12402;&#12425;&#12364;&#12394;&#12392;&#12459;&#12479;&#12459;&#12490;&#12384;&#12369;&#12434;&#32722;&#12358;&#12383;&#12417;&#12398;&#25480;&#26989;&#12384;&#12387;&#12383;&#12398;&#65311;&#12354;&#12426;&#12360;&#12394;&#12356;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;&#12392;&#12356;&#12358;&#12392;&#12289;&#19968;&#30058;&#21336;&#32020;&#12394;&#34920;&#29694;&#12392;&#12363;&#12418;&#25945;&#12360;&#12394;&#12363;&#12387;&#12383;&#12398;&#65311;&#12381;&#12428;&#12384;&#12387;&#12383;&#12425;&#27005;&#12375;&#12356;&#20808;&#29983;&#12376;&#12419;&#12394;&#12367;&#12390;&#12289;&#24608;&#12369;&#32773;&#12398;&#20808;&#29983;&#12384;&#12424;&#12290;&#20840;&#12367;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;&#12414;&#12354;&#12289;&#27005;&#12375;&#12369;&#12426;&#12419;&#12356;&#12356;&#12387;&#12390;&#12371;&#12392;&#12384;&#12429;&#12358;&#12397;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;&#28450;&#23383;&#12399;&#20309;&#12418;&#35501;&#12417;&#12394;&#12356;&#65311;&#25968;&#23383;&#12392;&#12363;&#35501;&#12417;&#12394;&#12356;&#65311;&#19968;&#23398;&#26399;&#12384;&#12387;&#12383;&#12425;&#12381;&#12428;&#12399;&#35501;&#12417;&#12427;&#12399;&#12378;&#12384;&#12369;&#12393;&#12397;&#12290;&#20840;&#12367;&#12290;&#24608;&#12369;&#32773;&#12384;&#12424;&#12290;&#12354;&#12398;&#20808;&#29983;&#12290;&#19968;&#20307;&#20309;&#32771;&#12360;&#12390;&#12435;&#12384;&#12429;&#12358;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;&#27578;&#12379;&#12400;&#12356;&#12356;&#12384;&#12429;&#12358;&#12290;&#27578;&#12379;&#12400;&#12539;&#12539;&#12539;



&#12360;&#12540;&#12392;... &#12394;&#12395;&#65311;

Of course, I don't have a clue about what you just said  I could understand some familiar stuff though, like &#12402;&#12425;&#12364;&#12394;,&#12288;&#12459;&#12479;&#12459;&#12490; and&#12288;&#28450;&#23383;.

Btw, I have to ask about the inlay in my guitar. I realized that it's always written &#32118;&#26395;&#12288;instead of what I have ( http://www.kolumbus.fi/lassi.salo/kuva20.jpg ) What's the difference? I guess I should have made some more research before getting an inlay in a language I can't understand  Then again, I did want that word in Japanese there anyway, but romaji or hiragana would've looked silly (and would've needed more space too).

Anyway, tomorrow we'll see what &#12402;&#12429;&#12415;&#65293;&#12379;&#12435;&#12379;&#12356; is going to teach us. Probably something weird again, like how air conditioning works in Japan or how his son likes to watch &#37504;&#29273;&#65374;&#27969;&#12428;&#26143;&#37504;&#65374; when he's mad


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## Naren (Sep 20, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> Was it me in the future?!
> 
> Also, if I'm not learning Japanese for the anime, any tips on what I can watch to get my hearing up? Seriously, only thing I watched that was Japanese and not subbed was like Advent Children or maybe Digimon.



Watch what you wanna watch.  If you're interested in Godzilla movies, watch Godzilla movies. If you're interested in romance dramas, then watch those. If you're interested in samurai movies, watch those. If you're interested in animation like sakeido, watch those. 

I think that if you're learning a language just so you can read comics or watch animation, you're not going to go particularly far with it. The reason you have for learning oftentimes dictates how far you can go.



Ze Kink said:


> &#12360;&#12540;&#12392;... &#12394;&#12395;&#65311;
> 
> Of course, I don't have a clue about what you just said  I could understand some familiar stuff though, like &#12402;&#12425;&#12364;&#12394;,&#12288;&#12459;&#12479;&#12459;&#12490; and&#12288;&#28450;&#23383;.



Since no one seems to be able to read what I write (although Metal Ken seemed to understand a bit of it), I'll write an explanation:

" That first semester was a class for just learning hiragana and katakana? I can't believe that... In other words, your teacher didn't even teach you the most basic expressions and stuff like that? If that's that case, then he's not a "fun teacher," but a "LAZY teacher." Goddammit... Well, maybe it's okay if it's fun... so, you can't read any kanji? Like, you can't read numbers and stuff like that? If you took Japanese for a semester, you SHOULD be able to read it. Seriously. He's just lazy. That damn teacher. What the hell is he thinking? You should just kill him, y'know? Kill 'im. "



Ze Kink said:


> Btw, I have to ask about the inlay in my guitar. I realized that it's always written &#32118;&#26395;&#12288;instead of what I have ( http://www.kolumbus.fi/lassi.salo/kuva20.jpg ) What's the difference? I guess I should have made some more research before getting an inlay in a language I can't understand  Then again, I did want that word in Japanese there anyway, but romaji or hiragana would've looked silly (and would've needed more space too).



What do you mean "what's the difference"? "Instead of what you have"? 

Did you even compare those. They're the exact same word, written the exact same way.

Now, I think it's probably the weirdest inlay I've ever seen. Kinda like making an inlay that says "depression," screaming to everyone around you "I AM A VERY SAD AND DEPRESSED INDIVIDUAL! I CRY MYSELF TO SLEEP EVERY NIGHT AND EVEN GOT THE WORD FOR HOPELESSNESS INLAYED ON MY GUITAR!" (bursts into tears)

 Sorry. I just really don't get that inlay.


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## yevetz (Sep 20, 2008)

Yo sorry for jumping in yuor talk...is it true that in the Japanese language one letter means a word?

Thanks


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## Zak1233 (Sep 20, 2008)

yevetz said:


> Yo sorry for jumping in yuor talk...is it true that in the Japanese language one letter means a word?
> 
> Thanks



yip for instance &#19968;&#12289;&#20108;&#12289;&#19977; those mean , 1 , 2 and 3 but in japanese you can write a word in 3 ways, hiragana(which is how elemtery kids learn to write at first i think...) you can writeeverything in japanese using hiragana but no one really does that ( unfortunately ) also katakana, which is used for english type words, like camera in japanese is &#12459;&#12513;&#12521;&#12288;ka-me-ra and then theres kanji which is teh hardest pain in the arse to learn lol ( &#19968;&#12289;&#20108;&#12289;&#19977; is kanji)
but in chinese its all kanji, which is really hard


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## Naren (Sep 20, 2008)

yevetz said:


> Yo sorry for jumping in yuor talk...is it true that in the Japanese language one letter means a word?
> 
> Thanks



It CAN. 

For example:

&#20809; = light
&#29356; = dog
&#29483; = cat
&#37507; = gun
&#31859; = rice
&#24859; = love

and so on.

But to make a lot of other words, you need to combine kanji.

For example:

&#24962;&#39729; = depression
&#24481;&#39151; = rice
&#36939;&#21205; = exercise
&#33258;&#26292;&#33258;&#26820; = desperation
&#21332;&#21147; = cooperation

etc.

You can have 1 symbol in Japanese mean one English word or you can have 10 symbols in Japanese mean one English word. Of course, English has words that consist of one character as well: such as I and A.



Zak1233 said:


> you can writeeverything in japanese using hiragana but no one really does that ( unfortunately )



UNFORTUNATELY?!  It takes me 10 times longer to read something written in just hiragana than something written in a mixture of hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

For a comparison, normal Japanese written in hiragana, katakana, and kanji would be like this:
I went to the mall yesterday and bought a new coat for three bucks. It was great, man. I'm gonna buy some more tomorrow.

Japanese written in just hiragana would be like this:
iwenttothemallyesterdayandboughtanewcoatforthreebucksitwasgreatmanimgonnabuysomemoretomorrow

And, Japanese has more homonyms than any other language on the planet. I bet there are over 30 different words all pronounced "chou," such as "very," "butterfly," "intestine," and a lot more, but they are all written with different kanji.

Something written in all katakana is even harder to read.



Zak1233 said:


> but in chinese its all kanji, which is really hard



Except in Chinese, it's called Hanzi. 

Japanese has roughly 10,000 kanji and around 3000-4000 of them are in common use. Chinese has roughly 50,000 hanzi and something like 15,000 of them are in common use.  (I don't remember the exact number, but it was pretty ridiculous)


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## Zak1233 (Sep 20, 2008)

Naren said:


> UNFORTUNATELY?!  It takes me 10 times longer to read something written in just hiragana than something written in a mixture of hiragana, katakana, and kanji.



i think its easier  the thing you wrote with no spaces was the first thing i read and i read it just the same as i would read a passage with spaces lol its not too hard

and the only reason i said unfortunately is because i think im gonna really struggle when i start to learn kanji  seems really hard


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## Naren (Sep 20, 2008)

Zak1233 said:


> i think its easier  the thing you wrote with no spaces was the first thing i read and i read it just the same as i would read a passage with spaces lol its not too hard
> 
> and the only reason i said unfortunately is because i think im gonna really struggle when i start to learn kanji  seems really hard



What thing with no spaces? The English sentence with no spaces, punctuation, or capitalization? If you read those just as easier, then you're different than most people. I guess I'll try something different.

With all 3:
I was going to hurt that guy really bad, but my sister interfered.

With just hiragana:
Aiwuzgoinuhhurrdatgairillaybudbatmoisysturentrfered.

If you think that the English example simply with no spaces and no punctuation was just as easy to read, the above example would be a more accurate comparison.

I would assume someone who can't read kanji would think that just hiragana would be easier, but I can guarantee you that not a single Japanese person or someone who can read Japanese (ie. not a beginner) would think that the hiragana is easier. 

I guess the absolute easiest to read would be hiragana, katakana, and kanji with furigana over the kanji, but that can be troublesome to make and you can't write e-mails or really anything on your computer that way.


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## Xtremevillan (Sep 20, 2008)

That english Aiwuzgonna makes my head hurt 

Now I really wanna start  I know, I got German and other schoolwork.

So..uh..Good morning! I have a question. Since hiragana is all sounds and has no meaning, how...would you form words? From two sounds? Like ne-ko, you would have to realize that the symbols and sounds for ne-ko combine to make neko which is a cat?


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## Zak1233 (Sep 20, 2008)

yip you just combine the hiragana to make words

&#29356;&#12288;&#65293;&#12288;&#12356;&#12396;&#12288;&#65293;&#12288;inu - dog
&#30007; - &#12362;&#12392;&#12371; - otoko - girl
&#22899; - &#12362;&#12435;&#12394; - onna - boy
&#26085; - &#12402; - hi - sun
&#26376; - &#12388;&#12365; - tsuki - moon

theres some basic ones





Naren said:


> With all 3:
> I was going to hurt that guy really bad, but my sister interfered.
> 
> With just hiragana:
> Aiwuzgoinuhhurrdatgairillaybudbatmoisysturentrfered.



that made me lol


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## Naren (Sep 20, 2008)

Zak1233 said:


> &#26085; - &#12402; - hi - sun



 That's a pretty big mistake. That symbol can mean "sun," but the word "hi" does not mean "sun." It means "day."

The word for sun is "Taiyou" (&#22826;&#38525.



Xtremevillan said:


> So..uh..Good morning! I have a question. Since hiragana is all sounds and has no meaning, how...would you form words? From two sounds? Like ne-ko, you would have to realize that the symbols and sounds for ne-ko combine to make neko which is a cat?



As I explained to you in the pms a month or two ago, Japanese is a syllabic language. It consists of two different kinds of writing: kana (hiragana and katakana) which is syllabic and represents sounds, and kanji, which represents primarily meaning rather than sound.

&#12397;&#12371; - This can ONLY be pronounced "neko."
&#29483; - this can be pronounced "neko" (kun-yomi) or "byou" (on-yomi).

For an extreme example, the kanji &#29983; can be pronounced: nama, sei, shou, i(kiru), i(keru), u(mareru), u(mu), i(kasu), o(u), ki, ha(eru), ha(yasu), na(ru), na(su), u, asa, ubu, and on and on. That kanji has about 30-40 different readings if you include the ones for names as well.

In contrast, &#12362; can only be pronounced "o." &#12362;&#12392;&#12371; can only be pronounced "otoko."

And so on.

For the neko example, you would pretty much only write neko with kanji. There are rules about how you use hiragana, katakana, and kanji, and I remember explaining them in detail to you in a pm, but it seems like you forgot all of that. 



Zak1233 said:


> &#30007; - &#12362;&#12392;&#12371; - otoko - girl
> &#22899; - &#12362;&#12435;&#12394; - onna - boy



 WOOOOOOOOAHHHHH!! I didn't even read this, but you have these backwards. Unless you're a crossdresser or a hermaphrodite, jeeeez.

Correct is:

&#30007; - &#12362;&#12392;&#12371; - otoko - male
&#22899; - &#12362;&#12435;&#12394; - onna - female

If you come to Japan, you'll be going into the girls' restroom, confident that it's for guys.


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## Zak1233 (Sep 20, 2008)

Naren said:


> Correct is:
> 
> &#30007; - &#12362;&#12392;&#12371; - otoko - male
> &#22899; - &#12362;&#12435;&#12394; - onna - female
> ...



yeh i just noticed that  
otokonoko - man
onnanohito - woman

??

and as for the rest room thing, who said i wouldnt want to go into a female restroom in japan, i wouldnt mind that at all...  

j/k


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## Naren (Sep 20, 2008)

It's a good way to get arrested. 

And actually it'd be "otoko no hito" and "onna no hito" for man and woman and "otoko no ko" and "onna no ko" for boy and girl.


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## Zak1233 (Sep 20, 2008)

Naren said:


> It's a good way to get arrested.
> 
> And actually it'd be "otoko no hito" and "onna no hito" for man and woman and "otoko no ko" and "onna no ko" for boy and girl.





ah i see, thanks for clearing that up


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## militant_x (Sep 20, 2008)

thats awesome. I started learning Japanese. Kinda sucks, have to put that on pause to learn either french, german, or russian in order to get the phd.


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## Xtremevillan (Sep 20, 2008)

I do onda remember the pms but like I said I am still confused. I still don't get it. If I wrote the symbols for ne and ko right, by themselves they have no meaning until you realize that together hey form neko whichis cat! Am I still getting it wrong? If I am oh well I will learn it later when I start.


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## Metal Ken (Sep 20, 2008)

Naren said:


> I was just talking to someone about an hour ago. He was having trouble distinguishing between wa and ga, ni and e, de and to, and didn't understand how to use o.
> 
> Particles are one of the hardest things to learn at the beginning, but it's absolutely necessary that you understand them all inside and out if you want to participate in communication. Because if you use the wrong one, oftentimes instead of being nonsense, it will just take on an entirely different meaning. There is that famous example of switching particles where you go from "Mr. Tanaka will use it" to "I will use Mr. Tanaka" just by switching "wa" to "o" (and a lot of other examples).



I know man 

I'm still shaky on a few instance of whether to use &#12395;&#12288;or &#12391;. Things like that. 
I was wondering - do you know any good grammar books? Sometimes a few of my teachers miss the finer points of certain things. They're cool, but since they're japanese, they sometimes cant explain why some things are the way they are, they're just like "Yeah, just do it this way, because", and not really "This is _why_".


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## Metal Ken (Sep 20, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> I do onda remember the pms but like I said I am still confused. I still don't get it. If I wrote the symbols for ne and ko right, by themselves they have no meaning until you realize that together hey form neko whichis cat! Am I still getting it wrong? If I am oh well I will learn it later when I start.



&#12397;&#12288;and &#12371; are just phonetic symbols, like G and P in English. You put them together to make certain sounds and words, as in English.


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## Xtremevillan (Sep 20, 2008)

right so thenfollowing that theory you would have to know that for example g l o and p would make "glop" and then you would have to know what it ia in advance! I know I suck at putting together my thoughts but if you can see where I am coming from..


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## Naren (Sep 20, 2008)

Metal Ken said:


> &#12397;&#12288;and &#12371; are just phonetic symbols, like G and P in English. You put them together to make certain sounds and words, as in English.



Yeah. The difference is that English is an alphabetic language and Japanese is a syllabic language. In alphabetic language, each character represents a fragment of a sound. In a syllabic language, each character represents SEVERAL fragments, which make up a syllable. So, in an alphabetic language like English, one character will represent the sound fragment "m," while in a syllabic language like Japanese, one character will represent an entire syllable like "ma." 

That's why McDonald's in English becomes "Makudonarudo" in Japanese. Because, every consonant other than "n" requires a vowel attached to it. However, sometimes "i" and "u" can become silent vowels when they fall inbetween particular consonants or after particular consonants (at the end of a word). For example, "shimashita" is pronounced "shimashta." The "i" falls inbetween an "sh" sound and a "t" sound, which makes the "i" sound silent.

Syllabic languages generally have a lot more characters than alphabetic languages. And ideographic languages like Chinese have a lot more characters than both.



Xtremevillan said:


> right so thenfollowing that theory you would have to know that for example g l o and p would make "glop" and then you would have to know what it ia in advance! I know I suck at putting together my thoughts but if you can see where I am coming from..



In an alphabetic language, yes, but Japanese is not alphabetic. It is syllabic. So, it would have to be "gu" "ro" and "pu."


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## Xtremevillan (Sep 20, 2008)

Ok so far I am with you, now let's say I wanted to say house. It would be (roll witn me) ho so ou or whatever. In order to k ow what I am saying you would have to ALREADY k ow what makes up the word house!! Otherwise I could be saying whose or zomwthing. Is this like working backwards?


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## Naren (Sep 20, 2008)

Metal Ken said:


> I know man
> 
> I'm still shaky on a few instance of whether to use &#12395;&#12288;or &#12391;. Things like that.
> I was wondering - do you know any good grammar books? Sometimes a few of my teachers miss the finer points of certain things. They're cool, but since they're japanese, they sometimes cant explain why some things are the way they are, they're just like "Yeah, just do it this way, because", and not really "This is _why_".



When I was first starting out when I was 14 years old, I bought a book called "Japanese grammar." It only focused on grammatic structure, particles, and so on, and didn't focus on vocabulary or phrases at all. It was a pretty good entry grammar book.

For me, I generally use particles by whichever _sounds_ right and sometimes I'll tell a non-Japanese that they're using a particle incorrectly without really knowing why. Most of the time, I do know why, but my sense of what seems right and wrong must be pretty good because Japanese have commented that I never make mistakes with particles. My superior was once mentioning that most foreigners make tons of mistakes with particles and I mentioned that they're kind of hard and he said that he'd never heard me use them incorrectly.

Of course, I can't tell a beginner to use particles based on "feeling."  I did at some point learn the specific details of when and where to use each particle, which formed the basis for my grammar knowledge, I guess.



Xtremevillan said:


> Ok so far I am with you, now let's say I wanted to say house. It would be (roll witn me) ho so ou or whatever. In order to k ow what I am saying you would have to ALREADY k ow what makes up the word house!! Otherwise I could be saying whose or zomwthing. Is this like working backwards?



It works like this, let's imagine that the word for house is "hausu." In that case, you would have to write the character for ha, then the character for u, and then the character for su.

It would look like this
hausu - &#12495;&#12454;&#12473;
&#12495; - ha
&#12454; - u
&#12473; - su

The symbol that MEANS house would be &#23478;. That's the main difference between kanji and kana.


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## Xtremevillan (Sep 20, 2008)

okay so you DO have to work backwards; if I gave you the symbols for ha u and su you would have to know that combined they make hausu and that hausu is house! This might seem like straightforward logic but it's really making me curious to see how hiragana will work. So I would learn the symbols an heir sounds, then combine it to make words! u


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## Metal Ken (Sep 20, 2008)

Naren said:


> Yeah. The difference is that English is an alphabetic language and Japanese is a syllabic language. In alphabetic language, each character represents a fragment of a sound. In a syllabic language, each character represents SEVERAL fragments, which make up a syllable. So, in an alphabetic language like English, one character will represent the sound fragment "m," while in a syllabic language like Japanese, one character will represent an entire syllable like "ma."



I realize the difference, but i was just trying to explain it in a more basic way. I thought he was kind of missing the point the characters in the kana able to be connected to form words in the same way as letters are in english. If you take them apart, for the most part they don't mean anything, just as the individual letters in English.


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## Naren (Sep 20, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> okay so you DO have to work backwards; if I gave you the symbols for ha u and su you would have to know that combined they make hausu and that hausu is house! This might seem like straightforward logic but it's really making me curious to see how hiragana will work. So I would learn the symbols an heir sounds, then combine it to make words! u



That's the same in any language.

If I wrote "peanut butter" in English and you didn't know that those characters combined meant "peanut butter," you wouldn't be able to read it.

It's a basic premise of every language on the planet.


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## Xtremevillan (Sep 20, 2008)

...yes. I do no think everyone realizes how retarded I am. I'm just not good at English.


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## Naren (Sep 20, 2008)

But, like was already said, you don't write stuff with just hiragana. Japanese consists of: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Unless you can read all 3, you cannot read Japanese.

&#20363;&#12360;&#12400;&#12289;&#12371;&#12435;&#12394;&#24863;&#12376;&#12395;&#12399;&#12394;&#12427;&#12435;&#12384;&#12369;&#12393;&#12397;&#12290;&#12402;&#12425;&#12364;&#12394;&#12418;&#12459;&#12479;&#12459;&#12490;&#12418;&#28450;&#23383;&#12418;&#20840;&#37096;&#24517;&#35201;&#12391;&#12289;&#19968;&#12388;&#12364;&#12394;&#12365;&#12419;&#35501;&#12417;&#12394;&#12356;&#12387;&#12390;&#12527;&#12465;&#12290;

There are some words that you can write in hiragana, katakana, or kanji, but they are rare. An example would be "cigarette" because it originally came from Portuguese about 400 or so years ago and is thought of as both a foreign word AND a native Japanese word. It is most commonly written in katakana as &#12479;&#12496;&#12467; because it is from a foreign language, but you will also see it written in hiragana as &#12383;&#12400;&#12371; and equally as much in kanji as &#29017;&#33609;.


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## Xtremevillan (Sep 20, 2008)

yes I remember you said hiragana is native kata is foreign and kanji are verbs or something. I believe the ex used was table. Thanks man. So if I am to learn the syllables whole as you did then would the next step be to learn the combinations to make words, or go onto katakana?


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## Naren (Sep 20, 2008)

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but you need to learn kana first (hiragana and katakana), while you're learning the language. You shouldn't just sit down and learn to read kana when you can't form even a basic sentence. 

You seem to be pretty confused about what hiragana, katakana, and kanji are used for, but you haven't started studying Japanese yet, so it's okay, I guess.


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## Shawn (Sep 20, 2008)

Cool. I used to know alot more Japanese when I was younger living there but as time went on, I lost most of it. I can still read and speak a little.


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## Xtremevillan (Sep 20, 2008)

Wait didn't you tell me to learn hiragana and kata before I started rosetta? And learn kanji on the way.


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## yevetz (Sep 20, 2008)

Naren said:


> Correct is:
> 
> &#30007; - &#12362;&#12392;&#12371; - otoko - male
> &#22899; - &#12362;&#12435;&#12394; - onna - female
> ...



in many slovenian languages ONA means female too


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## Ze Kink (Sep 20, 2008)

Naren said:


> Since no one seems to be able to read what I write (although Metal Ken seemed to understand a bit of it), I'll write an explanation:
> 
> " That first semester was a class for just learning hiragana and katakana? I can't believe that... In other words, your teacher didn't even teach you the most basic expressions and stuff like that? If that's that case, then he's not a "fun teacher," but a "LAZY teacher." Goddammit... Well, maybe it's okay if it's fun... so, you can't read any kanji? Like, you can't read numbers and stuff like that? If you took Japanese for a semester, you SHOULD be able to read it. Seriously. He's just lazy. That damn teacher. What the hell is he thinking? You should just kill him, y'know? Kill 'im. "



The one course I took last spring was only about 4 weeks, twice a week. It's the only option I have besides trying to study myself, which sucks.



Naren said:


> What do you mean "what's the difference"? "Instead of what you have"?
> 
> Did you even compare those. They're the exact same word, written the exact same way.
> 
> ...



Yeah, I actually just realized it's just a handwriting vs. typing kind of difference  the symbol (what do you call the different "parts" of kanji anyway?) right corner of &#26395; is more like a &#26085; on the "typed version", and closer to&#12288;&#12479; in the "hand written" version.

Doesn't it also mean loss of hope and hopelessness etc.? Because that was what I was trying to get. The difference with getting a "loss of hope" inlay would be that everyone would understand it (I haven't met anyone here in Finland who could read it, though one dude who saw it knew that the first kanji was hope), and it would only really have one way of understanding it. There's a lot of reasons why I wanted it there, one for example is that my main source of inspiration seems to be hopeless or nearly hopeless situations. For example, we had our first gig coming in three days, our other guitarist was going to leave to army* the next day after the gig, so no chances of moving the gig or anything, and we didn't have ANY material ready. During the 3 days, I wrote two songs, a third one together with the other guitarist and the vocalist, and we arranged a cover medley of roughly 15 minutes. I've never written songs that fast... until some months later, again a couple days before a band contest  The inlay is there to remind me, and hopefully make the guitar inspire me too!

Today we learned the numbers from &#19968; to &#20806;, the homework we got was to write some numbers which got progressively harder, the last one was &#19968;&#20806;&#20108;&#21315;&#19977;&#30334;&#22235;&#21313;&#20116;&#20740;&#20845;&#21315;&#19971;&#30334;&#20843;&#21313;&#20061;&#19975;. And some sentences using numbers too, like:
&#12380;&#12435;&#12406;&#12391;&#20116;&#30334;&#20108;&#21313;&#20870;&#12391;&#12377;&#12290;
&#12366;&#12421;&#12358;&#12395;&#12367;&#12434;&#22235;&#30334;&#12464;&#12521;&#12512;&#12367;&#12384;&#12373;&#12356;&#12290;
&#12426;&#12435;&#12372;&#12434;&#20116;&#21313;&#20491;&#12392;&#12418;&#12418;&#12434;&#19977;&#21313;&#20491;&#12367;&#12384;&#12373;&#12356;&#12290;

I'm pretty excited, because the next chapter is called &#12479;&#12496;&#12467;&#12392;&#12373;&#12369;&#12288;

And regarding your "how do I use hiragana etc." discussion, I think the reason why it was so "easy" to me (and it's for other Finnish people too), is that we learn to read and write with syllables. For example, a first grader's mother tongue book could have sentences like "Tä-mä au-to on pu-nai-nen" (this car is red) or "Mi-nun ni-me-ni on Jan-ne" (my name is Janne). Both could be&#12288;written in Japanese too (without ä's of course), e.g. the latter would be &#12415;&#12396;&#12435;&#12395;&#12417;&#12395;&#12362;&#12435;&#12376;&#12419;&#12435;&#12397; - mi-nu-n ni-me-ni o-n Ja-n-ne. Pretty close to the original, huh? And, if you read &#12415;&#12396;&#12435;&#12395;&#12417;&#12395;&#12362;&#12435;&#12376;&#12419;&#12435;&#12397; in Japanese, it would sound almost exactly like it would if a Finnish person reads "minun nimeni on Janne", because Japanese and Finnish are pronounced almost identically. The difference would be that "ja" is pronounced more like "za" in Japanese from the Finnish perspective, and more like "ia" in Finnish from the Japanese perspective.

*He's still there BTW, our drummer began his service a couple months ago, and our bassist has to go in january. Compulsory military service . Me and the vocalist are the only ones who didn't/won't go. I'm doing civilian service currently and the vocalist is probably going to get freed from service. Kinda sucks that our band was together only for about 2 months (but we were active without the other guitarist for a while), and after that we have to take a break of almost 2 years


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## Naren (Sep 20, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> Wait didn't you tell me to learn hiragana and kata before I started rosetta? And learn kanji on the way.



If Rosetta is only written in kana, then I would recommend not even using Rosetta. There has to be a balance where you learn to read WHILE you're learning the language. Hiragana is the first you should learn, and then katakana, and then kanji, but you don't just sit down and learn hiragana before you've learned any vocabulary or grammar.

I think Japanese is a language where it's really really not a good idea to learn on your own (for speakers of European languages). I started learning Japanese on my own when I was 14, but my one teacher in my Japanese university said to me, "You started out teaching yourself Japanese? That's impressive. Most people who do that permanently have screwed up grammar and pronunciation." And she's right.



Ze Kink said:


> Yeah, I actually just realized it's just a handwriting vs. typing kind of difference  the symbol (what do you call the different "parts" of kanji anyway?) right corner of &#26395; is more like a &#26085; on the "typed version", and closer to&#12288;&#12479; in the "hand written" version.



Actually both versions are printed versions. I don't think you would even recognize a hand written version. It's tough stuff. You might consider it like the one here as a standard font and the one on your fretboard as a little bit stylized of a font.

Actually, the radical on the upper right is the moon radical. See how the lines are extended below bottom line and the left one is curving to the left. That's how it worksss.



Ze Kink said:


> Doesn't it also mean loss of hope and hopelessness etc.? Because that was what I was trying to get. The difference with getting a "loss of hope" inlay would be that everyone would understand it (I haven't met anyone here in Finland who could read it, though one dude who saw it knew that the first kanji was hope), and it would only really have one way of understanding it. There's a lot of reasons why I wanted it there, one for example is that my main source of inspiration seems to be hopeless or nearly hopeless situations. For example, we had our first gig coming in three days, our other guitarist was going to leave to army* the next day after the gig, so no chances of moving the gig or anything, and we didn't have ANY material ready. During the 3 days, I wrote two songs, a third one together with the other guitarist and the vocalist, and we arranged a cover medley of roughly 15 minutes. I've never written songs that fast... until some months later, again a couple days before a band contest  The inlay is there to remind me, and hopefully make the guitar inspire me too!



 I think you totally misunderstood that word. The first symbol means "loss" or "cut off" and the second symbol means "hope." Therefore, it means "despair" or "hopelessness." I don't know if hopelessness is an inspiring word in Finnish, but it isn't in English. I imagine someone committing suicide because they have no choice.

Since a Japanese->English dictionary will only give you one-word English answers like "despair," "desparation," "hopelessness" and so on for &#32118;&#26395;, I'm writing the translation of the definition of &#32118;&#26395; in my Japanese->Japanese dictionary:
To entirely lose all hopes and expectations. For all hope to die out. Ex. "To lose all hope in life." (hopeless, desparate)

It's not something to be inspired by.  It has more to do with you than with the situation. You can't use the word &#32118;&#26395; to describe overcoming a hopeless situation.



Ze Kink said:


> Today we learned the numbers from &#19968; to &#20806;, the homework we got was to write some numbers which got progressively harder, the last one was &#19968;&#20806;&#20108;&#21315;&#19977;&#30334;&#22235;&#21313;&#20116;&#20740;&#20845;&#21315;&#19971;&#30334;&#20843;&#21313;&#20061;&#19975;. And some sentences using numbers too, like:
> &#12380;&#12435;&#12406;&#12391;&#20116;&#30334;&#20108;&#21313;&#20870;&#12391;&#12377;&#12290;
> &#12366;&#12421;&#12358;&#12395;&#12367;&#12434;&#22235;&#30334;&#12464;&#12521;&#12512;&#12367;&#12384;&#12373;&#12356;&#12290;
> &#12426;&#12435;&#12372;&#12434;&#20116;&#21313;&#20491;&#12392;&#12418;&#12418;&#12434;&#19977;&#21313;&#20491;&#12367;&#12384;&#12373;&#12356;&#12290;
> ...



Wow. You're just starting your second semester/year and you've already learned &#20806;? I took Japanese for 4 years in college and no one ever taught me &#20806;. Not really something you have to learn very soon, seeing as it's 1,000,000,000,000. A number that you rarely see outside of astronomy.



Ze Kink said:


> And regarding your "how do I use hiragana etc." discussion, I think the reason why it was so "easy" to me (and it's for other Finnish people too), is that we learn to read and write with syllables. For example, a first grader's mother tongue book could have sentences like "Tä-mä au-to on pu-nai-nen" (this car is red) or "Mi-nun ni-me-ni on Jan-ne" (my name is Janne). Both could be&#12288;written in Japanese too (without ä's of course), e.g. the latter would be &#12415;&#12396;&#12435;&#12395;&#12417;&#12395;&#12362;&#12435;&#12376;&#12419;&#12435;&#12397; - mi-nu-n ni-me-ni o-n Ja-n-ne. Pretty close to the original, huh? And, if you read &#12415;&#12396;&#12435;&#12395;&#12417;&#12395;&#12362;&#12435;&#12376;&#12419;&#12435;&#12397; in Japanese, it would sound almost exactly like it would if a Finnish person reads "minun nimeni on Janne", because Japanese and Finnish are pronounced almost identically. The difference would be that "ja" is pronounced more like "za" in Japanese from the Finnish perspective, and more like "ia" in Finnish from the Japanese perspective.
> 
> *He's still there BTW, our drummer began his service a couple months ago, and our bassist has to go in january. Compulsory military service . Me and the vocalist are the only ones who didn't/won't go. I'm doing civilian service currently and the vocalist is probably going to get freed from service. Kinda sucks that our band was together only for about 2 months (but we were active without the other guitarist for a while), and after that we have to take a break of almost 2 years



I always thought Finnish sounded like a pretty syllabic language, similar to Japanese in that regard. But isn't Janne pronounced like "&#12516;&#12493;" and not "&#12472;&#12515;&#12493;?"


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## Xtremevillan (Sep 21, 2008)

> If Rosetta is only written in kana, then I would recommend not even using Rosetta. There has to be a balance where you learn to read WHILE you're learning the language. Hiragana is the first you should learn, and then katakana, and then kanji, but you don't just sit down and learn hiragana before you've learned any vocabulary or grammar.
> 
> I think Japanese is a language where it's really really not a good idea to learn on your own (for speakers of European languages). I started learning Japanese on my own when I was 14, but my one teacher in my Japanese university said to me, "You started out teaching yourself Japanese? That's impressive. Most people who do that permanently have screwed up grammar and pronunciation." And she's right.



Well if you remember there are three modes in Rosetta, one I believe is Romaji ( "otonoko" ) and one I think you said is hiragana and the last one is straight Japanese. I guess I can ask you guys what to do when I've ordered some books and stuff on which way to go. I do have a free credit next semester that I was hoping I could pull down a third year course but if I can't I'll probably end up taking German or Japanese depending on how full the classes are. But for now I'll peace this thread and leave you Japanese speaking people...speaking Japanese!


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## Ze Kink (Sep 21, 2008)

Naren said:


> Actually both versions are printed versions. I don't think you would even recognize a hand written version. It's tough stuff. You might consider it like the one here as a standard font and the one on your fretboard as a little bit stylized of a font.
> 
> Actually, the radical on the upper right is the moon radical. See how the lines are extended below bottom line and the left one is curving to the left. That's how it worksss.



We actually just learned that kanji today, because we learned the names of months. Some other kanji we learned today (and some of these yesterday) were: &#25307;&#12365;&#29483;&#12288;&#23383;&#24341;&#12288;&#33457;&#12288;&#20870;&#12288;&#20803;&#12288;&#20140;&#12288;&#20889;&#30495;&#12288;&#26412;&#12288;&#31354;&#12288;&#26862;&#12288;&#26376;&#12288;&#23665;&#12288;&#23665;&#12293;&#12288;&#22826;&#38525;&#12288;&#28246;
&#12288;&#28779;&#12288;&#29983;&#12288;&#26519;&#12288;&#20309;&#12288;&#26479;&#12288;&#37202;&#12288;&#39770;&#12288;&#32005;&#33590;
We don't really exercise kanji yet, but our teacher sometimes shows us how some words are written in kanji, perhaps she's trying to "make us ready" for them or something.



Naren said:


> I think you totally misunderstood that word. The first symbol means "loss" or "cut off" and the second symbol means "hope." Therefore, it means "despair" or "hopelessness." I don't know if hopelessness is an inspiring word in Finnish, but it isn't in English. I imagine someone committing suicide because they have no choice.
> 
> Since a Japanese->English dictionary will only give you one-word English answers like "despair," "desparation," "hopelessness" and so on for &#32118;&#26395;, I'm writing the translation of the definition of &#32118;&#26395; in my Japanese->Japanese dictionary:
> To entirely lose all hopes and expectations. For all hope to die out. Ex. "To lose all hope in life." (hopeless, desparate)
> ...



Yeah, I do know it's not the real meaning, but it's sort of what desperation or hopelessness mean to me, other than the literate meaning. And as I said, it's only one of the reasons. I have to leave to band practice soon so I don't have time to explain more now, but perhaps later.



Naren said:


> Wow. You're just starting your second semester/year and you've already learned &#20806;? I took Japanese for 4 years in college and no one ever taught me &#20806;. Not really something you have to learn very soon, seeing as it's 1,000,000,000,000. A number that you rarely see outside of astronomy.



Not even that long  I just began my second course, which will last 3 weeks, 6 lessons in total. The first course was a month or so, if I remember correctly, so it was about 10 lessons in total. I too don't think I'll be needing &#20806;, but our book still had it there. Wouldn't the Japanese way of writing it be 1,0000,0000,0000 BTW? Our teacher had no idea what it was in Finnish (well, her Finnish is pretty funny anyway, as she is Japanese), and no one of the students was sure either. I guess it's "biljoona", which is not "billion", as it's "miljardi" in Finnish.



Naren said:


> I always thought Finnish sounded like a pretty syllabic language, similar to Japanese in that regard. But isn't Janne pronounced like "&#12516;&#12493;" and not "&#12472;&#12515;&#12493;?"



Almost, "&#12516;&#12531;&#12493;" is correct. I was trying to describe the pronounciation in English so I put "za" and "ia" in there. In Japanese, they would indeed be &#12472;&#12515; and &#12516;.


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## Naren (Sep 21, 2008)

Ze Kink said:


> We actually just learned that kanji today, because we learned the names of months. Some other kanji we learned today (and some of these yesterday) were: &#25307;&#12365;&#29483;&#12288;&#23383;&#24341;&#12288;&#33457;&#12288;&#20870;&#12288;&#20803;&#12288;&#20140;&#12288;&#20889;&#30495;&#12288;&#26412;&#12288;&#31354;&#12288;&#26862;&#12288;&#26376;&#12288;&#23665;&#12288;&#23665;&#12293;&#12288;&#22826;&#38525;&#12288;&#28246;
> &#12288;&#28779;&#12288;&#29983;&#12288;&#26519;&#12288;&#20309;&#12288;&#26479;&#12288;&#37202;&#12288;&#39770;&#12288;&#32005;&#33590;
> We don't really exercise kanji yet, but our teacher sometimes shows us how some words are written in kanji, perhaps she's trying to "make us ready" for them or something.



 Sorry, but I have absolutely zero respect for your teacher. She seriously picks the worst order to teach kanji. She's teaching you some of the most basic kanji in the world (such as &#28779; and &#26412, some intermediate (such as &#25307; and &#38525, and some advanced (such as &#20806.

I seriously doubt her ability to teach...



Ze Kink said:


> Yeah, I do know it's not the real meaning, but it's sort of what desperation or hopelessness mean to me, other than the literate meaning. And as I said, it's only one of the reasons. I have to leave to band practice soon so I don't have time to explain more now, but perhaps later.



And I guess I could put the symbols for "suicide" on my guitar and claim that I think they are very uplifting and encouraging because so many people overcome suicide. 



Ze Kink said:


> Not even that long  I just began my second course, which will last 3 weeks, 6 lessons in total. The first course was a month or so, if I remember correctly, so it was about 10 lessons in total. I too don't think I'll be needing &#20806;, but our book still had it there. Wouldn't the Japanese way of writing it be 1,0000,0000,0000 BTW? Our teacher had no idea what it was in Finnish (well, her Finnish is pretty funny anyway, as she is Japanese), and no one of the students was sure either. I guess it's "biljoona", which is not "billion", as it's "miljardi" in Finnish.



&#20806; is one trillion in American English (1,000,000,000,000).

I'm pretty sure no Japanese would write a trillion as 1,0000,0000,0000. I've been "studying" Japanese for about 11-12 years now and lived in Japan for over 5 years and never seen anything like that before. In general, Japanese don't use commas with numbers. For example, &#19968;&#19975; is not written 10,000 or 1,0000. It's generally just written 10000. I will say that I have seen &#19968;&#19975; written as 1.0000 before, but it's really weird and confusing...


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## The Atomic Ass (Sep 21, 2008)

*Subscribed*

I'll be reading this in full and contributing what little I can when I get my Internet tomorrow.

I've been learning Japanese, but the lazy way, only learning how to speak it, not read it.


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## Ze Kink (Oct 4, 2008)

Bump! We're still learning stuff related to numbers, so we're learning to answer such questions like "&#21365;&#12399;&#12394;&#12435;&#20998;&#12395;&#12420;&#12391;&#12427;?"

The amount of kanji we use has also understandably expanded, so a typical sentence we practice would look like "&#26469;&#36913;&#12398;&#22303;&#26332;&#26085;&#12395;&#20140;&#37117;&#12408;&#34892;&#12365;&#12414;&#12377;&#12363;?" instead of just hiragana and katakana.

We didn't really learn any new stuff today, just some new verbs and kanji. It was good for me though, since I had to skip the previous lesson because I had a gig the night before, and couldn't get up early enough to attend  Tomorrow we'll probably be learning more about particles.


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## Naren (Oct 4, 2008)

Ze Kink said:


> The amount of kanji we use has also understandably expanded, so a typical sentence we practice would look like "&#26469;&#36913;&#12398;&#22303;&#26332;&#26085;&#12395;&#20140;&#37117;&#12408;&#34892;&#12365;&#12414;&#12377;&#12363;?" instead of just hiragana and katakana.



That's good.  Granted those are all very basic kanji, but so many teachers put off teaching kanji so much, even though you literally can't read Japanese without a thorough and deep understanding of kanji. Students oftentimes really hold back from learning kanji. I've heard so many people say "No, I just want to learn to speak Japanese. I don't need to be able to read it." 

So, it's good to see your teacher so actively teaching kanji... even though the kanji she picks is sometimes utterly insane (seriously! &#20806; is the kind of kanji you'd learn in your last year of college Japanese. I think your teacher has her priorities a little off.  I just checked my Joyo kanji book and &#20806; is number 1562 (they are listed in level of difficulty and importance). In other words, not the kind of kanji you'd teach someone who is learning sentences like "are you going to school tomorrow?").


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 4, 2008)

^ My friend is doing that, he wants to learn romanji only.


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## Naren (Oct 5, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> ^ My friend is doing that, he wants to learn romanji only.



In that case, he will both never learn to read Japanese and never learn to speak it (correctly).


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 6, 2008)

True, but I can't control him. Anyways, my friend gave me her Japanese book which the teacher at my college uses in her class. So far it uses the same dictionary as Rosetta, with the ra ri ru re ro. Unfortunately it does not display stroke order so I cannot at least see how they work. They say that the romanji displayed will help with pronounciation. They also have the "shi + k" -> "shk" thing going on, which is the same as my dictionary. Unfortuantely again no clear "r" pronounciation.... I sped ahead to grammar where as of now I don't remember much, but I do remember that "ka" (or was it ko, Im pretty sure it was ka) at the end of a sentence is a question. AND that in Japanese you don't have to repeat things if it's assumed what you're talking about, like "what color is the moon", you don't have to say "the moon is white", just "its white". Particles are hard! I dont remember much about'em either, but I did it at 9 AM on four hours of sleep... this thing goes pretty fast, right after hira/kata you jump straight into sentences where they go into particles and stuff. Watashi wa .... desu. Something. Thats what I remember.


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## Naren (Oct 6, 2008)

You can't learn how to pronounce things through explanations. You have to actually hear them. I mean, that should be obvious, but if you can't get a teacher and are jumping in your pants, wanting to start immediately, at the very least get some native Japanese speakers to help you (someone learning Japanese doesn't count) and maybe a CD or something.

And it's "ka," by the way.

Yeah, anyway, I don't need to repeat my core advice, because I'm sure you remember it.


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 7, 2008)

I remember. I do have another question.

Grammar book says not to break apart double consonants. Dictionary says to break them apart. Hm. The Grammar book lists "Kite kudasai" and "Kitte kudasai". Dictionary has "Gakko" and "Kippu". Grammar says not to say it twice but to hold the consonant longer, "Keet-teh ..." while dictionary has "kip-pu". Hm? It seems that the grammar book split it in half while saying to hold it twice as long.

I did recieve my obviously Grammar book, the dictionary, Kanji flash cards and the kanji dictionary which has drawing strokes.


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## Naren (Oct 7, 2008)

"Kite" means "Come." "Kitte" means "cut it." They are pronounced completely different. "Gakou" means "painter." "Gakkou" means "school." Like I've said a zillion times, you *NEED A TEACHER* for this. But, if I were to compare them, "kite" is pronounced "kee-teh" and "kitte" is pronounced "keet-teh" with a short little pause inbetween where your tongue is pulling back on the top of your upper teeth.

In hiragana, 
kite = &#12365;&#12390;
kitte = &#12365;&#12387;&#12390;

The little tsu denotes a doubled consonant.

gakou = &#12364;&#12371;&#12358;
gakkou = &#12364;&#12387;&#12371;&#12358;

And what do you mean "break apart double consonants"? If you mean in writing them in romaji, then that's completely up to you. I write double consonants in romaji as "gekkoppossoppan'nozzuka" (that's nonsense by the way). But you really shouldn't be learning from romaji. It'll cripple ya fo sho.


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## Ze Kink (Oct 7, 2008)

Finally found my XP disc, yay! Now I can type Japanese on my laptop too. I decided to retire my old pc anyway, since it started to really annoy me (refuses to connect to WLAN, doesn't recognize USB devices anymore etc).

We watched 2 episodes of &#38651;&#36554;&#30007; (hope that's correct since I haven't rebooted yet so I can't see what I just wrote ) because sunday's lesson was the last lesson of that course. And we watched it without subtitles, it was really really hard to understand, but at least I understood a little! Luckily, the next course starts on saturday. I guess I need to do some reading, because I have to go to work next saturday and can't attend the first lesson of that course.


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## Naren (Oct 7, 2008)

That's the best way to improve your listening.  ... Not &#38651;&#36554;&#30007; though. I definitely wouldn't recommend that to anyone... but watching Japanese movies or TV shows without subtitles. Even if you don't understand what they're saying, if you stay attentive, you'll become better and better at understanding and having the words clearly go in through your ears. When I was 17, I watched a Japanese movie with subtitles where I could barely understand any of the words spoken. To me, it sounded so slurred together and I imagined I'd never be able to easily understand it. I kept watching movies and TV shows and working on my Japanese through various methods (reading, writing, speaking, listening, etc.). When I was 20, I watched that movie again (for the first time since I was 17) and this time without subtitles and the stuff that I had remembered clearly as sounding like incomprehensible gobbelty-gook was easily understood. I could clearly hear every single word and I understood 90% of them. The ones that I didn't understand, I could clearly make out and look up in a dictionary. It was a very rewarding experience.

Just purposefully listening in itself is a great way to improve your listening ability.


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## Ze Kink (Oct 8, 2008)

Naren said:


> That's the best way to improve your listening.  ... Not &#38651;&#36554;&#30007; though. I definitely wouldn't recommend that to anyone... but watching Japanese movies or TV shows without subtitles. Even if you don't understand what they're saying, if you stay attentive, you'll become better and better at understanding and having the words clearly go in through your ears. When I was 17, I watched a Japanese movie with subtitles where I could barely understand any of the words spoken. To me, it sounded so slurred together and I imagined I'd never be able to easily understand it. I kept watching movies and TV shows and working on my Japanese through various methods (reading, writing, speaking, listening, etc.). When I was 20, I watched that movie again (for the first time since I was 17) and this time without subtitles and the stuff that I had remembered clearly as sounding like incomprehensible gobbelty-gook was easily understood. I could clearly hear every single word and I understood 90% of them. The ones that I didn't understand, I could clearly make out and look up in a dictionary. It was a very rewarding experience.
> 
> Just purposefully listening in itself is a great way to improve your listening ability.



Recommendations are always welcome! I learned English from movies and games before we started it in school, so I know it's one of the best (if not the best, which it probably is) ways to learn for me.

I can hear almost everything in anime and movies, but it's just gibberish to me unincluding words and stuff I already know. Again, I think it's because of the similarities between Finnish and Japanese.


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 9, 2008)

I talked to a native Japanese person. I gave her a few words that had the silent rule, like "Sumimasen", "kaimashita" and to get my r's up, "kuruma".

For Sumimasen, she literally said, "sue me mah sen". I heard the "sue" clearly. 
For "kaimashita", once again, "kai ma shita".
And for "kuruma", she said "kuruma". Well, at least I heard an r the three times she did it, but my friend said he heard a more L sound. She said if you try to skip over the r you might get it, I'm not sure I said it right.

But she did do the end of the word -su right, it was just "des" or "kimas". Naren, this is the same one that pronounces "alkyne" "arrryl kyne".

I also asked her about stroke order but she didn't have the time (10 mins between classes), she said that in general they are drawn from top to bottom. 



Now for one unrelated question, do Japanese electronics work in the US without any conversion or adaptor or anything? I think we run 120 volt or something, and a Japanese PS2 I saw ran 110. Then I saw another web page where it takes "8.5v" and the US takes "8.5v.


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## Naren (Oct 9, 2008)

Huh, what are you talking about? Sumimasen and kuruma do not have any silent rule.   It is VERY clear that you have no idea what the silent rule is. Why wouldn't you hear the "su" in "sumimasen"? 

I think you really really really need a teacher. I have no idea where you are getting these bizarre ideas, but I think you are confusing yourself and mixing yourself up by reading through these books and not understanding what they're saying.

And what do you mean she did the end of the word "right"? If she's a native Japanese speaker, EVERYTHING she says is pronounced right.

Since I took linguistics in college, I can give you an example. The English "R" sound is made with the teeth touching each other (or at least ALMOST touching each other) and the tongue not touching any part of the mouth. The English "L" sound is made with the mouth open (the teeth not touching) and the tongue touching the gums behind the upper teeth. The Japanese sound you are describing as an "R" that is neither an "R" nor an "L" is made with the mouth open (the teeth not touching) and the tongue very lightly touching the gums behind the upper teeth. So, from a scientific mind, if you wanted to classify that IN ENGLISH, it would be an "L." So, I guess the "r" in "kuruma" is more like an L than like an R, but it's not either.

As for electronics, they will probably not work right. I brought my alarm clock over when I first came here and when I plugged it in, I set it to the actual time at 4:00pm. It kept getting behind time. It'd be 4:30 and it'd say 4:25. After an entire day, it was like 2 hours behind. Some things work fine and some things get really screwed up.



Xtremevillan said:


> I also asked her about stroke order but she didn't have the time (10 mins between classes), she said that in general they are drawn from top to bottom.



They are A LOT more complicated than that. To describe the rules about stroke order, I'd have to write an entire page, and I'm sure you'd still get them wrong. Most Japanese know them because they learned them in elementary school, but couldn't explain to you what the rules are. They could just show you how they are written.

Saying "tell me everything about stroke order" is like saying "Teach me how to draw."


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 9, 2008)

Well I thought the u in su was silent, like "sukidesu" or this textbook's favorite one, "Sumisu" (Smith). The silent rule is not for kuruma, i was doin the r thing for kuruma (didnt finish my thought). The teacher for Japanese only teaches in the spring and I was informed there may be no spring semester as no books for spring were ordered :\

Hm, I see what you mean. From the two kanji I saw (front of kanji flashcard packet thing) it looked like she was right. For..uh, I can't type the character but in romanji its "a", you draw the vertical line, then horizontal to make a "t", then the curved bottom. I was drawing the horizontal first, then vertical, then curved bottom. I remember her drawing that yesterday.

Yeah, I'd rather not fry a PS2


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## Naren (Oct 9, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> Well I thought the u in su was silent, like "sukidesu" or this textbook's favorite one, "Sumisu" (Smith). The silent rule is not for kuruma, i was doin the r thing for kuruma (didnt finish my thought). The teacher for Japanese only teaches in the spring and I was informed there may be no spring semester as no books for spring were ordered :\



 The reason "suki" is pronounced "ski" is because the "u" falls between an "s" and a "k." All "u"s and "i"s aren't silent, dude. 

And you could pronounce those silent vowels as well. You could pronounce "suki" as "su-ki" or as "ski." 

Talking about which consonants make u's and i's silent would take too long to explain and should be reserved for a few classes. 

I'll just give a random example:

Ashita gakkou ni iku yotei deshita ga Matsuki-san wa kite hoshikunai to iimashita.

would be pronounced (with an (X) where silent syllables are):

Ash(X)ta gakkou ni iku yotei desh(X)ta ga Mats(X)ki-san wa kite-hosh(X)kunai to iimash(X)ta.

I would recommend putting off Japanese until you can get a teacher.



Xtremevillan said:


> Hm, I see what you mean. From the two kanji I saw (front of kanji flashcard packet thing) it looked like she was right. For..uh, I can't type the character but in romanji its "a", you draw the vertical line, then horizontal to make a "t", then the curved bottom. I was drawing the horizontal first, then vertical, then curved bottom. I remember her drawing that yesterday.
> 
> Yeah, I'd rather not fry a PS2



I assume you mean &#12354;.


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 9, 2008)

You are right. also !! I remember those rules from re dictionary! "shinbun" 's i is not skipped because it's not next to a blocking consonant. Oh man. And as much as I agree with you if I can't get a teacher by ezy semester I have to move on.

I memorized pretty much all of the hiragana and stroke order for them, still having problems with that r--I'll ask the native japanese speaker to critique me some more, I looked online and Hiragana for r + vowels to me sounds CLEARLY like a D. "Day" = re. The only one to have "weird" stroke order for me was "mo" as you draw the vertical before the horizontal and "yu". The good thing is that katakana follows the same rules so it should be much easier. kana This site is much better!!

Now I got most of the katakana down except a few. Kinda sucks that I keep forgetting random ones.


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 13, 2008)

I didn't want to ask, but between the words "kan'en" (hepatitis) and "kan'nen" (idea), Naren, do you find yourself harshly stopping yourself after that first N in "kan'en"? I am saying it and it is coming out "kanuh-en", whereas kan'nen is "kahn-neneh". 

As for the rest I've memorized through that kana page most of the letters and sounds, the r continues to defy me so I will ask the native Japanese speaker on Wednesday. Here goes some copy paste from posts around here:

&#12371;&#12435;&#12395;&#12385;&#12399; &#12490;&#12524;&#12531; &#12373;&#12435;.

The only thing I had a little problem was combining, say, &#12454;&#12456; fluently. Everything else, like &#12364;&#12388;&#12371; seems to go smoothly.


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## Zak1233 (Oct 13, 2008)

my japanese coach is coming out tomorrow for the DS. lookin gforeword to pick this one up! seems like itl be a great tool to get things into my head more and memorize em, i bought my chinese coach and thought it was great so i'd defo recommend this to people!


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 14, 2008)

> I was just talking to someone about an hour ago. He was having trouble distinguishing between wa and ga, ni and e, de and to, and didn't understand how to use o.



Well, so far I can understand o (politeness or object marker). Wa and ga kind of confuse me, I see Tanaka san WA and sometimes Tanaka GA, I know wa is the topic marker and ga is the subject, hm. ni and e I did not get to.



> &#30007; - &#12362;&#12392;&#12371; - otoko - male
> &#22899; - &#12362;&#12435;&#12394; - onna - female



Here is another problem I will be facing in two lessons from now, substitution of hiragana into kanji. I think it is simply that, a substitution? I know you can write kanji with hiragana as the above example shows (probably not all, but I think from what I have seen it is also pronounced that way?) so I think I am right...


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## Naren (Oct 15, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> I didn't want to ask, but between the words "kan'en" (hepatitis) and "kan'nen" (idea), Naren, do you find yourself harshly stopping yourself after that first N in "kan'en"? I am saying it and it is coming out "kanuh-en", whereas kan'nen is "kahn-neneh".



 uh, kan'nen is NOT "kahn-neneh." Where are you getting that "eh" at the end? And "kanuh-en" would be "kanaen." You're totally confused me here. I have no idea what you're talking about.

kan'en = kahn-ehn
kan'nen = kahn-nehn

They sound just as different as "foot socks" and "flue shots." 

Don't know where you're getting all those extra vowels that aren't there.

I seriously hope you're learning your pronounciation from a Japanese (or from Japanese people) and not from a book... 



Xtremevillan said:


> Well, so far I can understand o (politeness or object marker).



 That is proof that you DON'T understand "o."



Xtremevillan said:


> Wa and ga kind of confuse me, I see Tanaka san WA and sometimes Tanaka GA, I know wa is the topic marker and ga is the subject, hm. ni and e I did not get to.



I wasn't talking about whether the person I was talking to had "gotten" to them yet. I was saying that he didn't know how to use it correctly. And it's clear that you don't know how to use wa or ga correctly from that mixed up explanation there.



Xtremevillan said:


> Here is another problem I will be facing in two lessons from now, substitution of hiragana into kanji. I think it is simply that, a substitution? I know you can write kanji with hiragana as the above example shows (probably not all, but I think from what I have seen it is also pronounced that way?) so I think I am right...



Hiragana represents sound. Kanji represents meaning. It's that simple.

Dog is &#12356;&#12396; in hiragana and &#29356; in kanji. They are both pronounced "inu," but everyone would write it with the kanji and not with the hiragana. OK or alright would be &#12384;&#12356;&#12376;&#12423;&#12358;&#12406; in hiragana and &#22823;&#19976;&#22827; in kanji, but no one would write that word in hiragana. The hiragana represents the sound and the kanji represent the meaning and thus the sound.

And, yes, you can write all kanji with hiragana, unless there is a magical kanji that doesn't have a pronunciation (this is a joke. There is no such magic kanji). However, kanji do not have only 1 reading. This kanji &#29983; does not have a single hiragana representation. It has about 50 different hiragana representations depending on context and meaning.

If it sounds confusing now, it will make perfect sense when you're ready to study kanji.


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 16, 2008)

ok thanks. Also I still can't get this fucking r sound down. My Russian friend who was there the last time of kuruma said it and got it right and constantly gets on my nerves whenever I try to say it by going NO WRONG HAHAHAHA. I keep saying kuluma or kuduma. The native speaker said not to worry about it too much it'll sound like I have a slight lisp or something but I want to get I down. The only problem is in every example I hear I hear a hard r. I downloaded advent children in Japanese. This did solve part of my desu problem. But yeah the r persists. Hm. Is there any way you can record yourself saying words that have r in it? I don't want to half ass learn the basics if a language. 

As for particles  I was told o was an object marker. Wa is used for common knowledge or already introduced things. Ga is used to distinguish, or mark subjects that are neutral in acivity or after a intereogrative. Wa would be like john san wa nihinjin desu. (post office) ga... Dare ga...

Phone keyboard sucks. You'd think an iPhone keyboard wouldn't be this shifty. Shitty not ucking shifty STOP IT


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 16, 2008)

also did I get the konnichiwa naren San right?



> The English "R" sound is made with the teeth touching each other (or at least ALMOST touching each other) and the tongue not touching any part of the mouth. The English "L" sound is made with the mouth open (the teeth not touching) and the tongue touching the gums behind the upper teeth. The Japanese sound you are describing as an "R" that is neither an "R" nor an "L" is made with the mouth open (the teeth not touching) and the tongue very lightly touching the gums behind the upper teeth. So, from a scientific mind, if you wanted to classify that IN ENGLISH, it would be an "L." So, I guess the "r" in "kuruma" is more like an L than like an R, but it's not either.



Now when I say R, maybe it's my New York Accent, but my teeth do not touch, but my tongue cocks back and the sides touch the top of my mouth. The D in feared is pretty much how my tongue positions when I say r. For the Japanese R I'm not even sure of how to come close, when I try anything it's like I'm spitting my tongue out of my mouth. :\ I still hear it:
http://media.putfile.com/asdgf-37 KURO. http://media.putfile.com/asdt Atarashii... I'm going to take a video of myself saying it a few times and just up the audio, this is really fucking frustrating. I see the Japanese person tomorrow so I'll ask her one more time, I think three times is enough...


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## Naren (Oct 17, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> ok thanks. Also I still can't get this fucking r sound down. My Russian friend who was there the last time of kuruma said it and got it right and constantly gets on my nerves whenever I try to say it by going NO WRONG HAHAHAHA. I keep saying kuluma or kuduma. The native speaker said not to worry about it too much it'll sound like I have a slight lisp or something but I want to get I down. The only problem is in every example I hear I hear a hard r. I downloaded advent children in Japanese. This did solve part of my desu problem. But yeah the r persists. Hm. Is there any way you can record yourself saying words that have r in it? I don't want to half ass learn the basics if a language.



 You might have a hearing problem. I've oftentimes heard the Japanese "soft R" mentioned as being the exact opposite of the English "hard R." In fact, I've known some who consistently romanize it as an "L" and others who just don't want to romanize it at all since there is no alphabet letter that could even remotely represent how it sounds.

Japanese usually cannot tell the difference between an L and R because they have neither in their language. Through extensive practice, they can learn to recognize both. 

When I was an English teacher, I would do exercises where I would go through pairs where the only difference was L or R. I would do: Rice, Lice, LAN, Ran, Lore, Roar, and so on. And at first, they thought I was joking, because every single one of my students thought each pair was the exact same word, just said twice.



Xtremevillan said:


> As for particles  I was told o was an object marker. Wa is used for common knowledge or already introduced things. Ga is used to distinguish, or mark subjects that are neutral in acivity or after a intereogrative. Wa would be like john san wa nihinjin desu. (post office) ga... Dare ga...



It's not that simple. O as a particle is a direct object particle, but I'm not really gonna get into explaining particles here... It would take way too long.

I've never heard Wa explained like that before... and I happen to strongly disagree. Ga's explanation also doesn't make any sense.

This might explain why very very few non-Japanese can get particles right.


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 17, 2008)

The hearing problem may definitely be true. I'm not sure, like I said when I get the camera I'll record a quick audio clip or three, because even when the native japanese speaker speaks I hear an L. As for your examples I hear a huge difference, obviously...

I know about the direct object particle, something like hon o kaimashita or something. As for wa I was yes, told that it was used for common knowledge things or things already introduced from one book, with the general overlap being "As for..." or "Speaking of..." and gave four examples with breakfast and eight o clock, some of which: [As for]Breakfast (wa), 8 o clock (wa) at I ate. [Speaking of] 8 o clock, breakfast at I ate. And then two other examples I can't remember at 8 AM.

And yes, I will have this difficulty of differenciating between ga and wa, they use post office and rain with ga to describe neutral activities. post office over there is. rain falling is. I have the overall, general general most general grammar down (subject object verb). I can say the basic John san wa pan o kaimashita. In this I can see that John is the topic of our sentence, the bread is the direct object and kaimashita is the verb congugated to buy. John san wa eigo o [saw]. Once again John is the topic but this time, the object is a movie, which he saw. I did glance at "top" ue, "at/on/etc" when talking about location ni, but I decided that until I got down wa and ga I'm not going to touch those.

A weird thing but I guess should make sense is that upon negation of a ga, you use wa. And ga is used sometimes to distinguish "It is I who did it..." or interrogative "Who did this" Dare ga... And that's really as far as I memorized and would think about on the bus and train. At first i made quite a mistake associating ga with nonhuman objects and wa with humans...


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## Naren (Oct 17, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> The hearing problem may definitely be true. I'm not sure, like I said when I get the camera I'll record a quick audio clip or three, because even when the native japanese speaker speaks I hear an L. As for your examples I hear a huge difference, obviously...
> 
> I know about the direct object particle, something like hon o kaimashita or something. As for wa I was yes, told that it was used for common knowledge things or things already introduced from one book, with the general overlap being "As for..." or "Speaking of..." and gave four examples with breakfast and eight o clock, some of which: [As for]Breakfast (wa), 8 o clock (wa) at I ate. [Speaking of] 8 o clock, breakfast at I ate. And then two other examples I can't remember at 8 AM.
> 
> ...



Actually, you can use "wa" with any word. For words like "rain" and "post office"? I wouldn't say I hear wa more often than ga, since they are particles that you can use for anything, depending on what you want to say.

Yeah, most textbooks use "As for..." to explain wa. It's an "okay" way to explain it, but I think you might be imposing rules to wa and ga that don't exist.

*Wa is not used for "common knowledge."*

For example, "Watashi wa sou omowanai" - "I don't think so." How is that common knowledge? "Kare wa itsumo monku itteru" - "He's always complaining." How is that common knowledge? 

And what the hell is a "neutral activity? I don't know what that means, but I can think of a lot of activities that aren't neutral that you'd use ga.

For example, "Omae ga shineba ii" - "You should die." How is that neutral? "Kare ga ore no musume o koroshita n da!" - "He killed my daughter!" How is that neutral?

Back when I was in junior high, high school, and college, I read a hell of a lot of Japanese textbooks, but I'd never heard of wa explained as "common knowledge" or ga explained as "neutral activities." Probably... because it's not true.

O is the direct object particle. It's used for connecting a noun (that happens to be the object of the sentence) to a verb. So, you seem to have that understanding correct. "Hon o yonda" - "I read a book." "Kinou nin'niku o tabeta" - "I ate garlic yesterday." "Tabako o yameta" - "I quite smoking."

What book are you using that told you that stuff? Because you might want to return it and get your money back since it has incorrect information.


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 17, 2008)

The one the official class uses. I think for "common knowledge" it means a thing thatwas already included. Also looking over I see John San GA eigo o [saw|]. This would mean john is the...subject. I can understand eigo and o. But by logic wouldn't it be wa? You said you can use it for any word but I want to make sure that this book ishnt shitting me.

Oh wow.. I forot to say thanks. Also did I get that konnichiwa naren san right?


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## Naren (Oct 17, 2008)

Maybe by that logic, it would be wa. But that logic is incorrect.

You can use wa or ga for anything, regardless of whether it was mentioned or not.

I have no idea what [sawl] is, though. John [sawled] English?

Unless, you meant "Jon-san ga eigA o mita." (Eigo = English, Eiga = Movie)

Either of these can be said:
Jon wa eiga o mita.
Jon ga eiga o mita.

Wa and ga are not always interchangable, but there are a lot of cases where they are. Both of the above sentences mean the same thing, but they have a slightly different sound to them.



Xtremevillan said:


> Oh wow.. I forot to say thanks. Also did I get that konnichiwa naren san right?



Yeah, but keep in mind that there are no spaces in Japanese.


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 17, 2008)

Yeah. If I didn't space my iPhone went retarded with copy paste. yeah I meant "[saw]"...blah. Can you give me a short example of something that was ga only?if I were to say (post office) wa or p.o. ga, would wither be accepted? yes I meant eiga. Now that I think about it, eigo is pronounced ego...interesting for English.


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## Naren (Oct 17, 2008)

"Eigo" is not pronounced "Ego." The English word Ego would be written pronunciation-wise as Iigo in Japanese (&#12452;&#12540;&#12468, but the word "ego" is written &#12456;&#12468; actually and is pronounced like the English waffle brand "Eggo." 

"Eigo" is pronounced "Ay-goh."

A = ah
I = ee (like "keep")
U = oo (like "soon")
E = eh (like "men")
O = oh (like "cone")
EI = ay (like "say" or "raise")
AI = ai (like "I" or "sigh" or "bye")

and so on...

You shouldn't try to learn a foreign language's vocab and stuff when you don't know how to pronounce it...

Yuubinkyoku wa tooi desu ka = Is the post office far?
Yuubinkyoku ga hakai sareta zo! = The post office was destroyed, dude!!



Uhm, for an example, I dunno...

Pen ga nai! - My pen is gone!


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 17, 2008)

Oh. Hm, thought ei was "ee". I know that ue is like we in wet. 

&#12488;&#12524;&#12483;&#12463;&#12473;&#12475;&#12511;&#12467;&#12531;&#12480;&#12463;&#12479;&#12540; I randomly found this in my gmail. I think it says: toretsukesusemikosodaketaa in romaji. I do not think that is right-I always get confused between shi and tsu in katakana. Cool thanks for the example...now it's going to be alittle


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## Naren (Oct 17, 2008)

It says "Trex semi-conductor" (Torekkusu semikondakutaa), although I have no idea what a "Trex semi-conductor" is. 

Ei is not "ee." "Ii" is "ee." If "e" is pronounce "eh," then how would "ei" be "ee"? If you pronounce it slowly, it becomes clear. "E" is pronounce "eh" and i" is pronounced "ee" which makes "eh-ee." And, if you pronounce that at normal speed, it's the same pronounciation as the letter "A." rhymes with "gay," "say," "gray," and "main."

This is one of the main reasons why I said that you _*NEED*_ a teacher. I swear, you're definitely gonna have really fucked up pronunciation, bizarre incorrect ideas about grammar, mixed up definitions of vocabulary, and misreadings of kana (as demonstrated in your post above mine).


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## Zak1233 (Oct 17, 2008)

naren man, you seriously gotta start "ss.org weekly japanese lessons" 
every post you've made in this thread is fantastic and reaallyyyy informative


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 17, 2008)

I could certainly see the benefits of both. I just get confused sometimes. Here is my analyzation:

&#12488;&#12524;&#12483;&#12463;&#12473;&#12475;&#12511;&#12467;&#12531;&#12480;&#12463;&#12479;&#12540;

To. Re. small tsu, which on my iPhone looks normal...so that would be kku, but I thought it was ke. Su. se. mi. ko, which I thought was probably ro. So and N look similar to me, but it's N. that is a da, followed by another ku and then kaa. Can you see if I did these right?






should be

re, small shi, ku su? rekkusu, maybe means health?




[kanji]small shi, i think, tsu yo. Not sure what this could mean. 

re, small shi...I think that is a ku again, and su. rekkusu again. then hiragana, ko re ga, katakana see bu ku ri su ta ri, hiragana na. rekkusu korega seebukurisutari na.






soreni seebukurisukari nifureroto. The last two are suru.

That's all, I guess I can record me saying that r sound now though putfile is being a bitch because I have to refresh the page just to hear it over.


http://media.putfile.com/asdfsdf-23

In this one I MEANT TO SAY NI but it came out ne. http://media.putfile.com/ASDGSSAF One more question, when you have a word like "Itterasshai" would it be "it-terash-sha-ee"? I was looking at the word "kaimashita" and noticed it was "ka-ee-mash-ta", the I being before a blocking consonant. How would you realize that the ha in a sentence is actually the particle wa? http://media.putfile.com/dgfsghf


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## Naren (Oct 18, 2008)

So, you're playing Final Fantasy XII in Japanese, eh?

No, it does not mean health. HP means health. It's pronounced Rekkusu and it means Lex and is Vaan's older brother's name.

It says, first pic: "Bash: Lex, this is a save crystal." (Basshu: Rekkusu, kore ga seebu kurisutaru da."
Second pic: "Bash: Touching a save crystal will completely recover your HP and MP." (Basshu: Sore ni, seebu kurisutaru ni fureru to HP to MP ga kanzen ni kaifuku suru.")

I don't know why you're trying to read something clearly wayyyyy beyond your level. You can't read any of those kanji and you're clearly struggling with the hiragana and katakana. And, even if you could read all of those pronunciation-wise, they are all vocabulary and grammar that you do not know.



Zak1233 said:


> naren man, you seriously gotta start "ss.org weekly japanese lessons"
> every post you've made in this thread is fantastic and reaallyyyy informative



Just trying to help.  I don't know why, but it bothers me when people are learning incorrect info or learning things incorrectly.

 I have bad memories of being a teacher (my job around 4 years ago), so I try to avoid giving lessons, even though I oftentimes get people asking me to teach them English or guitar.



Xtremevillan said:


> That's all, I guess I can record me saying that r sound now though putfile is being a bitch because I have to refresh the page just to hear it over.
> 
> 
> [putfile]asdfsdf-23[/putfile]
> ...



 Wow. Uh, other than the fact that what you're saying is nonsense (I assume you misread the katakana and hiragana), you are still saying an "R" and not a Japanese &#12425;&#12426;&#12427;&#12428;&#12429; syllable. I imagine you are also making that sound without touching the upper gums above your teeth with your tongue when you do it.

No offense, but your pronunciation is incredibly stilted and you are pronouncing a lot of the sounds wrong. I can see that you're trying, but I don't know what to tell you when you don't have a native Japanese speaker as a teacher, tutor, or language partner.



Xtremevillan said:


> One more question, when you have a word like "Itterasshai" would it be "it-terash-sha-ee"? I was looking at the word "kaimashita" and noticed it was "ka-ee-mash-ta", the I being before a blocking consonant. How would you realize that the ha in a sentence is actually the particle wa?



"A blocking consonant"? What's that? 

As for "itterasshai," if someone asked me about that in person, I could answer, but I have no way of answering that question over the internet. You literally have to be able to hear me and you'd probably have a lot of questions still. The best way to get a response would be to ask a Japanese over there in person. The problem, I think, is that you are misunderstanding a lot of things about pronunciation and have quite a few misconceptions.



Xtremevillan said:


> How would you realize that the ha in a sentence is actually the particle wa?



By knowing the language.


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 18, 2008)

Yeah, I downloaded it last year and remembered I had it so I popped it in and here we are. I also have the International version which has English audio but Japanese everything else (or at least I can't make it Japanese audio since I can't navigate the menu!) On the last sound file I did it right out of my textbook reading the romaji underneath the symbols. Maybe I messed up words.

I don't know, I thought I had the symbols right. I can understand what you're saying about the R. I seriously do not know about that. I said that whenever I hear it I hear a clear R and when I talked to the native Japanese person all I heard was either an L or an R, nothing inbetween. Hm. 

As for blocking consonant my book says it is like shi + k where k is the blocking consonant or shi + t which would make it shta. http://media.putfile.com/itterasshai I guess it will take me a long time to see the particle relationship.


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## Naren (Oct 18, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> I don't know, I thought I had the symbols right. I can understand what you're saying about the R. I seriously do not know about that. I said that whenever I hear it I hear a clear R and when I talked to the native Japanese person all I heard was either an L or an R, nothing inbetween. Hm.



Well, you didn't have the symbols right.  And I don't know what you should do to stop confusing the sound as an English R or L. And, if you hear it sometimes as an L and sometimes as an R, that's even weird, because it's always the same sound and it's neither an L nor an R.



Xtremevillan said:


> As for blocking consonant my book says it is like shi + k where k is the blocking consonant or shi + t which would make it shta. itterasshai - Putfile.com I guess it will take me a long time to see the particle relationship.



Oh, you mean a silent vowel? I wouldn't use "blocking" because it doesn't block anything. It erases it.

And, you said something about "kaimashita." Yeah, the "i" there falls between a "sh" sound and a "t" sound, so it is pronounced "kaimashta." Does that answer your question?



Xtremevillan said:


> itterasshai - Putfile.com I guess it will take me a long time to see the particle relationship.



Sounds Arabic. 

It should sound like this:


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 18, 2008)

it does. I have to remember those silent rules. I call when blocking consonants sorry. I'll view that at work. I did memorize numbers and the basic time.


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## Naren (Oct 18, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> it does. I have to remember those silent rules. I call when blocking consonants sorry. I'll view that at work. I did memorize numbers and the basic time.



It's just a video of some Japanese lady saying "itterasshai" twice to her cat (Lilly) before it leaves. I just randomly searched for a Japanese video on YouTube of someone taking itterasshai.

I'm sure a grammar book should detail the rules of when a "u" or an "i" is silent.


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 18, 2008)

...I still hear iteRa. I don't have the camera at the moment (probably tomorrow) but...yeah. Man if the Japanese course isn't offered I will just have to forget everything I've learned...which isnt much but still, I thought I was doing ok....

And yeah that dictionary has the rules but I can't remember all at once. I can probably in a day, I memorized the numbers in about fifteen minutes from one to ten.


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## Naren (Oct 19, 2008)

It's supposed to be pronounced Itterasshai. But you pronounced it like Itarashaiii -- with no doubled "t" or "sh," with an elongated "i" at the end, with an "ita" instead of "itte," and with a hard "r" instead of a soft "r." And you are pronouncing it like Arabic. When I heard that audio file, I imagine you with a brown turban on your head and a short black beard, standing out on a dusty road to a desert village.

If you think that the lady in that video's prounciation and yours even remotely resemble each other, then this is not a problem with Japanese, but a problem that you will have any foreign language you try to learn. 

This might sound harsh, but you aren't doing "okay." You need a native speaker to guide you and correct you. Without that, you'll just get yourself lost further and further in your own mire of incorrect pronunciation, incorrect grammar, misunderstandings, and misreadings.


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 19, 2008)

Well I am Indian, so...besides the point. While I thought my and her saying itterasshai were different I thought the r's were similar.


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## Naren (Oct 19, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> Well I am Indian, so...besides the point. While I thought my and her saying itterasshai were different I thought the r's were similar.



An Indian and an American with Indian heritage are two completely different things.


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## Ze Kink (Oct 20, 2008)

Please recommend me something good to watch? I'm just about to finish Eureka 7 and need something new.


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## Zak1233 (Oct 20, 2008)

i got a couple of questions for you naren if you dont mind me asking, i've been wondering this for a while now, what does wagamama - &#12300;&#12527;&#12460;&#12510;&#12510;&#12301;&#12288;mean?? its the name of a japanese restraunt here, but i was wondering if it actually has a meaning in japanese or seeing as they write it in katakana maybe its just a straight translation with no meaning 

also in japan if you say, whats your initial in your first name(say your names hiroyuki) would your first "initial" be "hi" ??

thanks in advance


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## Naren (Oct 21, 2008)

Ze Kink said:


> Please recommend me something good to watch? I'm just about to finish Eureka 7 and need something new.



Isn't Eureka an American TV show?

Well, first, what do you want to watch? Animation? Live action movies? Regular TV shows? And genre? Action? Drama? Horror? Adventure? Sci-fi? Fantasy? Etc.

I will say that animation is your best bet for understanding. They have the simplest grammar, the clearest pronunciation, generally no mumbling, the audio is crystal clear, and there is a wide range of speech styles (with nothing obscure).

For watching stuff in Japanese for studying/practice, remember that it either has to have no subtitles or have the subtitles turned off. If they are on, then you might as well be watching a movie in Swedish (or for Americans: in English).

One recommendation: Cowboy Bebop.



Zak1233 said:


> i got a couple of questions for you naren if you dont mind me asking, i've been wondering this for a while now, what does wagamama - &#12300;&#12527;&#12460;&#12510;&#12510;&#12301;&#12288;mean?? its the name of a japanese restraunt here, but i was wondering if it actually has a meaning in japanese or seeing as they write it in katakana maybe its just a straight translation with no meaning



 There's a restaurant called "Wagamama"? 

It means "selfish" or "self-centered." There is an expensive Japanese female fashion store in Shibuya called "Wagamama Club" (I think). Some girls admit to being "wagamama" because it infers that you're very concerned about your fashion, look, and you really value yourself. The people who would use these terms generally are of the Paris Hilton-style, but generally it's kind of an insult. I remember the first time I looked it up in a dictionary, the definition said "egotistical."

Wagamama is usually written in hiragana as &#12431;&#12364;&#12414;&#12414; or katakana as &#12527;&#12460;&#12510;&#12510;, but it also has kanji which would be &#25105;&#20760; or &#25105;&#20397;.



Zak1233 said:


> also in japan if you say, whats your initial in your first name(say your names hiroyuki) would your first "initial" be "hi" ??
> 
> thanks in advance



What do you mean? If you mean "initial" as in like John Tyler Wilson's initials would be JTW, then if your name was Hiroyuki, your initial would be H. Just like if your name was Ahmed, your initial would be A. If your name was Chaong'Yong, your initial would be C (or maybe CY). Or like if your name was Namnibi, your initial would be N. The word "initial" means that it's just one letter, so it couldn't be two letters like "hi."  

Kind of a weird question...

Of course, the language in Japan is Japanese, so we don't use initials. 

And, by the way, why do you have that absolutely horrendous bullshit "sukeban keiji" movie poster as your avatar?


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## Ze Kink (Oct 21, 2008)

Naren said:


> Isn't Eureka an American TV show?
> 
> Well, first, what do you want to watch? Animation? Live action movies? Regular TV shows? And genre? Action? Drama? Horror? Adventure? Sci-fi? Fantasy? Etc.
> 
> ...



Eureka is, but Eureka 7 is not. I've seen one Cowboy Bebop movie already, so I think the series could be nice, as I liked the movie.

But yeah, anything goes, live action, movies, series, whatever. I think I'll be watching Tetsuo soon, it's apparently pretty weird and good.

I don't actually see subtitles as bad, quite the opposite. I originally learned English with the help of subtitles. I must mention though, we don't generally use dubs in Finland, children's movies being the only exception I can think of. So like any other Finnish person, I'm not distracted by subtitles, and I can watch the picture and listen to the audio at the same time while reading subtitles. And when I can understand what they speak, I don't look at them, and it happens pretty much automatically, I don't even think about it. Men varför i svenska? Min svenska är jättedålig, men visst förstår ja någonting.


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## Naren (Oct 21, 2008)

Ze Kink said:


> But yeah, anything goes, live action, movies, series, whatever. I think I'll be watching Tetsuo soon, it's apparently pretty weird and good.



Eh, that depends on your taste. Some people rave about Tetsuo, but I think it's pretty average. 

A similar movie that I think is a LOT better is this: Electric Dragon 80.000 V (2001)



Ze Kink said:


> I don't actually see subtitles as bad, quite the opposite. I originally learned English with the help of subtitles. I must mention though, we don't generally use dubs in Finland, children's movies being the only exception I can think of. So like any other Finnish person, I'm not distracted by subtitles, and I can watch the picture and listen to the audio at the same time while reading subtitles. And when I can understand what they speak, I don't look at them, and it happens pretty much automatically, I don't even think about it. Men varför i svenska? Min svenska är jättedålig, men visst förstår ja någonting.



 I very very very strongly disagree with this. It may have worked for English because Swedish and English are in the same language family and have the same word roots and grammar structure (for the most part -- EDIT: I just noticed you're from Finland and Finnish isn't in the same language as English, but it is a very similar language when compared to Japanese). As a translator myself (one who has made subtitles for several Japanese movies), I almost never write literally what they're saying. And you'll notice that pretty much no professional translators do. The only people who do are the amateur japanimation subbers who have no idea what the characters are trying to say, so they just translate it literally which makes no sense. I think that Japanese is the furthest language from English in the world, which means it's also pretty far from Swedish (I mean, Finnish ). The main problem with that way of doing things is, even if you fully hear the Japanese and remember it, you'll associate it with an English expression. And that's the worst thing you could do. If I had watched all the Japanese movies and TV shows I've seen with subtitles, I probably wouldn't even be half as good at Japanese as I am now.

Even though I work as a translator and coordinator where I'm reading Japanese all day, translating, interpreting, and communicating entirely in Japanese, if I watch a Japanese movie with English subtitles, I will only understand about 30% of the words said. You turn those subtitles off and I suddenly understand 100% of the words. I can't help but read subtitles in they are there. If it's an American movie with Japanese subtitles (which it usually is when I watch American movies with my girlfriend because she doesn't understand any English), I end up reading all of the subtitles, not because I want to, but because it's there. In fact, I was watching some Japanese TV shows that had Chinese subtitles hardcoded and, even though I can't read Chinese, I learned the Chinese symbols for a lot of words.

And when I was tutoring people in Japanese, I noticed that the students who watched Japanese movies with English subtitles all the time had the worst grasp on the language.

I personally feel that subtitles are a handcap in learning that will only cripple your learning.  And I can't even imagine trying to analyze that backwards from Japanese to English to Swedish (EDIT: Finnish, I mean. ).


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## Zak1233 (Oct 21, 2008)

Naren said:


> There's a restaurant called "Wagamama"?
> 
> It means "selfish" or "self-centered." There is an expensive Japanese female fashion store in Shibuya called "Wagamama Club" (I think). Some girls admit to being "wagamama" because it infers that you're very concerned about your fashion, look, and you really value yourself. The people who would use these terms generally are of the Paris Hilton-style, but generally it's kind of an insult. I remember the first time I looked it up in a dictionary, the definition said "egotistical."
> 
> ...



wow thats unexpected wagamamas  i bet they got no idea what it actually means themselves haha

and as for the initials i was curious because of the fact that since japanese is really a syllable type language i didnt know if they used the actual first letter of say "ka" for instance (k) or if they used the whole "ka" , thanks for clearing that up 


and as for yoyo cop girl... i thought it was a pretty neat movie  fighting scene at the end tho was dreadful haha

recommened me some japanese movies?? lol i want to see some good ones but i dunno what to watch



wagamama | positive eating + positive living


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## Naren (Oct 21, 2008)

Zak1233 said:


> wow thats unexpected wagamamas  i bet they got no idea what it actually means themselves haha
> 
> and as for the initials i was curious because of the fact that since japanese is really a syllable type language i didnt know if they used the actual first letter of say "ka" for instance (k) or if they used the whole "ka" , thanks for clearing that up



Yeah, that's an aspect of alphabet-based languages like English, Italian, French, German, and so on. You don't get that in ideographic languages like Japanese or Chinese.

The other guitarist in my band is named Takanori, but we all call him Taka. The bass player is named Kazuya and sometimes I call him Kazu. These aren't initials, since initials only exist in alphabetic languages, but they are abbreviations. Japan uses a lot of abbreviations.



Zak1233 said:


> and as for yoyo cop girl... i thought it was a pretty neat movie  fighting scene at the end tho was dreadful haha



Then you have really bad taste in movies. 



Zak1233 said:


> recommened me some japanese movies?? lol i want to see some good ones but i dunno what to watch



I'm going to bed right now, so I don't have time to give any recommendations, but I really don't know what to recommend. I've seen hundreds, maybe even thousands of Japanese movies. I took Japanese cinema courses in college in Tokyo and used to watch Japanese underground cult cinema. And nowadays I watch mostly mainstream stuff and some arthouse/horror/etc.


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## The Atomic Ass (Oct 21, 2008)

Naren said:


> You might have a hearing problem. I've oftentimes heard the Japanese "soft R" mentioned as being the exact opposite of the English "hard R." In fact, I've known some who consistently romanize it as an "L" and others who just don't want to romanize it at all since there is no alphabet letter that could even remotely represent how it sounds.
> 
> Japanese usually cannot tell the difference between an L and R because they have neither in their language. Through extensive practice, they can learn to recognize both.


I have heard a lot of variations on the R, ranging from "hard R", all the way over to full "L". Took me by surprise the first time I heard it like that, but it doesn't confuse me much anymore.

"WakateLU-masen." 

Now "sukoshi", that word confused me. All the times I heard it, it was spoken so fast it sounded like "skoshi".



Xtremevillan said:


> The hearing problem may definitely be true. I'm not sure, like I said when I get the camera I'll record a quick audio clip or three,


Get Skype. That goes for everyone. It's very handy for these kind of discussions.


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## Naren (Oct 21, 2008)

The Atomic Ass said:


> "WakateLU-masen."



 What...? &#12431;&#12363;&#12387;&#12390;&#12427;&#12369;&#12393;&#12431;&#12363;&#12387;&#12390;&#12414;&#12379;&#12435;&#65311;

I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what that is.  I assume that you misspelled "wakatte" as "wakate" and wrote "lu" instead of "ru" and then decided to throw a polite negative ending after the informal positive ending... which... makes no sense...



The Atomic Ass said:


> Now "sukoshi", that word confused me. All the times I heard it, it was spoken so fast it sounded like "skoshi".



That's probably because it IS pronounced "skoshi." 

You probably only just kinda looked into Japanese for a short period of time a long long time ago, but one of the very first things you learn in Japanese is about silent "u"s and silent "i"s. And the u in "sukoshi" falls between an s and a k, which makes the u silent. Therefore, it is pronounced "skoshi" or "skosh" (because the "i" at the end of the word comes after the "sh" sound, it could be pronounced or silent).


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## Ze Kink (Oct 22, 2008)

Naren said:


> Eh, that depends on your taste. Some people rave about Tetsuo, but I think it's pretty average.
> 
> A similar movie that I think is a LOT better is this: Electric Dragon 80.000 V (2001)



Cool, I'll have to check that out.



Naren said:


> I can't help but read subtitles in they are there.



I ignore subtitles all the time when I'm watching tv. As I said, we have subtitles in pretty much everything, and I don't read them when I'm watching anything that's in English. Sometimes I will though, e.g. to see how well they've managed to translate lyrics or songs (often pretty well actually, I watched some Flight of the Conchords with my girlfriend yesterday, and even the Finnish lyrics were hilarious). If I remember a part of a tv program, like a joke that I thought was funny, I always remember it in English, not in Finnish. Most of my friends remember the translations.

And I simply cannot do what many people do here; turn down the volume and only read the subtitles, if they don't want to make noise for example.

When I mentioned the rarity of dubbing in Finland, I simply have to put this here :



Try watching 1:40 and 2:50 -> without laughing  if the link doesn't work, try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR0jEOXqL04

That company did those shitty dubs for years, only now I've realized how bad they were  I mean, how could they? Why didn't anyone complain? Luckily, I think that Digimon was their last dub because people finally realized that they needed to complain about it. I never followed that show, but I think they switched to subtitles and the original Japanese soundtrack.


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## Naren (Oct 22, 2008)

I couldn't watch the video, but I've never seen English dubs that didn't totally suck in Japanese animation. They'll spend like millions of dollars on the voice actors and actresses in a super high-budget blockbuster animation in Japan and then spend like $1,000 on the voice actors in the US who are not even known outside of crappily dubbed Japanese animation and are seriously amateurs. It's very unbalanced. The same is true with Japanese games too. Excellent acting in the Japanese version and then the most horrible amateur crap in the English version.

As for the subtitles, I already said my opinion, but it's up to you what you do.



Ze Kink said:


> Cool, I'll have to check that out.



I will note, however, that both that movie and Tetsuo have very very little dialogue. In fact, no movies in the cyberpunk genre (in Japan at least) have much dialogue. They're like black and white silent movies with tons of chaotic industrial and punk music and sparse dialogue.


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## The Atomic Ass (Oct 22, 2008)

Naren said:


> What...? &#12431;&#12363;&#12387;&#12390;&#12427;&#12369;&#12393;&#12431;&#12363;&#12387;&#12390;&#12414;&#12379;&#12435;&#65311;
> 
> I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what that is.  I assume that you misspelled "wakatte" as "wakate" and wrote "lu" instead of "ru" and then decided to throw a polite negative ending after the informal positive ending... which... makes no sense...



It wasn't intended to. My humor is dense and esoteric. And I can't read a lick of Kanji, Hira, or Kana. 





Naren said:


> That's probably because it IS pronounced "skoshi."
> 
> You probably only just kinda looked into Japanese for a short period of time a long long time ago, but one of the very first things you learn in Japanese is about silent "u"s and silent "i"s. And the u in "sukoshi" falls between an s and a k, which makes the u silent. Therefore, it is pronounced "skoshi" or "skosh" (because the "i" at the end of the word comes after the "sh" sound, it could be pronounced or silent).



DINGDINGDING! You win the &#165;6400 prize!


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## Naren (Oct 23, 2008)

The Atomic Ass said:


> It wasn't intended to. My humor is dense and esoteric. And I can't read a lick of Kanji, Hira, or Kana.



Dense, maybe, but I don't think esoteric is an accurate description of that...  I dunno what to call it, but I wouldn't really call it "humor."



The Atomic Ass said:


> DINGDINGDING! You win the &#165;6400 prize!



Sweeeeeeet. I'm a little low on cash and could really use &#165;6400.

I'll be waiting for the wire transfer.


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## The Atomic Ass (Oct 24, 2008)

Naren said:


> Dense, maybe, but I don't think esoteric is an accurate description of that...  I dunno what to call it, but I wouldn't really call it "humor."
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Actually, the prize is paying me &#165;6400 yen. You should feel honored and privileged to be giving me money. Besides, I'm broke. 

And besides, esoteric literally describes my humor.


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## Xtremevillan (Oct 31, 2008)

I have good news and bad news.

Good news: I am most likely, 99&#37; going to be able to take Japanese next semester. 
Bad news: I have bought the textbook and started to go through it. Now this is both good and bad since I didn't order the audio CD...and then I realized, Rosetta Stone!  I matched up the audio for parts of the book (numbers, time) and saw it would work. Naren, I think I have the R sound down (unfortunately I had to give my camera back for credit on my card...) to a fault, I was watching Advent Children and sometimes I distinctly keep hearing an R and when I pronounce it it is more L-sounding, and the native Japanese speaker keeps telling me that my pronunciation is good enough considering I'm a foreigner and she can understand when I say something like &#12384;&#12428;. I'm still having a little difficulty with the word "jinruigaku" (not going to copy paste the entire hiragana) because of the n and r next to each other but it's speeding up, sometimes I accidentally say "jing-" :\. Other than that I've just been learning and stuff. I do have a question you will most likely get pissed at.

When watching Advent Children, I understood a few things (Shinra, Company...) and of course, Cloud's name, Barret, Tifa, etc. I noticed some Japanese words. One of them distinctly and throughout was "Okaasan" and "Oniisan". In these, at least to my ears, the O was not pronounced. "Kaasan" and "Niisan". Is this due to some rule, tradition, something I should learn from a teacher? Rosetta Stone uses words other than Okaasan and Oniisan to describe mother and brother so no luck there. 

I did get quite frustrated at the first Kanji lesson. They introduce 15 Kanji, the normal basic ones that everyone introduces: 1-10 and five other ones. So I flip back to the chapter...to see that they don't use any of them fucking ONCE. They use movie, breakfast, today, morning, dinner, weekend, etc. This does not help me. I flipped on Rosetta Stone's Kanji mode and it was a better help than this, because it actually goes with the effing dialog.


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## Naren (Nov 1, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> When watching Advent Children, I understood a few things (Shinra, Company...) and of course, Cloud's name, Barret, Tifa, etc. I noticed some Japanese words. One of them distinctly and throughout was "Okaasan" and "Oniisan". In these, at least to my ears, the O was not pronounced. "Kaasan" and "Niisan". Is this due to some rule, tradition, something I should learn from a teacher? Rosetta Stone uses words other than Okaasan and Oniisan to describe mother and brother so no luck there.





(sigh)

If you don't know the basics behind stuff, don't ask me questions about sparse words that you managed to pick up from listening.

Maybe before you start watching videos that you don't understand at all, you should at least try to get down the absolute basics. 

(You should already know the answer to your question. And, if you don't, then that means you should open your textbook instead of watching animations. You can try to understand that stuff once you have a basic foundation to build upon -- which you lack right now).



Xtremevillan said:


> I did get quite frustrated at the first Kanji lesson. They introduce 15 Kanji, the normal basic ones that everyone introduces: 1-10 and five other ones. So I flip back to the chapter...to see that they don't use any of them fucking ONCE. They use movie, breakfast, today, morning, dinner, weekend, etc. This does not help me. I flipped on Rosetta Stone's Kanji mode and it was a better help than this, because it actually goes with the effing dialog.



Better get used to it. In order to read an average Japanese newspaper, you'll need to be able to read at least 2500 kanji.

And kanji are not necessarily words. They oftentimes mean nothing by themself and only have meaning in compounds (although all the basics have meanings by themself). Obviously you shouldn't learn a kanji for a word you don't know until you already know that word, but 1-10 are all things you should already know and I'm sure the other kanji were very basic things like the two kanji you need to write "Japan" ("Sun"/"day" and "origin"/"book").

Once you get to higher levels, they'll teach you around 50 new kanji every 1-2 weeks (assuming they go up to that level).


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## Xtremevillan (Nov 1, 2008)

Wow. Okay then.


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## Xtremevillan (Nov 4, 2008)

Naren said:


> &#12397;&#12371; - This can ONLY be pronounced "neko."
> &#29483; - this can be pronounced "neko" (kun-yomi) or "byou" (on-yomi).
> 
> For an extreme example, the kanji &#29983; can be pronounced: nama, sei, shou, i(kiru), i(keru), u(mareru), u(mu), i(kasu), o(u), ki, ha(eru), ha(yasu), na(ru), na(su), u, asa, ubu, and on and on. That kanji has about 30-40 different readings if you include the ones for names as well.
> ...



I have finished about 95&#37; of the lesson before learning Kanji. I opened the Kanji book I have. I recognized 1-10 easily, but for some of them after it was so weird. The character for &#23665; with "san" next to it, but yama in italics. In Kuruma, &#36554; has sha listed before in italics kuruma, but for 1-10 it's the actual words (itchi, ni, san, shi/yo/yon, go, etc). &#30007; has dan and nan, but otoko in italics. I'm just a little lost after reading the first 10 which had them clearly listed and then others (itchi had hito, ni had futa of which i recognized futari (pair), shichi had nana).

In your description, I think the parenthesis ru verbs (and other verbs). You mentioned something about ON and KUN, of which I think I saw, I'll read my dictionary introduction again, it was a little weird, but the book I have and the dictionary do not really go together, sometimes it uses the non-italics and sometimes it uses the italics, it's quite confusing.

--e

My dictionary doesn't have the word for "neko" but has one for "byo", with no mention of a cat or anything.


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## Naren (Nov 5, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> I have finished about 95% of the lesson before learning Kanji. I opened the Kanji book I have. I recognized 1-10 easily, but for some of them after it was so weird. The character for &#23665; with "san" next to it, but yama in italics. In Kuruma, &#36554; has sha listed before in italics kuruma, but for 1-10 it's the actual words (itchi, ni, san, shi/yo/yon, go, etc). &#30007; has dan and nan, but otoko in italics. I'm just a little lost after reading the first 10 which had them clearly listed and then others (itchi had hito, ni had futa of which i recognized futari (pair), shichi had nana).



I'm pretty sure I explained this to you in a PM a while ago, but this is something that is so important that you absolutely HAVE to understand this before you start learning kanji, so I'll explain it. I will use all the same kanji examples for each section so that it's easy to understand.

All kanji have 3 different kinds of readings: the Kun reading (&#35347;&#35501;&#12415, the On reading (&#38899;&#35501;&#12415, and the Jin-mei-you reading (&#20154;&#21517;&#29992. 

The kun reading comes from the original Japanese words that existed before Chinese symbols were adapted. With kun reading, you've generally got a full word with just one kanji.

For example
&#29483; (Neko) - Cat
&#29356; (Inu) - Dog
&#23478; (Ie) - House
&#36554; (Kuruma) - Car

The On reading comes from the Chinese pronunciation of the kanji, as it was approximated about 1300 years ago (which is why the readings are oftentimes very very very different from Chinese). These pronunciations are USUALLY only used in compounds with other kanji. Most of the time, a single kanji's on reading doesn't mean anything by itself. There are, of course, a lot of exceptions, though.

&#24859;&#29483; (Aibyou) - Pet cat
&#30058;&#29356; (Banken) - Watchdog
&#23478;&#20027; (Yanushi) - Landlord
&#38651;&#36554; (Densha) - (Electric) Train

Jin-mei-you readings are only used for people's names and are readings not found in Kun or On readings. These are the hardest to learn.

&#21644;&#29483; (Kazuko) - the female first name "Kazuko" (the symbol for "relaxed" and "cat")
&#23478; (Oshio, Karyuu) - several male first names or family names, pronounced "Oshio," "Karyuu," Ietsugu," "Osuo," and so on&#12288;(the symbol for "house").
&#22235;&#36554; (Shishiya) - The family name "Shishiya" (the symbol for "four" and "car"/"carriage").

I didn't write a name using "dog" because all of those names are pronounced "inu."

As for the kanji you mentioned:
&#23665; - Mountain
Kun reading - Yama 
On reading - San
&#30007; - Man, male
Kun reading - Otoko
On reading - Dan, nan

As for &#19971;, shichi is the on reading and nana is the kun reading, but both can be used. They both mean 7. Another similar number is &#22235;, which can be pronounced yon (kun reading) or shi (on reading). They both mean 4, but sometimes "shi" is avoided because it also means "death" (written with the kanji &#27515.



Xtremevillan said:


> My dictionary doesn't have the word for "neko" but has one for "byo", with no mention of a cat or anything.



The only meaning for "byou" that I can think of is "second" (for example 2&#31186; = two seconds). If your dictionary doesn't have "neko," then you have a pretty shitty dictionary.  Even a 100 page pocket dictionary should have "neko."


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## Ze Kink (Nov 5, 2008)

My course will finally continue next week 

I haven't really studied during the break, I've just practiced katakana, because I noticed I often mix up some of them. I still have some catching up to do though, which I'll probably do this weekend or next week. We didn't exactly learn the "other" numbers such as roppon happun ippun etc. but they've been used frequently, so I need to check them. I also need to refresh my kanji knowledge, I don't remember some of those we've learned that well.


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## Xtremevillan (Nov 5, 2008)

And actually I face a problem. Now that I've ordered the book I've done the first two lessons until one little section before the second. I jumped a little ahead to the kanji which I described, and I was told that that's all we do. In one semester. The first two lessons.

While balancing Organic and Bio, I did the first two sections. This is gay. I don't need to spend ten weeks learning all the stuff that I did in a month. The only problem I still have is recognizing small tsus and shis, and the difference between the two in them katakana (handdrawn). Sometimes ke's and ku's in katakana but it's pretty negligible, for all intents and purposes I've done them. I was told that we stop RIGHT before Kanji. Just like Ze Kink's 

:\ Anyways, another question. Now that I know about on and kun readings I still have one question. Kun is used by itself, true. I guess like "Kin". On is used in combination with other kanji, ok, and i won't touch the last one. Let us say I have this example: hito picture (couldn't get a regular shot) specifically HITO/KIN/NIN. This has Jin, Nin, and _hito_, of which I understand to be On and Kun readings (italic is kun). In all of the Kanji I have read involving such the naming has varied from --nin, --jin, --hito. I can never ever tell which will be which, short of Nihonjin. I've labeled &#20154;&#21147;&#36554; as hitorikikuruma (completely wrong) and something else with &#20154; as jin at the end instead of hito. In these the thing is a compound, wouldn't you use the on, in this case as _hito_? 

I asked the Japanese speaker and she said it depends on order and the next time I see her is next Wednesday. She recommended that I just brush up on Hira/Kata and rules (she asked simple questions like "how do you say, what is your name?" to which I replied "Namae wa nan desu ka?" and followed up by "Whose name is oleg?" to which I think I am incorrect, "Oleg wa dare no namae (ga?) desu ka?" which would be in the first level) before just skipping level 1 and starting level 2 since all we do is just hira kata in level 1, with a brush of starting kanji, the first 30 or so (1 - 10, nihon, fire, etc) ). 

The only real problem I have is discriminating which pronunciation/thing will be used with and when, I think you will not be able to describe it to me accurately online though, and this might be asking too much...thanks for any input.


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## Xtremevillan (Nov 5, 2008)

Ignore this, my idiotic friend is retarded.


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## Naren (Nov 6, 2008)

Xtremevillan said:


> While balancing Organic and Bio, I did the first two sections. This is gay. I don't need to spend ten weeks learning all the stuff that I did in a month. .



 YES, YOU DO. Every single post you've made has been almost completely wrong. Maybe if you spent 5 months learning the stuff that you did in a month, it'd actually be correct.

You seriously are butchering your sparse Japanese abilities for no reason. 




Xtremevillan said:


> :\ Anyways, another question. Now that I know about on and kun readings I still have one question. Kun is used by itself, true. I guess like "Kin".



Kin?  And what would that mean? There is no kun reading of "kin." Anything pronounced "kin" would be an on reading and would not be pronounced by itself (except in some literature I guess). I'm guessing, you mean "gold"? Or maybe "bacteria"?



Xtremevillan said:


> hito picture (couldn't get a regular shot) specifically HITO/KIN/NIN. This has Jin, Nin, and _hito_, of which I understand to be On and Kun readings (italic is kun). In all of the Kanji I have read involving such the naming has varied from --nin, --jin, --hito. I can never ever tell which will be which, short of Nihonjin. I've labeled &#20154;&#21147;&#36554; as hitorikikuruma (completely wrong) and something else with &#20154; as jin at the end instead of hito. In these the thing is a compound, wouldn't you use the on, in this case as _hito_?



 I really wish you would wait until you actually had a native Japanese speaking teacher and then take everything slow instead of being incorrect about EVERYTHING.

First of all, &#20154; does not have a KIN pronunciation. I have no idea where you got that idea. Its on reading is NIN and JIN and it's kun reading is Hito.



Xtremevillan said:


> I've labeled &#20154;&#21147;&#36554; as hitorikikuruma (completely wrong) and something else with &#20154; as jin at the end instead of hito.



And that is because you still do not understand AT ALL how kanji works.

&#20154;&#21147;&#36554; is... you said hitorikikuruma? It's Jinrikisha. I don't even know where to start with what is totally wrong with your reading, so I'll just say it's very very very very wrong.

In that case:
&#20154; = JIN
&#21147; = RIKI
&#36554; = SHA

All "on" reading.

No one... literally NO ONE will ever mistake the readings of hito, jin, and nin because they are INSANELY obvious.

I would just be wasting my time in explaining them to you, though. If someone who actually wants to seriously learn Japanese asks me, I'll be more than happy to explain. But not to someone who just throws my advice and help into the garbage bin.



Xtremevillan said:


> The only real problem I have is discriminating which pronunciation/thing will be used with and when, I think you will not be able to describe it to me accurately online though, and this might be asking too much...thanks for any input.



That's not your only problem. Your biggest problem is that you jump way way way beyond your level. You don't even understand the most basic beginner elements of the language yet you are trying to learn things that require a knowledge of those basics to understand. 

I really don't think I can help you unless you try to help yourself...


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## Xtremevillan (Nov 6, 2008)

> (couldn't get a regular shot) specifically HITO/KIN/NIN. This has Jin, Nin, and hito,



I'm sorry I can't be as perfect as you and not commit typos. 

You're more than welcome to say that your advice and help is thrown into the garbage bin though I have taken it. So I have not waited for a teacher, I didn't wait for a teacher for Organic Chem, or Bio, or German. Above all, I don't really want to continue this conversation, so just put me on ignore because my questions will not stop.



> No one... literally NO ONE will ever mistake the readings of hito, jin, and nin because they are INSANELY obvious.



Insanely obvious to someone starting out, of course, how could I have missed that. 



> I really wish you would wait until you actually had a native Japanese speaking teacher and then take everything slow instead of being incorrect about EVERYTHING.



It's funny, because the example I gave when I was talking with a native Japanese speaker had me doing actually OK, but it seems you love to ignore those when you're quoting me.


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## Ze Kink (Dec 7, 2008)

Bumping this topic for fun!

We're currently having a break, the next course will probably begin in january or so. Meanwhile, I've been studying this other book I have by myself, and it's really good compared to the book we're using at the lessons (which has really vague explanations of everything, and is pretty confusing overall). The only thing it's worse at is that everything so far has been only hiragana and katakana, even the simplest stuff like the chapter that was about numbers. I just began studying the next chapter, it's page number 89 (and chapter 10) and it has the first kanji excercise so far! The kanji that it teaches are &#26149;&#12288;&#22799;&#12288;&#31179; and &#20908;, so nothing grand there either. Quite stupid IMO, they could've been incorporated into the studies much earlier. Some kanji were already mentioned earlier though, but not used at all; for example, one exercise mentioned that thin things should be counted as &#26522;, but the examples given for it were &#12394;&#12435;&#12414;&#12356;&#12289;&#12356;&#12385;&#12414;&#12356;&#12289;&#12395;&#12414;&#12356; and so on.


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## 13yearold (Dec 16, 2008)

wow neal you got insulted by a random guy on the internet and you didnt even retaliate, what has this world come to


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## Stealthdjentstic (Dec 16, 2008)

13yearold said:


> wow neal you got insulted by a random guy on the internet and you didnt even retaliate, what has this world come to



He wasn't insulted jackass, he was corrected on his Japanese speaking ability


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## ZeroSignal (Dec 16, 2008)

Stealthtastic said:


> He wasn't insulted jackass, he was corrected on his Japanese speaking ability



Just report the fool.


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## The Atomic Ass (Feb 16, 2009)

Hey Naren, there are some free language podcasts on iTunes. What are your thoughts on the quality of them? Any good?


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## Ze Kink (Feb 17, 2009)

I was thinking about bumping this yesterday, cool! I haven't really been studying lately, as there wasn't a course that would fit my schedule  I have plans though, we'll see how they turn out later.


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## The Atomic Ass (Aug 30, 2010)

Bumpy-bump. We haven't talked about Japanese lately, and I've been so damn lazy I've forgotten practically everything I knew. 

Can anyone (looks at Naren) suggest some reading material that has no Kanji, just Hiragana and Katakana?


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