The Japanese language - All things related

[CoolOtaku]

This is the place for all questions and comments about the Japanese language. Whether you have a question about how something works (grammar, spelling, etc.) or you just want to point out something you find peculiar, let the world know right here!

Also, I'm curious about one thing. How many people here have at least attempted learning Japanese, either in formal classes or on your own?

One of the biggest hurdles for me when I started learning Japanese was the grammar structure. It has a lot of flexibility, but the basic sentence structure is almost opposite that of English. I had a homework assignment that highlighted this point very clearly by having the students take the numbered parts of an English sentence and move those numbers to fit Japanese sentence structure. In general, it turned out that from the English order of 1-2-3-4, it became 1-4-3-2 in Japanese. I've always found it interesting that it's so close to being the opposite of English :)

[Ges]

German is like that too. You don't know what the hell they're talking about in some cases because the verb comes at the end of the sentence.

But anyway, I've always wanted to learn Japanese for he sole purpose of playing some import titles, but I had not the intestinal fortitude.

[Sushi_b]

I've only grasped the odd word or two from listening but never bothered to read the language. I'm guessing that the easiest one to pick up would be Katakana (sp?)? I'm interested but only as a minor hobby and nothing more then that.

[CoolOtaku]

Actually, katakana is fairly hard to retain for most people for the first few years (at least). It's not like it's harder to write than hiragana or anything, but you rarely have to write it. In the case of some of the characters, you seldom even see the katakana ones, so it can be challenging to remember them. Katakana has always felt like our print to me, and hiragana our cursive. I prefer cursive in English, so I guess it's no surprise that I like writing hiragana much more than katakana.

Kanji can be fun too. Sometimes >_>

[Devil King]

I think it would be cool to learn, even still. I almost took a class a couple years back, but never did.

[Less Than Liz]

I have no desire to learn Japanese, but this (http://www.enemieslist.net/japanese/) amused me.

I took Latin because it didn't have an oral exam.

EDIT: Holy shit, there is an Otaku Culture forum now and I just posted in it.

[CoolOtaku]

I have no desire to learn Japanese, but this (http://www.enemieslist.net/japanese/) amused me.

I took Latin because it didn't have an oral exam.

EDIT: Holy shit, there is an Otaku Culture forum now and I just posted in it.

Hahaha, as offensive as that link was at times (I skimmed), that was pretty damn funny, especially when it was spot on.

Don't you feel special, Liz? You're among the very first to post in this brand new sub-forum!

[Sushi_b]

I only skimmed through some of that article but it's pretty funny in spots. I don't know exactly, but most of the other places I've been to are pretty much the opposite. Most people are very surprised and excited if you attempt to make contact with them in their local language. Japan didn't seem too bad for that, but the people certainly felt much more cold and unwelcoming as compared to other countries.

[CoolOtaku]

It depends on the person (surprise). I met some very friendly people who were very patient with me as I took the time to form my thoughts and struggled figuring out the right words. I also met some people who treated me like the plague (although this didn't always require that I try talking to them first...). It's kind of hard to tell when the author of that post is being entirely serious and when he's overgeneralizing for the sake of getting a laugh. This particular part seems like it's probably the latter.

[Sushi_b]

Well I think that can be true of any country that you visit. Just as a whole though, I didn't feel as though Japanese people were as warm and welcoming as I anticipated them to be.

CoolO, will you be revisiting the country anytime soon? Also, how is your studying going still?

[Priest4hire]

I've also always had a mild ambition to learn to read Japanese for gaming's sake. As if I don't have a large enough backlog as it is. Does make me wonder if [i]Slime Forest[/i[ would be worth a shot. Seems like an interesting way to go at it.

After all, why do dull and repetitive grinding for virtual gold and loot when you could do it to learn another language?

[CoolOtaku]

I wish I could, but right now I just need to find a job of some sort. My studies are going... slowly. I'm trying to design a routine to make sure I keep at it consistently (and make real progress), but it's quite the challenge at this point.

[Seifer]

I have been diligently studying for the past couple of months and have picked up on a couple of minor things. I would hope that there are others here who are either still learning or already know the language and would be willing to speak in it so we could practice.

I was going to write something in hiragana but the damn thing isn't working until I restart the computer so I'm just typing it in romaji then: ARIGATO GOZAIMASU!!!! :D

[CoolOtaku]

I'm still keeping up with my Japanese. I do at least flashcards through (Anki (http://www.ankisrs.net/)) every day. What kind of stuff are you using for study materials at this point, Seifer?

[Seifer]

The very first thing I did was use Knuckles in Chinaland and set it for japanese, but I stopped using it because once I got to the higher levels it was only giving me the english translation of things. So that doesn't help much if you're trying to learn things from a "japanese perspective" which I'm told is the only way you can achieve any actual fluency.

I used flashcards to memorize katakana in about a week, then, hiragana I'm still working on now.

Pimsleur's Japanese would have taught me a lot more as far as speaking and sounding like a native (which I can to some extent) but I recently had to move so I gave up with studying. Pimsleur was probably the best as far as learning what some words mean and just getting past the basics like saying your name, asking how people are doing, where you're from, etc.

I used rosetta stone for a little while and that was all but worthless. I have no idea how that works for anyone.

EDIT: I think an excellent way to learn would be to either find japanese movies or english movies but with JAPANESE dialogue AND subtitles. Like if I could watch a film like The Godfather where I already know the plot and most of what people say and be able to read the subtitles in japanese language and also be able to hear them speaking in it that would definitely help out a lot. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find anything like this just yet.

[CoolOtaku]

I've heard that Rosetta Stone is great for pretty much everything except for Asian languages, like Japanese and Chinese. Personally, I've never used it and don't have much need for it at this point.

Making the switch to all Japanese is really challenging. I'm under the impression that most people don't try to make the switch until they've already had at least a couple years of solid, consistent studying. If you don't have the vocabulary for it, it will be nothing but pain, confusion, and frustration. Every now and then I look up a word only to realize that I have to look up every other word in it to understand it. To make matters worse, each word that I need to know has even more words I don't understand in its own definition. When you come across a word that is so utterly foreign to you, the branching process explodes into an unmanageable mess.

To sum up, making the switch to all Japanese is vital, but so is picking the appropriate time to do so.

[Seifer]

I find it's best to learn as you go. You can read about driving a car as much as you want but nothing compares to the hands on experience of actually getting beside a licensed driver and learning the right way to do it.

As with all things, certain words can have different meanings. A friend and I used to joke "At least it's not chinese" because of it being one of the hardest languages out there for english speakers due to the tonal system. Like the expression "hua" could have any number of completely different and unrelated meanings depending on whether you use a high pitch, low pitch, or even a neutral tone which I guess is what most of the thai languages do. Thankfully japanese is difficult, but not by those standards!

It's easy to get overwhelmed and personally I take that as a sign that I'm just moving too fast and have to slow down. One thing that helped me out a lot was learning the topic markers and being able to identify when they're being said. When you understand the context of a sentence and you're able to pick out the words you don't know and look them up, that's when you're able to really start making progress.

Sounds to me like you know a lot more than I do so I wanted to ask a question. I skimmed through a message board about this once last year and a guy who claimed to be a native speaker mentioned a way of handling kanji where that you could observe certain stroke patterns in the design and this made it so that you could find it easier in a dictionary to figure out what that particular kanji meant. Have you heard anything about this or how to do it? I only heard about it that one time the guy said something and I don't know if that's really possible or what.

[CoolOtaku]

If I'm right, it sounds like you're talking about how to use a kanji dictionary, in which case there is a very specific process you have to learn. Rather than being organized by a, b, c, etc. or by the order of the phonetic characters (e.g., a, i, u, e, o, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, etc.), kanji dictionaries are ordered by radicals and stroke numbers. I'm not sure how much you know about kanji, so I'll start from the beginning just in case.

Generally, each kanji is composed of different parts. You can often find these individual parts as standalone kanji. When you're dealing with a kanji dictionary, the first thing you have to do is identify the desired kanji's radical. When you've done that, you check a certain page at the beginning of the dictionary that has a list of all the radicals (ordered by their number of strokes, low to high). You find the radical listed there and it will tell you what section to look in to find the kanji. Once at the section, you find the subsection which you identify by the number of strokes of the kanji (radical portion excluded, I believe). Then you just have to find where it is in that subsection and go to the corresponding page.

It sounds like a giant mess in words, but it's really not that bad once you've gotten some hands-on time with it. That explanation is also entirely from memory and I pretty much never use kanji dictionaries now (not the traditional book kind at least), so there might be a few inaccuracies. There's even a step or two that can be shortened once you get comfortable with it.

Aside from that (and I do hope that's what you were talking about haha), I agree. Hands-on experience/immersion are essential. It sounds like you're picking up on some really important parts of the language. Just being able to pick out the particles in sentences helps you understand grammar structure as it's commonly used. On top of that, you can pick out individual words to look up because you'll know where one ends and another begins.

If I completely missed the point of your question, let me know and I'll give it another swing.

[Seifer]

Oh no, that's exactly what I meant. I hope it doesn't sound weird but it's really exciting to speak with someone who knows what they're talking about. I've studied alone for nearly a year and a half, so forgive me if I come across too chatty or anything.

Incidentally "ka" is probably the easiest one seeings that from what I'm told it is simply a question mark spoken out loud, like when listening to someone in japanese if I hear a person say "ka" at the end of something they just said, I know "they just asked that person a question". Little things like that really help out when you're trying to figure out what's going on.

As I got better with hiragana and katakana I started studying grammar and particles and then came along kanji. For me figuring out how to look them up in a dictionary is a big deal because I think the typical rote memorization can take a LONG time. It's much more effective to read japanese, wait until you see a kanji you don't recognize and then keep learning as you go and eventually I can start recognizing them. One could argue that it's the same as though you memorized them but it helps me to stay motivated and press on when I'm able to actively use things as I learn.

I wanted to ask you if you're able to read import games and stuff in their native language and also have you been able to speak with anyone from japan? If so what might be some stories/experiences you could share (assuming your native language is english, excuse me if it isn't)? Again I'm not trying to pry or anything, just making friendly conversation concerning the topic.

[CoolOtaku]

Check out this thread (http://www.allrpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3345) for a few Japan stories. Nickoten also posted some of his own experiences, as did Sushi_b.

It's still a pretty exciting event for me when I meet someone who speaks Japanese, so I understand the feeling. It's not terribly difficult to find people who do when you're in college, but outside of that we're pretty few and far between in most places.

Every now and then I get the chance to play a game in Japanese, but it's mostly just been Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD Ver. for a long time now. Here's our review of it (http://allrpg.com/?p=2967) on the main page if you're interested. At this point I don't have a whole lot of difficulty playing games in Japanese, but I still keep a dictionary (or two) handy.

I spent my junior year of college in Japan, so I have indeed spoken with Japanese people (in Japan) :) I'm not sure if you're in school, but if you get the chance, go for some classroom learning. It'll force you into all the uncomfortable situations you're unwilling to put yourself in and you'll be a heck of a lot better for it.

[Seifer]

I figured out how to get my hiragana going. ありがとう！


Unfortunately I don't have the privilege of studying in a school. That's not to say I wouldn't love to though! About how expensive are language classes for japanese?

Here's a question I had. I understand that building a sensible vocabulary probably requires a dictionary, but I wondered if you knew of any easier ways to learn new words perhaps using the internet in some way? To elaborate a little more, what I do is I read a sentence written with hiragana and no kanji anywhere at all and sometimes it contains slang or very specific expressions that I find very difficult to look up in dictionaries, so I wanted to find out if there was a way to learn some of these dialects.

[CoolOtaku]

As for language classes, I honestly have no idea. I never took any outside of college, but it might not be so bad. Depends on where you live I guess.

As for your last question, I would say that this falls under the category of Japanese study methods where everyone has their own opinion about what is best. Starting Japanese is hard. There are three writing systems, the "r/l" sound is a biotch for a lot of people at first, the grammar is all sorts of funked up, and then you have not only slang but vastly different dialects all across the country.

Personally, I like the more systematic approach to learning Japanese in the first few years. Textbooks are god. Vocabulary lists in textbooks are your lesser gods, as are the grammar rules. Review the lists and rules repeatedly until you can picture each page inside your head and recite parts of the text. It is a monotonous process indeed, but it will build a very strong foundation for everything that comes after it. This is essentially how I think it is best to start, but there are plenty of other people out there who would disagree with me completely. There are other valid ideas floating around, but this appeals to me the most.

The toughest part about trying to do what you mentioned, reading a sentence in all hiragana and then looking up words you don't know, is probably the homonym issue. As you may or may not know, Japanese uses oodles of homonyms, hence the dire need of kanji. Pretty much everyone hates kanji when they start, but things flip later on and they hate seeing a sentence without them because they have no idea what it is supposed to be saying. I raise this point because even if you look up a word you find in hiragana, you will often find multiple and entirely different definitions because of the high frequency of homonyms in Japanese. There's also the issue of Japanese words translating into English words that destroy the meaning of the sentence. I mean, take your standard introduction, for instance.

はじめまして。[なまえ]ともうします。よろしくおねがいします。
(Hajimemashite. [Namae]to moushimasu. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.)

In English, if we tried to translate it, it would be something like...
Nice to meet you (Even this line is localized quite a bit). I am called [name]. Please treat me well (Still somewhat localized, and who on earth would say this?).

English definitions of words will be wonderful for the first couple of years, but after that you'll start to find a lot of Japanese words that you're just more comfortable with in Japanese. Of course, if you're using a Japanese-Japanese dictionary, then good luck with that branching! I may have said a lot of unnecessary stuff, I don't know, but I hope at least some of it is useful for you. In short, avoid dialects/slang until you're really comfortable with all the basics (Why didn't I say this in the beginning?).

*-*

[Seifer]

Yeah I did find some expressions that sound ridiculous when translated into english. どぞ　よろしく。is something like "PLEASE BE NICE TO ME :D". Also, addressing someone as あなた(You) is apparently rude. Is it that way with all cases or are there exceptions to using it?

Now that I recall I did have a textbook and one of the first things it mentioned was homonyms and how infernal they are to people who don't intimately know the language (incidentally this book I fortunately still have after moving, it's Japanese step-by-step by Gene Nishi). I also have a dictionary that's japanese-english but I don't rely on it too much because the words are all displayed in romaji and not hiragana or kanji　(Wait it really does, damn why didn't I remember that!), which is also the reason I stopped using knuckles in china land.

Kanji helps out a lot when it comes to written words but based on your extensive on-hands experience, don't people catch hell when trying to talk about things out loud? Some words can have up to 5 different meanings and the book said that it depends on the accent you use when saying the word that controls it's meaning but I have a hard time believing that it's REALLY that easy.

Just for people who are still trying to study, here's an excellent web page I stumbled across that helps with learning the standard 1945. http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ik2r-myr/kanji/kanji1a.htm

By the way, sorry again for the insistent questions, please don't feel like you're obligated to continue answering. But you know the expression "ちゃって" I see it a lot sometimes added next to other words like "おくれ”　and I wasn't able to look it up anywhere. JAPANESE SLANG!! IT IS DESTROYING ME!!!!

[CoolOtaku]

I don't mind the questions at all. It's fun to talk about now and then :) Just maybe someone else will stumble across this thread and find something useful (if this is you, you should join the conversation ;) ).

I could explain what ちゃって (chatte) is, but it would require some prior foundational grammar knowledge. If you know て (te) form, you'll be in much better shape for this. If you don't, this is gonna be a bit difficult to grasp. So, let's start with a basic verb. I'm feeling 食べる／たべる／taberu right now, so that's what we're using. You have your basic 食べます／食べました／食べています／etc. Now, you may have noticed that the last example form uses the て form - 食べています. Just a reference, I'm sticking to standard politeness (also sometimes referred to as long form, although it's really a misnomer when you take into account the existence of honorific language) for the moment to keep things a little less complicated.

So, we've got our て form on. We've got our verb. We're eating. Life is good. But wait! That cake... why did we eat that cake?! That was Phakiel's cake! Oh, woe is us! Phakiel is gonna be so mad that we ate the birthday cake he smuggled out of an acquaintance's party. However shall we explain this to him? We totally ate his cake and it was good. What else can we say?

食べてしまいました！(We totally/completely ate it [perhaps even regrettably]!)

Broken down, this is 食べる in て form --> 食べて, and then we use the grammar pattern referred to as 〜てしまう --> 食べてしまう, which we then turn into standard politeness past tense (that cake is long gone, after all) --> 食べてしまいました！

We're ever so sorry, but that is just way too much trouble to say for how little we honestly care. After all that delicious cake, I am feeling pretty damn lazy. I'm not bothering with all those syllables. Screw that! He can take his apology in short form!

食べてしまった！

You know what? That's still kind of a lot of work. That cake was too tasty to feel bad about eating it. It's time to pull out the slang with an insincere apologetic look.

Here is where it gets complicated (I did warn you by saying "slang" was coming). 食べてしまう can be shortened to 食べちゃう. This is the short form of a slang version of 食べてしまう. Just remember that they are equivalent and the rest will get a lot easier. Once again, 食べてしまう＝食べちゃう. Got it? Maybe? Good enough. Moving on to the end!

Phakiel, we have something to tell you, man. ケーキを食べちゃった。There, we said it. We are pretending to be sorry, so get off our backs already. Sheesh.

Don't worry, I'm done with that horrendous story :p What you saw as 〜ちゃって is simply the て form of the slang version of 〜てしまう. It means to do something completely and, depending on the context (like all Japanese things), it can also have an added layer of regret. Maybe you read a diary. You could read a diary completely and have no feelings of remorse over it. It could be a diary from the school library you were reading for a class assignment. On the other hand, you could have just read your little sister's diary and she will not be happy with you. Both have the option of being expressed with this 〜てしまう form.

I'm starting to feel like I'm the master of too-much-information. I should cut myself off here >_> I hope that wasn't too disjointed. Let me know if you'd like any clarification.

Woops, almost forgot to address part of your post. I continue! あなた and any other form of "you" is rude in most situations. There aren't a lot of times when it's a normal thing to say, so stay away from it. I still have not used it much. It's a land mine waiting for you to step on it. Don't.

As for the kanji and homonyms junk, it's not as bad as you would think. In fact, it's really not much of an issue most of the time. The context is key. If you don't know what a person is talking about, forget about it. If you do know the general topic at least, however, you are much less likely to have difficulty understanding which version of a homonym they are using. It's kind of hard to believe until you see it in action for yourself enough.

Now, as for the accents part... That one is a bit trickier. There are indeed words that sound the same aside from the intonation (high or low) and have totally different meanings. It is important, but it is not necessary most of the time to communicate. There just aren't that many words where it really matters in my experience. Most homonyms, however, have the same basic intonation. It's all about the context.

For real, cutting myself off!

[Atlas]

My wife speaks fluent Japanese. I've made no attempt to learn--mainly because I'm much too busy at work.

[CoolOtaku]

You know, I don't think I ever knew that, Atlas. That's pretty cool. It's not an easy language to learn by any means. Do you know how long she spent studying it?

[Atlas]

Well, she is half Japanese, and she grew up in Misawa and Okinawa.

[CoolOtaku]

Yup, that'd do it.

[Atlas]

Yes, she is still a huge SMAP fan. :p

[CoolOtaku]

Man, I haven't heard anyone talk about SMAP in forever. I just checked and apparently they're still around? o_0

[Seifer]

You should know that I read every part of your posts and understand all the info you gave and for me it's all very valuable help and I appreciate it! Your answers are all clear and right on the money! ありがとう　ございます！

It would certainly be awesome if others who were trying to learn would speak up and join in. Instead of bombarding you with more questions I think I'll post my motivations for trying so hard to learn.

It comes from a lot of things, the most basic answer being video games. I don't care much for the industry these days. I feel that the market is way over saturated with fps' and stuff and as americans we are totally missing out on some excellent console role playing and other japanese-native genres and franchises. Further, this all even goes back to the original Famicom where we missed out on some very excellent titles early on like Fire Emblem and most of the Romancing SaGa games (when the first SaGa Frontier came out I didn't even know what the hell Romancing SaGa was and it all gave me a really bad stupid feeling). It was the same thing when FF7 came to america to confuse the hell out of us all because come to find out there were like 4+ games that didn't get localized.

Most people probably consider this a shallow thing (learning a language for anime purposes or other types of media), but I feel so deeply passionate about this subject that it really motivates me to press on and continue practicing and learning as much as I possibly can about the place all these wonderful games came from. Another thing is that I have no problem at all importing some retro games that was already localized here years ago in order to play them from a japanese perspective. It might sound weird but I think it's exciting to play through the old Final Fantasy games or Xenogears (I'm a huge Suikoden fan!) and get to read through all the dialogue in it's original native tongue. That might sound really out there but it's enough to motivate me anyway!

Another thing is the accuracy in which all these games were localized. FF7 and FF Tactics, for example both had horrendously bad translations to the point where it was laughable. Being in the mid to late teens then I really didn't care either way but now that I've gotten so much older I can't shake the feeling like I missed out on some great dialogue sometimes. Lots of people bitched then but I ask the same question now that I asked then: What better way to critique a butchered translation than to learn the language and simply translate the damn thing yourself? That way you'll really know exactly what was said without what can only be described as a murmuring middleman?

If absolutely nothing else, at the bare bones of it all I don't feel like things are really going to change as far as the gaming industry is concerned. I personally thought that E3 was terrible this year and not a single RPG in sight anywhere. BUT THEY'RE STILL COMING OUT IN JAPAN. If I can't catch up on the games I missed out on I certainly want to be able to import every role playing gem worth playing that japanese companies develop and you better believe I'm going to comprehend these games to the fullest extent I can while I'm doing it! Also this is really stupid but in Super Mario RPG, I'm sure you know that Bowser's winning pose was censored. He actually gives the player a milder version of the bird in the original japanese version, which I personally thought was hilarious. Just little things like that, you know?

Lastly, I'm kind of a big fan of Daigo Umehara and hope to be able to speak with him one day so I can let him know what he knows already which is what an awesome frickin' gamer he is :).

[CoolOtaku]

Haha, Daigo is pretty beast. I'm glad to hear that my ramblings haven't been for nothing XD

For me as well, the initial spark that made me want to learn Japanese was certainly video games, anime, and manga. At this point they're more like bonuses for me. The more I came to know about Japan, the more interesting I found it all and my reasons to learn grew more and more numerous. Whatever the reason is, as long as it keeps you pushing forward, I'd say it's a good reason :)

[Atlas]

Man, I haven't heard anyone talk about SMAP in forever. I just checked and apparently they're still around? o_0

Those loyal fans keep em goin' :p

[CoolOtaku]

Thought I'd share this just for the heck of it. I recently bought Remembering the Kanji Vol. 1 (otherwise known as RTK). It's a very popular book, although volumes 2 and 3 aren't nearly as well-liked. Tons of people report amazing success from using it and others bash it like it's the hip thing to do.

For those unfamiliar with the book, I highly recommend looking into it even if only briefly. It's all about remembering what kanji mean through the use of mnemonics. Some of the mnemonics that I've read so far have been way too out there for my liking, but I'm feeling pretty good about where it's taking me. I think I'll get some pretty good results from using it. It doesn't teach you how to read kanji (that's volume 2, I think), but that's something you can pick up as you read stuff in Japanese.

I'm also considering buying the New Kanzen Master series of JLPT N1 books from TheJapanShop (www.thejapanshop.com). It seems like the best set available for N1. There aren't many other options in the first place though, so that's not necessarily saying a whole lot. I have read good things about it, so I remain hopeful. It's a shame it costs so much to get the whole set, but I'm sure it's worth it. *Sigh.*