shanshan310
Member
I still have a lot of trouble remembering new vocab doing this. Sometimes words just don't stick well.
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The Big Ass Superior Thread of Learning Japanese
- Thread starter RevenantKioku
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I still have a lot of trouble remembering new vocab doing this. Sometimes words just don't stick well.
I'm an expert
Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
I'm sure you don't need me to tell you this, but the remembering part really comes with regurgitating it in a real scenario. Or seeing it used abruptly in a place you didn't expect to and having to make your brain work. If you watched a show, encountered a word you didn't know, wrote it on a list, and then read the list once a day, you probably would have it in your brain somewhere. But you don't really learn it until you actually access it in a natural setting, whatever that might be. The simple tip of not using subtitles when watching something is a natural progression of that.
Obviously the easiest way is "immerse yourself in Japanese/move to Japan!", but that isn't an option for everyone, or at least not all the time. When I was 18 or 19 or whatever when I was intensely studying, I went out of my way to really throw out of the ordinary stuff at my brain to make it work. I'd read Japanese food product labels, or hair styling magazines, or watch a niche program..anything that wasn't the usual repertoire or textbook/websites/popular shows. Even though I own a home in Osaka and my wife is from there too, I attribute my kansai-ben completely to watching Hey!x3 for years before I even stepped foot in Japan almost a decade ago now.
Again, not dropping any bombs here, just reiterating the importance of simple stuff. I know everyone has to start somewhere, but once I escaped the school way of learning the language, everything flowed much quicker. Except kanji, I enjoyed brute forcing them like I was collecting pokeymanz.
Obviously the easiest way is "immerse yourself in Japanese/move to Japan!", but that isn't an option for everyone, or at least not all the time. When I was 18 or 19 or whatever when I was intensely studying, I went out of my way to really throw out of the ordinary stuff at my brain to make it work. I'd read Japanese food product labels, or hair styling magazines, or watch a niche program..anything that wasn't the usual repertoire or textbook/websites/popular shows. Even though I own a home in Osaka and my wife is from there too, I attribute my kansai-ben completely to watching Hey!x3 for years before I even stepped foot in Japan almost a decade ago now.
Again, not dropping any bombs here, just reiterating the importance of simple stuff. I know everyone has to start somewhere, but once I escaped the school way of learning the language, everything flowed much quicker. Except kanji, I enjoyed brute forcing them like I was collecting pokeymanz.
Zoe
Member
Well how do you plan to read it if you don't know what you're reading?
Hi Japan-GAF and learning Japanese-GAF, I took a year of Japanese in college and felt like I was picking it up rather quickly. It has now been over four years since then and I want to jump back into learning to read and speak/comprehend speech. I plan to go Japan next summer for a couple weeks and want to concentrate on speech comprehension and being able to speak well enough to get around. I likely will want to keep up on my reading skills as well to understand signs/menus but I believe that speaking and understanding speech should be my primary concern.
I've purchased some of the books recommended in the thread and have bookmarked many of the websites and tools provided but am wondering if anyone could possibly provide me with further books and or resources that I should direct my attention to in preparation for a trip in a year.
Thanks!
I've purchased some of the books recommended in the thread and have bookmarked many of the websites and tools provided but am wondering if anyone could possibly provide me with further books and or resources that I should direct my attention to in preparation for a trip in a year.
Thanks!
CornBurrito
Member
Any tricks for hearing the difference between:
あい
あえ
as well as
お
おう
Those sounds sound extremely similar to me.
I know the difference between the latter two is a slighter deeper "oh" sound but I can't pick up on it.
Speaking of immersion, is there a good way to get Japanese manga? I'd appreciate PMs for import sites, or other methods of obtaining Japanese manga. Also does anyone know any Japanese language forums? I remember an awesome Pokemon forum in Japanese I discovered years ago. Wish I could remember it. It would help since the move and Pokemon names are clear enough and would help pick up on contexts of other words. A video gaming forum would also be cool.
I wish I had enough knowledge to do this. But now that I'm focusing on it, I can pick out some new words. When I do turn of subtitles I end up imagining them on the screen anyway since I'll have memorized what they said.
That reminds me. What's the main difference between the particles "ga" and "wa?"
あい
あえ
as well as
お
おう
Those sounds sound extremely similar to me.
I know the difference between the latter two is a slighter deeper "oh" sound but I can't pick up on it.
Speaking of immersion, is there a good way to get Japanese manga? I'd appreciate PMs for import sites, or other methods of obtaining Japanese manga. Also does anyone know any Japanese language forums? I remember an awesome Pokemon forum in Japanese I discovered years ago. Wish I could remember it. It would help since the move and Pokemon names are clear enough and would help pick up on contexts of other words. A video gaming forum would also be cool.
I wish I had enough knowledge to do this. But now that I'm focusing on it, I can pick out some new words. When I do turn of subtitles I end up imagining them on the screen anyway since I'll have memorized what they said.
That reminds me. What's the main difference between the particles "ga" and "wa?"
shanshan310
Member
Try saying the syllables in あい and あえ separately, and then kind of slowly merge them together. They do sound similar but there is a difference. おう is just a longer sound than お.
I'm also curious about this, I only know of 2chan.
I found that subtitles helped me to pick up new vocabulary too. But in a way they were a bit of a crutch, they filled in knowledge gaps in my head and kept me thinking in English. I still use them sometimes because I often watch shows with my partner, but watching with Japanese subtitles helps more imo. I've actually learnt a fair bit of kanji from it. But yeah, if you turn them off and there are words you don't know it's incredibly frustrating and I find it hard to progress.
wa indicates the topic of the sentence, while ga indicates an subject (the object of the sentence is indicated by wo). I'm kind of bad at explaining but this site and this one too seemed to provide some good answers.
CornBurrito
Member
Yeah I may watch a bit without subtitles once I know enough Japanese to form a complete sentence, but I'm not there yet. I'm still learning the kana. I've really been slacking on that.
Gah fuck Japanese particles... So complicated. Hopefully a formal class at college will help me get the hand of this all. Thanks for the links though. They gave some pretty detailed explanations. It seems I was correct in my thinking that "ga" can be used to stress importance. Like saying "your eyes are beautiful" in Japanese could be disastrous if you said "あなたのめがきれいです" (probably broken japanese) because then it would come off as "only your eyes are beautiful - the rest of you is not so much"
I'm an expert
Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
..yes..take the class..
CornBurrito
Member
News Web Easy is really nice. Articles go up pretty often, and there are a ton of old ones on there too. Like the name suggests, they are easier to read versions of actual articles. There is also audio for every article.
This would be a nice site to use once you're ready to start reading stuff.
It does not mean that at all. -ga does not mean "only". The above sentence means "your eyes are beautiful", it makes no implications about the rest of the person.
In regard to the ga/wa distinction, I like the following example: you can say "Boku wa sushi desu" at a restaurant when ordering from the menu. It means something like "As for me, I'll have sushi". But if you say "Boku ga sushi desu" it means "I am sushi". Pretty big difference. Wa marks topics, -ga marks subjects.
CornBurrito
Member
Oh... this bit from the website made me believe it could be used to denote "only" bits...
Bah. :[
CornBurrito
Member
Not quite sure I follow.
What's the main difference between:
あなたのめがきれいです
あなたのめはきれいです
は/が got many usages. You can't explain all of them with a few words. I think both Conrn and hongcha are correct. It's just a part of the examples in many usages.
As for めがきれい, sorry, I don't have a good example right now but it's possible that someone can take it offensively in some contexts. But you need a context before that.
a lovely wife: I cook dinner for you.
a good lookin husband: I cook dinner tonight.
かわいい おくさん：わたしは でぃなーを つくるね♡
いけめん ていしゅ：こんやは おれが つくるよ。きみは やすんでて(*´∀｀*)
As for めがきれい, sorry, I don't have a good example right now but it's possible that someone can take it offensively in some contexts. But you need a context before that.
In this case,
a lovely wife: I cook dinner for you.
a good lookin husband: I cook dinner tonight.
かわいい おくさん：わたしは でぃなーを つくるね♡
いけめん ていしゅ：こんやは おれが つくるよ。きみは やすんでて(*´∀｀*)
Sorry, I don't have a good example for this one too. lol
In this particular example, I don't think either of these constructions would be very natural. When talking about someone's body parts, the usual form is to identify the person as the topic with は and then the specific body part as the subject with が.
So in this case it would be あなたはめがきれいです。
(Of course there's also the issue that you shouldn't generally use あなた to address someone unless there's no other option, but that's a whole different subject. In example sentences like this, it's totally fine.)
In general, though, it's true that the は/が distinction can result in different kinds of emphasis. One way I've often heard the distinction described is that a は sentence and a が sentence are answering different hypothetical questions. So to give a basic example:
1) わたしは にほんに いきました。
2) わたしが にほんに いきました。
The first sentence could be used to answer the question "Where did you go?" (あなたはどこにいきましたか
or "What did you do?" (あなたはなにをしましたか. The "I" doesn't really get any emphasis because it's the topic (and indeed could easily be omitted from the sentence entirely in many contexts). The emphasis is on what was done.The second sentence could be used to answer the question "Who went to Japan?" (だれがにほんにいきましたか
So the emphasis is roughly "I went to Japan."But this emphasis isn't necessarily very strong or even present in all cases where が is used. It's all a matter of looking at the context. For instance, looking at the above あなたはめがきれいです sentence, it could indeed be a response to a question of わたしはどこがきれいですか ("What part of me is beautiful?"), but more generally, the が is used because you already have a topic marked with は and you're narrowing it down to talk about a specific part of it. It's very neutral, and definitely wouldn't carry any implications that you think other parts of her aren't attractive. The overall topic, after all, is still the person as a whole.
In fact, confusingly enough, if you were to say あなたはめはきれいです, that could definitely carry an implication that you don't think any other part of her is beautiful. That's because when you specifically mark a topic where it's not necessary, there's usually an implication that you're comparing it to other possible topics. Like if you were having a conversation about dogs and everybody was saying how much they loved them, you could say わたしはきらいです ("Me, I hate them.") The explicit わたしは draws a contrast with the other people who were saying the opposite. In a similar way, the explicit めは in めはきれいです sounds like it's very specifically picking out the eyes to talk about, with the implication that you don't think the rest is worth mentioning.
I think the good old method of over-literal translation, by translating は with one of the rare English constructions that explicitly marks out a topic ("As for...", "On the subject of...", or "subject followed by comma") can help to make some of these distinctions clearer. So:
わたしはにほんにいきました "Me, I went to Japan." (I don't know where you guys went, but I went to Japan!)
わたしがにほんにいきました "I went to Japan." (Who went to Japan? It was me!)
あなたはめがきれいです "As for you, your eyes are beautiful." (What a charmer.)
あなたはめはきれいです "Speaking of you, as for your eyes, they're beautiful." (The rest of you, not so much.)
いぬはすきなんですよね! "Dogs, don't you just love them?!"
わたしはきらいです。 "Me, I hate them."
I'm an expert
Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
Fuck me..I feel like I'm in a time warp in 1999 with this ha/ga stuff. If your aim is to pass a test, all you have to do is know the basic grammar rules for any particle. If your aim is to sound fluent, you'll know exactly when to use what particle from experience with the language, which basically means having the language in your daily life for years and years.
shanshan310
Member
You gotta start somewhere though, and having a reference point to bounce from makes it a lot easier to expand your knowledge than just absorbing the language - especially with grammar.
I'm an expert
Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
I'm not disagreeing, it's just I have never once in my "J-life" stopped and thought "do I use ha or ga here.." The only time I contemplated that was when I was taking a test. Hell, it's even on the JLPT and I'm sure plenty of Japanese make mistakes with it. My point was more, don't stress too much about forming a sentence, verbal or written, and going down some mental checklist as to which to use. It'll come naturally.
shanshan310
Member
mm yeah, that's a good outlook to have. Communicating is really the ultimate goal, and worrying about grammatical accuracy can get in the way sometimes.
I'm an expert
Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
It's strange that so many foreigners get so freaked out about making mistakes with their Japanese (I come across this here, there, on gaf, everywhere) but most of those people come from countries where there are millions of immigrants that don't speak perfect English (or whatever native language) yet function in daily life or professional settings or whatever. If I go to any restaurant or shop here in the tri-state area it is more than likely I'll come across someone who doesn't speak perfect English but has zero issue using it like they did.
CornBurrito
Member
I'm not going to really stress out over it, but it'd be nice to at least have a general idea so I'm not going in blind.
Yeah yeah, I'm fine sounding like a ばかがいじん as long as I can get a general point across.
What... I thought あなた was just a formal "you." Does really nobody use it in Japan most of the time?
Zoe
Member
It's generally impolite to not refer to someone by their name or title.
Can someone please translate this elf installer for me? I don't understand the 200MB vs. 600MB option...
Please choose your installation method.
The Maximum Installation will provide the most pleasant game experience.
For more details, please consult the manual.
> Standard (200 MB)
> Maximum (600 MB)
OneEightZero
aka ThreeOneFour
I'm shocked about how much of those screenshots I was able to understand without translation.
Viola of the Abyss
Member
Hello! I recently moved to Japan and I'm attending school here.
I got admitted to 中級1 level and they asked us to buy a dictionary.
Mobile dictionaries are not allowed because the teachers won't be able to tell if we're searching words or playing Angry Birds / browsing Facebook / whatever, which is too bad since Kotoba for iOS is an excellent dictionary and was my primary choice until now despite running on my old and rusty 3G.
They suggested us to buy an electronic dictionary, but since they're pretty expensive and I'm on a budget I just bought a 3000 Yen paper one, which unfortunately is not up to the task :/
So pretty much the choice right now would be between caving in and spending 35000 - 50000 on a denshi jisho (electronic dictionary) or spending about 15000 to buy a used 3DS XL with Kanji Sonomama....
I already researched both sides' advantages, and while I'd really fancy a physical keyboard the electronic is so much more expensive.
What would you suggest me to do in this case?
I got admitted to 中級1 level and they asked us to buy a dictionary.
Mobile dictionaries are not allowed because the teachers won't be able to tell if we're searching words or playing Angry Birds / browsing Facebook / whatever, which is too bad since Kotoba for iOS is an excellent dictionary and was my primary choice until now despite running on my old and rusty 3G.
They suggested us to buy an electronic dictionary, but since they're pretty expensive and I'm on a budget I just bought a 3000 Yen paper one, which unfortunately is not up to the task :/
So pretty much the choice right now would be between caving in and spending 35000 - 50000 on a denshi jisho (electronic dictionary) or spending about 15000 to buy a used 3DS XL with Kanji Sonomama....
I already researched both sides' advantages, and while I'd really fancy a physical keyboard the electronic is so much more expensive.
What would you suggest me to do in this case?
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
You can find decent electronic dictionaries for cheaper than that.
As long as it has a Japanese dictionary, an English -> Japanese dictionary, and a Japanese -> English dictionary, as well as a "jump" function that let's highlight words and look them up directly, you should be good to go.
You don't need all of those fancy ones with high resolution color screens and television tuners. I'd recommend going into a big electronics store and trying a few out. Whichever one boots up and responds the fastest is the one you should buy. You want to be able to pull out the thing and look up a word at a moment's notice (especially if you're leaving in Japan and constantly exposed to words you don't recognize), which the DS will not be good for at all.
As long as it has a Japanese dictionary, an English -> Japanese dictionary, and a Japanese -> English dictionary, as well as a "jump" function that let's highlight words and look them up directly, you should be good to go.
You don't need all of those fancy ones with high resolution color screens and television tuners. I'd recommend going into a big electronics store and trying a few out. Whichever one boots up and responds the fastest is the one you should buy. You want to be able to pull out the thing and look up a word at a moment's notice (especially if you're leaving in Japan and constantly exposed to words you don't recognize), which the DS will not be good for at all.
I made a video where I learn some new Japanese words by singing the Mobile Suit Gundam theme:
http://youtu.be/iBIQtzIwtc0
Singing is a pretty good way to learn and I'm thinking of making a series like this. Any thoughts on how to make the format better?
http://youtu.be/iBIQtzIwtc0
Singing is a pretty good way to learn and I'm thinking of making a series like this. Any thoughts on how to make the format better?
Obviously my presenting skills are really terrible, I'm just hoping I'll get better at it over time.
Awesome! I liked it a lot!
Learning from songs seems like it could be a little tricky since it often isn't very indicative of the actual language, but you seem like you have the right approach to it. Learning individual words seems like it'd work nicely, especially with songs that have a consistent theme, like you pointed out with the Gundam song.
Also, some of the words you learned were already conjugated. It might be helpful to find the dictionary form of verbs and learn those as well. For example, moeagare is a conjugation of moeagaru (though I'm not exactly familiar with that conjugation, maybe someone in here can help out). If you learn the dictionary form, then later you'll see it conjugated many different ways and still know what it means.
But yeah, overall I liked it. Good job!
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it!
I tried talking about the plain form moeagaru, but even just mentioning it made things seems complicated. And being still at beginner level, I couldn't explain what form moeagare is (I think it must be imperative, but I really don't know).
You're right about the language of song lyrics being a bit different to everyday spoken language as well. I hadn't thought about that before.
You're right, "moeagare" is the imperative form =)
Another thing that might bear mentioning about it is that it's actually a compound verb, made up from the basic "moeru" (to burn) and "agaru" (to go up). This seems a pretty helpful thing to mention when introducing it to English-speakers, since we have plenty of similar expressions about burning in English using "up" (in particular, "to go up in flames" is almost exactly equivalent!)
That is pretty interesting, I didn't know that. 'Moeru' appears in the lyrics as well.
Maybe I could mention stuff like this in posts on my channel's Google+ page. Or perhaps use captions. Because if I start trying to explain grammar on video I know I will fall pretty far short!
Brawly Likes to Brawl
Member
ゴールデンラーメン
Is that what you wanted?
Is that what you wanted?
They don't have to be together (it will still make sense either way), but spaces are not really used in Japanese writing.
So I would keep them together.
That's good to know. I appreciate it!
GAF, I need your help!
Next year I will need an electronic dictionary/denshi jisho for my second year of Japanese studies. The only requirements are that it needs the following:
- Kojien Japanese Language Dictionary
- Meikyo Japanese Language Dictionary
I have seen these things ranging from $20 to $350 and I have no idea what to go with. Brand, features, etc. So far I've been using a few apps on my iPad/iPhone (which is convenient, because I can write an unknown kanji using the touchscreen and my phone will find it for me) and I also have the three volumes of the Japanese dictionary thingies on the Nintendo DS lying around somewhere. I've never tried them though.
Does anyone have experience with these things and can recommend me one? I'm not sure if I will need a really fancy one because I've already got my iOS app that's been really helpful so far... And maybe I can just use the DS as a denshi jisho? I don't want to spend a ridiculous amount of money if I don't have to.
Thanks in advance guys!
Next year I will need an electronic dictionary/denshi jisho for my second year of Japanese studies. The only requirements are that it needs the following:
- Kojien Japanese Language Dictionary
- Meikyo Japanese Language Dictionary
I have seen these things ranging from $20 to $350 and I have no idea what to go with. Brand, features, etc. So far I've been using a few apps on my iPad/iPhone (which is convenient, because I can write an unknown kanji using the touchscreen and my phone will find it for me) and I also have the three volumes of the Japanese dictionary thingies on the Nintendo DS lying around somewhere. I've never tried them though.
Does anyone have experience with these things and can recommend me one? I'm not sure if I will need a really fancy one because I've already got my iOS app that's been really helpful so far... And maybe I can just use the DS as a denshi jisho? I don't want to spend a ridiculous amount of money if I don't have to.
Thanks in advance guys!
あなた also is the equivelant of dear/darling and married couples use it quite a lot.
Don't know if this is the right thread. Sorry.
I got an email from my Japanese teacher and unfortunately I have no idea what she is talking about, but as she is 78 and it's been so hot out I've been very concerned. If someone could please translate this for me I'd be very appreciative.
I got an email from my Japanese teacher and unfortunately I have no idea what she is talking about, but as she is 78 and it's been so hot out I've been very concerned. If someone could please translate this for me I'd be very appreciative.
In the first part she's apologising for her bad IT skills, something about an email problem.
The rest is a bit beyond my understanding, but I don't think she's in any danger if that's what you meant.
I'm an expert
Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
Something about angels..help..Tokyo 3.. giant robots... Is your name Shinji? Who's Shinji?
Oh and she caught a cold. Darn AC.
Oh and she caught a cold. Darn AC.
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