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wickedcherub) wrote2007-01-08 05:28 pm
wickedcherub) wrote2007-01-08 05:28 pm
Entry tags:
Learn Japanese With wickedcherub Part 1: Introduction
I have been trying to learn Japanese for a very long time, but always lose motivation. I never lose motivation to make stupid LJ posts though, so I thought I could combine the two. I'm trying to head to Japan if not in June, then definitely at the end of 2007, so I have time to get *some* understanding.
The other thing I realised while studying Japanese is that the best way for *me* to learn is to teach someone else while I'm learning. It's my education-student mentality, I suppose. So I'm going to pretend that some of you are reading this.
I know a lot of you are trying to learn Japanese too, so maybe we can help each other out. I'm going to make these posts as frequent as possible, (read: every second day) and stick them under cuts and tag them. Also, I obviously suck at Japanese, so if you *do* know Japanese and I make a mistake, please tell me. Today's post will probably be the longest.
I also suck at languages in general, so think about this as a Japanese for Idiots or something. Or Japanese for People Who Watch Prince of Tennis, and other such animes.
FIRST THING: Please make sure you install the Japanese Language Pack in Windows. You can find it in Control Panel. Otherwise you won't be able to read any of the Japanese.
Introducing the Introduction:
Finding the right Japanese textbooks is hard. I don't want to communicate my business ideas effectively, nor do I just want a survival phrase book. What *I* want to do is to be able to understand anime without relying too much on subtitles. Be able to understand manga when the raws come out. To perhaps understand the gist of actor blogs and their interviews.
Maybe I'll get to 'how to find use Japanese public transport' and 'how to book a hotel' eventually, but right now the focus is just anime, and I haven't been able to find a textbook like that!
The best thing about learning Japanese through anime however, is that I am constantly immersed in this language, with subtitles so I can immediately translate what I just heard. We've all picked up words that way just through osmosis.
The Language:
Japanese is both hard and easy at the same time. There aren't very many grammatical rules, no gender nouns or plurals (sort of), hardly any verb conjugation. Which is awesome if you sucked at the romance languages (i.e. Me). However, Japanese is very vague because without these rules, everything is implied from the context of the sentence. Many degrees of politeness are expressible too, which mixes things up a bit.
There's also a new alphabet to learn (which isn't too hard) and a couple thousand kanji (which *is* hard to learn).
So let's get to it!
Kana and Kanji
The Japanese language is written in Kana and Kanji. Kana are phonetic characters - like the alphabet, they represent a sound and don't have a meaning.
There are two types of kana, hiragana and katakana. Katakana is used to write borrowed-words, that is words from other countries like coffee, McDonalds, butter. The words you recognise as English words but have been Japan-ified. Like keeki for cake. Hiragana is used to write everything else.
There aren't that many hiragana and katakana syllables and they are generally easy to pronounce. I'm not going to go through them here because a) I already know them and b) it would take me too long to teach. If you don't already know them, there are many helpful websites on the Internet you can find using Google. Your life will be much enriched if you learn them. :)
One fantastic way I've discovered to remembering hiragana and katakana is to watch Japanese karaoke. Even if it's the opening and ending themes to that anime you're watching or the subbed Hyoutei in Winter musical. You can sing along to the Japanese script!
kanji sucks. Except when it doesn't. They're characters that have been borrowed from China about 1500 years ago. You have to learn each one off by heart - the way it's written and the sound it makes and it's meaning. Because each one has a meaning. Which sounds like a drag, but once you get used a couple, you'll be amazed how much faster you can read and understand text. Apparently you need to know about 2000 of them to graduate high school in Japan. Errr, we shall go through them slowly.
Pronunciation
Japanese is easy in the sense where every syllable sounds exactly the same in each word. There's no emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble in Japanese. (so glad we're not learning English!) No syllable is longer than the other. HOWEVER, if you've been watching your anime properly, you've noticed that their voices go up and down up and down all the time. With only a handful of syllables in their alphabet, Japanese has a lot of homonyms. Rokakku's Davide is glad he's Japanese. So Japanese is a tonal language, where the intonation you give your word gives it a different meaning. (as would its Kanji which is why it's so great to learn Kanji! YES)
There are two tones, and I've been told it's like a 'do' and a 're' on the musical scale. Being musically inept, this does not help me. But it might help you. Imagine everytime a character has said hello in your anime.
o-ha-yo-u!
In musical terms, it'd be do-re-re-re. Low, then a little higher. I assume that you have to learn the correct intonation each time you learn a word. Or you could just use the same intonation each time and hope your listener understands what you're saying :p Words like sake (low high) mean rice wine, but sake (high low) means salmon. So aren't you glad you watch so much anime that you'll learn the intonation by osmosis! *nod nods*
Vocabulary
The hardest part I find in learning a language is the vocabulary. There is no way around it, sometimes you just have to memorise lists of words. I also suck at learning things off by heart, so I find the easiest way is this:
Take a short list of words, 5, 10, 15 words. I take the first one, in this case, ame, which means rain. I close my eyes and think, ame, ame ame, it sounds like ame-rica. Then I imagine tons of big fat rain all over a map of america. I imagine the grand canyon flooding, the statue of liberty being rained on, Disneyland, a drenched cowboy hat. The stupider the picture, the better. AME AME AME. As long as I've connected a silly picture of AME-rica with rain, I'll remember. It doesn't even matter if the words aren't connected. As long as you can make the connection in your brain.
Then I test that list of words again. And hopefully I'll have remembered it! The other problem is actually sitting down and remembering the words :(
VERB LESSON #1 : DESU ーです
-desu ーです。 is a polite verb meaning 'to be'. Eg: Tina desu = I am Tina.
It is very useful.
NOUN LESSON #1
Nouns you should know:
watashi わたし 私（we will learn the Kanji later don't stress) - I, Used by women, and polite men.
boku ぼく - I. Used by boys, boys being polite, girls in very specfic cases
ore おれ - I. Used by boys in rough/casual situations. Used by most PoT characters.
anata あなた - you. (polite)
kimi - you (familiar)
omae - you (rough/casual)
ADJECTIVE LESSON #1
There are two types of adjectives in Japanese. i-adjectives and na-adjectives, depending on their last syllable.
Adjectives you should know:
kawaii かわいい - cute
hayai はやい（速い）- fast
mijikai みじかい - short
atsui あつい - hot
PARTICLE LESSON #1: WA - は
Japanese has these things called particles. They attach onto the end of words to help identify the purpose of the word, eg, is it the subject of the sentence? and are like prepositions, except they go after words, so really they're POSTpositions. は (pronounced wa in this case) is important because it denotes the theme of a sentence.
SENTENCE PATTERN YAY
eg:
Watashi - wa Tina desu.
わたし は テｲナ です。
I am Tina.
eg:
Anata-wa hayai desu.
あなた は はやい です。
You are fast.
END OF FIRST LESSON
Okay, if you're feeling up to it, which I might go do now, is to make up lists of nouns and adjectives to learn so you can say lots and lots of things with that one sentence pattern! Like, Kaji Masaki-kun wa oishii desu. (Kaji Masaki is delicious. I wish I knew if that was true.)
But I must go make dinner.
The other thing I realised while studying Japanese is that the best way for *me* to learn is to teach someone else while I'm learning. It's my education-student mentality, I suppose. So I'm going to pretend that some of you are reading this.
I know a lot of you are trying to learn Japanese too, so maybe we can help each other out. I'm going to make these posts as frequent as possible, (read: every second day) and stick them under cuts and tag them. Also, I obviously suck at Japanese, so if you *do* know Japanese and I make a mistake, please tell me. Today's post will probably be the longest.
I also suck at languages in general, so think about this as a Japanese for Idiots or something. Or Japanese for People Who Watch Prince of Tennis, and other such animes.
FIRST THING: Please make sure you install the Japanese Language Pack in Windows. You can find it in Control Panel. Otherwise you won't be able to read any of the Japanese.
Introducing the Introduction:
Finding the right Japanese textbooks is hard. I don't want to communicate my business ideas effectively, nor do I just want a survival phrase book. What *I* want to do is to be able to understand anime without relying too much on subtitles. Be able to understand manga when the raws come out. To perhaps understand the gist of actor blogs and their interviews.
Maybe I'll get to 'how to find use Japanese public transport' and 'how to book a hotel' eventually, but right now the focus is just anime, and I haven't been able to find a textbook like that!
The best thing about learning Japanese through anime however, is that I am constantly immersed in this language, with subtitles so I can immediately translate what I just heard. We've all picked up words that way just through osmosis.
The Language:
Japanese is both hard and easy at the same time. There aren't very many grammatical rules, no gender nouns or plurals (sort of), hardly any verb conjugation. Which is awesome if you sucked at the romance languages (i.e. Me). However, Japanese is very vague because without these rules, everything is implied from the context of the sentence. Many degrees of politeness are expressible too, which mixes things up a bit.
There's also a new alphabet to learn (which isn't too hard) and a couple thousand kanji (which *is* hard to learn).
So let's get to it!
Kana and Kanji
The Japanese language is written in Kana and Kanji. Kana are phonetic characters - like the alphabet, they represent a sound and don't have a meaning.
There are two types of kana, hiragana and katakana. Katakana is used to write borrowed-words, that is words from other countries like coffee, McDonalds, butter. The words you recognise as English words but have been Japan-ified. Like keeki for cake. Hiragana is used to write everything else.
There aren't that many hiragana and katakana syllables and they are generally easy to pronounce. I'm not going to go through them here because a) I already know them and b) it would take me too long to teach. If you don't already know them, there are many helpful websites on the Internet you can find using Google. Your life will be much enriched if you learn them. :)
One fantastic way I've discovered to remembering hiragana and katakana is to watch Japanese karaoke. Even if it's the opening and ending themes to that anime you're watching or the subbed Hyoutei in Winter musical. You can sing along to the Japanese script!
kanji sucks. Except when it doesn't. They're characters that have been borrowed from China about 1500 years ago. You have to learn each one off by heart - the way it's written and the sound it makes and it's meaning. Because each one has a meaning. Which sounds like a drag, but once you get used a couple, you'll be amazed how much faster you can read and understand text. Apparently you need to know about 2000 of them to graduate high school in Japan. Errr, we shall go through them slowly.
Pronunciation
Japanese is easy in the sense where every syllable sounds exactly the same in each word. There's no emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble in Japanese. (so glad we're not learning English!) No syllable is longer than the other. HOWEVER, if you've been watching your anime properly, you've noticed that their voices go up and down up and down all the time. With only a handful of syllables in their alphabet, Japanese has a lot of homonyms. Rokakku's Davide is glad he's Japanese. So Japanese is a tonal language, where the intonation you give your word gives it a different meaning. (as would its Kanji which is why it's so great to learn Kanji! YES)
There are two tones, and I've been told it's like a 'do' and a 're' on the musical scale. Being musically inept, this does not help me. But it might help you. Imagine everytime a character has said hello in your anime.
o-ha-yo-u!
In musical terms, it'd be do-re-re-re. Low, then a little higher. I assume that you have to learn the correct intonation each time you learn a word. Or you could just use the same intonation each time and hope your listener understands what you're saying :p Words like sake (low high) mean rice wine, but sake (high low) means salmon. So aren't you glad you watch so much anime that you'll learn the intonation by osmosis! *nod nods*
Vocabulary
The hardest part I find in learning a language is the vocabulary. There is no way around it, sometimes you just have to memorise lists of words. I also suck at learning things off by heart, so I find the easiest way is this:
Take a short list of words, 5, 10, 15 words. I take the first one, in this case, ame, which means rain. I close my eyes and think, ame, ame ame, it sounds like ame-rica. Then I imagine tons of big fat rain all over a map of america. I imagine the grand canyon flooding, the statue of liberty being rained on, Disneyland, a drenched cowboy hat. The stupider the picture, the better. AME AME AME. As long as I've connected a silly picture of AME-rica with rain, I'll remember. It doesn't even matter if the words aren't connected. As long as you can make the connection in your brain.
Then I test that list of words again. And hopefully I'll have remembered it! The other problem is actually sitting down and remembering the words :(
-desu ーです。 is a polite verb meaning 'to be'. Eg: Tina desu = I am Tina.
It is very useful.
Nouns you should know:
watashi わたし 私（we will learn the Kanji later don't stress) - I, Used by women, and polite men.
boku ぼく - I. Used by boys, boys being polite, girls in very specfic cases
ore おれ - I. Used by boys in rough/casual situations. Used by most PoT characters.
anata あなた - you. (polite)
kimi - you (familiar)
omae - you (rough/casual)
There are two types of adjectives in Japanese. i-adjectives and na-adjectives, depending on their last syllable.
Adjectives you should know:
kawaii かわいい - cute
hayai はやい（速い）- fast
mijikai みじかい - short
atsui あつい - hot
Japanese has these things called particles. They attach onto the end of words to help identify the purpose of the word, eg, is it the subject of the sentence? and are like prepositions, except they go after words, so really they're POSTpositions. は (pronounced wa in this case) is important because it denotes the theme of a sentence.
(Theme)-wa (Noun) desu.
(Theme)-wa (Adjective) desu.
(Theme)-wa (Adjective) desu.
eg:
Watashi - wa Tina desu.
わたし は テｲナ です。
I am Tina.
eg:
Anata-wa hayai desu.
あなた は はやい です。
You are fast.
Okay, if you're feeling up to it, which I might go do now, is to make up lists of nouns and adjectives to learn so you can say lots and lots of things with that one sentence pattern! Like, Kaji Masaki-kun wa oishii desu. (Kaji Masaki is delicious. I wish I knew if that was true.)
But I must go make dinner.
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Ciaran wa shinsetsuna desu!
I hope I keep up with it too. Apparently it takes a couple of years of study to get proficient, but I don't want to be writing poetry or anything, I just hate waiting for people to sub things all the time! Just the *gist* of things will be fine.
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... Sigh. No idea WTF that says. D:
I'd love to have the 'gist' too. Makes it so much easier
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Ah, well mine will be better, cos it'll motivate me to learn, at least. :p
Well, do you understand most of that sentence? Just not that third word? Cos then you could look it up in the dictionary and totally know a new word. :p
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Mm this is tru. :D
I'll go do that! ^___^ Better not have insulted me. ;)
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One thing to be aware of with tone is that it's not consistent across Japan. You gave the example of ame for rain, but ame is also candy, and in different regions, the tones are switched. So while tone is a factor, it's really not a very important one. (It's nowhere near comparable to tone in Chinese, and not even comparable to syllabic emphasis in English.)
As for books, this (http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Japanese-New-College-Text/dp/0824808592/sr=8-2/qid=1168239153/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/002-6526779-5617668?ie=UTF8&s=books) is the textbook we used, both at the community college and at UCLA. I've always thought it was quite good. IIRC, there are four volumes.
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If you could read each of my posts I'd be so grateful, really :D
I also haven't decided on how I'm going to romanise everything. And I can't seem to figure out how to write small katakana? I went to type in 'Ti' for my name and it didn't work :(
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And yeah, I know what you mean about the monotone. Hopefully people who are watching anime and dramas and such will have a bit of a leg-up in that department, since they're used to actually hearing the language more than maybe people who just started off in class are. I was just trying to say that while yes, there is an up and down thing going on, it's not a huge worry if you put the tone on the wrong syllable. You won't sound funny like you would if you put the wrong emphasis in English, and you don't have to worry about it meaning a completely different word like you would in Chinese. Much more confusion comes from foreigners not getting the hang of long vowels and double consonants, IMO.
Are you typing Japanese directly into your browser? Because I can never seem to get my computer to do that (this is the third computer I've had where I installed the Japanese stuff and can view it just fine in all programs, but I can never get it to work for typing directly into Japanese). I have to type in a Japanese word processor (JWPce (http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html), which I will totally pimp here, because it's awesome and made by a guy I went to UCLA with; it's a word processor and also has a great built-in dictionary) and then c&p into Firefox or Word or whatever. That said, in JWPce, to type small letters, you type + first; I'm not sure if that's a universal thing or not.
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In high school I had the greatest Japanese word processor on my laptop, but then deleted it when I dropped Japanese to continue French (and then dropped French to continue maths). I'm typing Japanese straight into my client, yes, and it does Kanji and everything :) but I'm not completely sure how it all works yet.
Am also wondering how far in I have to keep romanising everything :p
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I think I'm going to enjoy these posts. ^^
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We're gonna learn TONS of Kanji :p
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Yay!
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Kanji shits me up the wall, and I am going to beat them, yes I am.
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I told myself I was going to study Japanese over break so I wouldn't forget anything and feel lost spring semester...
..And then I forgot my textbook at school. ;__;
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It would probably be beneficial if I took some sort of class, but REALLY I don't need to learn about how to ask about travel destinations :(
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We actually didn't do too much of that sort of stuff, but then again, it might be what we're learning this coming semester. We mainly focused on grammar and vocab, I think. I don't even know. I just do what they tell me to. :p
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I'd take a college class, except that I'm already majoring in maths and science (as well as teaching) and they don't let me choose a language.
I'd have to take a night class, and night classes seem to be geared towards tourists and business people. Not otakus. :p
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Euuugh, math and science. Not that I don't love those areas, but studying them would make me die.
I just don't like night classes in general. I start feeling like I have no free time or something.
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Having people join in is a great motivator :D
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Kimi-wa awesome.
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And you need to add a desu on the end of that :), without it it isn't a sentence, because sentences need verbs!
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Or not. ;)
Kimi-wa awesome desu.
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Arigato :)