Everything Japanese!

[Pekka]

by the way, awesome website you gave me.. great links...

[chequita guevara]

What ever happened to cyclotrons1-6?

[SnowFire]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
The trouble is (and correct me if I'm mistaken, I've only taken Japanese for a few years) that the Japanese language was developed more or less in isolation. Chinese characters were adopted to give it a written form later, but the fact that the language existed as a different spoken tongue for a long time before this means that there isn't really much similarity even with Chinese, despite the use of Chinese characters for kanji.

Yes, which is evil for Chinese speakers. However the mere fact that kanji are used is far more evil for English speakers. Ideograms suck compared to alphabets. As an example, I don't really know Italian (aside from some music terms, cognates from English & Latin, Dante references, and so on). But with cognates, I think it'd take about 3 weeks of work to be a proper tourist & visit. Given 3 weeks of prep, I could read street signs, read the newspaper, have an idea of what the correct pronunciaiton of things are, and so on. I might not understand it all, but I could get parts & maybe gather the general idea.

Change 3 weeks into 3 years for Japanese. Maybe you might get some quick spoken proficiency, but there are... what... 2000 or so daily-use kanji you'd need to learn simply to be able to attempt to read signs? Never mind learning how to actually pronounce them.

I'm thinking the best way to learn Japanese is to either be really serious about it, or go live in Japan a la Drake. I know it'd just take massive exposure for me at least to wrap my head around all those kanji to get some kind of reading proficiency down.

[Pekka]

SnowFire, that's ok. I know some people have bad brains and they can't save information so well.

[Bosh]

Most important word to learn: kogal

[Bosh]

that the Japanese language was developed more or less in isolation

Not necessarily, Ancient Japanese and Ancient Korean were probably quite similar and there's still quite a few similarity (especially comparing Busan and Fukuaka dialects).

[Pekka]

Found interesting ways to learn Kanji instead of just trying to learn them one by one and then forgetting half of it.

De Roo spent years investigating ancient Chinese history and culture to locate links which could explain the unified logic behind the component parts. Here are four of De Roo's stories that include the component "STAND"立. The stories also contain the following familiar components:

"TEN" 十 "TREE" 木 "WATCH" 見 "HAND" "WOMAN" 女 "SUN" 日
(Note: Only one English meaning is provided here for each kanji or kanji component).

"SPICY" 辛
When you bite into a strong tasting, SPICY 辛 food, you STAND UP 立 TEN 十 times faster than usual and rush to the kitchen to rinse your mouth.

"PARENT" 親
Responsible PARENTS 親 living near a forest, (a STAND 立 of TREES 木), must carefully WATCH 見 their children, who might be in danger of wild animals or bandits.

"COME IN CONTACT WITH" 接
A man's HAND COMES IN CONTACT WITH a prostitute (a STANDING 立 WOMAN 女 who reaches out to him on the street).

"SOUND" 音　
Folks in ancient China used to listen for the SOUND 音of the temple bell, morning and evening, at the moment when the STANDING 立 SUN 日 was on the horizon.

Makes sense plus more fun. Then of course, memorizing Kanji is not the way to start, but just thought I'd show you guys..

[Drake Tungsten]

I don't know about those alphabets though.. I guess I'll skip those for now. Looks confusing and difficult to remember. No logic that I can see.

The kana syllabaries are a piece of cake. The kanji, however, are a *****. As others said, they were originally designed for Chinese, which is completely different from Japanese in most respects, so they made a rather awkward fit when the Japanese adopted them.

Both systems are extremely logical, however. Finding the logic that underlies 2000+ Chinese characters isn't easily done, though.

[Cyclotron]

I've taken Japanese for about 6 years now. I probably know a few hundred kanji, but that's not even close to the 2k or so (as SnowFire said) you'd need to read a newspaper.

Pekka, that's a great way to memorize kanji, but it unfortunately only works for some. You'd be hard pressed to find logical links in all the kanji in common use. I would highly recommend learning hiragana and katakana first; in Japanese, you need to know the various readings of those kanji, and just knowing a kanji means "sun" isn't going to help you if you don't know the on and kun readings. That requires knowledge of the phonetic alphabet, which isn't really that hard to learn.

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
What ever happened to cyclotrons1-6?

Dunno. Brutally murdered?

[Tattila the Hun]

I tried learning japanese usin program called Rosetta Stone. Basic premise being, you learn like a child would. There's a picture of a boy, otokonoko or something. A boy in plane with cat, otokonoko hikooki something neko. Couldn't quite finish it, but took a glimpse of the last course. I'm pretty certain I could understand much of the anime I so dearly love, if I should finish the course well.

I still remember few words, like uma, which means horse, and kuruma, which means car. (Many horses?)

Onnanohito kawaii.


And I'm hearing this is a good place to start:

http://www.thejapanesepage.com/news.php

[muxec]

http://thejapanesepage.com/

[Cyclotron]

Basashi = raw horse meat. Most important word.

otokonoko hikooki something neko

Probably to.

[muxec]

Anata wa manuke desu

[laurentius]

Re: Everything Japanese!

Originally posted by Pekka
Let's do it!

Douzo kosikakete kudasai!

I want to learn some basic Japanese, I mean start somewhere. As you know, I'm the Japan man, a big fan of the land of the rising... sand.. I mean sun.

I need good websites, and also I need anything that has to do with Japan, its culture, everything.

Show me!

arigato!

Thats cool, I've been bitten by the same bug few months ago. Theres one book in your local library thats a must read for you. The "Tokio-passi" a legend full of hilarious facts and useful tips about Tokyo and Japan in general. The newest edition is 2005 so its pretty much up to date. If you are even more profoundly interested consider joining the East Asian Studies network in your local Uni.

http://www.asianet.fi/

other useful links:

http://www.fi.emb-japan.go.jp/

http://kielikeskus.tkk.fi/

http://www.japania.org/

http://momo.jpf.go.jp/sushi/index.php?LangFlag=j

http://www.learn-japanese.info/

http://www.studyjapan.go.jp/en/

http://www.suomikai.org/

http://www.sanrio.co.jp/english/spl/spl.html

[Drake Tungsten]

Tokyo sucks...