Katawa Shoujo Forums

*Bobs in*

I've been learning Japanese on and off for the past 2 years (devoted, I know), and I remember bits and pieces of it. I'd estimate that I can pronounce 90% of any Japanese words in English, and I could probably read some Hirakana fairly well. (To anyone who complains about how complex the writing system is: I'll show you two words in the English language. Inferior and Interior. One line, completely different meaning. And they don't do any of the vowel+e stuff either.)

I'll say that the key to pronouncing and writing Japanese (and really any language) is simply forget that it's related to your native language in any way. When I asked a friend, who was a U.S. diplomat for a long period (~10-20 I'd guess) she said something similar. Speaking as someone who is the victim of an English teacher for a mother, this may make no sense at all, but here goes. Kekkon isn't the Japanese word for marriage. It is marriage. (I don't know how to put characters in here, but the idea applies to the characters as well.)

Tips:
Use words or characters interchangeably in your personal documents (good for freaking out people if you are learning 2 languages at once)
Find someone else who is learning the language (or knows the language) and converse with them in that language occasionally.

Comrade wrote:Don't bother learning Kanji until you master Hiragana. I am using a software called rosetta stone, its a great way to learn new languages.
Message me and i will link you to a trial version.

^^^
This

Until you master hiragana and katakana (and is comfortable with them), don't bother with Kanji. It shouldn't be hard though; kindergarteners can do it in a week or two

Megumeru wrote:

Comrade wrote:Don't bother learning Kanji until you master Hiragana. I am using a software called rosetta stone, its a great way to learn new languages.
Message me and i will link you to a trial version.

^^^
This

Until you master hiragana and katakana (and is comfortable with them), don't bother with Kanji. It shouldn't be hard though; kindergarteners can do it in a week or two

There are only about 50 characters that are being used regulary, Compare that to Arabic that has 28 letters and each is written differently if it is used in the beginning, middle or end of the word. (And of course there are vowel signs that are necesaary in writing, and Hamzas, Waslas, etc..)

Being able to speak japanese would surely be cool, even though I am not much into anime, manga and stuff like that. But truth being said, I don't think I'm good at foreign languages, and don't have much time for it either. I struggle to make sense writing in english, let alone to speak properly with my terrible accent and pronunciation and english is said to be one of the easiest languages out there, so I don't stand a chance of learning japanese, which is considered one of the hardest langauges, even if I had time and will to do so. Other than english the only foreign langauge I learned was german, but I was even worse at it than at english so I gave up very quickly.

Bluegaze wrote:english is said to be one of the easiest languages out there, so I don't stand a chance of learning japanese, which is considered one of the hardest langauges.

Absolute nonsense.
English, being a mess of celtic, latin and german languages rarely makes sense in its own gramatical rules, and is extremely inconsistent with its own rules. Japanese, as a contained language doesn't have that issue.
Compared to semitic languages Japanese grammer is ridiclousaly simple. You know how i felt moving from the 10 arabic verb structures to the single Japanese verb? Fucking delightful.

Comrade wrote:Don't bother learning Kanji until you master Hiragana. I am using a software called rosetta stone, its a great way to learn new languages.
Message me and i will link you to a trial version.

Don't use Rosetta Stone. They're evil.

But this business about Japanese writing being hard is not about the number of strokes or the similarities of the shapes or what-have you; it's the sheer number of them, slotted into multiple writing systems that all run in parallel for subtly different purposes.

I mean, take Spanish. It has 27 letters, or if you want to count upper/lower case as different, then 54. Japanese, on the other hand, expects you to learn in the neighborhood of 2200 different characters before the tenth grade, in order to be able to read books and newspapers, and probably around 3500 for an educated person. Chinese is even worse, though.

Let me put it this way: Vietnam used to use kanji-style/Chinese-style characters for its writing. Then a guy called Alexandre de Rhodes came along and wrote up a Roman-style alphabet system for use in Vietnamese. Today that man is revered as a national hero in Vietnam. Just sayin'.

If only all languages used Phonecian abjads

Comrade wrote:If only all languages used Phonecian abjads

Hell, let's all just go with IPA and be done with it. And then we can drink an IPA to celebrate world unity.

I was extremely sarcastic when i said that.

Atario wrote:And then we can drink an IPA to celebrate world unity.

First you'd have to get unity over IPAs being good, which is so not the case.

Disgusting things...

Atario wrote:I mean, take Spanish. It has 27 letters, or if you want to count upper/lower case as different, then 54. Japanese, on the other hand, expects you to learn in the neighborhood of 2200 different characters before the tenth grade, in order to be able to read books and newspapers, and probably around 3500 for an educated person. Chinese is even worse, though.

I don't think Chinese is worse than Japanese. I think Japanese is worse because you have all the Chinese characters plus another layer on top of that, with multiple cross-connections between the layers.

In fact, knowing Chinese helps you retain meaning for a lot of Japanese words (for example, if you're memorising terms), but it's also a disability in some ways because of the way Japanese modifies the meanings.

brythain wrote:

Atario wrote:I mean, take Spanish. It has 27 letters, or if you want to count upper/lower case as different, then 54. Japanese, on the other hand, expects you to learn in the neighborhood of 2200 different characters before the tenth grade, in order to be able to read books and newspapers, and probably around 3500 for an educated person. Chinese is even worse, though.

I don't think Chinese is worse than Japanese. I think Japanese is worse because you have all the Chinese characters plus another layer on top of that, with multiple cross-connections between the layers.

In fact, knowing Chinese helps you retain meaning for a lot of Japanese words (for example, if you're memorising terms), but it's also a disability in some ways because of the way Japanese modifies the meanings.

Not the meaning.

The way we write them.

Well ok, the meaning does change a *bit*.

Comrade wrote:There are only about 50 characters that are being used regulary, Compare that to Arabic that has 28 letters and each is written differently if it is used in the beginning, middle or end of the word. (And of course there are vowel signs that are necesaary in writing, and Hamzas, Waslas, etc..)

There's more than 50. Kanjis, right? The 50 are just the easy icing on the cake--we learn those during junior school.

I was talking about Hiragana. A Japanese friend of mine told me there are over 200 Hiraganas, but only around 50 so i am going by her words.

Yeah I'm trying to get down hiragana & katanaka first, kanji will have to wait. I'll have to write them down on paper and hang them around my pc so I'll see them every time and practice. For now ill just review all of them everyday till I can memorise them.

Also heard about Rosetta Stone program and was a bit interested. But I also heard it doesn't actually teach you how to read if I'm not mistaken, correct me if I'm wrong.

Finding someone to practice or knows any japanese in my surroundings is not possible im not afraid.

ogorhan wrote:Yeah I'm trying to get down hiragana & katanaka first, kanji will have to wait. I'll have to write them down on paper and hang them around my pc so I'll see them every time and practice. For now ill just review all of them everyday till I can memorise them.

Also heard about Rosetta Stone program and was a bit interested. But I also heard it doesn't actually teach you how to read if I'm not mistaken, correct me if I'm wrong.

Finding someone to practice or knows any japanese in my surroundings is not possible im not afraid.

Memrise goddamit, literally does all that for you.

It even sends you emails when it thinks you should practice a specific "course" (read wordset, or alphabet) because you havent worked on it in a while.
Mastered Katanaka and hirigana in a few weeks doing that, just have to repeat the courses every now and then to make sure the ones i dont use often stay fresh.