# I signed up for Japanese lessons! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 30, 2009, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529 "2009-06-30T23:41:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/61 "2009-11-23T18:20:58Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > Pssst… _Minn **a** _. Oops. So it is. _Minna no Nihongo._ Does that mean, ‘Japanese for Everyone’? > [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > Nice work! Isn’t it fun when you start putting together all the little bits into something really useful? A few notes… > > \*Suupaa \*should be written with katakana: スーパー I know; we haven’t been Offically Introduced to _katakana_ yet. I’m going to try to absorb them over the next two months though. I don’t know how to make that ‘extender’ character either, so I just used a dash. > [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > The long vowel in kyou is written with an _u_, not an _o_: きょう > A shorter way of writing \*this morning \*is _kesa_: 今朝 (けさ) > > One nice thing about kanji is that the more you learn, the easier it will be, as you learn various radicals (small elements that appear in many kanji in various combinations), as well as the general guidelines for stroke order and such. I’ve already started noticing commonalities. For example, that part that has four horizontal lines and a square seems to appear in a lot of _kanji_ relating to speech or language. I found an older thread relating to tools to learn Japanese, and it pointed me to some good books on Amazon.ca, such as [Japanese in Mangaland](http://www.amazon.ca/Japanese-Mangaland-Basic-Course-Using/dp/4889961151/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2QXZCWLBA78OD&colid=27C11V0FL253). 😃 There’s a reason my other screen name on other boards is _Komiksulo_. > [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > がんばって! 😃 🙂 Thanks! どうもありがとうございます！ ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/62 "2009-11-23T23:01:41Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > Oops. So it is. _Minna no Nihongo._ Does that mean, ‘Japanese for Everyone’? Yup, that’s a very good translation! > [@](#): > > I know; we haven’t been Offically Introduced to _katakana_ yet. I don’t know how to make that ‘extender’ character either, so I just used a dash. I thought that might be the case. Depending on the word, it should pop up in katakana automatically, depending on your IME. Honestly, it’s been so long since I used mine, I can’t even remember. :o > [@](#): > > I’ve already started noticing commonalities. For example, that part that has four horizontal lines and a square seems to appear in a lot of _kanji_ relating to speech or language. Good catch! 口 (くち _kuchi_) by itself means, among other things, “mouth.” > [@](#): > > どうもありがとうございます！ いいえ、どういたしまして。 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/63 "2009-11-24T07:01:20Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > Oops. So it is. _Minna no Nihongo._ Does that mean, ‘Japanese for Everyone’?I know; we haven’t been Offically Introduced to _katakana_ yet. I’m going to try to absorb them over the next two months though. Yep, “Japanese for everyone” is a good translation. “Everyone’s Japanese” also works. > [@Sunspace](#): > > I don’t know how to make that ‘extender’ character either, so I just used a dash.I’ve already started noticing commonalities. For example, that part that has four horizontal lines and a square seems to appear in a lot of _kanji_ relating to speech or language. yep, there are many kanji that have multiple meanings and are, therefore, pretty ubiquitous, and even kanji whose pronunciations change depending on many factors. For example, the kanji 本 (hon) in the name 本田 (honda) is pronounced “moto” in the word 山本 (yamamoto) because of its position in the word. Note: the first kanji in the word yamamoto: 山 (yama) is the word for mountain. > [@Sunspace](#): > > I found an older thread relating to tools to learn Japanese, and it pointed me to some good books on Amazon.ca, such as [Japanese in Mangaland](http://www.amazon.ca/Japanese-Mangaland-Basic-Course-Using/dp/4889961151/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2QXZCWLBA78OD&colid=27C11V0FL253). 😃 There’s a reason my other screen name on other boards is _Komiksulo_. 🙂 Thanks! どうもありがとうございます！ Some other, very reasonably priced books you may want to look into is the Kanji de Manga series by Glenn Kardy and Chihiro Hattori. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/64 "2009-11-24T07:09:46Z")
Kanji is also very nice in differentiating things that are otherwise homographs (or homographs in certain conjugations). I now present my favorite sentence in Japanese 丹羽の庭には二羽鶏は俄に鰐をたべた。 (Yeah, it misses an honorific, bite me) ひらがなでは。。。 にわのにわにはにわにわとりはにわかにわにをたべた。 Edit: Note that this is a tongue twister （早口言葉）, and mostly just a clumsy theoretical statement. It literally means: In Niwa’s garden two chickens suddenly ate an alligator (or something along those lines). You’ll rarely see anything THAT bad. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/65 "2009-11-24T13:55:26Z")
I’ve been giving y’all some slack here based on the “help with translation” loophole in the [rule against posting in languages other than English](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7697021#post7697021), but we do in fact have such a rule. Please, folks, stop posting in Japanese. Thanks, twickster, MPSIMS moderator ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/66 "2009-11-24T17:24:40Z")
I’ll start spoilering English translations or something. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/67 "2009-11-24T20:43:53Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > Kanji is also very nice in differentiating things that are otherwise homographs (or homographs in certain conjugations). > > I now present my favorite sentence in Japanese > 丹羽の庭には二羽鶏は俄に鰐をたべた。 (Yeah, it misses an honorific, bite me) > > ひらがなでは。。。 > にわのにわにはにわにわとりはにわかにわにをたべた。 Hah! Try saying that three times fast. I have some other pretty cool Japanese tongue twisters but won’t post them here because of Twickster’s admonition about posting in Japanese. > [@Jragon](#): > > Edit: Note that this is a tongue twister （早口言葉）, and mostly just a clumsy theoretical statement. It literally means: In Niwa’s garden two chickens suddenly ate an alligator (or something along those lines). You’ll rarely see anything THAT bad. For those who are interested, Jragon’s four character kanji above translates to: hayaguchikotoba, literally ‘fast mouth words’ meaning ‘tongue twisters’. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/68 "2009-11-24T20:54:54Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > Kanji is also very nice in differentiating things that are otherwise homographs (or homographs in certain conjugations). > > I now present my favorite sentence in Japanese > 丹羽の庭には二羽鶏は俄に鰐をたべた。 (Yeah, it misses an honorific, bite me) > > ひらがなでは。。。 > にわのにわにはにわにわとりはにわかにわにをたべた。 > > Edit: Note that this is a tongue twister （早口言葉）, and mostly just a clumsy theoretical statement. It literally means: In Niwa’s garden two chickens suddenly ate an alligator (or something along those lines). You’ll rarely see anything THAT bad. :: peers at sentence :: :: head explodes :: I think that transliterated would be _niwa no niwa ni wa ni watori wa niwa ka niwa ni o tepute._ Aiiee. Why do I have a feeling that this is going to be another long, strange journey? Admittedly, it’s one I’ve wanted to take since high school. If I was being rational about it, I’d be studying Mandarin… but I’m not. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/69 "2009-11-24T21:00:16Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > :: peers at sentence :: > :: head explodes :: > > I think that transliterated would be _niwa no niwa ni wa ni watori wa niwa ka niwa ni o **tepute**._ Aiiee. tabeta, not tepute. (bolding mine) > [@Sunspace](#): > > Why do I have a feeling that this is going to be another long, strange journey? > > Admittedly, it’s one I’ve wanted to take since high school. If I was being rational about it, I’d be studying Mandarin… but I’m not. It’ll be a long, strange, yet fun journey. Keep at it and you’ll reap the rewards. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/70 "2009-11-24T22:23:01Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > tabeta, not tepute. (bolding mine) :smack:After all that repetition of ‘to eat’ in class too. Just goes to show how quickly one can start to lose it. I may have to continue to practise every night even without the classes. > [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > It’ll be a long, strange, yet fun journey. Keep at it and you’ll reap the rewards. 🙂 Free trip to Japan? \ Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/71 "2009-11-24T22:42:15Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > :smack:After all that repetition of ‘to eat’ in class too. Just goes to show how quickly one can start to lose it. I may have to continue to practise every night even without the classes. Don’t sweat it. For a frustratingly long time I kept confusing Ta (た) with Na (な). It’s just practice, practice, practice, like anything else. > [@Sunspace](#): > > Free trip to Japan? > \ I wish. Japanese is hard, so I figure I’ve earned the equivalent of three free trips at this point. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/72 "2009-11-25T03:53:07Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > Don’t sweat it. For a frustratingly long time I kept confusing Ta (た) with Na (な). It’s just practice, practice, practice, like anything else. I keep forgetting katakana. I can read them fine, but every once in a while when writing I still have to look one up, and every time I curse under my breath when I realize I still know the useless katakana for wo when it could be replaced by something, you know, I’ll actually use. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/73 "2009-11-25T11:37:42Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > I keep forgetting katakana. I can read them fine, but every once in a while when writing I still have to look one up, and every time I curse under my breath when I realize I still know the useless katakana for wo when it could be replaced by something, you know, I’ll actually use. What, in my estimation, made katakana easy for me was, contrary to what I was told to do by others learning Japanese, I learned it at the same time I learned hiragana. Although not really the case, I treated katakana as the cursive form of hiragana. It made the characters easier for me to remember. I now see that taking that tack with kanji would have made that easier as well for forming simpler words earlier in my language training, e.g.; 私 (watashi), 初 (haji), etc… And don’t forget about spelling out numbers, especially large numbers, which are infinitely easier to write with kanji than with hiragana or even in English. For example, 534,682 spelled out in English would be ‘five hundred thirty four thousand six hundred eighty two’. In japanese (romaji) it would be ‘go juu san man yon sen roppyaku hachi juu ni’ or, with hiragana: ‘ごじゅうさんまんよんせんろっぴゃくはちじゅうに’. As you see, spelled out numbers in either English, romaji, or hiragana is pretty time consuming to write, and kind of a nightmare to read in hiragana. However, the same number spelled out with kanji would simply be ‘五十三万四千六百八十二’. As you see, numbers, even large numbers are very easy to spell out with Kanji, and almost as quick as writing the actual numbers themselves. The bonus is it’s even easier to read. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/74 "2009-11-25T17:49:23Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > I have some other pretty cool Japanese tongue twisters but won’t post them here because of Twickster’s admonition about posting in Japanese. AFAIK, you \*\*can \*\*post in Japanese (or any foreign language) as long as you also provide translations. > [@Sunspace](#): > > After all that repetition of ‘to eat’ in class too. If it makes you feel any better, I had a classmate who constantly mixed up 読む (_yomu_, to read) and 飲む (_nomu_, to drink). My poor teacher was forever saying things in a long-suffering voice like “V-san, you do not drink a newspaper” and “V-san, you do not read your coffee.” ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2009, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/75 "2009-11-26T00:18:06Z")
Just before my last lesson, I dug up two copies of [Mangajin](http://www.mangajin.com/). Mangajin was an amazing US-based magazine that laid out Japanese-language _manga_ (comics/cartoons/graphic novels), and explained how the text in the manga (dialogue, sound effects, narration) all worked. There would be a four-pass translation: the original Japanese, a direct transliteration of the original Japanese into _romaji_, a direct translation of the _romaji_ into English, and a polished English rendering. It was quite remarkable. I bought them in the 1990s, during my last phase of strong interest in Japanese. I think I can make more use of them now. Sadly, the magazine is no longer published. I’ll add, though, that things have definitely improved in some ways. Several of the articles we about ways to get Japanese into email and word processors. The Microsoft computer world was just transitioning to Windows 95, and Unicode had only recently appeared on the horizon. I’m not sure where Macs were at that point with respect to Japanese. You had to either get a special program to input the Japanese and then copy/paste it into your English-language program, or get a Japanese word processor, or get Japanese versions of the OS. Now, I just enabled the _hiragana_ keyboard on my Mac, and I could type straight in, and use it in all programs without problem! I send and receive email with my Japanese teacher, post snippets in Japanese characters here, throw things into Illustrator or Photoshop, all without problem. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2009, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/76 "2009-11-26T02:49:28Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > Now, I just enabled the _hiragana_ keyboard on my Mac, and I could type straight in, and use it in all programs without problem! I send and receive email with my Japanese teacher, post snippets in Japanese characters here, throw things into Illustrator or Photoshop, all without problem. Yep, Japanese is MUCH, MUCH easier to enable and type on a Mac than a Windows computer. Switching from hiragana to katakana is a breeze, and it auto-converts to Kanji as you type, in whatever program you’re using, which is invaluable, although you really need to be diligent about checking the conversion or the kanji may end up saying something other than you intended, or cause your sentence to not make very much sense. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2009, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/77 "2009-11-26T02:54:40Z")
Honestly, I didn’t plan this when I bought the Mac\*! What’s Windows like these days for Japanese? [sub]\*I just received a new 27-inch iMac. Now I can type REALLY BIG _hiragana_ in my email… 🙂 [/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2009, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/78 "2009-11-26T03:30:52Z")
You can do it on a Windows computer, but it’s no where near as simple, nor as intuitive, as on a Mac. Also, if I’m not mistaken, it doesn’t work with all programs. I need to be able to switch back and forth between roman characters, hiragana, and katakana with no fuss and, from my experience, Windows is simply not up to the task. Granted, it’s been over a year since I tried typing kana on a PC, so things may have improved, but it just works on my Mac so, at this point, I simply don’t care if Microsoft has made improvements in this area. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2009, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/79 "2009-11-26T06:24:12Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > You can do it on a Windows computer, but it’s no where near as simple, nor as intuitive, as on a Mac. Also, if I’m not mistaken, it doesn’t work with all programs. > > I need to be able to switch back and forth between roman characters, hiragana, and katakana with no fuss and, from my experience, Windows is simply not up to the task. Granted, it’s been over a year since I tried typing kana on a PC, so things may have improved, but it just works on my Mac so, at this point, I simply don’t care if Microsoft has made improvements in this area. When I was using Windows, I had the Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard enabled so I could type in both English and French. I then used a little program called [EK](http://www.esperanto.mv.ru/Ek/index.html) to replace some letters on the Canadian keyboard so that I could type in Esperanto. When I came over to the Mac, I discovered that the Mac did not have the Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard, and that the Canadian keyboard it did have was a legacy keyboard and not Unicode. So I switched to the US Extended keyboard, which was Unicode and let me type Option-B and Option-^ to get the Esperanto accents (ĝŭ), plus Option-e, Option-`, Option-^, Option-u, and Option-c for the French accents (èéâïç). I enabled hiragana and katakana input, and I can now select hiragana and katakana as desired from the input keyboard menu when I want to type in Japanese. I may end up getting a copy of Windows 7 and stuffing it into a virtual machine to see what it’s like. I completely skipped Vista (my PC died the same month that Vista came out, and I borrowed a computer for four months while I saved up for a Mac.) ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2009, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529/80 "2009-11-26T18:34:34Z")
You should thank your lucky stars you skipped Vista. I wish I had as it’s given me nothing but a headache since day one, in addition to being slower than any operating system I’ve used since Windows 98. Besides work, which I need to do to live, becoming fluent in Japanese is my primary focus, and since I’ve decided to take the total immersion route, I need my entire environment to be as conducive to learning the language as possible, including my computer, and my Mac fits the bill nicely there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-signed-up-for-japanese-lessons/501529.md?page=5)