Over the past couple of days I learned all of the hiragana using www.thejapanesepage.com, which seems to be a pretty good introduction to the language for anyone interested in a free website. Now all I have to do is wait for my books to show up and I can start really learning about the language.
Does anyone have any tips for a good way to learn vocab? For learning German I found flashcards to be really helpful (I actually used a nice program called vTrain to make flashcards on the computer), but it seems like that wouldn’t be as helpful, because I should be practicing writing the words instead of just recognizing them, right?
I hope I don’t overdo things and then lose interest… it seems like something that could happen with other subjects, but learning japanese has been something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, so I don’t think it’s that likely.
Besides, I can even pretend to be learning Japanese (or actually do it) by watching anime. I’d probably learn things from anime that I won’t from a Japanese class. I’ve heard that most Japanese courses teach a really formal type of Japanese and that colloquial Japanese instead stressed nearly as much. Is this true?
I don’t read that many novels - in any language. I’m more of a non-fiction/essay guy. I enjoyed a few books by Hitonari Tsuji: Shitto no kaori, Hakubutsu, Pianissimo and Anti-noise. In the big names, there’s of course Kobo Abe and I quite like Natsume. I shouldn’t forget Kawabata; I read Yukiguni three times and I keep finding new stuff each time.
His grammar is very simple, though. His style is very sober, very to-the-point and close to spoken language. Unlike, say, Mishima, or to pick someone of Murakami’s generation, Hitonari Tsuji. The first work I read of his was a short story called Naya wo yaku and it hooked me.
Try to “think” the words you learn in your daily life. When you pass a tree, think “ki”. If you see a cat, think “neko” and so on. It’ll help you make a mental connection between the words and the real-life object. As you progress, subsitute whole phrases. The danger with flash-cards is that eventually, you just become very good at remembering flash-cards and not the actual, living words.
Yes. The reason is that it’s better to sin by being too formal than it is by being too casual. You can learn casual language by hanging out with friends, and through popular media like manga and tv.
I also like non-fiction; in fact, most of my reading in English is non-fiction. What kind do you like? Have you found anything interesting in Japanese? My tastes are hard to categorize, as I read whatever captures my interest, whether science, history, food, travel, or whatever. I bought a book called Baka no Kabe recently - have you heard of this?
You are right about Murakami’s grammar, though. It’s a piece of cake compared to Oe.
Disciple of Alf, where do you live? Are you a college student? Larger cities, and university towns, tend to have some kind of Japanese culture exchange group thingies. Nothing beats talking to a native speaker for learning a language. I suggest you look into Japanese groups in your area.
I think I liked Shitto no kaori best, though Hakubutsu (White Buddha) is also good. Be warned, though, he’s quirkier than Murakami when it comes to kanji.
Never heard of it. I recently finished a master’s degree where I studied music and technology and that’s what I’ll be teaching starting next week. That means that I read a lot of stuff about music, sound and computers as well as aesthetics. For fun, though, I read a lot of stuff about Buddhism, food, language, history, and, since recently, finance.
For the most part I live in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a city of about 60,000, but right now I’m living in the little river-side village of Emmersdorf in Austria. Somehow I doubt that there would be any kind of Japanese group around here, although there are lots of Japanese tourists who come to see the Stift here in Melk (where I go to school). They probably wouldn’t want to be bugged by some weirdo Amerikan exchange student though.
And I don’t really become a college student until next year. One of the statistics my college likes to throw out is that nearly 50% of all its students take part in some kind of exchange program, and I’m thinking I’m going to be a part of that 50%. There’s also a part of the Japanese program there called ‘Japanese House’ where 3 students get to live in a, well, Japanese house on campus for a semester with some native Japanese speakers. Whether through an exchange program to Japan, this Japanese House or something else, I plan on using and practicing my Japanese.
In the mean time, I’ve used that Slime Adventure game thingy from lrnj.com to learn the katakana (and even some hiragana that I hadn’t learned, like we and wi) as well as some really basic kanji. I suppose I’ll have to learn to write the katakana too… and I suppose I should probably learn how to pronounce and write the kanji. Oh well, sooner or later my books will show up and I’ll learn for real.
It’s too bad they don’t offer Japanese classes in Austria, although it might be silly trying to learn Japanese in German.
Mostly through the use of “ateji,” which are kanji that are used to “spell” a native Japanese word and are chosen only for sound, not meaning. Some authors either make up their own, it seems, or use really obscure ones.
Murakami’s quirkiness also includes using rare kanji instead of common use kanji. The only example I can think of right now is from Norwegian Wood. For verbs meaning “to ask,” he doesn’t use the common kanji for kiku or tazuneru. He uses an obsolete kanji for both readings.
I’ll be able to quote my kanji dictionary when I get home tonight, but apparently some authors like to play with kanji the way James Joyce played with English. Making up readings to kanji in order to combine the meaning you want with the reading you want is common (Tomoyasu Hotei does it fairly often in his lyrics, using kanji to show his meaning, but writing furigana above them to show that they’re to be read as English words). Alternatively, some authors replace the standard kanji for certain words with other kanji that have identical readings but completely different meanings. Again, this is just for artistic (or possibly humorous) effect.
I was going to post about my co-worker (whose wife is Japanese) and how fluent he’s become, but ever since I saw the thread title I’ve got that stupid song in my head as:
Learning Japanese
I think I’m learning Japanese
I really think so
Those two are obsolete, which is why you hadn’t learned them. “We” and “wi” aren’t how they’re pronounced; it’s “e” and “i”. You just use “we” and “wi” to type them in a computer. You’re thinking: “hey! there’s already ‘e’ and ‘i’!” Well, that’s why they’re obsolete. You still sometimes see them, usually to write store names and such. A bit like “Ye Olde Shoppe” in English.
Prior to the end of the war, the use of kana wasn’t as logical as it is now. “Sou iu koto” (that kind of thing) was written “sau ifu”, for instance.
That’s one thing I like about Japanese , that the “spelling” with kana is logical, and few exceptions.
Growing up, I was terrible at spelling in English.
