@Yggbert: How many are you doing a day?

OT: I’ve got the other 4000 of Core6k added to my deck now (took a while to get it just right), should start any day now :)
The other day I got this: http://www.zeldawiki.org/Hyrule_Historia – it cost… a fair amount, but it’s all due to having to be imported to the UK and the fact it’s reasonably rare. I’m a huge Zelda fan though, so the book is like a dream come true :D All in Japanese, so will take quite a while to get through; lots of pictures though :D

A more visual link: http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2011/12/15/nintendo-announces-legend-of-zelda-25th-anniversary-encyclopedia

• This reply was modified 12 years, 9 months ago by  MisterM2402 [Michael].

@missingno15: Ah, no, that isn’t the one :/ Decent song though, thanks :) I really *should* listen to Japanese radio more; easy way to find new bands.

The song I’m looking for, pretty sure the background image looked pretty similar to this one: http://youtu.be/ggDXGJlXD4E
Hardly much more to go on seeing how generic it is, but maybe just a sleight memory jog :P Was definitely red with some kinda text in the middle.

EDIT: Hot damn! A few minutes later I found it! :D http://youtu.be/zqf5DO5Jh2o
Pink, red, close enough…

• This reply was modified 12 years, 9 months ago by  MisterM2402 [Michael].

http://www.alc.co.jp/ – bang them in the search box and hit enter. Lot’s of different example sentences given. Or you could check out the example sentences on jisho.org.

As for “what’s the difference between X and Y?”, a lot of these are things you just have to learn over time, things you just have to not worry about for now – you’ll get a feel for them. They’re things that, if you asked a Japanese person, they’d reply “Hmmm… I don’t really know; they just ARE different…” because it’s an instinctive difference rather than something clear cut. And some of them are actually obvious if you look them up in a dictionary. For example, in regards to “位置（いち）　ｖｓ。　場合　ばあい”, 位置 is a place/position while 場合　is a case/situation – I’m not sure how you are confusing them, since in the dictionary they both have distinct entries, not similar at all as far as I can see.

There are a couple I can see where the difference might be harder to garner from a dictionary though: こっち is a casual/contracted form of こちら (sometimes if you see a word with a っ and it sounds like another word, it could be a contracted form; the more contracted forms you learn, the more you’ll see what I mean, and the more you’ll be able to get a feel for whether something might be another form of a different word). 歳 is the proper counter for age, while 才 is a substitute with less strokes which is easier to write.

Also, be careful with your diacritics (can’t remember the Japanese name) – you’ve written からた instead of からだ and ふじ instead of ぶじ. Just making sure you’re not reading/learning the words wrong in the first place :P There were a couple of other cases that I can’t remember now.

I agree that you should work on your weaknesses, but this isn’t a weakness to worry about :P

I was actually surprised at how many threads I found regarding this topic. I might just shoot Koichi an email and tell him he needs to make this point clearer in the book, seeing as so many people are stuck. Maybe. If I have time.

@missingno15: Yup, as long as I don’t have a strong accent, I’m cool with that. A decent level of pronunciation will come in time, I’m sure, but I doubt I’ll ever “pass as a native”. It’s not like I’ll end up like 「外国ジム」 from not reading the book :P (http://youtu.be/sb5PZ6TXZXI)

OT: Finished Core 2000 today! :D I started near the end of last Summer, but have only been going a decent pace since the start of the year, which is why it’s taken so long. Now on to the other 4000…

Surely the best guide on how to sound like a native is *listening* to natives themselves, right? And why does it matter whether or not you pronounce like a native? Having a bit of an accent makes you more interesting (at least it does in English, I find). Obviously, if you’re unintelligble that’s no good, but a reasonable pronunciation should come without studying textbooks on it.

It’s not just about stressing the “tori” part – any word with “hi” can have a more “hissing” sound. The level of “hiss” (for want of a better word) just depends on the speaker. Also, it largely depends on the kana coming after it: “hima” will generally have less hiss than “mannenhitsu” or “hikari”. Something to do with how /m/ is a bilabial consonant while /k/ and /t/ are plosives… or something.

If anyone knows what I’m talking about, could you back me up, maybe rephrase it so it’s a bit clearer? :D Or tell me I’m talking BS, just whatever…

EDIT: Aha! Here we are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_palatal_fricative (/ç/)
It’s not just a plain h as in the word “he/him”, it’s more like in the word “hue”. 人（ひと） is actually listed as the Japanese example of the phoneme :D

• This reply was modified 12 years, 10 months ago by  MisterM2402 [Michael].

@MomoIro: You’d been studying Japanese for more than a DECADE before you started learning kanji? But… what? I don’t get it XD What were you DOING for all that time? You can’t really read or write without them, so… I’m guessing you just listened to the radio, watched TV or talked to people maybe?

Even if you had studied ONE measly kanji per day, you could have been done in a little over half a decade :P Why didn’t you just start kanji when you started learning Japanese in the first place? I’m really curious haha :D