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Yeah, I do that too but it’s still not easy. When the numbers are bigger, it takes a while for me to work out where the commas should go.
1) 七十六
762) 48
四十八3) 五百三十八
5384) 724
七百二十四5) 三千九百十五
39156) 6,037
六千三十七7) 一万七千四百八十
17,4808) 54,125
五万四千百二十五9) 二十万九
200,00910) 478,513
四十七万八千五百十三11) 八百九十三万四千六百五十七
8,934,65712) 93,478,235
九千三百四十七万八千二百三十五“If you know Japanese and Mandarin, you’d have your bases covered pretty well in any Asian business transactions.”
So you’d be able to conduct business in India and Kazakhstan too? Sweet!
The best language to learn is the one you want to learn. They don’t have to be related at all. You don’t have to learn a language just because it “goes with” another one.
So, forgetting for a minute that you’re learning Japanese at all or know anything about it, which language would you want to learn? If there aren’t any, then just focus on Japanese until there is one.
If you *are* wanting to learn another language just for the sake of it (rather than because you really want to), it might be worth considering that languages with similarities might *not* be best learned together. For example, if two languages share some grammatical structures or vocabulary, you’re probably going to get the two mixed up a lot. Steve Kaufman – a polyglot who makes YouTube videos – is learning Korean right now and he says that he often unintentionally starts thinking in terms of Japanese when speaking Korean because they have similar grammar in some instances (he lived in Japan for 9 years, I think, so I’m pretty sure he’s what you’d call “fluent”). Same thing goes for languages like Spanish and French, which share lots of vocabulary, or so I’m told.
歌詞（かし）is the word for “lyrics”, so go to google.co.jp, enter that, the artist name, and any lyrics you think you might have heard and see what it comes back with. Even if you don’t know the kanji, Google should take care of that for you. Obviously, if you don’t know the artist name you’ll need to put more lyrics in instead, but it worked for this example anyway :D
You know what the best learn-a-language video game is? Any video game that’s in that language :D Well, not just any game in the language, try and find one that’s not *too* wordy or has furigana or something. You’ll probably learn a lot more that way.
Maybe that’s not the best for an *absolute* beginner, but it’s probably better than this game. I’ve not actually played InFluent, but it looks to me like “Anki: The Videogame” or like the real-world technique of putting Post-Its on various objects around your house.
My advice would be to get a phrasebook, with Japanese text and/or romaji. You could just learn a bunch of words and a few grammar points but it’s unlikely you’d be able to put together comprehensible sentences that easily with such a short amount of time (unless you’re studying intensively, reading lots and listening to lots of Japanese audio). Learning phrases will allow you to use more useful Japanese and you’ll learn vocab at the same time. Learning common responses to questions like “Where is the library?” or “What time does the train arrive?” is also essential, as it’s no good knowing how to ask a question without being able to understand the answer. A phrasebook should get your ears used to common answer patterns so you’ll be more likely to understand what people are saying to you.
Same as zeldaskitten, when I started the advice was the opposite.
I’m not sure why you made such a big deal about it. It’s not like it’s some deep, dark secret that your parents would disown you for (assuming they’re reasonable people). For me, it wasn’t a case of “Should I tell people, or should I not tell people?”, it was more like “Oh hey, so I started learning Japanese” just as it would be for any other topic of conversation. It was a talking point, not something to “confess”. I guess my parents thought it was a little bit odd considering I’d not had any interest in Japan previously, but overall their opinion was pretty much “Oh really? That’s interesting. It’s good you’re doing something productive, keeping your brain active.” (I was unemployed for most of the year between high school and university, when I started with Japanese).
Unless you actively avoid looking at things written in Japanese, you never give up “learning” it. Even if you decide to stop “actively studying”, every time you read or listen to Japanese, you’re getting ever so slightly better ;)
When you see no progress with your work?
Nope. You’re just plateauing. If you’re seeing little progress, mix things up a bit, study differently.
When is Japanese going to pay off?
When your knowledge of Japanese positively impacts your life in any way. Even if you’re just able to read one ingredient on the back of a packet of something or other – if you hadn’t known the Japanese you knew, you’d have less idea what you were buying ;) If you see some Japanese and go “Hey, I know what that means, awesome!”, your Japanese has improved your mood just the tiniest bit, and I’d say that was “paying off”.
When you learn to play the guitar you have tangible results in months.
Firstly, you have tangible results in *anything* if you’ve been learning for months. Also, it depends how much you’ve practised. If you’ve worked on your Japanese 1 hour a day for 3 months, you’ll be far better at *that* than you would if you’d only been messing around on guitar here and there one day a week for 3 months.
When you study Japanese, identifying a full youtube title of a video is the closest to ‘mastery’ you’re ever going to get.
Uh, what? That’s not even nearly true. Think how many people who have learned Japanese can use it day in, day out conducting business in the actual country with actual native speakers. I’d say that was closer to “mastery” than reading a YouTube title :P
I see blog posts that I can understand the gist of, but there will always be Kanji that evade me.
As is the same with most people who haven’t done KanKen 1 ;)
No matter how many Kanji you know, you never will know enough, unless you’re Asian.
How many is “enough”? You realise Asian people are humans, just like you and me? They don’t have special kanji-learning genes – if they can learn so many, why can’t we? Remember that native Japanese people both don’t know all kanji *and* regularly forget ones they know. As Zeldaskitten said, I certainly don’t know every English word and I’m native.
What would be the ultimate warning sign that you ought to quit?
If you’re really resenting it or it’s negatively impacting your life in some other way. If you have to choose between spending time on Japanese and spending it on something really important that actually needs done, put Japanese on the backburner, don’t just give up outright – there will be time for it again later.
The frick is 畳?
It’s “tatami”, as in the mats that are found as flooring in Japanese homes. It’s in the Jouyou, so it’s not exactly rare :P
While looking at no dictionaries whatsoever
Then look at a dictionary! If that’s a word you want to learn, learn it, then next time you see it, you should be able to recall it… possibly. That’s how learning works! :D
Just because you feel you suck at Japanese now, doesn’t mean you’ll suck this much forever. If you keep at it, you’ll suck a little less each day. Eventually, you’ll suck so little, it won’t be that noticeable ;)
さっか is “sakka”, not “tsaka”. The small tsu “doubles” the next consonant when writing it in romaji, but in actuality, I think it represents a glottal stop (someone correct me on this).
Small tsu and small ya/yu/yo are used for totally different things, they just happen to each use small versions of the characters to represent something else. Small katakana ke（ヶ）is actually pronounced ka and used to show number of months, e.g. 三ヶ月 means “3 months” as opposed to 三月 meaning “March”. There are other small kana used for different reasons than these too.
Well, I actually took that from the transcription. It’s possible that the guy made a mistake – I did notice a couple of things that didn’t quite match up with the audio on the first one I listened to / read.
Here’s the whole paragraph it’s from, if it helps:
僕もおっさんなんですけどね、実は。でもね、いくらね、おっさんの僕でもね、プライドがあります。あんな、どでかいもんね、耳にくっつけて電話なんかするなんて、恥ずかしくてできません。自尊心がありますから。ほんとに。・・・そんな事する人、いる分けないですけどね。でもね、僕はね、はっきり言ってiPadなんかよりね、愛人が欲しいです
It seems like he’s talking about himself as well. The most annoying part is that the audio for this episode of the podcast isn’t actually working, so I’ve only got the transcription to go off, no clues from the voice
He says ね a lot, I’ve noticed :P
そんな事する人、いる分けないですけどね
What does いる分けない mean here? The guy was saying something about older people – including himself – having too much self-respect to have a phone glued to their ear (in a short podcast on the topic of the iPad/iPhone), then he says that line. I think he means something like “People like that, I’m not too different from them, really.” but I’m not sure what いる is doing there.
@Joel: Sorry that I can’t answer your question – a little bit over my head, that one :P
Maybe he’s like Beetlejuice: say his name three times and he appears!
*ahem*
Koichi, Koichi, Koichi
Add a note about 七人 pronunciation!There, maybe that will work ¬_¬
Dang, I would have gone to the London show had I known… Or maybe not, considering I’m up in Scotland and I’m the only person I know who likes them – would be a bit weird travelling all that way and being at a concert on my own :P
I saw an article about it and they showed photos of people waiting in line, which seemed to go on for miles! When I’ve seen videos of them live, they always seem to be lip syncing instead of singing because their dance routines are so energetic, which is a shame, but I’m betting it’d still be an awesome experience anyway :D It’d be pretty bizarre to see them in person, a bit unreal; I think that would be exciting enough on its own haha.I think it depends on what your native language is like. If there are particular patterns in Japanese that aren’t common (or even exist) in your native language, you won’t be used to them and they’ll be difficult to pronounce at first. I’d imagine Japanese speakers can’t even comprehend how to say “Red lorry, yellow lorry” in English :P Granted, it’s still tricky for us, but you can see it’s even more difficult for them because they’re not used to stuff like that.
To me, your example sentence isn’t too hard to say, but I can *kinda* see how it might be a mouthful for some. This is speaking after 3+ years of learning the language; I’ve no idea how I’d have coped trying to say this when I started, sorry.
OT: Did you know that Perfume played in the UK, France and Germany last year? They finally came to *my* country and I didn’t even know about it till about 6 months after >.<
