The Japanese Lesson Thread: Post yer ?'s

Proper romanizing is a debatable topic. I think you'll find MOST places do:
ta chi tsu te to
sa shi su se so

I prefer to write them as above, b/c that's how I learned it, and that's also how they sound (for non-Japanese speakers).

However, using Microsoft IME, or the IME that comes with Linux, either pronunciation will result in the proper character printing out.

For me, the hard ones to figure out how to type out was Æ’eÆ’B
That would be "thi" to get it to print the small "i".

Good luck. /versus/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

Time to spam my site!!! Yeah!

...well, it's good for a laugh, I suppose; any inspiration you may find is purely coincidental. Just three courses, so far. (Yes, I'm being humble...)

By all means, check out the links page. Next update I'm including this link - besides all those nice articles, it has the best pages on learning kana (though I could have discovered it a year earlier /versus/images/graemlins/frown.gif ). Move your mouse over a hiragana character to see the corresponding katakana character, and vice-versa!

Anyone want to edit the post that screws up the formatting in the first page??

 

random contribution:

http://home.inter.net/kenbutler/particlehome.html

kakoii website for particle resorce /versus/images/graemlins/laugh.gif, this is what i am learning at present.

http://www.japanese-online.com/

stapler: the lesson pages are great starters, and it even has a local forum^^.

as for me, Ranma and battle royale has been my listening resource for fluid speaking (i have two entire series of ranma on avi /versus/images/graemlins/cool.gif)...... heh, i'm gonna go to japan speaking like an anime character ^_^ !!!

 

Hey Gaijin-san do something about Aoi's new win poses.
This kyouto language is......

 

musukashi?

demo, osakaben wa, henna ne ? osakaben wo wakaranai...

 

Well, I don't own the win poses. /versus/images/graemlins/frown.gif
I've not got enough fight money at the moment, but if I can grab them, I will.

I don't really understand much of what she's saying either.

 

GO for the P+G+ new win pose.
she says something like
"kokouwo tomeru kore koso bu no shiidosu"

 

Those things cost fight money, unfortunately, and I've got about 3 characters w/ almost no items. /versus/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

Well alright, here's a question:

What's the deal with all those words that are sorta... the same? Like:

ÂÂL‚¢
ÂÂL‚Ü‚é
ÂÂL‚ß‚é
ÂÂL‚ª‚é
ÂÂL‚°‚é

I mean, my dictionary lists them as separate entries; I don't know how many more verb inflections there are...

 

Well, they're actually different words, and different forms of verbs.

ÂÂL‚¢ -- wide, an adjective
ÂÂL‚Ü‚é -- becomes wide(spread)
ÂÂL‚ß‚é -- to make wide(spread)
ÂÂL‚ª‚é --- becomes widened
ÂÂL‚°‚é -- to widen

The verb portions are transitive/intransitive verb pairs (I forgot which is which). /versus/images/graemlins/smile.gif There are lots of these. The easiest way to remember it, is if it has the "A, KA, SA" sound before the last kana, then the object does it itself. If it has the "E, KE, SE" sound before, then someone/thing does something to the object.
‚«‚Ì‚±‚ª‚ªÂÂL‚ª‚½ = The mushroom widened (a dumb sentence, I know)
‚«‚Ì‚±‚ðÂÂL‚°‚½ÂÂB= I widened the mushroom.

[probably worthless sidenote]
Don't confuse this with verbs that are the "I can" tense (sorry -- I said I don't know names of parts of speach).
‚ÂȂ·  to talk
‚ÂȂ¹‚é = to be able to talk
[/probably worthless sidenote]

Notice that GA sound has the ‚ª and the GE sound has the ‚ð to mark what's actually happening to t mushroom.

The flipside of this, are verbs like:
“®‚­ = To move (by itself) (‚¤‚²‚­)
vs.
“®‚©‚· = To move something(‚¤‚²‚©‚·)
EX:
ŽÃâ€Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ªâ€œÂ®â€šÂ¢â€šÂ½ = The car moved
ŽÃâ€Ã¢â‚¬Å¡ÃƒÂ°Ã¢â‚¬Å“®‚©‚µ‚½ = I moved the car

 

That was more helpful than you think! Thanks a bunch... now some more things I need clearing up on:

<ul type="square">
[*]­‚µ VS ÂÂ@­‚È‚¢
[*]‘½‚¢ÂÂ@VSÂÂ@‚½‚­‚³‚ñ
[*]‘å‚«‚¢ÂÂA¬‚³‚¢ VSÂÂ@â€Ã¥â€šÂ«â€šÃˆÂÂA¬‚³‚È
[/list]

Never did get those cleared up... have anymore of those crazy sentences? /versus/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

 

I think ­‚È‚¢ and ‘½‚¢ are adjectives while ­‚µ and ‚½‚­‚³‚ñ are adverbs.

‘å‚«‚¢ÂÂA‘å‚«‚È and ‚¬â€šÂ³â€šÂ¢ÂÂA¬‚³‚È are the same as far as I know, just one is in the "i" adjective form, while the other is in the "na" adjective form.

 

Good questions. Lemme see if I can clear these next ones up... tough.

­‚µ VS ÂÂ@­‚È‚¢
‘½‚¢ÂÂ@VSÂÂ@‚½‚­‚³‚ñ

These are all adjectives, but have different meanings. For most situations (that I can think of right now)
­‚µ = a little, a bit
­‚È‚¢ = few

“ú–{ΐ­‚µ‚µ‚©‚í‚©‚ç‚È‚¢ÂÂBI only know a LITTLE Japanese
‚±‚±‚É‚ÃÂÂÂl‚ªÂ­‚È‚¢ÂÂBThere are FEW people here.
­‚µcan be used to describe intangible things.
"Do you want to eat/play cards/hear music?"
"Yes, a little."
You could never use ­‚È‚¢ in this sense.

Also note, ­‚µ can often be traded for ‚¿‚å‚ÃÂ‚Æ with few exceptions. One of them is one you'll hear all to often, which means "hell no", but they only say, "‚»‚ê‚¿‚å‚ÂÆÂÂBÂÂBÂÂBÂÂh

‘½‚¢ÂÂ@VSÂÂ@‚½‚­‚³‚ñ

Uh... this one's a bit harder. I guess you could think of it as "many" vs. "a lot". One thing is that ‚½‚­‚³‚ñ will often have a verb following).
ÂÂl‚ª‘½‚¢ -- many people
ÂÂl‚ª‚½‚­‚³‚ñ‚¢‚Ü‚·ÂÂB there are many people
You'll never see a verb after ‘½‚¢ÂÂBOn that note, ‚½‚­‚³‚ñ is also interchangeable in many cases ‚¢â€šÃ‚¢
‚½‚­‚³‚ñÂÂH‚ׂ܂µ‚½ - I ate a lot
‚¢‚¢‚½‚ׂ܂µ‚½ - same as above
ÂÂH‚ׂ½‚̂ѽ‚©‚½ - There was a lot that I ate. For all intents and purposes, the same as above, but grammatically different (and sounds kind of strange I might add).

‘å‚«‚¢ÂÂA¬‚³‚¢ VSÂÂ@‘å‚«‚ÈÂÂA¬‚³‚È

You know, there's a science to this one, and I've forgotten it. Again - the power of memorization is amazing. the latter two you've listed (w/ the ‚È) always have a noun following them. The first two you'd use by themselves. For now, that should take you pretty far. /versus/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

oh crap, none of the symbols are visible on my pc, just scrambled text!, i even have japanese disply support too. /versus/images/graemlins/confused.gif

i am getting none of this info..

 

This is all too good. It'll be a while before I can take another class (having finished 3), and with this and my friend's sister's notes (who's a class ahead), I think I'm going to have my hands full. /versus/images/graemlins/laugh.gif Something about "Passive voice"... ÂÂH‚ׂê‚éÂÂAˆù‚Ü‚ê‚é...

And, er, Bare_Knuckle, is it actually enabled? You still have to choose it with:

Right click > Encoding > Japanese (Shift JIS)

I'm not sure how that "Auto-Select" thing works...

 

RU asking about passive tense? It can be quite a pain to get down, but it'll come naturually at some point. What gets hard, is when the use it with the "was made" tense.
ÂÂH‚ׂ³‚¹‚ç‚ꂽ -- I'm still not comfortable with this.

Bare: what browser are you using? I put everything here in Shift-JIS, and it works. Most browsers have the setting under view->encoding->Japanese (SHIFT-JIS). Autodetect works sometimes, but I think the encoding has to be in the header of the HTML that's passed to the browser. In this case, I doubt it would be there.

 

heh, no worries, triple was right all along... now the only problem is to learn kanji /versus/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

So uh... what's the best way to learn new words? Through kanji? Or do you learn them separately?

For example, ‚¨‚­ (to put) was a fairly new word, but I'm still going to ask, "Okay, how do I really write it?"

Over the summer I've been going back to the early chapters of my first book to learn how to write pretty much everything that can be written in kanji, in kanji. Though I don't know if I should bother learning those weirder kanji compounds, like those ‹M•ûÂÂA‹MÂÂâ€â€Ã‚ÂA and â€ÂÞ•û for ‚ ‚È‚½, and ‰½•û for ‚Ç‚È‚½ÂÂB And –†for ‚Ü‚½... where does it end? Well anyway, it sounds like an okay plan... and now my kanji count is at a modest 420 or so. Now I can stop writing ’nÂÂ} in hiragana... /versus/images/graemlins/smirk.gif Learning the on'yomi helps, like with ‘ - ‘“XÂÂA‹³‰Ã‚‘ÂÂAŽ«Â‘.

I'm inclined to stick with this so far; in my last class, I was 1 of about 3 or 4 people who didn't already know how to write Chinese characters. I gotta catch up, you see...

Eh, maybe I'll just get one of them commercial vocab cards.

 

All those Chinese kids blowing the bell-curve, eh? /versus/images/graemlins/smile.gif We all suffer from that.

Anyways, the way I became a kanji machine, was on my study abroad. It wasn't in Tokyo... by a stretch. I lived in Shizuoka, which was very calm compared to big city life. the last bus home was like 8:30 PM, so I had to either cycle or tax ($$$) home if I wanted to booze. Neither was fun. As such, I studied... A LOT b/c my host family watched the lamest TV I had ever seen, until my fiance moved in.

What I did, was read my host brothers mangas. He had tons of them, they were there, and I had so much time I still can't believe it. I'd go through, and write down all the words I didn't know. Look them up, then read it again w/ the list. I'd make flash cards of those, and learn to WRITE them. They became part of the list. I'd read for an hour, practice kanji for an hour, and so on. At my height, I could handwrite 1000 or so. Then, I got Japanese on my computer (I didn't have a computer when I started learning, which was probably a good thing). Be careful - a good IME can kill your Japanese. I can't write my way out of a paper bag right now, but I can still read them fine.

And don't worry about the kanji you mentinoned. You MIGHT see them from time to time in kanji, but there almost always in hiragana these days. If you know how to write them, Japanese people will think you're weird. /versus/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

Gaijin-san do a tutorial about how to listen and recognize
long vowels (chouon) from short vowels (tan'on). It is the biggest listening problem!!!
mattaku mendounandayo!!!!!!!