Japanese

[SethSquall]

Originally Posted by Squeek

It's just annoying. You learn it, so you learn that it's for politeness, right? It's just not appropriate for a forum setting like this. To me, "desu" puts a "sir" or "madam" at the end of your sentence. Find someone on the forums who does that.

Politeness is what I'm used to. It's what I'm taught and it's what will be in the Exam. Both writing and listening. So it's best I learn to speak that way first. I understand what you're saying though dude, I don't say please/thank you/sir/madam and stuff on here in English. This is for learning purposes though really. I would much rather learn this way and cancel out any unnecessary politeness when I'm much better at the language. Sorry if it annoys you that much though =/

Originally Posted by nestlekwik

These are more for brushing up on what you know already, but I have found these to be great tools in keeping your hiragana and katakana sharp:

http://www.msu.edu/~lakejess/kanjigame.html - this lets you do "flash card"-type recognition of hiragana, katakana and kanji where the character is shown and you select its romanization (or vice versa). It is browser-based and not too intensive.

http://lrnj.com/ - this is the infamous Slime Forest game. Slime Forest is an RPG you download for the PC where to attack enemies, you have to type in the romanized forms of katakana and hiragana. Fun stuff.

I suppose if you had enough will power to memorize the characters from these tools, they could actually teach you the characters, so if you are willing and can do it, more power to you.

Thanks man. Oh and rock on with the Flash Cards and the RPG they'll help out loads. Thanks for those too.

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by Squeek

It's just annoying. You learn it, so you learn that it's for politeness, right? It's just not appropriate for a forum setting like this. To me, "desu" puts a "sir" or "madam" at the end of your sentence. Find someone on the forums who does that.

I do that occasionally. Actually, I find formality to be a good idea in a setting such as this. Only the types of posts where I avoid capitalization would I be willing to drop formalities.

And actually, if I recall, typically, short verb forms are usually used around people that are already known and avoided when you've just met.

npv: I can read hiragana, katakana, and maybe 50-100 Kanji. I just can't write them on paper. That's what I'm trying to say. I also won't be able to fully translate the sentence without consulting a few sources. Namely, a particle reference, a kanji dictionary, and a verb conjugation guide.

I'm sure that you can't READ 100 Kanji. I could MAYBE believe that you could UNDERSTAND 100 kanji, but I don't believe that you can READ them. And even then... 100 is a lot... I wouldn't estimate my understanding at any more than ~30~40 TOPS, so I doubt that you'd know THAT MUCH more than me.

About the speaking comment. I can understand most things in the sentence. When words are spoken, you can't really tell which ones are kanji and which ones aren't. It's a lot easier to understand. But I still don't know a lot of words and the spoken word is far too quick to pick up everything. I can only understand basic situations. And again, while I can understand some spoken word, I cannot speak it.

I think you're over estimating your ability a bit. If you could understand it as well as you believe, you'd be able to half-ass your way through speaking it as well, even if it's not 100% correct. Think of what a stereotypical Japanese person who is poor with English sounds to us grammatically; I'm sure you could manage the vice versa of that if you're as perceptive as you think.

And yeah in case it weren't obvious I've never had lessons because my high school didn't offer them and I've been way too busy at college to even think about personal electives. I picked up what I know from games and anime.

Yeah, aural comprehension is a major issue.

[omgitznpv]

Originally Posted by Squeek

About the speaking comment. I can understand most things in the sentence. When words are spoken, you can't really tell which ones are kanji and which ones aren't. It's a lot easier to understand. But I still don't know a lot of words and the spoken word is far too quick to pick up everything. I can only understand basic situations. And again, while I can understand some spoken word, I cannot speak it.

I am left confused.

Originally Posted by Squeek

And yeah in case it weren't obvious I've never had lessons because my high school didn't offer them and I've been way too busy at college to even think about personal electives. I picked up what I know from games and anime.

From personal experience, it's faster learning something outside of school (probably because I'm motivated to do it if it's outside of school, haha). I'm simply using guides and books, and I'm getting along perfectly fine.

Originally Posted by nestlekwik

I suppose if you had enough will power to memorize the characters from these tools, they could actually teach you the characters, so if you are willing and can do it, more power to you.

I have found it much faster to memories the characters by simply making flash cards. I make them into groups of 7 or 8, memorize one individual group, memorize another, put the two groups together (14-16 cards then), and reinforce both, memorize another group, put it together, reinforce all three, until it's all good.

It took me about 50 minutes to memorize Hiragana this way, and it took about 30 for all the additional sounds; it took me an hour to memorize Katakana and about 20 minutes for the sounds.

Originally Posted by Afrobean

I think you're over estimating your ability a bit. If you could understand it as well as you believe, you'd be able to half-ass your way through speaking it as well, even if it's not 100% correct. Think of what a stereotypical Japanese person who is poor with English sounds to us grammatically; I'm sure you could manage the vice versa of that if you're as perceptive as you think.

Beyond true. Happens with me with Chinese (I'm not like fluent or anything)- I can understand (aurally) the language very well, and I can get basic ideas across.

Originally Posted by Afrobean

Yeah, aural comprehension is a major issue.

Only Western languages for me hehe

*edit*

I think this was one of my biggest posts ever :\

[SethSquall]

一二時です

Hehe. I hope that makes sense.

[QuadDamage]

NI SHI ZHONGGUOREN MA lol

[pokelda]

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[SethSquall]

Yea it's more basic in here Pokelda.

[omgitznpv]

Originally Posted by QuadDamage

NI SHI ZHONGGUOREN MA lol

WO SHI. WO DE ZHONG WEN BU SHI TAI HAO DE

i'm 75% :<

[Squeek]

se lanzo al abismo

[ddr_f4n]

I can finally learn Japanese! my school doesn't teach it =(

[Dimitri13]

Originally Posted by SethSquall

一二時です

Hehe. I hope that makes sense.

Erm.. Is that supposed to be 12 o'clock?

If so, it's supposed to be jyuu(10) san ji desu.

[Sunako_Nakahara_Girl]

Originally Posted by Afrobean

Also, your explanations of pronunciation are counter productive. "haah ee". That is not how "はい" is supposed to sound.　What you're saying would be more like "はあいい". You also weren't very clear in your "vocabulary list". Some of those words are different depending on context (such as "愛", or as you put it, "あい"), while other things are only to be used in a certain way (such as that, as you put it, "あお" is a noun and you're not supposed to use that form of the word to describe something as being blue in color).

I kind of realized that. thanks for pointing that out though.

About the color blue. That is how my teacher told us it was said and spelled. I have her class tomorrow so I will ask her about that.

Originally Posted by Afrobean

And dude, you're obviously still beginning. Beginners shouldn't teach. Heck, I wouldn't even feel comfortable teaching things to a beginner and my current level is higher than what my high school teacher's was.

It may seem like it but I'm not. I'm not saying that I'm am expert or something it's just that I'm not exactly a beginner. I’m just in between.

most of you guys are a lot older than me and have probably(maybe) have been studying longer than I have. I mean most you that have posted know a lot of kanji. I’m barely in the middle of learning kanji. I’m not even suppose to be learning kanji at all. My Japanese Teacher is teaching us what a Japanese AP student should be learning and I'm not even in high school yet.

What I had typed out isn't even 1/4 of what I really know. Most of that is also what I originally learned in the first week of school.
Also I was half asleep when I typed all of that out so I didn't realize all those mistakes.

Originally Posted by Dimitri13

I do not believe OP is from Japan. She has made too many mistakes in her post. I believe she is a 14 year old American girl who wishes so hard to be Japanese. (Weeaboo) Mod, track IP please :{

That, or she just recently moved to Japan and is trying to share her (albeit partly incorrect) knowledge with us.

Although I'm still going for the first one.

I didn’t realize the mistakes that I made.
No I don’t wish to be Japanese. And I’m not American either.
I’ve been living in Japan for 2 years.
Also if you didn’t know I do NOT live on Mainland Japan.

Originally Posted by nestlekwik

These are more for brushing up on what you know already, but I have found these to be great tools in keeping your hiragana and katakana sharp:

http://www.msu.edu/~lakejess/kanjigame.html - this lets you do "flash card"-type recognition of hiragana, katakana and kanji where the character is shown and you select its Romanization (or vice versa). It is browser-based and not too intensive.

http://lrnj.com/ - this is the infamous Slime Forest game. Slime Forest is an RPG you download for the PC where to attack enemies, you have to type in the Romanized forms of katakana and hiragana. Fun stuff.

I suppose if you had enough will power to memorize the characters from these tools, they could actually teach you the characters, so if you are willing and can do it, more power to you.

That Just Gave me an Idea.!

---------------------------

Right now I am correcting the mistakes I made.
And am adding some kanji and katakana and some More difficult phrases and words.

[EDIT] And Also adding stuff that will help you remember some of the hiragana characters. For those of you who DON"T know anything of the characters and are having trouble remembering them.

[SethSquall]

Originally Posted by Dimitri13

Erm.. Is that supposed to be 12 o'clock?

If so, it's supposed to be jyuu(10) san ji desu.

十三時です

?

So why is it 13. I understand why it's 10 first that was a silly mistake hehe but are we in 24hour clock or something?

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by SethSquall

十三時です

?

So why is it 13. I understand why it's 10 first that was a silly mistake hehe but are we in 24hour clock or something?

Saying 13 o' clock doesn't make sense in English, but 十三時 makes sense just fine. They have a kind of thing with midnight that I don't recall exactly (could be 0 or 24 depending on the day that you're counting it as or something), but yeah whatever.

[pokelda]

Originally Posted by Afrobean

Saying 13 o' clock doesn't make sense in English, but 十三時 makes sense just fine. They have a kind of thing with midnight that I don't recall exactly (could be 0 or 24 depending on the day that you're counting it as or something), but yeah whatever.

Its called military time rofl. And no, I have never heard of 十三時 ever in my japanese speaking life so I am inclined to believe it does not make sense at all. Besides, Dimitri was trying to say 12 o'clock not 13 o'clock so this was only him making a mistake.

[jimerax]

13:00 usually means 1:00 PM

[pokelda]

Originally Posted by jimerax

13:00 usually means 1:00 PM

But not in Japan however*

[SethSquall]

Someone say "It's 12oclock" please haha. I want to know if I have it right.

十二時です

?

[pokelda]

Yes, that's correct

This is actually pretty good for an intermediate attempting to teach, I don't see why afro needs to bitch about it.

[Maid]

What's the point of this thread?