Japanese

about learning the language in general, i'm not sure.. but some people say it's better to just start learning basic grammar before learning any script. i'd definitely recommend getting a reasonably strong background in grammar and vocabulary before moving on to kanji, though.

I made a mistake in my previous post:
"You may have trouble with the Japanese r if your first language is Japanese, but just think of a Spanish r. (not rr) " I meant to say "if your first language is English", not "Japanese".

Tiffany,
Thank for your compliment:) Yeah it's true that articles can be very difficult for some Japanese because we don't have them in our language. I did a lot of listening and reading, and as you input lots of English sentenses, you'll get the sense of any language... I believe.
Actually I'm not that good at writing, I think I'm better at speaking.

Sub-Sean,
Check this site where you can learn hiragana and its pronunciation.
http://sp.cis.iwate-u.ac.jp/sp/lesson/j/doc/hira.html

I've tried learning Japanese in the past, and I'm currently trying to again. The hardest thing about learning Japanese is the kanji, in my opinion. When I want to practice Spanish, there's a multitude of resources available to me that I can easily read. Reading Spanish helped me come way closer to fluency than I had been before I started. But with Japanese, I can't do that because most things are written in kanji, and I only know about 100 kanji. The other obstacle is, of course, the grammar. From what I've seen, Japanese grammar is very logical and simple (much simpler than Spanish). However, the way the words are ordered in Japanese froces me to think backwards, making it much more difficult to come up with sentences rapidly. When I'm speaking English or Spanish, I think up the sentence as I go along, but Japanese requires you to pre-plan setences.

Hi, Sub-Sean. Try this website, http://www.japan-guide.com/
It`s not really a one for learners but it`s got a forum and a language-question-section in it. That`s where many learners come and ask questions, then japanese native speakers answer them, just like here.

My advice is when you come to start Chinese characters, don`t try to remember indivisual characters but as a word. As Xatufan says sylables share the same symbol, in other words each symbol has more than one sylable, like "Sen" (1000) also sounds "Chi" so you might say "Chi Yen" to mean "1000Yen" when "Sen Yen" is actually right, if you have remembered them separatedly. I know that`s a bit too fussy example but to be able to say words right it would work.
Good Luck!

Back again.

Actually it would be "sen en" not "sen yen". There is no "ye" in Japanese. I don't know how it happened that we got "yen" out of "en".

Let me explain what I meant by "Chi = ? ... 1000 = ?". Actually these question marks were meant to be the characters but, as I'd expected, they didn't come out right.

Of course, it is no coincidence that katakana "chi" looks like the Chinese character for "1000": this is what it is derived from. "Chi" is the native Japanese pronunciation of the character (kun-yomi) but the Sino-Japanese pronunciation (on-yomi) "sen" is more commonly heard.

I'd be surprised if Chihiro in that movie had written her name in katakana: names are usually written in Chinese characters. I think I know the movie Xatufan is writing about: it was on TV a while ago but I only saw bits of it.

Is it the one in which the witch has an enormous head and flies like a bird, the one in which the witch has a huge baby that turns into three bouncing heads, the one in which the girl's parents have turned into pigs or at least so she thinks?

I saw that scene in which the witch absorbs most of the girl's name. I thought the character was "1000" not "chi" but I really don't remember: I wasn't paying a lot of attention.

In Steve K's experience ...

"You need the Romaji for the first few months or there is just too much strange stuff happening at once."

This is not my experience but everyone is different. The first thing I really concentrated on was hiragana. I made an effort to write any new word I learnt in this script. I believe that, in the long run, I have very much benefitted from this.

If there is "just too much strange stuff happening at once", my advice would be to leave that other strange stuff alone for those few months and learn hiragana first. Of course, though, everyone is different and this may not be for you.

If you want to use Roman letters ("Romaji" in Japanese), I'd suggest not relying on it for months but only a few weeks. Also, make an effort to use the hiragana alongside side of it whenever you have the time, i.e. write the word in hiragana with the romanisation above it.

Another thing to be careful of is what system of romanisation you're using. There are three which are well known: Nihon-shiki, Kunrei-shiki and Hepburn. Read about them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romaji Often you'll find mixed or confused versions out in the real world.

Hepburn is the most commonly used and has the advantage (for English speakers) of following English spelling (at least for consonants but be careful of "a" and "u", also be careful of "o" if you're from North America). Nihon-shiki has the advantage of having a one-to-one correspondance to and from kana. I don't know of any advantage that Kunrei-shiki has: it more or less combines the worst of both systems.

If you want to romanise Japanese words, first choose a system. You could invent your own system but you might have to explain it if you want it to be read by others. I'd advise against mixing systems willy-nilly (as many people seem to do) but there'd be some sense in mixing them in a systematic way (to get the best of both worlds ... as opposed to Kunrei-shiki's worst of them).

Also be careful of these particles:

1A) "ha" verses 1B) "wa"
2A) "he" verses 2B) "e"
3A) "wo" verses 3B) "o"

A) "Kare ha happoshu wo koen he mote kita." verses
B) "Kare wa happoshu o koen e mote kita." i.e.
C) "He brought a cheap beer-substitute to the park."

The (A)s correspond to how the sentence/particles would be written in hiragana but the (B)s are how it/they would be pronounced. (C) gives the English translation. What do you use (A) or (B)? I'd go for (A).

Steve K also says "Ignore katakana or at least do not put too much effort into it." I disagree. If you plan to live in Japan or just to visit and you know English, then you'll find katakana to be of great use. Company names, product lables and menus are often written in katakana. Often this katakana is a transliteration of English (especially in the case of product lables and bar and restaurant menus).

Once (s)he can read katakana things become ever so much clearer to the English speaker. If you only want to learn Japanese then, sure, leave katakana till later but if you actually want to survive Japan, get onto it as soon as possible. And, let's face it, the main reason anyone would want to learn Japanese would be to get by in Japan.

i agree with jim for the most part of his thesis, but there's one thing i noticed;

> A) "Kare ha happoshu wo koen he mote kita." verses
> B) "Kare wa happoshu o koen e mote kita." i.e.

In no romanization system is "motte" written as "mote", the te-form for "motsu" is "motte", not "mote".

Sho,

Thanks for that correction. I'm still what I'd consider a learner and ever shall be.

A) "Kare ha happoshu wo koen he motte kita." verses
B) "Kare wa happoshu o koen e motte kita."

Of course, you realise that I was writing tongue-in-cheek with the "cheap beer-substitute". Happoshu isn't too bad. Indeed, it's often better than what might pass as beer in some countries.

<<about learning the language in general, i'm not sure.. but some people say it's better to just start learning basic grammar before learning any script. i'd definitely recommend getting a reasonably strong background in grammar and vocabulary before moving on to kanji, though.>>

I agree it is better to know some bassic grammar and vocabulary before you start learning the script in a language with a non-Latin script, but even in that case learning the script should start at a fairly early stage and should run parallel with expanding vocabulary. I plan to learn Mandarin in the near future (I've already got to the basic phrases, and I would like to move on to a level beyond that), and I would definitely feel handicapped if I knew, say, several hunderd words or phrases in Manadarin without a clue about how to write them. So I think it is best to start learning the script after having learnt the most essential vocabulary and phrases, and to master the script for what you already know before going on learning new vocabulary.

I suppose whether to start with the script, vocab and/or grammar depends on various factors. Each to there own: some may find it more useful to take one approach others may find another better. Also each language is different: some orthographies are very phonemic with only a small number of symbols others are not.

Learning Mandarin and learning Japanese are two very different things. Japanese only has about a hundred different syllables. These are represented in hiragana by about fifty different symbols.

Aside for the particles "ha" and "he" each symbol (or combination of symbols) has only one pronunciation. Also, aside for the pairs "wo"/"o", "di"/"zi", "du"/"zu", "dya"/"zya", "dyu"/"zyu" and "dyo"/"zyo" (Nihon-Siki romanisation) each pronunciation has its own symbol (or symbol combination).

Mandarin is very different. The Chinese use Chinese characters (almost) exclusively. There are thousands of them. They don't use an alphabet nor do they use a syllabary (except perhaps for some pockets of the country). There can be many different ways to pronounce one character. Many characters can be pronounced in the same way.

Chinese script is very difficult (inspite of Chairman Mao's efforts). Hiragana, on the other hand, is much easier: fifty basic symbols (actually 46 plus two obsolete ones) for the fifty basic syllables, then voice marks, then small "ya", "yu" & "yo" and finally the small "tu" (a.k.a. "tsu").

To see what I'm talking about have a look here.

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_hiragana.htm
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_katakana.htm

is there any japanese?

Do you mean are there any Japanese people on this thread? Sho wrote that he was Japanese.

yeah i am japanese!

DOUSHITE DES KA????? NANI O SHIMASU KA??? WATASHI NO NAMAE WA SAGARA SOUSKE DESU. KONDO NO SHUUMATSU KAIMONO NI IKIMASU. KEIKI GA ARIMASU NE.

Hi everyone thank you so much for the websites and advice. One more thing, do you recommend learning kanji as i go along from the start or wait untill i have a reasonable grasp of the language and grammar?

james, your japanese is good... where did u get those sentenses from?:P

Sub-Sean,
As a native speaker I first knew how to speak and I had quite a bit of vocabulary, and then I learned kanji at school, and it looks like it worked for most native speakers. I don't mean that this is true for those who study Japanese as a second language too, but I suppose one of the advantages of our language is that you can learn basic grammar and vocabulary without learn any kanji. I personally recommend working harder on your pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar for the beginning.