日本語 (Japanese Practice)

[Kizyr]

(Also, is the informal phone answer "moshi moshi" related to this?

are you sure it doesnt come from 申す?
my japanese teacher said that back then prior to the Meiji Restoration "申し申し" was a common greeting phrase and since its been some time since then it just changed and came out as もしもし. but well, it wouldnt be the first time he got something wrong...

I stand corrected!

Reference: http://gogen-allguide.com/mo/moshimoshi.html
(or Yahoo: http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa ... hie_detail)

Ascii, your teacher is correct. According to what I could find, 申し（もうし） was used in the Edo period. When phones were first being used in Japan, 「おいおい」 ("hey hey") was used as a greeting; this was made into a bit more polite form of 「申し上げます」 which then resulted in 「もしもし」. KF

[nandeyanen]

はじめまして。マークと申します。５年ぐらい前、大阪に１０日月間ほど住んでいて高校生として留学しました。その間に結構勉強で頑張ってJLPT2受かったんですが、帰国以降あんまり勉強らしく勉強してません（笑）でも、今でもなんとかしゃべれてるようみたいです。「～です」、「～ます」とかの固くて丁寧な話し方をやめさせてもらったら、かなり大阪弁になっちゃうと思います（笑）来年日本の大学院で修士課程をする計画を立てるんです。いけたらうれしい！

よろしくお願いします。

[nandeyanen]

頑張ってね。

僕は少なくとも日本語を使う仕事してもらう。実に、来月日本に彼女を見に行くんだ。ただの一週間だけど楽しみ。

出し抜けには。。。
「わ」についての質問があるんだ。教科書とかで、女の事だと習ったけれど、たまに男が使うことを聞いたことがある。男の人なら使ってもいいか？


誰かロック・バンドの日本バージョンに楽しみ？

About the「わ」ending...

I would say as a basic rule it is predominately used by females. In this instance, the Japanese-Japanese dictionary on my electronic dictionary says along the lines of that it is used to lightly or softly add emphasis. e.g.: 「おもしろいわね」「あら、困ったわ」「別のやり方のほうがいいと思うわ」
But males will sometimes use it I believe, but the intonation and context is usually (perhaps only subtly) different. I don't know how common it is used like this in 標準語 because I never spent much time in places like Tokyo.

But it is a bit different in 関西弁. 「わ」is used by both male and females fairly often. I used it heaps when I was there myself. e.g. 「もうええわ！」など
http://llarc.mit.edu/kansai/1.Character ... icles.html

[ConMan]

僕の名前はクリス。どうぞよろしく。七年間日本語を勉強したけど、それは四年前にしまった。日本に行ったことがない。しかし、来年に行くつもりだ。アニメがすきだがそれはアニメのせいに日本語を学ぶオタクと違う日本語を勉強した後始めた。

And, because I'm sure I mangled that up completely (especially the last part), the English rough translation.

My name is Chris. Pleased to meet you. I studied Japanese for 7 years, but I quit four years ago. I've never been to Japan. However, I intend to go next year. I like anime, but unlike those nerds who study Japanese because of anime, it (my like of anime) started after my study of Japanese. (Great, thanks to that awkward sentence structure I have to apologise for screwing up two languages.)

[zahlman]

I don't really know any japanese, but I think this is utter nonsense. If you try to learn the language based on listening to how it actually sounds spoken by the locals, you'll never figure out anything.

Seriously. I've been to "learn japanese" websites, read the lesson text, then downloaded and played the audio clip. And then sat there, and thought to myself, "You know, if I got myself some reasonably sophisticated audio software and spent all day on it, I might be able to transcribe that clip into romaji or kana (once I can finally keep them all straight) and then start analyzing it per the lesson text."

I'm really not sure where you're going with this, or what you mean. Could you elaborate or be more specific? Part of this might be because most "learn Japanese" websites are lousy.

I once made the mistake of greeting a friend's girlfriend at a party, who had been described in advance as Japanese, with "hajimemashite".

Not a mistake in that I suspect any error in social custom (maybe giving a name first would have been appropriate?), but because of creating the impression of actually knowing anything. Rapid backpedaling was required, naturally.

I don't think I could have picked out a syllable (mora) of the response if I tried, let alone a recognizable word.

That's just how the language is spoken by its native speakers. When you're not yourself fluent, it seems like you can barely figure out what they said well enough to reproduce the sounds, let alone understand what it actually means. Some languages seem like that to me (French, Portuguese, Japanese) and others don't (German, Spanish, Chinese).

My comment about not using anime to learn a language (to check comprehension to an extent, possibly, but certainly not to learn it) is based on understanding what kind of language is used in most anime, and seeing a lot of folks who have attempted to use anime to learn Japanese. It's possible to learn a bit, I'll grant that, but it's horribly inefficient. Watching it for hours might get you a handful of realistic phrases, depending on the series.

Er, yes, that's the fankid-ism I was referring to.

I'm not really consciously trying to learn anything this way. But I do learn something.

"to" doesn't only mean "and". It corresponds to how in English you might use "with" or quotation marks. Specifically, in that sentence, "to" marks the preceding word as a name, like putting it in quotation marks. It's the same use as if you wanted to say "I think that..." (．．．と思う).

I don't see how "with" is anything like putting things in quotation marks. :/

[Interactive Civilian]

"to" doesn't only mean "and". It corresponds to how in English you might use "with" or quotation marks. Specifically, in that sentence, "to" marks the preceding word as a name, like putting it in quotation marks. It's the same use as if you wanted to say "I think that..." (．．．と思う).

I don't see how "with" is anything like putting things in quotation marks. :/

I think you are perhaps focusing too much on the translation. Japanese often doesn't have direct translations and the translations that we use often only indicate the use of a word or a particle in Japanese rather than it's meaning, which may or may not be translatable. と is a particle that is used to mean "with, and", and it is also a particle to indicate quotation. Incidentally, it can also be used to make a conditional "if".

with
A: 昨日デートした。 Yesterday, I had a date.
B: 誰と？ With who?
A: ゆきちゃんと。 With Yuki-chan.

and
A: 薬とジュースを飲まなきゃ、風邪が治らないんだ。You have to drink medicine and juice for your cold to get better.

quotation
direct: たろ君が「あなたは本当にばか」と言った。Taro-kun said, "You are really stupid."
indirect: たろ君は俺がばかと言った。Taro-kun said I'm stupid.
(colloquially と sometimes becomes って: 何だと？＝何だって？＝ what did you say?)

conditional
A: 8時に行かないとだめだ。If we don't go at 8:00, it's bad. (often translated as "We have to go at 8:00").

Japanese translations are rarely straight-forward. You just have to get used to the various uses of the particles.

_{sidenote: yes, there are several possible variations on my English translations of the above. That's Japanese for you.}

[Benfrenchman]

Ah, the vagaries of the Japanese 'if/when'. It took me a long time to wrap my heard around the differences between れば、たら、と、とき et al.

I know them now, just in case someone was firing up a post to explain them haha.

[Interactive Civilian]

Ah, the vagaries of the Japanese 'if/when'. It took me a long time to wrap my heard around the differences between れば、たら、と、とき et al.

I know them now, just in case someone was firing up a post to explain them haha.

Heh... oddly, I "instinctively" know them. I.e. I can use them fairly naturally, mainly from years of listening and mimicry. However, I have no idea how to explain the differences or when to use what. Hmmmm...

[Simbera]

It's also used in a similar way to the quotations example for 'thought' or 'think', and I'm tipping other cases where you are separating the idea from what you did to it (thinking, saying...I dunno, forgetting, writing, stuff like that).

ピザはとてもおいしいと思います。
I think that pizza is delicious.

<^>

[Benfrenchman]

と also can be used as a quotative particle in ways that seem strange to an English speaker. Consider something like 彼女が「まったく！」と怒った。 Its literal meaning is something like "'Good grief!' she angered." but of course you can't say someone 'angered' something in English (at least not in that way). We'd say "she said angrily"

[Kizyr]

That's just how the language is spoken by its native speakers. When you're not yourself fluent, it seems like you can barely figure out what they said well enough to reproduce the sounds, let alone understand what it actually means. Some languages seem like that to me (French, Portuguese, Japanese) and others don't (German, Spanish, Chinese).

I see what you mean. To me, that's simply a function of understanding and familiarity. With enough practice it's possible to overcome.

It was like that for me the first few years of studying Japanese. Then things started to click and I could understand even without knowing every single word in a sentence (although I still wouldn't be able to translate it--that's a different skill).

For me, Spanish and Bengali were always like that, where I could understand pretty well from the beginning without knowing all the words. French and Chinese are more difficult--with French it helps that there's a lot of similarity with Spanish, but still if I here native French then it's very difficult to pick up on even isolated words.

"to" doesn't only mean "and". It corresponds to how in English you might use "with" or quotation marks. Specifically, in that sentence, "to" marks the preceding word as a name, like putting it in quotation marks. It's the same use as if you wanted to say "I think that..." (．．．と思う).

I don't see how "with" is anything like putting things in quotation marks. :/

Interactive Civilian did a pretty good job explaining this. There are just various ways to use the same word/particle. I did say "with or quotation marks".

It usually helps learning one meaning at a time, rather than trying to learn every possible way to use each particle. (Similarly, it's easier to learn one reading of a kanji, rather than memorizing all the readings of one character before moving on to learning the next.) I've found it easier to avoid confusion that way. KF

[lucaswschmidt]

"to" doesn't only mean "and". It corresponds to how in English you might use "with" or quotation marks. Specifically, in that sentence, "to" marks the preceding word as a name, like putting it in quotation marks. It's the same use as if you wanted to say "I think that..." (．．．と思う).

I don't see how "with" is anything like putting things in quotation marks. :/[/quote]

you guys have it all wrong. the と in と思う and the と which means with are completely different, a good number of japanese verbs go with a certain particle just because that's how the language works. the と in と申す is the same, it just indicates the object that the verb is acting on. it is important in japanese not to confuse, overthink, or directly translate the particles.

also, もしもし used to be a very colloquial greeting back in the day, the type of thing you would say when tapping someone on the shoulder is how i heard it. why you say it on the phone these days? all i can imagine is that once もしもし fell out of use they had a spare part of speech that wasn't being used for anything anymore, and once the telephone was introduced they had a new form of communication that needed it's own greeting. i imagine you can guess the rest.

[zahlman]

That's just how the language is spoken by its native speakers. When you're not yourself fluent, it seems like you can barely figure out what they said well enough to reproduce the sounds, let alone understand what it actually means. Some languages seem like that to me (French, Portuguese, Japanese) and others don't (German, Spanish, Chinese).

I see what you mean. To me, that's simply a function of understanding and familiarity. With enough practice it's possible to overcome.

Er, no. I'm actually much more familiar with French than I am with German. It just has a more WTF sound to it, to my ear. Similarly, while I wouldn't expect Chinese (any dialect) to be any easier to learn than Japanese, and I know much less about it, it still *sounds clearer* to me when spoken by native speakers. They don't seem to mumble, rush or elide syllables to nearly the same extent.

It was like that for me the first few years of studying Japanese. Then things started to click and I could understand even without knowing every single word in a sentence (although I still wouldn't be able to translate it--that's a different skill).

I can do that with written stuff, given time and resources (dictionary and my continuing studies). I actually think I'm pretty good at translating things without understanding them. It comes from an ability to process "bad English" quickly (even while laughing about it on the inside) that I think I gained from watching random subtitled Chinese movies in high school.

"to" doesn't only mean "and". It corresponds to how in English you might use "with" or quotation marks. Specifically, in that sentence, "to" marks the preceding word as a name, like putting it in quotation marks. It's the same use as if you wanted to say "I think that..." (．．．と思う).

I don't see how "with" is anything like putting things in quotation marks. :/

Interactive Civilian did a pretty good job explaining this. There are just various ways to use the same word/particle. I did say "with or quotation marks".

Yes, and I understood that. I just think it's strange. What's the problem?

English prepositions are very strange, too. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a language, besides Lojban, in which prepositions/post-positions/equivalent didn't impress me as fairly WTF-y.

[lucaswschmidt]

is it me or is there a pretty large number of people on here trying to learn japanese without any native speakers to learn from?

[Benfrenchman]

I guess xkcd is not really geared towards people who are unfamiliar with English. We need more Japanese people on these fora!

[ascIIaster]

yeah I think the problem is just that no one speaking Japanese fluently would be very attracted by this Language Practice Thread because he or she can just go to normal websites such as mixi...
@lucaswschmidt: I know a whole lot of people who try to learn Japanese without guidance from a native speaker but imho it's next to impossible to speak a language fluently unless you have someone you can ask about stuff and practice talking with. If you cannot get a native speaker as teacher you could try visiting meetings of the Japanese community. In München for example, there's a monthly get-together of Japaneses and Germans (which probably doesn't help you much unless you're from the München area but going from your name you could use the website to get an idea of what I'm talking about ).

regards,
Andreas

[lucaswschmidt]

you know, more native speakers on the forums and more blogging in japanese is kinda the opposite of what people need to learn japanese. you need to get away from the keyboards and find some japanese people, they're around.

[Benfrenchman]

So many Japanese people in Frankfurt, but they're all just complete strangers. I even work with a couple but since they're higher up the chain than me, I feel uneasy about approaching them speaking in my stilted nihongo.

[Interactive Civilian]

you know, more native speakers on the forums and more blogging in japanese is kinda the opposite of what people need to learn japanese. you need to get away from the keyboards and find some japanese people, they're around.

On one hand, you are absolutely correct.

On the other hand, forums and blogging are probably the best ways to learn to read and write Japanese, which in turn will also help fluency. My ability to read and write went from extremely low to fairly passable simply by being on Mixi.

Granted, I was already a fairly fluent speaker when I got my invite to mixi. But it was a big help for my reading and writing.

[babyduo]

On the other hand, forums and blogging are probably the best ways to learn to read and write Japanese, which in turn will also help fluency. My ability to read and write went from extremely low to fairly passable simply by being on Mixi.

The slang used in forums and mixi blog entries might act as a deterrent to some people, no? You can't really depend on mixi for learning correct Japanese because many mixi bloggers use pretty poor grammar themselves. It is a good place to practise, if you're out of other options.
I recommend:
- japanese dramas (closest approximation of real life speech out of all popular media, and subs help.)
- radio programs (if you get everything then your level is almost native! plus they talk about everyday stuff so it's good for upping your cultural knowledge.)
- japanese variety shows (the BIG KANJI LETTERS..captions? help a lot when you need to look things up in the dictionary!)

[Kizyr]

I recommend:
- japanese dramas (closest approximation of real life speech out of all popular media, and subs help.)
- radio programs (if you get everything then your level is almost native! plus they talk about everyday stuff so it's good for upping your cultural knowledge.)
- japanese variety shows (the BIG KANJI LETTERS..captions? help a lot when you need to look things up in the dictionary!)

I definitely agree with those recommendations. Though, I would place variety shows at the top, since I've found that to be the best for picking up everyday language, and Japanese dramas second. KF

[Tac-Tics]

Quick question. Does anyone know how to enter special characters with a Japanese IME? This is something I used to know a long time ago, but have forgotten.

For example, to enter hearts/encircled 1's, 2's, 3's/special bullet point characters.... it's all listed under some word, which I remember translates something like "symbols" but I don't remember it any more!

[ACU-LP]

I know very little Japanese (despite doing a couple of high school classes on it).
As I dont know how you guys are doing the japanese text stuff, I'll just spell it out.
Konnichiwa. Boku wa ei shi yu - ru pi. dozoyuroshku. ogenkidesuka.
Wow...my alias really does not go well in katakana....

[jelly_yuhuu]

はじめまして！私の名前はジェシカです。どうぞよろしくおねがいします！<(_ _)>
大学３年生です！日本語を大学で勉強していて、まだなかなか話しません。日本へ行った事がないですが、来年大阪に行きます。大阪府大学で一年間勉強します。

Umm..I think you can use this website to type Japanese characters http://ajaxime.chasen.org/
Just type the roomaji and it'll come up in hiragana, then press space to turn it into Kanji. Press enter after you're done.
If you use Mac, it's already installed I think :S

[ACU-LP]

Kewl, but I didnt learn any kanji....

[jelly_yuhuu]

You don't have to turn it into Kanji. After you're done typing, you can just press enter to move on to the next word you want to type. Also, for Katakana, you can press the shift button while typing the roomaji. And for small characters (eg: っ、ゃ、etc), type (the letter) x before typing the roomaji. For example, xtsu -> っ

[Cryopyre]

Is Japanese a fun language to learn? I've had interests myself but decided on Mandarin, but there's always room for more language.

[ACU-LP]

Is Japanese a fun language to learn? I've had interests myself but decided on Mandarin, but there's always room for more language.

Fun and definitely worth trying at least.
Even just some of the words are awesome

[Cryopyre]

How difficult is it?

[ACU-LP]

A bit at first, but once you get used to the fact things are a different way round, and with a bit of practice, it gets easier. I didnt practice though, then could not continue the course

[Gelsamel]

I'm kinda interesting in learning to speak Japanese fluently, right now I don't even have a 2nd language. Also, it just seems that the phraseology of Japanese stuff (well, when translated back into English) is just so much cooler.

"Don't say things that will cause misunderstandings"
"I'm saying you've got it totally wrong"
Etc.

Of course I guess it depends how you translate it, but most anime translate these phrases like that. It always sounds so nice and formal and respectful.

Anyway, I figure that since I'm finishing my physics degree next year it might be beneficial to know japanese just in case there are any cool job prospects over there.

[Benfrenchman]

If it doesn't look like normal English, the translator is Doing It Wrong. Translations shouldn't look like translations. </pet peeve>

Jelly, your Japanese is pretty good! Don't use the kanji for 事 when using the 'have done X' form though

God I'm nitpicky today. Here are some positives. Japanese is incredibly fun, vastly rewarding, and the grammar is actually pretty easy. I find it easier than, say, French. Vocab is a bitch though, and my speaking and listening are still shite. I have a bit of a love affair with the whole thing, though I don't read manga and don't like most anime.

PS. You should all go and buy Make 10 for the DS (I don't think it's available in the US but you should import it). My friend Dan translated it and the dialogue is stunning.

[Gelsamel]

If it doesn't look like normal English, the translator is Doing It Wrong. Translations shouldn't look like translations. </pet peeve>

You think those sentences don't look like normal English? They look normal to me, they seem to have the correct grammar and word usage as far as I know (I'm not that great at English though). It's just the phraseology seems to be not oft-used, it seems nice and polite and much more "this is a statement" with less emotional ambiguity etc.

[jelly_yuhuu]

Jelly, your Japanese is pretty good! Don't use the kanji for 事 when using the 'have done X' form though

何よ。まだ上手じゃないの。ギャハハハ　>.< *rolls on the floor* thanks for the advice (^^) The bad thing about typing Japanese is that i get carried away with the space button. I normally end up not being able to read most of the Kanjis I typed anyway. hahahaa. But yeah, iL stop using the kanji for koto in this context. So...when do you actually use the kanji for koto though? Is it only for literal meaning, like shigoto and kaji, or is it just not used in this one context? もっと教えて下さい　>.<

Japanese is incredibly fun, vastly rewarding, and the grammar is actually pretty easy. I find it easier than, say, French. Vocab is a bitch though, and my speaking and listening are still shite. I have a bit of a love affair with the whole thing, though I don't read manga and don't like most anime.

Gee Willikers, I think French is much easier!! (T.T) Well, not much...but, french grammar is closer to english than Japanese is. Japanese is a fun language to learn, because anything that's negative automatically gets made very very subtle in Japanese. And it's a very humble language too imo. My speaking skill is horrible though. Hahaha

[Benfrenchman]

@Gelsamel: They're grammatically correct, but they just don't look like something someone would say for real. Am I being overly critical? Probably... sorry!

@Jelly: Yeah, as I'm sure you know, there are times when Japanese uses already existing words for grammatical purposes. Another example is ～てみる which means "do something to try it out". It uses みる, the verb to see, as in 'do it and see', but you don't use the kanji (見る).

EDIT: Turns out you did know it. Man I took a long time to post that edit.

[jelly_yuhuu]

Umm...nope. Not really. I suppose it's like one of those redundant-in-grammatical-context Kanjis. Like people normally just write ください instead of 下さい. Which basically means the same thing anyway, and it doesn't matter to use either. I think... :S

[Gelsamel]

They're grammatically correct, but they just don't look like something someone would say for real. Am I being overly critical?

It doesn't sound like something that people would -commonly- say. But I wouldn't mind saying it just because the phrasing is so cool xD. Plus it seems as though those lines are nearly always translated like that.

[Kizyr]

Quick question. Does anyone know how to enter special characters with a Japanese IME? This is something I used to know a long time ago, but have forgotten.

For example, to enter hearts/encircled 1's, 2's, 3's/special bullet point characters.... it's all listed under some word, which I remember translates something like "symbols" but I don't remember it any more!

You don't need that necessarily. For stars, for example, you can input "hoshi" and just hit spacebar. Several star symbols will be there underneath the kana and kanji for it. Other things that work (unfortunately I'm not on a computer with IME right now so I'm going off of memory):

ten - for bullets/points
yajirushi - for arrows
haato - for hearts (I think--can't test this out right now)
1, 2, 3... etc. - for encircled numbers
tan'i - for units (the actual unit names--miri, kiro, etc.--will work as well)

If it doesn't look like normal English, the translator is Doing It Wrong. Translations shouldn't look like translations. </pet peeve>

The "golden rule" of translation should always be to make the dialogue sound as if it was originally written in English. That's usually what I go for. All it requires is a few run-throughs and edits to make sure the dialogue sounds natural. To me, awkward translations are a sign of novice skills in translation, or laziness in skipping over the editing process.

The Phoenix Wright series, by the way, is really good at making translated dialogue sound natural. KF

[Benfrenchman]

Yeah, Phoenix Wright is Alexander O Smith, a giant in the field. See: Final Fantasy 8 and maybe 10 too.

[Gelsamel]

So if you guys were subbing anime you'd translate "itadakimasu"? (If I spelled that right).

Because that's actually a pet peeve of mine...