Topic: Japanese (language) discussion thread

It has no meaning.

@sykotek Where did you get that from?

Well, yeah, just like Pixelman said, the meaning of the sentence is "There is no meaning", but I'm wondering where you got that from, or if you're just pulling random things off the internet.

2nd EDIT: No wait, this feel like some kinda of ironic joke...

@pixelman: wut? ...uv course it duz. bee nice pix.

@Tsuchinoko: on da web. can u halp? wut duz it meeeeen?

@sykotek please be mature about this. I'm trying to make a serious, but fun and educational thread here. I'm asking you nicely, please don't troll my thread.

i honestly think total immersion is the way to go. i studied and studied kana before the first time i went to Japan, but they didn't really click for me until I found myself in the CD/drama album section of an anime shop and their filing system used kana instead of letters, haha — being forced to use them is what made it work for me.

another thing that helped was that most of the signs (since Osaka is pretty tourist-y) had both the kanji/kana and a romanized version of whatever they were saying, so it was easy to match the sounds with the kana (or kanji) after a while. granted, kanji are a more complicated beast, but it did still help IMO. :3 Try making some signs for yourself for just random crap around your room, little post-it notes or whatever that show the kana and the romanized version of whatever that particular item is in Japanese, tape them up around your room, and then just glance at them whenever you interact with that object, remind yourself of that word and how it sounds, and consciously associate those sounds with those kana. Eventually you'll get the feel for how they look and how they should sound in your mind, reading will become quicker, and that'll help you in your studies (if you're serious, that is) :3

@Tsuchinoko: Just idly curious, is there any chance you may be able to teach any bits/phrases of Japanese in standard English characters?

@syko Its meaning is it has no meaning. In plainer terms, it means NintendoLife, the NintendoUniverse, and NintendoEverything. Experts say this sentence was created by early Japanese philosophers before they created the number 42. So it's an obsolete sentence, which is probably why you haven't seen it before.

@theblackdragon That's pretty good advice. Did you study in Osaka? I lived and studied at Doushisha (同志社大学) in Kyoto for 2 years. I'm not sure why, but most of us in my little group never really left Kyoto once we got there. Everything there is so self-contained. When I lived in western Tokyo all I did was go out of the area, haha.

@SMEXIZ I like the post-it idea, but there are plenty of areas in Japan where they have no romanized lettering in their signs. Just don't get used to romanized Japanese too much, because it will become a crutch. Like I said, most college/high school classes will get you writing in actual Japanese pretty quickly.

@Pixelman He's trolling, please ignore him. I looked at his comment history. He doesn't talk/type like that normally.

@GameLord08 I've tutored Japanese many times before. I'm really picky with who I teach it to though. Its hard to do it online, but if you're serious about it, I can. And theblackdragon seems to know his stuff too. Just give us a topic or theme, or ask things you want to know.

@Tsuchinoko: Pix is poking fun as well, so I'd just ignore both of them if they're bothering you. :3

that said, i didn't go to school for it or take any tutoring or anything like that — i worked for a company that operated out of Universal Studios Japan, and sometimes they'd send some of us over to help out during busy times and whatnot. I only visited Kyoto once during the times i was there in Osaka, though. it was just too far out for me, and Nara was so much closer (and cheaper) if I felt the need to just walk around in nature and visit temples. :3

@theblackdragon Well, okay I didn't get that. I just don't see the point. If you're going to not take something seriously, there's tons of other threads out there.

Sad thing is, I never went to USJ. I heard from a lot of people that its boring, so I never went. I should have just gone and made up my own mind, but I'm not one for theme parks anyway. I always wanted to go to Tokyo Disney Sea, but I don't want to go alone, since its really a place for couples, and I'm chronically single.

Nara is really nice. I really like Aichi-ken as well. I'm not one for big cities, though I find Tokyo a lot more comfy than Los Angeles or New York (since I've lived in all three, I can compare, haha). I can't stand Shinjuku or Shibuya though, soooo many tourists. Your company sounds nice. I'm trying to get more formal with my Japanese in everyday speech. I really want to move out of my current job and look for something nicer, more permanent.

What is your Japanese level anyway? Can you speak in conversation or read magazines? What do you consider your level to be?

Bye romanized do you guys mean with the phonetic sounds s-s-spelled out? Like how you gave me the first line of the katakana and in parenthesis the sounds each character represented?
Also when writing out sentences do you combine characters from all three kana? It kind of looks like in your sig that some of the game names combine kanji with hiragana.
Should I try to learn hiragana or katakana first? Hiragana would be more practical, no? What with katakana using slang terms and foreign words.

This looks helpful, just thought I'd put it here for all to see if needed

Hiragana would be a good start ... don't be daunted by the number of characters, many are repeated with a mere slash or bubble ふ fu　ぶ bu　ぷ pu

You'll find once you have Hiragana under you belt, Katakana isn't too much of a challenge... and yes your correct, Kanji, Hira and Kata can all be used in the same sentence for example: ファイアーエムブレム覚醒 を買いました
ファイアーエムブレム = Fire Emblem (Kata)
覚醒 = Awakening (Kanji)
買いました = Bought (first character Kanji, rest are Hiragana)

Hope that helps and not thrown you into some dark abyss of confusion : /

@SMEXIZELDAMAN Usually hiragana and katakana are taught in classes together. They're both used equally as often. Yes, Hiragana would be the first taught, and it is that way with Japanese children, but since one of the first things non-Japanese students of Japanese learn to write is their own name, katakana is usually taught within the first week just like hiragana.

Don't try to analyze things too much. Best thing to do is just dive in and start learning.

EDIT: Romanized means written in Roman letters, like A,B,C and so on. Its what most European languages use.

Yup. Think I am going to start by writing them out so I get a feel for them and then just memorizing them hardcore Tingle style (flashcards mothaducka!) I'll do hiragana first then katakana. I'll save kanji for when I want my mind to explode. Also have to brush up on a and learn some more Spanish vocabulary I love languages ♥

I had a free app on my iPod called "Hiragana & Katakana". It'll teach you the systems, and even has quizzes.

The only thing that was a little annoying was that the hiragana for the "e" sound was the same character used for the word "picture", and it would sometimes include both in the mutiple choice question, but it wanted you to pick a specific meaning (pretty much, you would have no idea if the correct answer was "e" or "picture" in this scenario, so you'd have a 50/50 chance of getting it right).

A lot of everyday Japanese sentences combine kanji and both types of kana. kanji were taken from Chinese, and the Japanese use them to represent solid ideas, but when you write those ideas into sentences they need to be conjugated into actual Japanese words and terms with hiragana, and 'foreign' ideas (it's more complicated than that, but that's the textbook definition) will be expressed phonetically in katakana. For example,

my cat will not eat cornflakes.
私の猫はコーンフレークスを食べません。
(watashi no neko wa koonfureekusu o tabemasen)

私, 猫, and 食 are symbols that stand for the ideas of 'myself', 'cat', and 'eat/food'. the first two are nouns, and so they don't really require conjugation of their own, just placement in a sentence via conjunctions and stuff. that's what の, は, and を do in this sentence, as 'no', 'wa', and 'o' respectively. 'no' between two ideas generally shows ownership of some sort, or that something (or someone) is 'of' something else. in this instance, 'watashi no neko' is 'cat of mine' or 'my cat'. 'wa' in a sentence generally shows that you've set a subject and you're moving on to the object of the sentence (the cornflakes) — also, i know は is technically pronounced as 'ha', but when it's used as a conjunction in a sentence it's always read 'wa'. English has its quirks, and this is one in Japanese :3

'o' provides the transition between subject or subject+object to verb in a Japanese sentence, in this case 'my cat' wa 'cornflakes' o 'will not eat'. and finally, in this sentence, 食べません is the entire conjugated verb (the plain verb would be 食べる, taberu, 'to eat'). the 'idea' is 食, and that plus the suffix makes the entire term into the Japanese word it is. i'm not getting into verb conjugation because in some ways it's about as tricky as conjugating a verb in English, lol (and there are 'special cases' where memorization may be involved), but you can say that you ate, you are eating, you will eat, you have eaten, and you didn't eat, you won't eat, you've never eaten, all with the same kanji and a different suffix in kana, or by using helper verbs to get the job done.

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This thread attracted me so I came to take a gander, but RR529, can you elaborate more on this or show me what exactly the question looked like? I mean, "picture" in Japanese is "え (e)" (絵 in kanji) all right, so I'm not sure what you mean by you can't know the correct answer 100%. Was it like:
Which of the following can be romanized as "e"?
1. あ
2. え
3. (a picture)
4. (a dragon)
Then of course 2 and 3 would both be correct, but I can't think of any other example that might caused the confusion.

@Tsuchinoko: I noticed you were asking about Japanese levels, so what is yours? I passed JLPT level 1 back in 2004 with a score of 351/400 (not sure what the newer N1 looks like now) and I take on translation as a hobby. I've never been to Japan but I actively converse with my Japanese buddies online in Japanese, including academic, entertainment, and politics.

@HADAA, I can't type the characters, because I'm on my 3DS, but I'll try to explain.

At the top it would have the character that represents the "e" sound in hiragana (you have it listed as "2", in your example), and it would ask you what it means.

A. Big
B. "e" (sound)
C. "ka" (sound)
D. Picture

Since picture & the "e" sound are both represented by the same character, you're never quite sure which it wants you to click.

@RR529 I'm not quite sure what you mean. Picture is 絵, which is read as ”え”. The characters aren't the same, but the sound is. There's a lot of words that are really short, like the word for stomach is 胃, which is read as "い". There is no confusion because in the sentence you would hear or read "絵を描きました".

Since you have the context and the kanji there, both hearing sentence and reading the kanji would let you know what the sentence meant.

I mean, you don't confuse the letter U with the word "You" do you? Its the same thing. Seeing the word spelled out and hearing the context gives you all the information you need. The kanji 絵 an the hiragana え aren't represented as the same thing.

some other words with short sounds:
蚊-か mosquito
矢-や arrow
歯- は tooth
胃-い stomach
手-て hand

Again, you will know these words from seeing the kanji, and hearing the context of the sentence.

Wait, now that I'm thinking about it, is it asking you to answer in only hiragana for something, and is giving you a double え in the multiple choice? Since the sounds are the same...hmmm, I'm still a bit confused, but maybe the problem is that it's just a poorly made app? Maybe if you could show us a picture of the question it would help us understand. Let's just say, in real life, you wouldn't be confused.

If the question was, what is picture in Japanese, and it gave you
A.え
B.英
C.絵
D.映

The answer would be C.

@HADAA Whats your ethnic background? Just wondering because I've known a lot of Chinese and Korean people who passed level 1 of the JLPT without ever being in Japan or without being fully fluent, and I always get so jealous of them. Conversly I know people from European-speaking countries that have been living in Japan for years and speak beautiful Japanese, but can't pass Level 1 of the JLPT. I would say I'm level 2. I can read about 600-700 kanji, and I can write a few hundred off the top of my head. My grammar gets a bit wonky if I'm speaking for a long time, like I start to feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over (when in actuality, I'm probably not). I haven't been studying as long as some of my other friends though.