Topic: Japanese (language) discussion thread

@Tsuchinoko I plan on Taking Japanese language courses and Spanish language courses in college. I started Spanish in high school and I want to finish that up and become fluent in that language and Japanese language and culture also interests me. So, no I wasn't kidding.

I see, well if you are really serious about a language, then its best to start as soon as possible. Also, I met a lot of kids who started studying Japanese so they could do the whole anime/manga thing, and 9 times out of 10, if that's the only reason they're studying it, they either drop out right away, or just take the beginning levels and stop taking it. I never saw the anime kids in the upper levels. Pretty much in high level Japanese (what we call 高級 koukyuu), those are academics mostly, either people studying it for their careers, or those that want to live and work in Japan. I think its that way with most language course study in college. If you're serious about it, then start studying ASAP, since a lot of colleges move fast with it, and like I said Japanese takes a long time to learn.

I don't have the option to study it in high school. They only teach French and Spanish here.
If you wouldn't mind and could teach me some basics and such that'd be really helpful. I don't have any of the Japanese characters on my keyboard though so I can only type with the English alphabet.

Same as with my high school. I studied it independently for almost a year and a half before I started it in college.

Did you use a particular website or book during your independent studies?

@SMEXIZELDAMAN
I've found interacting with fellow language learning helps an awful lot... give sharedtalk.com or conversationexchange.com a try

@Tsuchinoko
I'm trying to understand the "n desu" concept... for a replying answer right? if you wouldnt mind giving an example or two

I don't want to get the wrong habits ingrained into my learning though before I even start it in college as that would slow me down.
Doesn't desu mean "it is"?

@SMEXI Since "desu ne" means "isn't it", (ne being the not-ish), I think desu means "is it"

です is a little hard to translate, but most of the time people say it as "it is". ですね would be a sentence ending in which you're looking to seek confirmation, as in 「今日は君の休日ですね？」 "Today is your day off isn't it"? This is somewhat informal, but can be used with most people. the more informal version being だね, and the more formal version being でしょうね. This is more asking a question. Today is hot 「今日は暑い」, statement. The version in which you seek confirmation from someone, Today is hot isn't it? 「今日は暑いですね」 Of course, you can make it more informal by saying 今日は暑いだね or 今日は暑いね. The general rule is that the shorter the way of saying it, the more informal the tone.

@Andyv01 Are you talking about a sentence ending in んです？ Just want to make sure, since that would take a bit of time to explain. I don't mind explaining it, just want to make sure thats what you want.

@Tsuchinoko

Yes, thats the one im talking about. Many Thanks, no rush ... any help at all is greatly appreciated as text books can only tell so much...

@Andyv01 ん　is added before the です when you're explaining a reason for something, or when you're talking about a reason, or conclusion. Hmmm, I never explained this in English before...

Say, for example, your friend can't go to the movies with you today, because he has got a cold. He calls and say ごめんなさい。今日は会えないよ。風邪が引いたんですから。 (I'm sorry, I cannot meet with you today. It's because I have a got a cold). The んです　shows that you're giving a reason. なんです is another form of んです。 You usually use なん more for nouns, and ん for verbs or adjectives.

And as a responce to someone telling you they can't go to the movies, instead of just saying そうですか (Is that so?), you would more likely say そうなんですか (Adding the なん makes it sound like "is that the reason?")

That's the most common, normal way to use んです and なんです. There is another way we use it sometimes, when you're apologizing to someone in a suuuper polite way, you pad it out with things like ん or なん almost as if you're making excuses. Its a little hard to explain, but don't worry about it so much, since its really advanced.

Now THATS what i'm looking for

concise,clear explanation...

今日映画館に行くことができない。。。ちょっと疲れたんです... would this work it that context??

Thanks again

Yes, that's perfect. A bit formal, but 100% correct.

Where do you guys get all the Japanese characters? ;_____;
Those seem like they'd be hard to learn. Would it be better to learn to speak first then match those words with the characters or do both at the same time?

I don't know what you mean. Match them? Anyway, you can go into your computer and add Japanese input onto your keyboard. If you use Windows XP or newer all languages are already built into your computer, you just have to turn it on in the region settings. I don't know about Mac.

I meant match like I know how to speak it so then I'd have to look at a character and in my mind say" okay this character represents saying (whatever here)."
I don't know where to start I know random words and phrases, but do not know where I should start.

Maybe I'm still not getting it. Its not like a matter of matching. If you're thinking that its something like Chinese where a character represents a word, thats not the case. Japanese, especially hiragana and katakana, is a phonetic language, so they match up with the sounds. Kanji sometimes have different sound readings depending of usage, but there's no matching involved.

Like I said, it takes a lot of time, and I've heard it said that Japanese is a BIG language. Most college Japanese classes will start for a very short time with greetings and all that, but usually move on to writing hiragana, katakana, and beginner level kanji right away. My level 1 teacher started with all that on day 2.

Forget what I said about the matching thing. Too hard to explain what I meant. What are the differences between hiranga katakana and kanji? wasnt there like an alphabet of characters for like foreign words too or something?

@SMEXIZELDAMAN Hmm, well the word Alphabet really just means languages that use Roman lettering, A-Z, you know, Alpha, Beta and so on.

I guess in Japanese we refer to everything as "kana" (comes from 仮名, "meaning syllabary", kataKANA, hiraGANA).
Hiragana refer to the more curvy kana, and is the basic system in Japanese writing.
Katakana are more angular, and while many people say they are used for foreign loan words, there are a lot of Japanese slang and daily words that use this as well. I just like to say this is for "irregular" words (foreign loan words, slang, sound words and so on)

Both of these systems are phonetic. Here is the first line of the basic standardized hiragana chart.
あ、か、さ、た、な、は、ま、や、ら、わ (a, ka, sa, ta, na, ha, ma, ya, ra, wa)
and kanataka:
ア、カ、サ、タ、ナ、ハ、マ、ヤ、ラ、ワ (a, ka, sa, ta, na, ha, ma, ya, ra, wa)

And of course Kanji are used for most words in Japanese, but unlike Chinese they are a bit more standardized and more phonetic based, and much simpler in usage.

There are about 2000 kanji in standardized usage in contemporary Japanese.

Plz... halp, wut duz dis meen?

何の意味もありません