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Topic: Learning Japanese for Switch Imports

Posts 41 to 59 of 59

JaxonH

@Masurao
Not sure I follow. From my understanding, Heisig associates one keyword that best represents the meaning, and the benefit is learning to recognize the characters and know the main meaning, can expand with the other meanings later of course.

When you say original meaning, I'm not sure I follow... or at least, what benefit that would bring. Seems to be hard enough learning 2,000+ kanji, and while the history of the symbols is surely interesting, it seems like uneccessary memorization, unless you're just interested in etymology

All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans

God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John

Ryu_Niiyama

@JaxonH I think the issue that a lot of folks run into is once you start having to understand on and kun readings otherwise compound words are going to make no sense to you (I'm not a fan of Heisig either). The mnemonics are cute but I really recommend that you just learn the kanji straightforward so that you will have the on and kun readings already understood so you don't run into issues later on down the road and habits that you have to break. Also you only really need to learn the Kyoiku Kanji to start (which is the basic school requirements) unless you are planning on getting into technical/scientific translation. Kyoiku are about 1006. Not saying that learning the Joyo is bad (or going further for that matter) but for a new student it can be very daunting. Also learning in the kyoiku order makes it easier for you to "age up" into texts/games rather than you having a smattering of kanji knowledge all over the place that will take time for you to quickly utilize in a practical fashion. Also learning the kyoiku will have you using kanji for things that only use furigana in really basic texts (for instance numbers...you want to just go ahead and learn those kanji pretty quickly as most texts don't consider that basic enough for there to be a furigana reading above them) more quickly. Not sure how you learn but I just always used flash cards and writing and then reinforcing with reading books around that level; seriously start picking up some readers or even children's books. Try not to read romanji (Japanese using latin lettering) just force yourself to read Japanese. Many larger cities have some sort of a Japanese population in America and they usually have a Japanese school due to the differences in school systems...many of them will have booksales on the regular. (I lived at the NC Japan school in Raleigh when I lived there just because of the 1 dollar booksales and free magazines). Also check out used bookstores...many will have manga (Japanese has a LOT of mimesis and onomatopoeia and its good to start working on that early) that you can start with as well. I recommend regular books though.

Edited on by Ryu_Niiyama

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JaxonH

@Ryu_Niiyama
I'm not even close to being able to read yet, even children's books.

I'm going through the "Zero to Japanese #1" book right now. Gonna see where we stand after I finish this book (might take a year, who knows).

But I'll take your advice into consideration. If you think it's a bad method to start learning and recognizing the Kanji with at least one meaning and then expounding later (which was always the plan- start with one main meaning personable and then go back around and learn more). I just don't want to waste time learning history or origins... if it's not part of the actual language, I'll have enough on my plate as is.

All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans

God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John

Maxz

JaxonH wrote:

I got the Zero to Japanese #1 in the mail yesterday. Started going through it... I like how it starts with the basics- counting up to 9,999, double consonants and vowels, etc.

I feel like I have an edge already knowing the kana. When it says to write numbers down in Japanese in the workbook, I'm doing kana rather than romaji, so 3,241 as さんぜんにひゃく[う]よんじゅういち

I'd be interested to hear how you get on with Zero to Japanese #1 (or 02J1 as I'll call it because numbers are cool). I've just read the Tofugu rundown and it seemed pretty positive. It definitely looks like it goes down the 'cute and charming' route rather than the 'formal and businesslike' one, which I think is a good thing. I got a bit burned by 'Japanese for Busy People' reading like it was Japanese for Boring People, and I think a bit of whimsy goes a long way in aiding memorability. It does recommend moving onto the Genki series of textbooks at some point though, which is a recommendation I'd fully get behind when the time comes.

The phonetic spelling of 3,241 is almost right, except I think an errant 'う' has slipped in there by mistake, possibly from a slip of the keyboard after typing out "ひゃく". I've put square brackets around it within the quoted text. Anyway, copying out numbers in Hiragana seems like a sensible way of practicing counting and writing simultaneously, although obviously people don't often (if ever) actually jot numbers down like that, as it would take fifteen digits to express the number 3241 instead of the usual four. The traditional, Kanji-based way of writing that number would be 三千二百四十一, where the 'thousands', 'hundreds' and 'tens' components are actually written down (which is why you end up with seven digits instead of four). Nowadays it's pretty rare to see long numbers written out in anything other than the generic 0-9 Arabic system that we (and the rest of the world) use, similar to how we no longer use the Roman numeral system out of specific contexts. Still, it can give you a good feel for the pronunciation, as every voiced element is explicitly written. Combining the above with your Hiragana spelling and dividing accordingly gives 三(さん)千(ぜん)二(に)百(ひゃく)四(よん)十(じゅう)一(いち). So nothing spoken gets omitted, which is cool. But also explains why it's kinda long.

The only reason to learn the origins/etymology of a character would be if it actually helps you make sense of it and therefore memorise it. If you're still consolidating Hiragana and Katakana, it might be a bit early to be earnestly charting your future journey through oceans of Kanji, but obviously finding some memorisation tricks that work for you will be very useful when the time comes. Sometimes knowing their origins can help achieve that result. Sometimes remembering completely fabricated associations that have nothing to do with their historical development can help, whether from a book or made up on your own.

What I think is worth knowing are the meanings of certain Kanji components (known as 'radicals'); for example, 泳, 洗, 池, 湖, 海, 波 all share the same 3-dot氵mark on their left-hand side, and mean 'swim', 'wash', 'pond', 'lake', 'sea', and 'wave' respectively. As you can probably guess, the氵mark means water, so if you know the significance of those three dashes, then it might help stop all those characters seeming utterly unrelated and random. It's nice to know with three small marks you've made a start on a load of somewhat wet characters. But really, you'll probably have to toy around with until you find techniques you like, and anyone trying to 'impose' anything too heavily on you may be doing you more hard than good.

While 'the best way' of learning Kanji is something of an open (and individual) question, I do feel that the best way of practicing them is simply to read them in actual words, preferably within actual sentences. A character doesn't really mean anything if it's not in any words, and it's only through reading words that you start to get a feel for what the character really means in a literary context. Hopefully your textbook (when Kanji time comes) should be structured so as to include plenty of words that feature and therefore reinforce the characters you've recently learned. If you want more examples above what the textbook offers, you can bung the character into Jisho.org, which should give you plenty of words, and also example sentences containing those words.

Anyway, I might be getting ahead of myself with all the Kanji-babble. It's obviously one of the most central topics within the discussion of the Japanese language, so people tend to have a lot to say about it.

Edited on by Maxz

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JaxonH

@Maxz
Great post.

Yes, I accidentally slipped a う in there, probably thinking kyuu when writing hyaku.

I haven't gotten to the kanji yet, and may not until later in the book or later volumes. But I did recognize the 三 as 3, ニ as 2, 四 as 4 and 十 (I think) as 10. That one was a little shaky. Now I know 千 means 1,000.

How can I get hyaku symbol to show a little yu after hi on my phone keyboard? I'm using the standard Japanese language pack. Neither can I seem to get Katakana to show all the time

All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans

God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John

Maxz

@JaxonH Thanks. It's now about twice as long, so I hope there's not too much waffle in there.

Anyway, if your phone is laid out anything like my iPhone keyboard, there should be a button with a small circle, a double dash, and the symbol 小 (which means 'small') contained within it. It only appears on my phone after I type a character, but if you press it, it should either add a double-dash/dakuten mark (for example turning は [ha] into ば[ba]), a circle/handakuten mark (giving ぱ [pa]) or shrinking the previous character into its miniature form (turning や into ゃ, and つ into っ, etc.). Sometimes you'll have to press it multiple times to get the form you want. For example, to get to ぱ, you need to scroll through ば first, meaning two clicks.

I hope this helps, but if not please post a screengrab (or can pull an picture of the keyboard off the internet) and I'll try and decipher it. Phone keyboards tend to be a little more 'hands on' than computer alternatives, which will happily turn the word 'hyaku' into 'ひゃく' (and then subsequently '百' - the appropriate Kanji), without you having to faff about miniaturising stuff.

And yes, the first three numbers are a fantastic introduction to Kanji! As easy as 一, 二, 三! And then 四 comes along and ruins everything. Five is interesting (五), because you may notice it appears in the top-right corner of the final character of 日本語 (にほんご, Japanese language), and shares the same pronunciation. This is not a co-incidence! Often you'll have a smaller Kanji buried within a larger one, which may give a clue to its pronunciation (even if the meaning has nothing to do with it).

Frequently characters have one component that will hint at the meaning (for example, the氵in the earlier watery words), and another that will tell you the sound (though this is obviously only helpful if you know the sound of that component already). Still, these two facts can make memorisation and recognition a lot easier, and it means that the more characters you learn, the easier it becomes to learn others! Everything starts to become a nice friendly web, rather than an infinite ocean of isolated elements. That's probably not much comfort at the start when you don't know anything, but hopefully it should make things feel a bit less daunting. Not super easy and quick, but definitely possible over a sensible period of time and without everything spilling out of your head (and trailing behind you in a soggy line of sad, forgotten Kanji).

Edited on by Maxz

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JaxonH

@Masurao
Oh, the radicals aka primaries. Ya Heisig teaches those actually, so that you know what each primitive means, and creates a sort of alphabet with them

@Maxz
Using my iPad I can do it no prob (it's how I managed before) but on my Galaxy Samsung keyboard, apparently you have to use the suggestions- there is no way to add the double ticks or circle to change H to B or P, or katakana or combinations or small tsu...

Kinda limiting

All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans

God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John

Maxz

@JaxonH Well that seems like a bit of an oversight on Samsung's part. Half the joy of any language is being able to break it by typ1ng wurds how3va u lyke, and if the phone's dictionary only limits you to following its suggestions then that's a pretty shocking restriction. Are there any 3rd party Japanese keyboards you can download instead?

Edited on by Maxz

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JaxonH

@Maxz
Ya, but the English part sucks. Already tried.

All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans

God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John

FriedSquid

@JaxonH I have (and am currently typing on right now) a Samsung Galaxy, so hopefully I can help you with this... If I can explain it correctly First, if you don't have it I recommend downloading Google Keyboard from the app store, and then download Google Japanese Input.

You first type the base character (は) and then subsequently type the bottom left key for diacritics (which should show a small circle and the double tick), which should turn は into ば or ぱ (tapping it a few times will switch the diacritics). Once you have the character you want you have to hit the enter key. You can also use the same button to make the tsu or other characters smaller or bigger (つ > っ) once you first type the base character.

As for katakana, admittedly I haven't figured out an easier way to type them out, but once you type a hiragana character its katakana equivalent should show as a suggestion. Even if you type out a full word in hiragana it should show a suggestion that will change the entire word to katakana (or kanji), so you wouldn't need to convert each character to kana individually. So I can type おちゃ and once I've finished it will give me the kana version as a suggestion, オチャ.

I also like Google's keyboard as hitting the globe key will quickly switch between the different keyboards you have, thus I can swap between Japanese and English in a second. (you can switch to Latin characters within the Japanese keyboard, but it functions like classic 9-button phone keys, so it's more difficult to type than the regular English keyboard)

Hopefully that was helpful and wasn't all useless information, haha.

Edited on by FriedSquid

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JaxonH

@FriedSquid
Thanks for the help, but that's the one I tried. It works but I can't type in English to save my life on that keyboard

All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans

God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John

Maxz

Thought with the Monster Hunter XX article up today I'd pop in and ask how things are going! So, err... how are things going?

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JaxonH

Going great!

I can actually understand a lot of stuff in the game via Katakana. Options, Help, Chat, etc. all written out as English words in Katakana. It's amazing- I will be putting my Japanese learning on hold for the next month or so because I'll be playing this game and that's the whole reason I started learning in the first place. But whenever I slow down and eventually kind of move on, I will resume my studies because I do want to learn the language now. But just playing the game in Japanese and exposing myself to the language constantly will in and of itself kind of be a form of learning.

All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory. Wages of sin is death. Romans

God so loved the world He sent His only Son- whoever believes on Him has eternal life. Unless you believe, you will die in your sins. Whoever believes, rivers of living water flow within them. John

AlwaysGreener

Wow, there's a lot of great advice on this thread. I always wanted to learn Japanese, but I didn't know where to start exactly, at least now I can start on the right foot.

AlwaysGreener

Krull

I'm still working through the Duolingo app to get a base of vocabulary, listening to podcasts (mainly Learn Japanese Pod, which is actually mostly too advanced for me, plus a little JapanesePod101), and trying to pay more attention while watching anime. I find myself pausing the screen continually to read the kana that flashes up during Kill La Kill or Case Closed - though I am getting faster.

My WaniKani kanji course has taken a backseat, however. Still intend to at least get through the free stuff, before deciding where to go next.

Definitely enjoying the learning process so far, though.

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switchy99

Would anyone want to tell me how to make the word "somebody" in japanese using the keyboard? (example : 2nd row, 5th symbol)

switchy99

switchy99

I'm trying to get a translation of something, and you're yelling at me that I'm trying to get something translated. JESUS.

switchy99

DEADCELL

@switchy99 I don't think he is trying to yell at you. He is just trying to explain that context matters a lot in Japanese, and just throwing a word that translates to "somebody" won't necessarily make sense in the context you are using it in.

If you really need it, though, 誰か means "somebody." I don't have my Switch on me right now, so I can't tell you the exact row for characters to type (if I remember, I'll update this when I get home), but the characters you want to type are だれか. Or if you use the keyboard that lets you type with an English keyboard, type "dareka"

DEADCELL

KaiserGX

Hiragana Pixel Party on Switch works really well. Sure you can use flashcards but imo this is more fun and keeps me more motivated, and with the speed of how things are going, I think is forcing me to recognize the characters quicker.

One thing I should say, if you're learning the kana for the first time... in this day and age it's not really necessary to learn how to write it. When's the last time you really wrote anything on pencil and paper? You'll learn a lot quicker too if you just learn to read them. I am also using other external apps and websites. Right now I just want to focus on knowing that I know how to read the kana well and quick and I will move on to Kanji. Without Japanese television (not just anime) also helps, and without subtitles. I think when you use subtitles, you pay less attention to the speech and just focus on reading English. If you can find Japanese captions, that would be even better. I have a link to some Japanese live streaming channels but I don't know if I am allowed to link them here.

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