Topic: Japanese (language) discussion thread

Since this is Tsuchinoko's thread it's up to him to decide how we should move on, but I might as well give out the answers to Smexi's quiz:
Awesome, 99% correct!
Except お is o like I indicated in brackets, so 5 is Oyasuminasai. The rest is perfect.

Fuyu yasumi = winter vacation (yasumi means rest, so a winter rest/break. Natsu is summer)
Nuigurumi = stuffed doll
Utsukushii = beautiful
Oyasuminasai = good night (or oyasumi for short. What does yasumi mean again?)

I can keep making quizzes if I have time, otherwise I'll leave it to the topic creator.
Oyasumi!

The only Katakana I can read is の lol.

^That's hiragana

Woops! How do I activate Japanese on my keyboard.

Go into control panel, region settings, you can add languages to your keyboard there. Go to input methods or add keyboards. The IME Japanese program is fairly intuitive. It will ask if you want to change keyboards. If you have anything newer than Windows XP (or I think XP was the first) most languages are already installed, you just have to add/activate them.

If you have any other questions let me know.

I have a JP on the bottom right, and a red dot that says Microsoft IME and after that the letter A. Now how do I get it to work? I try to write Romaji but nothing shows up.

Roma-ji is the Alphabet. You are already writing in Roma-ji. If you mean Hiragana or Katakana, Click on the A and select Hiragana. I don't ever move it from that mode. Usually from that point to switch back and forth between the languages, you just have to type Left shift+ALT and it switches for you.

No I mean I was trying to write something in Romaji so it could turn into Hiragana. I think I got it to work now.

わたしわ　ねこ？じゃじゃ　つちのこ
Like that?

すぱ　まりお
I was trying to write with Japanese on, with Google translate just messing around with it. Typing Hoshi No Kabii and Kabi means mold? This is really fun to do.

I am typing Japanese on the left seeing what it translates to in English.

@KaiserGX I'm not sure what you mean in turning roma-ji into hiragana. Anyway, just like an actual Japanese keyboard they made the IME program so you would never have to touch that tab.

A few more hints. Press the select button for all your kanji choices. When you type hiragana, it will write it with a dotted line under it. It is still basically highlighted, so when you've written a word that you want to turn into kanji, press the select button it will give you kanji options. The IME program is fairly updated, so you should have all of your choices available for current Japanese, although sometimes I have to enter things in manually for newer slang that uses kanji (I can giver you some examples later if you want).

Also, your F6 and F7 buttons come in handy. Use F7 for turning your hiragana into katakana, so you don't have to point your mouse on the tab. It makes it a lot quicker. Your F6 button can be used for changing it back to hiragana. Just play around with it, practice. You'll get the hang of it. The more Japanese you learn, the more you learn about the kanji choices it gives you.

Also, one more thing. In Japanese we don't type spaces between words. You're still just starting so don't worry about that too much. The IME will recognize some things if you type a full sentence and then press the spacebar, but sometimes you need to stop at each word or maybe a set phrase and change it over, since the IME still a simple program and a lot of times kanji have many readings. I can usually type really fast while constantly changing my kanji and katakana and everything, but, like I said, you'll get used to it all with practice. Any questions, ask away.

Yes, kabi カビ／黴 means mold. Google translate won't know most names or slang terms. I never use online translators, so I don't know much about them, other than they can be really useless. That's why a human translator is always better

Isn't romaji like Watashi? I was trying to write that so it would turn it into Hiragana but for some reason it wasn't working before. Also thanks very much. This is very interesting to me. I think I memorized the Hiragana for shi from typing a bunch of Japanese words I remember shippo being one, which is tail right? Let me test out turning it into Katakana, let me also test out Kanji. I will type Mori which I think is Forest, it should put the Kanji that looks like 3 little trees.

Here goes.

しっぽ
森　もい

For some reason F7 doesn't work on my keyboard.

ぴかちゅ　しんか！

F7 doesn't work on your keyboard? Is that a new problem? Well, you should be able to chose katakana from the spacebar choices, it is usually the bottom choice it gives you. Im still not sure what you mean by turning romaji into hiragana. Your default typing in Japanese should be hiragana.

One more hint, while you're typing with the program on, if you hold shift down when you press the first letter it will type in Romaji until you press the enter key.

Sorry if this is difficult for you to understand or maybe I am saying it wrong but when I am typing Japanese. like Shinka isn't that called Romaji? When your typing Japanese using roman letters? Then the computer turns the characters into Hiragana? That's what I mean.

ありがと　アリガト　Second one is Katakana right? Also the shift key trick doesn't work for me either, but it's ok. I like seeing what the individual letter means when I type it.

火災　カサイ　かさい！

I think I know why the F key doesn't work. It's also the volume button. Ok got it, I just have to hold function too.

魚　サカナ　さかな

Is the only way to say Turtle in Kanji? I tried putting Kame and it gave me Jar.

@KaiserGX Yes, that second one is katakana.

I'm really not sure what you mean by shinka. I've never heard that word to mean anything with language. There is 進化 which means to evolve, as in scientifically evolve from one form to another. I'm really not sure about typing roma-ji and turning it into hiragana. We don't do that. Cell phones, chat, computers, all the default typing in Japanese is done in hiragana.

Do you know what roma-ji is? Its roman letters, as in A-Z. English, French, German, most European languages use the roman Alphabet. That's roma-ji. I'm really not sure what you mean by shinka, and turning that into hiragana. We go from hiragana and change that to kanji, katakana, etc.

The kanji for kame(turtle) is 亀。 The kanji for kame (pot) is 甕

@Tsuchinoko
By ぴかちゅ　しんか he meant ピカチュウ 進化 (Pikachū evolve/evolution). I hope Pokemon is still big in Japan. (Is it?)
And yes, in all western-based default IME system, we have to type romaji in order to turn it to hiragana/katakana/kanji, because we don't have printed hiragana on our keyboards.

In short, by using a Japanese keyboard like you do, you can use kana input (かな入力) and type しんか→進化
But for us we have to use romaji input (ローマ字入力) and do shinka→しんか→進化

Thank you, that's what I ment.

Want to bump this thread. Its been dead a while.
And BTW, I don't use a Japanese keyboard, I use my North American bought laptop. I was confused by his question. I thought he was asking if the word "shinka" had something to do with language input, not the writing of it in roma-ji.

Yes, shinka is romaji, シンカ is katakana, しんか is hiragana, and 進化 is kanji.

I always get Kanji and Katakana mixed up. Damn. It was Katakana I memorized before. I don't even know any Kanji (Except the word for Darkness 闇).

Also memorized some Hiragana, but that's probably what messed me up. EDIT: And crap, just remembered Hiragana was more important, but Katakana was easier to read when I was a kid.