Japanese Language Discussion

[burgerkingdiamond]

Sorry, I wasn't really clear. I meant it was more difficult because my level of Japanese when I was in high school isn't as good as it was when I was a kid, and it isn't as good as it is now. There was kind of a 'black hole' from Jr high until after graduating high school where I didn't care for Japanese. I was 'forced' to take that test. Although I passed, I didn't do as well asb others hoped because of the previously-mentioned reason and also I didn't have my heart into it since I was "forced". I can say with some confidence that I can pirobably breeze through it if I took it now since Japanese has been and is spoken at my home more than English on a daily basis and I am reading and writing Japanese daily. But I guess I shouldn't be too cocky!

Ah, gotcha. Are you living in the west, or Japan? I can imagine not doing well if you didn't even want to be there. I thought I was wasting my time as the 3 months prior to my taking L1 was spent mainly bickering w/ my better half and not studying. The 9 months prior to that was grinding away though... apparently that's all it took, as I absolutely crushed the grammar & reading parts... well, better than most anyway.

Curious to see the new layout. I'm actually speaking less Japanese now than I did even when I lived in the states for 2 years. I speak a bit with my wife but I try not to when my son is around. I guess it's about half and half out of the house, but I work alone, in a room... in my underwear. So, that whole dynamic is gone.

I'm curious as to why u don't speak japanese around your son.

[Skykid]

I'm curious as to why u don't speak japanese around your son.

Maybe he lives in Japan, in which case the kid will be fluent in Japanese anyway. If English is spoken at home he'll be bi-lingual.

[dcharlie]

I'm curious as to why u don't speak japanese around your son.

My Japanese is passable (i'd say old level 2 level) but the second i start speaking japanese round my son my wife jumps in and makes sure he doesn't pick it up. Hell, my wife doesn't even speak around my son and she's fluent Japanese (she's fully native level bilingual Japanese/English). We leave the Japanese to the father in law.

[burgerkingdiamond]

I'm curious as to why u don't speak japanese around your son.

My Japanese is passable (i'd say old level 2 level) but the second i start speaking japanese round my son my wife jumps in and makes sure he doesn't pick it up. Hell, my wife doesn't even speak around my son and she's fluent Japanese (she's fully native level bilingual Japanese/English). We leave the Japanese to the father in law.

Why doesn't she want him to pick it up? I WISH I was bilingual. That's like a gift. If you learn when you're young you have all the benefit of knowing two languages without having to put forth the effort to study, cuz you'll just pick it up. My girlfriend was born and raised until age 13 in Vietnam and she speaks VN at her house with her family. I know that if I ever had kids with her I would want them to pick up both English and VN.

[dcharlie]

Why doesn't she want him to pick it up? I WISH I was bilingual.

Oh, she does want him to be at least bilingual - she wants him to pick up "proper" Japanese from the native japanese speakers in the household - not my brand with it's weird honky tones

[GaijinPunch]

Also it is really true about it not testing your ability to communicate in any way, I can count the number of proper conversations I've had in Japanese on one hand and I was drunk for all them, so there is no way I can actually speak Japanese to the level you'd expect someone taking the highest level test should be able to.

It tests your ability to study, for the most part. But seriously, Japanese education is a joke, and this test is an encapsulation of that. It only measures (in theory) your ability to read: Not write, and not speak, and that's the true mark of communication. This is basically a reflection of how Japanese learn English their wholes lives, and also a reflection of how awful they are at it.

I'm curious as to why u don't speak japanese around your son.

Maybe he lives in Japan, in which case the kid will be fluent in Japanese anyway. If English is spoken at home he'll be bi-lingual.

Yeah, maybe.
That's it 100%, actually. My kid is surrounded by Japanese almost all the time. His English is crap now. He only knows what I make him say. I ignore him otherwise.

[dcharlie]

This is basically a reflection of how Japanese learn English their wholes lives, and also a reflection of how awful they are at it.

the wife was telling me about her experience working at McDonalds in her youth. Back then they had a set script of what to say to the customers in English "Welcome to McDonalds!" "Have a nice day!" etc. I assume to get that 'Mericana feel.

She was constantly chastized for saying her English lines with her fluent English and was ordered to say her lines with a fake Japanese twang.

"habu a naiiisu deee!"

needless to say she found it so absurd that she went and worked part time at somewhere with fewer dumb rules

smh@japan

[GaijinPunch]

needless to say she found it so absurd that she went and worked part time at somewhere with fewer dumb rules
smh@japan

Which country did she go to?

[dcharlie]

Which country did she go to?

lol... i was going to comment on the "fewer dumb rules" and that it's impossible to NOT have dumbness in Japan... but ironically around the same time she moved to Australia

[Skykid]

Yeah, maybe.
That's it 100%, actually. My kid is surrounded by Japanese almost all the time. His English is crap now. He only knows what I make him say. I ignore him otherwise.

LOL

Doesn't your wife speak English? You should only have english spoken in the home - that will make him a lot more effective bilingually.

[GaijinPunch]

You should only have english spoken in the home - that will make him a lot more effective bilingually.

No she doesn't, and not necessarily. She can, but it's not good enough that she should be speaking it to him.

[burgerkingdiamond]

I don't have the drive to learn kanji, but I'm learning hirigana. I know that to be literate in japanese you need kanji. How useful is hirigana? Is there any use for hirigana on its own?

[Skykid]

You should only have english spoken in the home - that will make him a lot more effective bilingually.

No she doesn't, and not necessarily. She can, but it's not good enough that she should be speaking it to him.

Ha ha, ok. I'm glad I don't need to think about kids yet.

Unless my girlfriend is nagging me about them.

[ryu]

I don't have the drive to learn kanji, but I'm learning hirigana. I know that to be literate in japanese you need kanji. How useful is hirigana? Is there any use for hirigana on its own?

reading children's books maybe ...

media directed at younger audiences often have something called furigana. that's the hiragana how a kanji is supposed to be read on top of the kanji.

but really, if you're going to learn hundreds of words you might as well go for their associated kanjis (and really learning the language, for that matter). generally i would recommend at least taking a japanese I course to get started with the very basics of grammar and stuff

also, it's hiragana btw

[burgerkingdiamond]

I don't have the drive to learn kanji, but I'm learning hirigana. I know that to be literate in japanese you need kanji. How useful is hirigana? Is there any use for hirigana on its own?

reading children's books maybe ...

media directed at younger audiences often have something called furigana. that's the hiragana how a kanji is supposed to be read on top of the kanji.

but really, if you're going to learn hundreds of words you might as well go for their associated kanjis (and really learning the language, for that matter). generally i would recommend at least taking a japanese I course to get started with the very basics of grammar and stuff

also, it's hiragana btw

Ok. I'm doing a self learning program that so far seems to be ok, but its doesn't really teach writing. Just listening and speaking. In this regard its pretty good. Japanese sounds are easy for a native english speaker. I'm learning the hiragana just on my own because its pretty easy. The japanese writing system seems so convoluted from what I've read that I'm afraid to even attempt it.

[ryu]

yeah writing is something different i think. personally i'm only trying to get into being able to read japanese for the time being.

memorizing kanjis to write must be really time consuming, and i doubt it would be any good doing this without at least the knowledge to write full-fledged sentences on your own. like you'd just forget them over time anyways if you won't use them somewhat actively.

i remember back in the jap. I course i attended to, my then fellow students were constantly complaining on how they could read every hiragana but couldn't remember any to write to save their lifes.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

Just got my results. I just knew that I didn't pass from the envelope. Last test's results came in one big envelope that had a certificate. This time I got a small envelope with just 2 pieces of paper. I failed by 5 points but I don't feel like I should have passed anyways.

Score breakdown JLPT1:

Language Knowledge: 37/60
Reading: 23/60
Listening: 35/60
Total: 95/180 (100 is a passing score)

[kyuzo]

Finally got a chance to read through this thread

Too bad you guys both got so close on the N1...

For the record: the best J/E dictionary in software form I've seen is Microsoft Bookshelf Basic 3. And I hate most of what Microsoft does. It's really good though... it's a Kodansha dictionary.

Did you specifically mean "software for download"? In terms of "available digitally" you could find the kenkyuusha big J/E in some of the electronic dictionaries when I last looked at those, which is head and shoulders above any other dictionary that I know of, at least for anything remotely literary (or is bookshelf just that awesome? I've never seen it)

As for child rearing, all the things that I've read seem to agree that the most important thing is having a specific language associated with each parent, but that the actual language you speak "as a family" can be a lot more flexible. We've been pretty consistent with that (I speak Dutch to the baby, my wife speaks Japanese to the baby, my wife and I alternate speaking English and Japanese every day) Our daughter's only 14 months old right now, so she's not a very good data point, but I have high hopes for trilingual

Did you guys care about the "one language per parent" thing much at all? What are you speaking with your wives? (and does it change when the kid's around?)

I'm curious if I'll be able to leverage speaking all three and my wife not knowing Dutch... There has to be some way I can use that to my advantage

[rancor]

I'm reading this thread intently because I'm in the exact same boat. My boy is only 10 months old now, so he's only making ba-ba-ba-ba-ba and fart sounds but I suppose speech isn't far off. I'm originally from Texas and a lot of my friends were Mexicans whose parents only spoke Spanish at home. During school or outside of the house the kids all speak fluent English. I suppose I'm trying to go with that approach because that's what I've seen work firsthand. My kid stays with his grandmother (Japanese) sometimes and she only speaks Japanese. I only speak English to him, and my wife only speaks Japanese to him. When my wife and I talk it's this weird hybrid of English/Japanese.. We use whichever best expresses what we want to say. Probably not best for the kid, so I think we should stop that.

[burgerkingdiamond]

So I'm very early in my Japanese study and the numbering is confusing me. Theres the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 .... and then there and then there are ending used for counting, like in English 1st, 2nd, 3rd.... It seems like the endings change based on what you're numbering. Like a different ending for people, inanimate objects, animals and it's confusing me. Can anybody clue me in?

[rancor]

Don't forget the endings based on the shape of the object as well.. -mai for flat objects (paper, etc.), -hon for long objects (pencils, chopsticks). It's ridiculous. Just gotta remember it.

[RNGmaster]

I don't have the drive to learn kanji, but I'm learning hiragana. I know that to be literate in japanese you need kanji. How useful is hiragana? Is there any use for hirigana on its own?

You need to use kana at the end of kanji for verbs and adjectives to show what tense or form the verb/adjective is (these are called okurigana). Kana are also necessary for particles (like wa, ga, o, no, ni, de, kara, mama, etc.) and some common verbs and words like iru and tsumori (I've never seen anyone write those in kanji).

Technically, you can get by with only kana, but you really need to know kanji. Once you stop looking at them as a series of arcane symbols, and you understand the logic and the radical system, it's actually quite intuitive and easy to learn new kanji. They're not as hard as they look - kind of like a good bullet hell, huh? - and they actually work very similar to word roots in English.

Free tip: always pay attention to long sounds, small tsu's, and other pronunciation matters. Japanese is a very finicky language in terms of pronunciation, and using one letter wrong could totally change the meaning of the word. Thankfully, everything is written as pronounced, so the spelling is much more rational than English spelling.

[GaijinPunch]

yeah writing is something different i think. personally i'm only trying to get into being able to read japanese for the time being.

memorizing kanjis to write must be really time consuming, and i doubt it would be any good doing this without at least the knowledge to write full-fledged sentences on your own. like you'd just forget them over time anyways if you won't use them somewhat actively.

i remember back in the jap. I course i attended to, my then fellow students were constantly complaining on how they could read every hiragana but couldn't remember any to write to save their lifes.

Nice score, UFO.

Did you specifically mean "software for download"? In terms of "available digitally" you could find the kenkyuusha big J/E in some of the electronic dictionaries when I last looked at those, which is head and shoulders above any other dictionary that I know of, at least for anything remotely literary (or is bookshelf just that awesome? I've never seen it)

No, it's not for download. It's a product they sell (about 8000 yen?) or used to anyway. There are OEM versions floating about. Not sure exactly what it came to. If you look on YJ, there are really cheap copies. 300 yen, as it were. Now, something since then may have come out that's better, but on Linux I'm using Kiten and it simply does not compare.

As for child rearing, all the things that I've read seem to agree that the most important thing is having a specific language associated with each parent, but that the actual language you speak "as a family" can be a lot more flexible. We've been pretty consistent with that (I speak Dutch to the baby, my wife speaks Japanese to the baby, my wife and I alternate speaking English and Japanese every day) Our daughter's only 14 months old right now, so she's not a very good data point, but I have high hopes for trilingual

I think you're in for an uphill battle w/ Dutch. But, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. I have a friend in a similar situation. The main kicker is that he doesn't speak Japanese and she doesn't speak German (and they live in an English speaking country... now New Zealand so those kids are going to be fucking confused). He says his oldest's German is pretty shit now, at age 6.

[burgerkingdiamond]

Don't forget the endings based on the shape of the object as well.. -mai for flat objects (paper, etc.), -hon for long objects (pencils, chopsticks). It's ridiculous. Just gotta remember it.

Ok so the "Japanese grammar is batshit hard" has started to come into play. Nice... I can't hold back my excitement :_(

[SamIAm]

Weighing in on a couple of conversation points:

First, for aspiring Japanese learners, it's sad but true that you probably won't benefit much from actually studying how to write kanji. For most gaijin, there is simply no occasion to really use it, so as the saying goes, you lose it. I write my address about once a month, and that's it.

Sure, learning the writing in the beginning will give you a better foundation. However, you have to be the hardest of the hardcore to learn how to write like a Japanese adult. The cruel irony is that if you want to be able to communicate verbally on a high level, you're still pretty much going to need to know how to read like an adult so you can develop your vocabulary. I say learn how to write well enough that you can write a kanji quickly and well if you are looking at a print of it at the same time.


Second, about biligualism in the house. I live in Japan, where I've dated one half-Japanese half-Kiwi girl, plus I actually teach English to an 18 year-old half-American girl. Both were raised here in Japan, and both spoke only English at home with both of their parents until elementary school. They dropped off in their English production ability after that, but they could always understand most of what's said to them. How is their English now? Well, the half-Kiwi girl studied hard in high school and has a good relationship with her Kiwi mother, so her writing and speaking are at about the level of an American junior high school student. The half-American girl, on the other hand, never liked school and doesn't communicate so well with her American dad, so she is actually worse off than a typical 6-year old American.

Make no mistake, learning both Japanese and English is hard, hard, hard, for anyone regardless of when they start. It takes a tremendous amount of work to get both languages down, and the advantages that kids have naturally in a bilingual house aren't enough to make it easy or painless. The only people I know who are truly 100% bilingual spent lots of time attending school in both of their parents' countries from a young age. Everyone else understands house-hold language well enough, and that's all. Those two girls I mentioned have 8 siblings between them, and they are all in roughly the same position.

[RNGmaster]

...it's sad but true that you probably won't benefit much from actually studying how to write kanji. For most gaijin, there is simply no occasion to really use it, so as the saying goes, you lose it.

But it looks really freakin' impressive to any bystander who's out of the loop - kind of like a competent play of a CAVE game.

[ryu]

Nice score, UFO.

I have absolutely no idea what you meant to say with that. :|

[GaijinPunch]

Nice score, UFO.

I have absolutely no idea what you meant to say with that.

Exactly what it says.

Just got my results.

Nice Score, UFO

[GaijinPunch]

For most gaijin, there is simply no occasion to really use it, so as the saying goes, you lose it.

Same w/ Japanese, really. They will of course have more situations to write, but it is becoming few and far between for them as well. The upside to learning to write them is they will stick in your head much better.

[ryu]

Exactly what it says.

Just got my results.

Nice Score, UFO

haha, oh. you had quoted my post before that, that's why i was confused about it.