Japanese Language Discussion

[GaijinPunch]

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

Ah, damn -- hit the wrong quote button.
You're right to be confused. I'm the dipshit.

[kyuzo]

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.

Yeah, it definitely seems like it'll be hard, especially to get to a level of maybe being able to move to Japan for the kids' high school and or college years (which we're at least considering, but who knows). I do think that community can help a lot with this stuff though, which I guess might be easier for me than it is for you guys. Not sure what it's like actually being settled in for a while in Japan, but definitely the year that I lived there going to school, I had only a handful of friends that spoke any English at all, and they mostly lived an hour away... We're pretty fortunate here in that there are two other Japanese families in our apt complex with babies of approx the same age (who will most likely live here for 3+ more years), my wife has a Japanese baby group that she spends time with at least once a week, and we have another group of mostly white guys married to Japanese wives through former co-workers and just general friends that we see pretty regularly. Or were the girls you speak of in similar situations?

On that note, yeah, I'm probably boned for teaching her Dutch, since it's just me and my parents, but oh well, we'll just have to try (oh, and there's also probably no saturdays in Dutch school in her future, heh)

[rancor]

..especially to get to a level of maybe being able to move to Japan for the kids' high school and or college years (which we're at least considering, but who knows).

I'm doing exactly opposite. My kid will be going to pre-school and elementary school here but we're gonna GTFO before junior high, when all individuality and creative thoughts are collectively squashed out of their young minds.
I've seen secondary Japanese education in action first hand, and there is nothing good about it. Their education system is 50 years behind what we're doing in the west. Japanese university is a joke.

[rancor]

..especially to get to a level of maybe being able to move to Japan for the kids' high school and or college years (which we're at least considering, but who knows).

I'm doing exactly opposite. Primary / elementary education in Japan is awesome and my kid will be attending - but we're gonna GTFO before he hits junior high. This marks the point when all individuality and creative thoughts begin to be collectively squashed out of their young minds in preparation for being a submissive office drone / salary man.
I've seen secondary Japanese education in action first hand, and there is nothing good about it. Their education system is 50 years behind what we're doing in the west. Japanese university is a joke.

[kyuzo]

Japanese university is a joke.

Yeah I guess I wasn't too impressed with the year I was studying abroad either. I was supposed to do a CS class/research thing but ended up taking a buncha Jap lit classes just because the CS classes were stupid... But then again the grad students I knew were all pretty smart (and decently educated), not sure how that happened...

I probably should've left that sentence at high school in the sense that I think there might actually be a sweet spot with western education (i.e. understand what is going on) can provide a decent basis for a few years of japanese high school or so (i.e. understand what they are now telling you to memorize) Mostly I'd like to find a way to give them some meaningful change of scenery around high school but I think that ended up working out pretty well for me, but it might just not be practical...

[NTSC-J]

Results from the July N1 came back. Epic fail.

Language Knowledge: 42/60
Reading: 24/60
Listening: 34/60

Total: 98/180

2 points away from a pass. UFO and GP, I feel your pain. Weird how we all got very similar scores, especially with the reading.

[xbl0x180]

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...

A bit off subject, but the "Spanish" they speak is a bastardised version with its own regionalities and spanglish words thrown in. They don't even bother (or know) to use the formal conjugations when addressing parents, adults, and other people of respect (hence, they unintentionally sound disrespectful). When I emigrated into the U.S. from Latin America, I thought it was the most godawful language I've ever heard.

Addendum: if there was an analogy to represent this phenomena it would be "ebonics." The Spanish Mexicans speak in the U.S. is akin to ebonics.

[GaijinPunch]

Results from the July N1 came back. Epic fail.

Language Knowledge: 42/60
Reading: 24/60
Listening: 34/60

Total: 98/180

2 points away from a pass. UFO and GP, I feel your pain. Weird how we all got very similar scores, especially with the reading.

I'm going to take it again in December... once again, "naked". I'm going to try a trick this time w/ the reading part. I will work backwards. Since it's a bell curve, you need to assume the last 10% is going to have the best return, as most people will just take a stab at those.

[NTSC-J]

It's funny, I was thinking the same thing. A number of people don't seem to finish in time, which makes me wonder what they're doing. I ended up finishing with like 20 minutes to spare, so my strategy next time will be to slow things down a bit. Also I'm going to trust my instincts more. One vocab question I mulled over for a while, not feeling right about my choice and changing it at the last minute...to the wrong answer. What a boob.

Frustrating to be so close, but I don't really want to pass it by a point anyways.

We both got 24/60 on reading which seems weak, but I dunno, you're a strong reader and I feel like I'm at least half-way decent...what gives?

I really hate standardized testing.

[GaijinPunch]

Well, I didn't study last time, so I wasn't in the right frame of mind. That slowed me down, and for the last 5 or so questions I had to take uneducated guesses. I finished, but only got to read the last few passages once. That killed me. I'm sure I'll get 99 again.

[RNGmaster]

What do you guys think about the proposals to limit the use of kanji? Is it entirely practical, or is there too much risk of confusing homonyms?

I personally think the rationale for keeping the kanji system is to make the language challenging to foreign learners - let's face it, without the clusterfuck of an orthography, Japanese is a relatively grammatically simple language.

[rancor]

Over the years I've learned that Japanese is not a language fit for the modern world. There - I said it.

[xbl0x180]

What do you guys think about the proposals to limit the use of kanji? Is it entirely practical, or is there too much risk of confusing homonyms?

I personally think the rationale for keeping the kanji system is to make the language challenging to foreign learners - let's face it, without the clusterfuck of an orthography, Japanese is a relatively grammatically simple language.

I think it's very impractical because enacting such a massive change sounds costly and bothersome. In general, native speakers most likely do not see a problem with their language, so they will also resist changing it to accomodate foreigners.

[GaijinPunch]

The kanji is necessary. No question about it. Print would take up too much space and be too hard to read w/ just hiragana. The kanji really doesn't make the language difficult for anyone other than whites... it's the goofy culture behind the language which is the real challenge. You'll realize then when you're fully emerged in crazy.

[greg]

I came across this podcast a year or so ago, but this is my first time really spending time listening to this.
http://learnjapanesepod.com/
If you're a casual studier like myself, this is a great tool. I've learned some interesting stuff, and I'm at an intermediate/advanced level.

[GaijinPunch]

2010: 99/180
2011: 100/180

Got the pass, but it didn't feel so satisfying.

[adversity1]

grats man!!!

[NTSC-J]

Got my results back:



Vocab/Grammar: 52/60
Reading: 42/60
Listening: 30/60
Total: 124/180

Thought I failed for sure with the listening...but committing first-degree murder on the vocab sealed the deal.

Feels good, man.

2010: 99/180
2011: 100/180

Got the pass, but it didn't feel so satisfying.

Cutting it a little fine there! Good work.

[adversity1]

are you guys taking level 1 or 2 or what?

[NTSC-J]

Oh, yea. It was N1.

[shmuppyLove]

[GaijinPunch]

Yeah, N1. You crushed me on the vocab part... I did about the same on the listening (only 36/60 which is still fucking crap for someone that lives in Japan as it's the easiest part).

Vocab/Grammarz: 40/60
Reading 24/60 (yikes!)
Listening: 36/60

Again, not really satisfied w/ my score, but oh, well. I'll probably continue to take it every December for shits & giggles. Might actually put more effort into it one year... like take a watch so I don't leave 5 blank in the reading part. But, I actually read Japanese a decent amount. An amount to get at least 30 on that shit.

Oh, and I think my theory worked... I did the last 5 reading questions FIRST! Overall, I found it much more challenging than the previous year, but then again, the previous year my life wasn't so fucking complex.

[NTSC-J]

Yeah, N1. You crushed me on the vocab part...

You also went in raw without any preparation. I studied 3 hours a day for a year, with most of that time spent on vocabulary. When I heard that they increased the vocab load from 10,000 from the old 1kyuu to 18,000 for the N1 I knew I had to hit it hard.

The reading is still kind of a jackoff since a lot of the answers seem like it could be one or the other. On practice tests sometimes I do really well, other times I'm not so lucky. This time I got lucky.

Listening is always hard for me and I thought this time was a lot harder than the last one. At one point during the rapid-fire short passages I got completely distracted and started to think about the wonders of the universe and all that. I thought for sure that I got under the 33% mark and failed the whole thing because of that, but I got lucky again.

Now to actually learn how to communicate in this goofy language!

[GaijinPunch]

Yeah, N1. You crushed me on the vocab part...

You also went in raw without any preparation. I studied 3 hours a day for a year, with most of that time spent on vocabulary. When I heard that they increased the vocab load from 10,000 from the old 1kyuu to 18,000 for the N1 I knew I had to hit it hard.

Well god damn. I didn't know that. Was that since they went from L1 to N1? There were definitely some fucked up words on that thing.

The reading is still kind of a jackoff since a lot of the answers seem like it could be one or the other. On practice tests sometimes I do really well, other times I'm not so lucky. This time I got lucky.

Yes -- definitely 50/50 on heaps of them. That's the part where even Japanese people could fuck it up.

Now to actually learn how to communicate in this goofy language!

Oh, wow -- you're so cute. You think people actually communicate here?

[rancor]

Oh, wow -- you're so cute. You think people actually communicate here?

Exactly - it's like you said in an earlier thread about ordering pizza - just follow the script.

[Eaglet]

Wow. Congrats guys.
A year ago i was kind of thinking of moving to Japan, study, do the tests etc. so i know in some small way the performance you had to put on to pass these tests.
Enjoy the sweet smell of victory!

[scrilla4rella]

Congrats guys. It must feel good get that N1 especially after they supposedly upped the difficulty.

[GaijinPunch]

Congrats guys. It must feel good get that N1 especially after they supposedly upped the difficulty.

Well, not good enough to 69 each other, but yeah... better than a loss. Especially last years less than 1 percentage point fist fuck.

[GaijinPunch]

Didn't they say the N-series will be more "aptitude based", meaning you can't cram for them? Going to cry foul on that one.

[NTSC-J]

Yea, they arent releasing any vocab, kanji, or grammar lists for this in the hopes that it will be harder to cram for and a better aptitude test. Personally, I crammed and it paid off. Kind of hard to cram for reading, but its always been like that. Just read a lot of boring crap for extended periods of time before the test and you should be ready for whatever snoozers they throw at you.

Regarding the 18,000 vocab number: I read this in the introduction to the new Kanzen Master vocab book and havent seen it mentioned anywhere else. They make the best books and seem to know what theyre doing, so I`ll take their word for it.