Japanese language

[Draekon]

After 4 months I can read - not fast - hiragana and katakana, I know well almost 50 kanji and so-so other 100. I have a new motivation to go on, I love the kanji characters, the various ways to read them. But is true that without 2-3 hours daily is not possible to learn Japanese.

Lesson number 5

Colors:
White 白 しろ (shiro)
Black 黒 くろ (kuro)
Red 赤 あか (aka)
Yellow 黄色 きいろ (kiiro)
Green 緑 みどり (midori)
Blue 青 あお (ao)
For Kuroko no basket fans:
Purple 紫 むらさき (murasaki)
And for the optimistic me:
Pink ピンク (pinku) or 桃色 ももいろ (momoiro, where momo is peach and iro is colour, so a pink like peach colour)
By adding colour (色 いろ, iro) to a thing you can say a colour of the thing, that you don't know how to say. This is useful.
As Naruto fan, words connected with the NV are easy to remember:
Leaf 葉 は (ha)
Wind 風 かぜ (kaze)
Water 水 みず( mizu)
Fire 火 ほ(ho) and so on.

I am happy I received today the Genki books and I will start tomorow to learn from the first one.
Wish me luck ^^

This is really awesome and admirable. Keep up the good work. I started studying a new language myself recently (French) and I'm really enjoying it so far

 

[Michelle]

おはよう！
After some time I figured that some of the pile of infos can be put in an uderstable place. But it will take much time to read a manga and much much time to speak in japanese. I still am at the top of the iceberg..
Helpful were some of the youtube lessons, and I loved two channels, one is Japanese Ammo with Misa, a great teacher with a sweet voice and another one is Learning Kanji, with other teaching style and easy to remember.
Great help is manga raw. After I bought one of the latest OP volumes in japanese I understood how nice is to read and catch the meaning in japanese
fortunately there is a manga raw site, and also some news applications with furigana and word explatations.
back to work
仕事は人生です。素晴らしいですね?

 

[Michelle]

Let's talk about reading raw manga. I already knew that in 2 years of learning someone can read and understand a manga and seems to be true. Any shounen/shoujo manga has furigana which means the small kana atop or in the right side of kanji to know how to read them and the text it's full with many words wrote directly in kana. This is for kids who didn't learn all kanji yet and fortunately it's a big help for the japanese learners.
Some sentences meanings are not easy to understand even after I search the unknown words in the dictionary (i randomly choose one from applications and it's a real help it's named Takoboto and it has kanji and words flashcards). But it doesn't translate an entire sentence so I google translate from Japanese to English.

My question for Japanese memebers is: has Google translate enough accuracy? or there is a better dictionary to translate a full sentence? I'm asking this because if I'm trying to translate in Romanian from Japanese the meaning is messed up.
Also Google translate doesn't give any explanations or analysis to the translated text.

 

[Alice in Noodleland]

Google Translate is tricky to use. I think Every language has its own grammatical rule and that's where Google translate fails.

Just continue to watch the YouTube videos and dictionaries much more reliable Imo.

 

[Michelle]

Google Translate is tricky to use. I think Every language has its own grammatical rule and that's where Google translate fails.

Just continue to watch the YouTube videos and dictionaries much more reliable Imo.

Google translate is good at grammar rules but fails at expressions and irregularities of a language. It is a nice helper when you have no idea of anything and gives you at least the subject of the sentece lol
I am watching and listening videos, sometimes I rewatch and so on. Thanks for the advice

 

[Finalbeta]

After i finished the english part on Duolingo I discovered a new interesting "class" which is, guess... you are right! Japanese for english speakers. Not like I am a good english speaker but I write and read at a decent level (69 if I have to trust Duolingo but i don't lol).
So full of confidence I started the Japanese lessons. From the very beggining I understood that reading and answering is not enough so I took a notebook (a green one ^^) and some writing instruments to write the hiragana that I see on Duolingo. Google helped me with some "how to draw hiragana characters" so now I can read - kind of- what is write in hiragana. Katakana is the same. Easy deal until now.

After a while Duolingo became nasty and started to add some kanji in the lessons.
Before my enthusiasm drowns Google mate provided me a site including kanji with full and complete (too complete ) explanations.

For the Japanese on this site and members who can speak Japanese after learning it:
how many years will take me to learn Japanese at the level I am at english?
How much time I need daily for practice?
And one more question: how can i listen the language except anime?

About speaking I have no hope yet but if I will have time our University has Japanese lessons for everyone. I wish to start these lessons when I have some knowledge

ありがとうございます。

It might take forever if you want to reach the hightest level xd not even Japaneases themselves can but if you want to learn the basics even a few months if you are determined

 

[Michelle]

One of Basho’s famous haiku poems

found it online in a site with 10 haiku of Basho
<Japanese>
古池や　蛙飛び込む　水の音
Furuike ya/ Kawazu tobikomu/ Mizu no oto
<English>
To an old pond
A frog leaps in.
And the sound of the water.

Do you agree with the translation?

How hard it is to translate a haiku? Nvm... the question it's dumb... it's quite impossible

 

[Konno]

Japanese would be a very important language to learn or to least get the basics.
However, in my opinion Chinese might be the next language I pay attention to and try learning.
After watching anime, you start to hear the same words here and there and learn their meaning. I like when that happens. This way I learned a few Japanese words already.

 

[Namahage]

If you start to recognise the grammar points and sentence structure, which you will after studying Japanese for a bit you can easily use grammar guides on the internet with an online dictionary to source what the raw manga is saying for example. Then with anime just watch through animelon and but furigana subs on and you can use that as well.

I find google translate gets the point across with some of the Japanese if you're just trying to say a small sentence etc, but the problem with Japanese is it has several ways of saying something that would be said in one way in English. For example "When" and "If" translates as ば、たら、と、とき、なら and google can easily mistaken which one it is therefore if translating English to Japanese it can miss the point completely.

 

[Michelle]

Thank you @Namahage , i didn't know there it's furnigana sub I will search for it!
About translating from english to japanese I have still a long way to go ^^

 

[Namahage]

Thank you @Namahage , i didn't know there it's furnigana sub I will search for it!
About translating from english to japanese I have still a long way to go ^^

Yeah it has an option where it does not use kanji but just hiragana and katakana which can be pretty useful when starting off.

 

[MadieV]

After i finished the english part on Duolingo I discovered a new interesting "class" which is, guess... you are right! Japanese for english speakers. Not like I am a good english speaker but I write and read at a decent level (69 if I have to trust Duolingo but i don't lol).
So full of confidence I started the Japanese lessons. From the very beggining I understood that reading and answering is not enough so I took a notebook (a green one ^^) and some writing instruments to write the hiragana that I see on Duolingo. Google helped me with some "how to draw hiragana characters" so now I can read - kind of- what is write in hiragana. Katakana is the same. Easy deal until now.

After a while Duolingo became nasty and started to add some kanji in the lessons.
Before my enthusiasm drowns Google mate provided me a site including kanji with full and complete (too complete ) explanations.

For the Japanese on this site and members who can speak Japanese after learning it:
how many years will take me to learn Japanese at the level I am at english?
How much time I need daily for practice?
And one more question: how can i listen the language except anime?

About speaking I have no hope yet but if I will have time our University has Japanese lessons for everyone. I wish to start these lessons when I have some knowledge

ありがとうございます。

I studied Japanese for 2 years and I still consider myself to be on a basic level.

Hiragana and Katakana are easy to master. Kanji on the other hand, is a real pain.Every character has a different meaning depending on the Kanji/hiragana that is right beside them. The meaning has very little logic to it so you should get ready to put your memory to some real work.

I used Duolingo for a while during my free time but if you want to really learn, I recommend you get the Genki books.

I would say, 5 years sounds reasonable for someone to be somewhat fluent in Japanese.

 

[Michelle]

Found it online and thought it can be useful
Common Honorifics

They are placed after the name and are very important

San - さん - used for Mr., Mrs., Ms., always in hiragana. San implies familiarity
It can be added at a characteristic of a person: Sushiya San = Mr. Sushi Shop, Honya San = Mr. Bookseller, Gaijin San = Mr. Foreigner
Also it can be added at a company name, or at a food name (for a fish that will be used for cooking we can say Sakana-San)

Kun - 君 - usually used for males, in informal language. Used by superiors to inferiors, males of the same age or status to each others and male children.
In business settings junior women may also be addressed as kun by superiors. Schoolteachers typically address male students using kun, while female students are addressed as san or chan.

Chan - ちゃん - is a form of san used to refer to children and female family members, close friends and lovers. Chan is sometimes applied to male children if the name does not fit with the kun suffix. A young woman named Maki might call herself Maki-chan rather than using a first person pronoun like watashi. Chan is also used for pets and animals.

Senpai and kōhai
Senpai (先輩) is used by students to refer to or address senior students in an academic or other learning environment, or in athletics and sports clubs, and also in business settings to refer to those in more senior positions.
Kōhai (後輩) is the reverse of this. It is used to refer to or address juniors.

Sensei - 先生 - is used to refer to or address teachers, doctors, lawyers, politicians, or other authority figures. It is also used to show respect to someone who has achieved a certain level of mastery in some skill. It is used by fans of novelists, musicians, and artists.

Sama - 様 - is the formal version of san. It's used in addressing persons higher in rank than oneself, and in commercial and business settings to address and refer to customers. It also forms parts of set phrases such as o-kyaku-sama(customer) or o-machidō-sama ("I am sorry to keep you waiting"). Sama is also occasionally used about oneself, as in the arrogant male pronoun ore-sama, "my esteemed self", meaning "I". However, this is not common outside fiction or humour.

There are also other ways to adress to someone respectfully in Japanese, including the job names ended in ka which means "expert", such as mangaka.

 

[Michelle]

今日 は 私 にとって ラッキーな 日 です 。
Today is my lucky day.