Language Course 1

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Postby Guest » 2004-12-21, 21:38

projetdefleur wrote:はじめまして!私のなまえはイエンです。私のしゅっしんはグリーンスボロしです。グリーンスボロしはノロスケロライナしゅうにです.大学生です;にねん生です。私のせんこうはすうがくとげんごがくです。私のしゅみはテレビーゲエムとがいこくご。

There it is again... hopefully everything is fixed, and I used the kanji that I know. let me know if it's correct :)


All Japanese can understand your sentences, but there's still room to improve.


correct expression:
はじめまして!私の名前はイエンです。私のしゅっしんはグリーンスボロ市です。グリーンスボロ市はノースカロライナにあります。大学二年生です。私のせんこうはすうがくとげんごがくです。私のしゅみはテレビゲームとがいこくごです。


native expression:
はじめまして! 僕の名前はイエンです。アメリカのノースカロライナ州グリーンズボロ市出身の大学2年生です。専攻は数学と言語学で、趣味はテレビゲームと外国語の勉強です。

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Car
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Postby Car » 2004-12-22, 20:34

nietoperz wrote:I can recommend the series "Situational Functional Japanese", because the Japanese used in these books sounds quite natural, plus they don't start with the "this is a book"-crap. On the other hand, they are rather student-life-oriented, so some of the situations might not be usable for tourist situations... Another good book is "Japanese for everyone" which is more business/worklife-oriented, but also does a thorough introduction of the writing systems.


Are there other good books in English or German?
Please correct my mistakes!

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Postby Rounin » 2004-12-23, 0:10

Did I mention Genki I and II earlier? They're very good books, in English. A kanji book called "Kanji ABC" is available in both English and German.

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Kotoshimo yoroshikune.

Postby kei » 2005-01-10, 14:40

新年明けましておめでとうございます。 :partyhat:
遅くなってしまって・・・ちょっと恥ずかしいですが。 :oops:

ところで、皆さんの今年も抱負(ほうふ)は何ですか?
私は、勉強して少しでも英語が上達できればと思っています。
これを英語で書けるぐらいにね。 :wink:

日本語を勉強している皆さんの抱負(ほうふ)は、何ですか?

今年もよろしくお願いします。
いい年でありますように。

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Postby Car » 2005-01-10, 17:23

Sorry for the late reply.

Thanks for the recommendations Rounin, I'll have a look at them soon.
Please correct my mistakes!

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Postby Stan » 2005-01-10, 21:32

Hello I have a question, do you think Chinese or Japanese is more difficult? Is Japanese the easier one?
if I was President,
I'd get elected on Friday
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Re: Kotoshimo yoroshikune.

Postby Kubi » 2005-01-11, 7:47

kei wrote:新年明けましておめでとうございます。 :partyhat:

謹賀新年。

ところで、皆さんの今年も抱負(ほうふ)は何ですか?

私は普通に抱負を何週間後で忘れますから、今年の抱負は、抱負がしないのでした。 :wink:
Je défendrai mes opinions jusqu'à ma mort, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez défendre les vôtres. - Voltaire

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Postby Rounin » 2005-01-15, 0:01

That depends. Japanese probably has the more complex grammar and writing system, whereas Chinese has a lot more hànzì signs and more complex tones. It all depends on what you find difficult.

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Postby Axystos » 2005-01-18, 10:21

I’m having some problems with the on’yomi and the kun’yomi of Japanese kanji. I read the wiki site on this subject and they say that, basically, on’yomi is used for kanji that are part of two or more kanji that make one word and kun’yomi is used for kanji that appear on it’s own (not regarding exceptions).

Now my question is: if I’d want to learn the Japanese word for ‘hand’ (you know, the thing with the fingers), my dictionary tells me the kanji is 手, the on’yomi is ‘shu’ and the kun’yomi is ‘te’. According to the paragraph above, this kanji alone should be ‘te’. Would you advise to learn the translation of ‘hand’ (i.e. 手 + pronunciation ‘te’) or both readings of 手 + the fact that ‘te’ means hand?

Other example: the word ‘country’. Kanji: 国, on’yomi is koku, kun’yomi is kuni. Should I learn only ‘kuni’ for this kanji, or both readings? Personally, I would guess that learning only the kun’yomi would suffice, if I want to know the translation of ‘country’. And since on’yomi is used in kanji combinations, I’d encounter them some other time, and I’d learn them when that time comes.

What do you think?

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Postby Kubi » 2005-01-18, 11:54

Axystos wrote:And since on’yomi is used in kanji combinations, I’d encounter them some other time, and I’d learn them when that time comes.

I think this is the essential point in your question. If you learn the on'yomi when they appear in a jukugo, that's fine, and you can stick with the kun'yomi for the isolated kanji. But if you want to be able to pronounce new jukugo correctly based on your knowledge of the kanji they're composed of, you'll need to learn the on'yomi together with the isolated kanji.
In general the first approach will be sufficient, also because some kanji can have quite a number of different on'yomi so that you'll have to learn them seperately for every jukugo anyway.
Je défendrai mes opinions jusqu'à ma mort, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez défendre les vôtres. - Voltaire

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Postby BobMaster0 » 2005-01-18, 14:44

I would learn by readings without question. I think that if you're going to learn kanji then there's no reason not to learn all the readings in current use for each character. Also, to take your example, just knowing "kuni" for country is not enough. Much of the time this character occurs in compounds as "koku". Also, once you get to a certain point, there will be increasingly more times when you hear a new word and you are able to infer the meaning and attach two characters to it.
Now, it is true though that you'll have to learn a lot of compounds individually. You'll see it written a lot of places that the on yomi is used for compounds and the kun yomi for the individual word, but in many cases that doesn't accurately describe the situation. However, Japanese morphology (and when which reading is used) slowly begins to reveal and self after awhile, but for some characters it's difficult to know which reading to use without already knowing the compound in question. Then again, the majority of compounds are on-on compounds. The one's that will be confusing are the remainder, namely on-kun, kun-on, and kun-kun.

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Postby schalke81 » 2005-01-18, 15:25

Exactly, where the kanji for country is read as "kuni", koku is also necessary to learn, as for example , with the word "foreigners", the kanji are read as "gai-KOKU-jin"...therefor it is important to learn all the reading of each kanji.

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Postby Kubi » 2005-01-18, 15:31

Of course in the end you need to know all the readings. But Axystos says he'll learn the on'yomi when he encounters the jukugo. In that case, the first time he encounters a word like 外国人, he'll learn the readings "gai" for 外, "koku" for 国, and "jin" for 人. But when he learns only the kanji 国 on its own, he'd in this case be ok by learning only the reading "kuni", as that is the reading of this character when it stands on its own.
I don't think our opinions are that different, we're probably saying the same from different perspectives :)
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Postby Rounin » 2005-01-18, 15:39

If I had to pick one single change I wanted to see in the Japanese language, it would be the immediate and complete removal of the kunyomi system. One thing is using it in dictionaries to show the etymology of words and to distinguish homonyms, but to a foreign student of the language, at least, it just seems to introduce extra difficulty. It just seems to introduce such a level of irregularity and guesswork to the decoding of a Japanese sentence that it's not even worth the few benefits it has.

The Koreans, by the way, use Chinese ideographs only for writing Chinese words, and then only rarely. I think the Japanese could easily do away with the kunyomi readings (Except for name readings, of course - It wouldn't be nice to mangle people's names), and it would make the Japanese language magnitudes easier.

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Postby Kubi » 2005-01-18, 15:46

What do you mean by "removal of the kun'yomi system"? The kanji stand for Japanese words with that pronunciation. Abolishing all the kun'yomi would mean to abolish all the underlying words, and I can't imagine that's what you want...
Je défendrai mes opinions jusqu'à ma mort, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez défendre les vôtres. - Voltaire

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Postby Rounin » 2005-01-18, 16:05

In the same way removing a man's hat would mean removing the man?

Compare these three versions of "Today, I took a picture.":

今日は写真を撮った。

きょうは写真をとった。

きょう は 写真 を とった。

As you can see, there's no need to use kunyomi, as in example number one. We could also completely remove all kanji, writing Chinese-derived words with either Katakana or Hiragana:

きょうはシャシンをとった。

きょうはしゃしんをとった。

This would probably "not be a chess move", as one would say in Norway. :lol: But some common Chinese-derived words, for instance 拉麺, are already usually written in this manner.

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Postby BobMaster0 » 2005-01-19, 17:40

The problem with doing this is that it strips the words of their meaning. While it is true that the are many native Japanese words that not longer use the characters for them any more, I feel like changing words like 今日 to hiragana would be a step backwards. Furthermore, taking a kanji-derived word such as 写真 seems to me an even more radical change. The characters' individual meanings do so much that kana alone can't. I would argue that reading a mixed-script text is faster and much more effecient than trying to read anything written primarily with kana. Having those characters also makes it much easier to acquire new vocabulary.

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Postby Axystos » 2005-01-19, 22:07

After having read your messages, I have decided to learn the on'yomi when I encounter them in kanji combinations, and otherwise just the kun'yomi. I thank you all for your replies.

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Postby Kubi » 2005-01-20, 12:45

BobMaster0 wrote:I would argue that reading a mixed-script text is faster and much more effecient than trying to read anything written primarily with kana.

I second that. It's a real pain to try and read a completely hiragana-written text, I've done that, and it took me much longer than reading a "normal" one as long as I knew most kanji.
And Rounin, what you do in your examples, is NOT removing the kun'yomi, but remove the KANJI of the words read in kun'yomi. That's a difference!
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Postby Rounin » 2005-01-27, 12:54

That's exactly what I suggested. You're the one who got the idea that I wanted to remove the readings and not the signs.


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