@poke oyasuminasai right? yea, japanese dont use spaces asides from romaji right? =)

@Madcowe Usually no spaces, no, but you can insert them to make it more clear. In this case I would remove the spaces because I personally think of "oyasuminasai" more as a single expression, and not something that is separated.

@poke ok then, thanks =)

You're welcome :)

or

domoarigatogozaimashita? xD

here I would add some spaces ;)

and I'm not sure if past tense would be appropriate here

and it's arigato_u_ ;) (*sigh*, stupid parser..)

カナにすればいいのではないかと　→　「どうもありがとうございました」

but, well, that depends on what romaji system you use

I'm pretty new to stack exchange. I've been starring questions but don't see a way to get a list of all the questions I've starred. Can I not do that? :/

@sartak: Click your username at the top bar, then click favorites

@bdonlan: ah ha! thank you!

11 houirs ago? hitobito wa doko desu ka?

ちょと微妙ですね、その日本語は

o/

choto KK desu ne, sono nihongo wa

KK?

ノシ

読みはびみょうです

K = kanji I don't know (-:

Ah :D

uh oh, just hit 500 rep

@hippietrail the reading is びみょう

hai. ore mo a few hours ago

Stupid me, didn't even occur to me that your line was a romaji transliteration.

just trying illustrate my pathetic japanese level

how shall we celebrate?

BANZAI!

I see we've closed a dupe (our first?)

@rcjsuen 7th, I think. I'm not in the private beta, but you can search for closed:1

@MichaelMrozek I meant as a duplicate of another question.

Looks like there was japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/470 though

looks like we've actually closed 2 dupes

Looks like now we'll have a dupe on Meta. meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/105/…

I read kanji I don't know as 何々, annoys the hell out of my wife

I'd probably just say 〇〇

maru maru?

Yup.

Ooo, 104 rep, I'm halfway to become an "avid user".

Wonder if the site will slow down on the weekends...

lol at まるまる

might speed up

People in my class says 何々 though.

One thing I found really helpful today, my wife was watching some お笑い DVD's and I got her to turn the Japanese subtitles on. Really good reading/listening practice.

I'm not sure you'd call it practice, I suppose it's like you're reading along.

I'm trying to read Enders Game in Japanese, at best I can manage like one page per day, I need an hour at least per page and most of that time is spent clicking around on jisho.org trying to find kanji i don't know

I read regularly also but I don't bother looking up every word I don't know unless I encounter it multiple times.

I used to do that but now I have a 'rule'

If I know a word in English, then I should know it in Japanese

and I'm only just getting started reading so your vocab is probably a lot larger than mine

Well I'm only reading light novels so it's not exactly Ender's Game caliber. :)

I can read Chinese so that helps too ;)

re light novels, can you give some examples?

Right now I'm reading this ja.wikipedia.org/wiki緋弾のアリア

I don't think that link worked out...but you can copy/paste and google if it didn't.

I try and put all vocab into Anki, but I'm working on an SRS app that will be a little less painful to use

hmm? why do you find anki painful?

I'm lazy and undisciplined, so I might take three or four days off sometimes. With a deck as large as mine there's at least 500 due reviews at the end of that.

ahh... why don't you just tune the spacing?

Well if I wasn't a programmer I'd probably do something like that, but what I really want is a 'recovery mode' where the deck starts 'decaying' after a certain amount of time off.

or some variation, I'm experimenting with different ideas atm

I've got some other little tricks up my sleeve but on second thought I don't want to blow my idea load in a chatroom full of programmers who are interested in Japanese :P

hehe

Better start your patent application.

meh, ideas aren't worth much, and if you actually use Anki or other SRS tools, the pain points are staring you in the face

put those pain points together with the internet, and you have a spookily smart SRS system that knows exactly what content to recommend to you

I will shut up now

I should probably get acquainted with some sort of flashcard application as I intend to take the JLPT this year.

Anki is awesome, seriously

If you're going through Heisig for Kanji, you might be better off with RevTK, but for free-form flashcards (I have sentnces and vocab decks) Anki can't be beat.

not yet anyway :P

What level JLPT?

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out. I guess I'll probably just start filling them in with the words I encounter while reading.

It'll be my first time taking it, I'm going to go for 3. Some people told me I could probably do 2 but I think not. And I figure it'd better to get some sort of qualification as a "base" first. Don't want to challenge a 2 and fail, it'd kind of feel like I threw my money away. ;o

I did 3kyu years ago and it felt a little too easy. But there's a huge gap between what was then 3kyu and 2kyu, not sure how it marries up to N2/N3

Yes, I heard about the gap thing and the new 3 they inserted in between.

oh I see, so N4 is equivalent to 3kyu and N2 is equivalent to 2kyu?

Yes, they added a 3 in between the old 2 and 3.

I think there are some rumblings about having to take and pass it for permanent residence, so I may need to try again at some point.

So 1 and 2 are unchanged ("for the most parts" I hear), and then 3 and 4 became 4 and 5.

good to know

^That seems weird to have it be a requirement to move. I have a friend living in London that's thinking of moving there within the year. His wife is Japanese but he himself pretty much doesn't speak it at all (except for the usual simple stuff).

I don't think that's wierd, in the UK you need to pass an English test for permanent residence (or if you speak English well, a 'Life in the UK test')

@Ali With RevTK you are referring to the books, not some software, right?

And there are a shitload of gaijin in Tokyo who don't speak a lick of Japanese and live in there own little gaijin bubble that's kind of disconnected from reality.

@poke no, RevTK is Reviewing the Kanji, an online app (free and unoffiicial) that acts as a spaced repitition system for use with Heisigs Remembering the Kanji

Oh cool, do you have a link?

To this day I have no fucking idea why the dude who built it isn't charging for it, it honest to god changed my life for the better. I would have paid $30 a month for it, no questions asked.

kanji.koohii.com

Thanks! :)

You need the book for it to make sense, and it won't get you reading kanji, just familiar with it

It's like your first breadth-first pass accross all of them

@Ali It seemed odd to me because of what you said with a lot of foreigners there that don't speak Japanese. But I suppose a good portion of those are there because of a work visa or they have a Japanese spouse.

I think that's the reason they want to make it a requirement i.e. so that foreigners living in Japan are at least encouraged to integrate better.

Could be completely off-base though.

I'll check with my friend some other time and see what he says I guess.