@ジョン 8 hours to learn to read the kana, or 8 hours to read and write them?

The former sounds plausible, but the latter doesn't match my experience. (Then again, I didn't use the book you used)

@AndrewGrimm He means 8 solid hours

It's actually pretty doable

(note that you'll still forget a few and confuse a few when trying to write them... but for the most part you should be able to read them all)

I just used a crappy workbook-like kana book, but the tricky part is the same no matter what you do.

@cypher Several of the entries in meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/a/773/29 required a category we didn't have... but should the dictionaries subsection be moved into the dictionaries category?

@AndrewGrimm As with RTK(anji), RTK(ana) focuses on the writing of the characters, on the basis that if you can write them, reading shouldn't be a problem. I learned to writehiragana in 3 hours one day, and katakana in 5 hours the next (the katakana section of the book isn't nearly as good imo, and keeps referring to kanji that people are unlikely to know at that stage as memory hooks)

a classmate who tried it apparently managed it a little faster.

RTK(anji) is controversial and i'm always nervous to recommend it, but i solidly recommend the kana version to anyone who asks

of course as jkerian says, you'll still get them muddled up sometimes, at first

but that's why i think it's so important to learn them right at the beginning of your Japanese education, then make a promise to yourself never to write romaji again

Although... you can soften that about 6 months in and do no real damage

The thing about kana is that you learn them, and you're done

It's practically the ONLY part of this language you can say that about

haha, that's very true

but i saw two types of people in my class: the type who, when writing, think romaji/bopomofo/hangul -> kana, and the type who just write kana because they've never used anything else

the latter invariably read and write faster

It helps if you can somehow manage to learn the kana disconnected from romaji (focus on pronunciation perhaps?)

and (at the risk of sounding like i'm his promotional guy :P), that's exactly what RTK does

Actually... I wonder if it might be helpful if you were to present students with a handful of romaji systems

"This one was designed to approximate English sounds... now obviously they're not very close, but it works if you're being sloppy"

"This was designed for efficiency, and to reflect the japanese organization of the kana"

which system does the latter refer to?

the "sibuya" system? (don't know the proper name, but 渋谷 bus station is one of the only places i've seen it used ><)

I was thinking kunrei

I guess it was en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihon-shiki_romanization though

"Nihon-shiki"

One reason for talking about nihon-siki... is that it's probably what you want to use in an IME

true, i still find myself typing the redundant "h" in "shi" a lot of the time -.-

kunrei modifies nihon-siki to match pronunciation in cases where it differs from the underlying kana

but i think there's a danger in putting more emphasis rather than less on romaji, for students

if you gave them multiple romaji systems, that is

Well... keep the goal in mind

What you're trying to communicate is not actually that "romaji is the scourge of the earth", but rather "don't trust romaji for pronunciation help"

And one of the nice things about romaji is that there's hardly anything to teach

This would be a 15minute opening of an early lesson

Note that I am probably biased towards romaji in some ways, since I did use JSL as my first japanese book (at the Middlebury language program)

It uses a kunrei variant, annotated with tonal indicators

I'm probably biased against romaji because it was strictly forbidden after the first week of class at my school (this was total beginner level at 東京日本語学校)

but a quick introduction to show that it can't be relied on for pronunciation.. that could definitely be useful to new students

hah... really? This is a japanese word? シンガーソングライター?

(just ran across it on lastfm.jp)

haha, brilliant

I do find this construction slightly odd... 14歳の頃にギターを、17歳で作曲を始める。

the multiple を

i've seen my school's name written トウキョウ・スクール・オブ・ザ・ジャパニーズ・ランゲージ somewhere

that was upsetting

lol

hm, that would seem fine on a mixi 自己紹介, but is that an artist writeup on last.fm?

yeah

strange

lastfm.jp/music/Shugo+Tokumaru

With at this point literally hundreds of links in our resources question... I'm sure we're annoying some SE moderator at this point with him/her needing to tell the system "no, really, that's not spam"

haha, i hope the fact that it's from multiple authors, many with 1k+ rep, will help

At least so far, I think it's worked pretty well

We're going to have issues with everyone wanting to add their favorite EDICT interface to the various software sections (speaking of literally hundreds).

The only wide-open section is Electronic Dictionaries... honestly because they've been replaced by iOS/droid.

yeah, i was wondering if we should get rid of that section

as someone pointed out, the marketplace for 電子辞書 changes much more frequently that we're ever going to update that section

Given that none of the contributors so far have anything useful to say on the topic, I'm inclined to agree

shall we remove it, then?

I think so

It can always go back if someone has something they want to ask about

done

ugh... way too tired to do any real work today

I extended "Open Beta weekend" a bit longer than I should have

(Diablo III and Tera)

i'm going to pretend i didn't see that, until the 8th May (thesis deadline)

doesn't matter... it's done now

Or, rather, you wouldn't have the clients downloaded by the time it ended

that's...for the best

I think D3's ends in 45 minutes, and Teras in about 4 hours (not sure about your net... but it took me 11 hours to get the client)

ah, so more of a demo/stress test than open beta

yeah

Tera still had 2 bugs that I noticed... D3 had lag issues

that won't go down well...

(the lag issues)

Yeah

honestly, I preferred Tera

It's an MMO though... and it's going to have a VERY rough time putting together an endgame with that interface (healing is a crapshoot atm)

i'm looking at it now. i'd never heard of it until you mentioned it

gorgeous graphics... but it better have that, given that it's 60gigs on disk

It plays like an action-RPG... kinda like Kingdom Hearts in some ways.

wha...? wow. what makes it the "first true action MMORPG"?

For example... you dodge enemy attacks by (novel idea incoming here) GETTING OUT OF THE WAY!

As opposed to standing there and rolling against your Dodge %, which is the normal MMO method

in such a way that a skilled player could actually kill an enemy 10 levels above their own?

if so, i'm starting to like the sound of it

Well... there is level-based damage reduction, so 10 would be a stretch

but 3 is pretty normal

I like by mongoose-lookalike warrior

He is small, furry, and fierce :)

haha

Look at the Popori race, if you haven't already

aha... i've just found the source of the meme my compsci friends jumped on on facebook this weekend

honey badger?

reminds me of the final fantasy mmo for some reason

or... well... lolicon...

(take a look at the Elin to see why that would come out of this MMO)

the character classes actually seem like a really strange mix of styles

It's similar to FF MMOs in that it features a) cute characters b) impossibly large swords c) impossibly androgynous male "warrior" types

In spite of the snark though, I did enjoy playing it

Healing is a *&@#ch though

(which will make a high level game/raiding nearly impossible)

in that case i'm sure it'll be fixed before the release

eh... they seem to want to specifically avoid the "grid-lock" issue with healers

maybe they could fix it with a "tank-lock" for healers?

so if you hold down a control/shift/alt key, your heals are auto-targeted to a preselected person?

Spell targeting is manual right now... you move your mouse so that a targetting recticle goes over your target, and you push a key

i'm starting to feel out of my depth in this conversation - i played WOW for 2 months in 2007 but haven't played any other MMOs

lol

Your tank is going to be dodging and weaving all over the place to avoid the boss's "special attacks" which seem to come every 2-3 secs for the big guys

ah, i can see how that would be difficult

ahh... I play WoW atm, but I'm retiring when the new xpac comes out

I might play Tera... it's quite fun, good looking... and probably won't last too long :)

ah, mists of "shark jumping" panderia

I don't actually mind the idea much, I'm just not enjoying the game anymore

By "the game" I mean raiding... since that's basically all I do in game now

weirdly that's when i quit - when it got to the point that doing the same raid over and over again was more efficient for levelling than exploring/doing quests etc

that was before the x2 xp for all quests thing...

ahh... 'raiding' is a slightly different thing :)

When you start raiding, you're done leveling

ah, i'm getting it confused with regular group dungeon crawling :p

yeah... the instances can be fun, but it can also be frustrating

(tanks still learning how to tank, DPS convinced they don't need a tank, and it sure as hell isn't there fault when they die, healers who are used to dps because that's how they solo)

That was one thing I was slightly disappointed in Tera with... I would really like an MMO that let a healer level by... healing

Give them a weak NPC minion that does the fighting, but is weak by comparison with any actual player character

IE, give them a basic NPC tank-pet

i fell into the "tanks still learning how to tank" category, lol. and that is a great idea

I used to play on the japanese Ragnarok Online servers... but that was before I really had the kanji knowledge to communicate effectively, I wonder if they're still up

It's an asian MMO though... so it's grindy as all hell.

that would be great practice. i'd be up for trying it out sometime

(after 8th May)

Tera needs japanese servers...

actually... now that I think of it... Tera would probably do pretty well in Asia

don't most paid MMOs lock you into your own region's server though?

actually... maybe it already has, someone said yesterday in chat that it was basically a port of a korean game

i played WOW on the US server, but only because I was on vacation when i signed up

anyways... lunch

yep, and for me it's that time of day again - housemates are calling for a CoD survival partner

at least that only take an hour at a time :P

talk to you later :)

hehe

and back