Oh, hello!

I was hoping someone else would create the chat.. :P

I think it's created just by default... not sure though

It wasn’t shortly after the site opened at least...

Unfortunately my current machine doesn't really support japanese input, so I'll have to wait till I get home tonight to actually ask the questions I had queued up for this :)

Spending most of my time arguing with a handful of people about what's on-topic around here :/

Oh well... such is stack-exchange on day 1 of a beta :)

I will say... so far I'm not terribly encouraged

:D

This is actually my second beta I participate in..

the first one just got out of private beta, and is quite related.. It's the German one.

likewise... but the previous one for me was a somewhat more focused site

hmm... I need to remember the other construction for quotative ka...

hello, world?

heya Ali

anybuddy around?

Man, I'm exhausted after all that

I'd never heard of <person> wo naosu... but apparently it is valid

It's quite annoying when your own research link contradicts you ><

I was so excited after seeing the site was in beta, then saw all these off-topic questions and was like :(

Yeah... it'll take a bit of work to keep it focused

But be encouraged dude, the questions we've had so far that are actually on topic are frickin' awesome!

But that's the point of the beta, after all

I've learned a bunch already, if we can make this thing work and stay focused then it will be a really good resource. I really want to make it work.

One oddity of japanese, of course... is that we really do have a group of people whose simple opinion is more valuable than many of ours...

You mean native Japanese people?

yeah

This is true, with a caveat.

Just because they know the language, doesn't mean they can explain it intuitively.

Not even Bjarne knows C++ as well as some of the people on stackoverflow at this point... but since fundamentally what we want to know is "how to talk to japanese people", they're sortof the experts by default :)

There are a LOT of very very sharp, near-native bilinguals who could probably do a better job.

They can point to a bit of language and say intuitively that it's unnatural, and that in itself is very very valuable.

I mean Japanese natives there.

yeah

But yeah, I guess my point is that there is value in both people who studied Japanese and Japanese natives.

And also, I imagine that Japanese is quite a bit less difficult (and makes more sense) than C++

I better eat something. It will be such a shame if this site doesn't stay focused.

I think (and hope) questions will get more focused as time goes on. "What is the best ____?" are kindof low-hanging fruit... some people will rep-whore them for a bit. But if the community survives at all, they'll start to be closed pretty aggressively after a week or so.

I really really really appreciate all the backup with marking stuff off-topic. I know I'm not right or even consistent a lot of the time but I think you can tell I'm pretty passionate about making this a good resource.

I will continue to be vocal about it as much as I can and it appears as though I have some silent support (as I can see questions getting closed).

looks like an admin is combing through the site removing the 'japanese' tag

@Ali We had a similar discussion on German.SE, about if we should label native speakers somehow, but after a discussion we all agreed that everybody is valuable, and native speakers are not necessarily better in the language than learners. So yes, I agree; all are equally valuable.

Eh... I wouldn't say all are equally valuable. But I would say the overhead of "authenticating" native speakers is FAR more effort than it's worth :)

I dunno, if you had a native japanese speaker who also spoke near-native English and could also talk confidently about the ins and outs of language usage and nuance then yes, pound-for-pound better than non-native.

But I'm not sure how many of those exist.

And yeah, how the hell are we going to authenticate!

heh... my office-mate :P

get him to join the public beta then!

I should... he grew up in Japan, but has lived and worked in the US for almost two decades now

The only problem I see is that apart from an ego boost, the site won't really offer much to people like your office-mate.

@Ali What was your comment here referring to? japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/23/…

pretty much

so before we went to beta and before commitment, about a year a go we had a massive debate/argument about what is on/off topic for the site.

you can find the details here: area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7526?phase=definition

in it we defined a lot of on topic questions, and some of them were really really good

I even copied some one of them into an actual question that jkerian answered.

So was my question somehow inappropriate? Because I don't really get why you said that there ^^

oh no not at all, my mistake

oh, okay then :)

when you said you 'spotted this about a month ago' I for some strange reason thought you spotted it in the definition phase content

which wouldn't make sense because you just asked me what that is

it's clearly getting late

I need a drink

so yeah no, great question btw, I'm just being a tool

haha, well I spotted that page in a manga and just thought "wow, that is a really good question!" :D

it is absolutely the kind of question that would annoy the fuck out of a native speaker :P

Why? ^^

love questions like that, like when you bust out a kanji they've never heard of, greatest feeling ever

I call it the gyaku-gaijin-smash

You're such a gaijin that you've looped all the way back round to being Japanese

We have a lot questions on German.SE where people ask for historical things I would have never even thought about (being native German), so it's just fair to have such questions here too :P

There was a handy site for comparing the google hit counts of two phrases... anyone remember what it is?

I know the one you're talking about, no idea what it is

google.com/trends

googlebattle.com or googlewar.com

that's what I was looking for

oh

handy for trying to figure out if "de ryuugakusuru" or "ni ryuugakusuru" is better

ok, my wife is getting grumpy because I've spent 4-hours straight at the computer, have fun guys!

later

bye :)

On a completely unrelated note, after looking at all those questions, I really have to improve my kanji knowledge..

In our japanese course we mostly learn only using kana..

ahh... what level are you at?

or we did until now

I don't know if it is a universally known level, but it's called A2.1 now

I'm on the opposite end... I can pick up manga and read them, but I stutter through even the simplest conversations

Oh, I wish I could read mangas already :o

hmm... do you happen to know where you are relative to the JLPT?

Oh, probably far away. It is just a language course at uni, with 2 hours a week. Can't expect much from it. But it is good to learn the basics. After this semester I have finished all three courses my uni offers, and then I'm going to continue learning myself.. without books, by actually reading/writing japanese..

Probably at least the old JLPT4 (the new N5)

Looking at the JLPT table on Wikipedia, I'm probably a bit below N5, yes.

I'm studying for the N2 right now... but I've got a long ways to go

N2, wow..

Makes me jealous :P

But also motivates me!

eh... when I say "studying" that puts me squarely at the "just barely passed the N3" level

:D

btw. you can edit your chat lines by pressing the up key

huh... interesting

Yeah, the chat is pretty amazing ^^

I'm about halfway through writing up... basically an essay... about ni vs de...

It's a tricky subject... and wo can get complicated in there as well :/

Makes you the perfect person to answer this question:

heh... yeah... that's what it's for :)

unfortunately... I need to double check one of my examples, won't be able to do that for a few hours

Ah, now I get it; I thought the essay was somehow related to your N2 level xD

But well, can't wait to see your answer! :D

Anyway, I'm going to bed. Actually I still have some vocabulary to learn for tomorrow's Japanese test :D – So, お休みなさい！