@Flaw I recorded my playing violin audioboo.fm/boos/840047- and pronunciation of the nasal g sound audioboo.fm/boos/836126- It is said that we kansai-jin can't pronounce the nasal g sound in a correct way, tell me what you think
I mostly do. Also when talking about a generic person which could be of any gender, I simply say he for the most part. Some say s/he but I think it's just annoying when people try to be "too correct"
And in Swedish h*n which is even more annoying to see. (she - hon, he - han)
And on Lang-8 or some other sites, Japanese ppl correct Japanese entries like 彼女は。。。彼は。。。 あなたは…君は・・・. I don't understand why they teach Japanese learners to use words that they don't use. Yes, we use names if we know the names, to address someone.
Like... 「～～さんは何才ですか？」、not 「あなたは何才ですか」
「あの人は何を注文したんですか」、not「彼女は何を注文しましたか」
When we translate English text into Japanese, we often use 彼、彼女、あなた、君。But we rarely use them in daily conversation.
When I correct on Lang8, I sometimes hesitate. I don't know how the OP wants his entries corrected. I wonder "Hmm should I correct it to sound perfectly natural? Or maybe the OP just wants it make sense/understandable, and wouldn't care if it sounds awkward or not?"
@Chocolate I don't know what a "correct nasalised g" is supposed to sound like because of insufficient listening exposure. But nice voice and violin though.
@Shazer2, You can click on the little arrow on the left of messages for some messages that others @user you with to see which message it's continued from.
@Chocolate I've heard that in terms of proper grammar, when someone's gender is unknown, it is correct to use "he/him". However, in practice we generally use "they/them" (even if it's only one person).
Some people who are big on using correct grammar will say that it's so bad to use third person plural pronouns instead of "he/she", but it's used so much, I don't think it's actually a problem
I thought TsuyoshiIto was female because of the pink avatar haha (I know, bad reasoning because the avatar is generated via some algorithm and not decided by the person)(Also pink does not necessarily mean female either).
The responses were friendly, but the replies used kanji. I wrote the post because the classmate from my former class (the one that stopped a few weeks ago) probably knows the kana (I know she was studying them), but doesn't know kanji, and probably would find an IME a bit scary.
(Not just because an IME involves language, but because it involves technology)
I could have posted in romaji but the first corrections were in hiragana and kanji so I just followed without thinking much... Also, after seeing some of your other entries I figured that you could read them.
If it had been your first entry they might have corrected/replied in romaji.
I feel like even if she could get by on Lang-8 with romaji at the start when she's saying very simple things, she would eventually progress to the point where she would need the kanji for clarification, what with all the homophones
I have no understanding for people who try to learn Japanese without kana/kanji, or without starting with kana the first thing they do for that matter. You don't learn to read before learning the alphabet. You don't learn simple arithmetic before learning what the numbers represent. Etc.
And the difficulty of it pales in comparison to the rest of the learning process anyhow.
jkerian and I got into this yesterday...the day before yesterday? Anyway, my own opinion is that there is a time and place for romaji, and a beginning Japanese class is not it
@silvermaple that's a reasonable rate. I went to look at language courses offered and also asked some of my friends who attended classes. They took in excess of 6 weeks. And that's without katakana.
My class started out with one week (half-time study) dedicated for hiragana/katakana. The next week was Swedish grammar, which sounds odd but turned out to be very useful + gave us plenty of time to let the kanas sink in. That's not too much to ask I think, a week.
I think it's something that online Japanese learners like to get their panties in a bunch over, but doesn't matter anywhere near as much as they think it does.
@gibbon That comment probably deserves more explanation. I actually suspect that the early focus on the written language, particularly in the online learning community, actually retards real language development. Reading and Speaking are separable skills. The focus on kana (continuing on to kanji), suggests to the beginner to learn primarily from the written language, and not from the (much easier) spoken language.
Yes, kanji are hard (but frankly they're not much harder to memorize than the pokemon... and millions of 9 year olds seem to be able to do that without much trouble), but that doesn't mean you should start with them if it's less efficient.
I think I see what you're trying to say, because we were talking about this earlier, but I think we're talking about two slightly different situations. (self-study vs classroom study)
And I'm still not convinced that focusing on one skill is the way to begin learning a language
(the one exception might be in an intensive beginners course... where you want something else for the mind to chew on after trying to cold-memorize conversations for X hours)
That's semantics. Being able to be mistaken as a native either at spoken or written (sound/write fluently) is impressive enough, and it rather firmly shows that the skills are dividable.
@silvermaple One of the major gay pride groups in France actually tried to sue the WYD organizers in Paris in '97, since they were using a rainbow for the theme.
I should probably clarify, I don't actually think romaji has any great virtue in studying Japanese. But I do think the rather intense focus on "switch to kana immediately!", the constant online advice, is a misplaced focus.
In our local corporate culture... Firmware is king. We're the ones that actually, you know, make the customers like us.
We also paper over the hardware bugs, and implement features a generation or two before the hardware can catch up.
In the Japanese branch... not so much
They're used to serving the consumer market. IE, customers will basically take any crap you manufacture, as long as the price point is right. All of the high profile work is done by the "advanced development" group.
Our corporate customers are more along the lines of "What the hell do you mean this generation requires X milliwatts more power on spinup than the last generation? Fix it now or the contract is cancelled. And while you're at it, your error recovery procedure is taking too long, half a second should be long enough for anyone."
Since we're the ones that can make that kind of thing happen, we get a bit more leeway... and less direct management control.
enough ranting about that from me today, though...
in summary, while I think I'll love the stay in Japan, the corporate culture shock (as opposed to the general culture culture-shock) will probably be a little rough
