[geeks] Re: um, hi. I'm new.

[Matthew Braun]

> Message: 1
> From: Joshua D Boyd <jdboyd at cs.millersville.edu>

<SNIP>

> If I had more time I'd probably try to do more with ordering straight
> from the far east.  Of course, not knowing japanese might be a slight
> stumbling block in that plan.  I want to learn.  The structures look
> easy enough, but they seem to use an extreme number of idioms.  Kinda
> like hebrew in a way I guess.

I studied Japanese for a short while. The vocab is only difficult because as
a non-romance language, cognates [1] are few and far between. However,
modern terms are nice because, unlike the French, the Japanese have no
issues just adopting foreign terms (keeki [cake], icu-creemu [ice cream],
beeru [beer], etc) [2]. Also, of the 4 written languages (romanji, hiragana,
katakana, and kanji), three are easy once your vocab is down. Romanji is the
romanization of Japanese so it's pretty straight forward, although there is
more than one system. Hiragana and katakana are phonetic, and together make
up (IIRC) less than 100 symbols (not including standard modifiers), so
again, if you know your vocab, you can just sound out the symbols and you're
ok.

HOWEVER:
  Kanji is nasti. It's symbolic, so there's not really any way to decipher
what things mean. And there's lots of it (I think over 40k ideograms IIRC).
You just have to buckle down and learn it.

Overall, it's not too difficult (as far as languages go). I've studied
Spanish, French, and Japanese and I can't say that any was signifigantly
easier than the others.


> When I learned hebrew, vocabulary was my biggest problem.  Except for
> 2 visits to jewish services, I was only reading it though, not
> listening or speaking.  Maybe constantly watching anime will help with
> the vocabulary.  Anyone care to recommend a good japanese lexicon?

You want to be careful about using anime as a study guide. Almost all dialog
in anime is in the informal style and can be construed as very rude. It's ok
though for training your ear; just don't try to pick up too much vocab.

(Though I can now say: "Boku wa hentai desu yo")

I almost made it Japan but I wasn't good enough, so everything I've said is
hearsay. Any other comments?

===========[b l i x]============
"Rub the bee. Rub the bee.
Keep rubbing the bee or damn
  your eyes, your life is ashes.
YOUR LIFE IS ASHES."
================================

[1] Words that sound similar between languages like "entrar" (to enter) in
Spanish

[2] "Beeru, onegai shimasu" and "Otoire wa, doko desu ka?" are useful
phrases we learned to take care of us in bars.