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

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 02:24:00PM -0400, Matthew Braun wrote:

> > 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.

Well, a large part of wanting to learn it is to watch anime without
having to wait for a decent translation.  Reading web sites and
software would also be nice.  I don't know how likely I am to ever
actually need to speak it, but who knows.
 
> (Though I can now say: "Boku wa hentai desu yo")

I don't think I want to say that to anyone.   
 
> I almost made it Japan but I wasn't good enough, so everything I've said is
> hearsay. Any other comments?


-- 
Joshua D. Boyd