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Josquin’s Language Symphony (RU, IR, 東亜) | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | Gaelic (Irish) | Icelandic | Portuguese | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4837 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 393 of 646 21 April 2013 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Japanese is great! I really like it very much. I'm going at a slow but steady pace at the moment, so I'm not having any stress at all. Well, of course, I'm still at the very beginning. I only know some set phrases, the hiragana, some katakana, and 32 kanji, but I like the way Japanese is different from Indo-European languages.
At the moment, everything is still quite easy, because I'm only dabbling, but I think getting a real foothold in Japanese would take quite a lot of effort. As far as I can tell, kanji are the most difficult part of learning Japanese, because most of them have two readings: the pseudo-Chinese on-reading and the native Japanese kun-reading. So, 本 can be read either as "hon" (on-reading) or as "moto" (kun-reading), and sometimes there are even additional irregular readings for personal names. The morphology is a lot easier than e.g. Russian, but instead the structure of the language is just so different. Instead of "in the mountains" you say 山の中 ("yama-no naka"), which means "mountain-of centre". A "rice field in the mountains" would be 山の中の田 ("yama-no naka-no ta"): "mountain-of centre-of rice field". Then there are the levels of politeness, which have to be observed when addressing others, but I don't know them very well yet. For example, you would refer to your own father as 父 "chichi", while when talking about another person's father you would have to call him お父さん "otōsan". However, there is no difference between singular and plural and there is only one verb form for all persons, but verbs also show the level of politeness. So, Japanese is interestingly different. Furthermore, I also like the traditional Japanese culture very much (not manga and anime, but rather shinto, zen and samurai), so I'll definitely continue this Japanese journey. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5049 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 394 of 646 23 April 2013 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
Улицы, наверное, пересекаются под прямым углом, а не сами являются прямоугольниками. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4837 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 395 of 646 23 April 2013 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's what I wanted to say. Of course, not every single street is rectangular but the total number of streets runs rectangularly. I'm not a geometrician, so I take a certain liberty of expression for granted. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5219 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 396 of 646 24 April 2013 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4837 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 397 of 646 24 April 2013 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
Just as I said:
I'm not quite sure whether 'rectangular' and 'прямоугольный' can be used this way, but in German you can simply say: "Die Straßen verlaufen rechtwinklig/im rechten Winkel." ("The streets run rectangularly/form a right angle.") My apologies to everyone, mathematician or linguist, if I should have broken the laws of geometry or language by using this word incorrectly. Edited by Josquin on 24 April 2013 at 7:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5049 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 398 of 646 24 April 2013 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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По-русски можно сказать, что улицы перпендикулярны друг другу, пересекаются под прямым
углом. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5219 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 399 of 646 25 April 2013 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh, so it's "the streets form / cross at / meet at right angles". Of course that means pretty much the same as "they are laid out in / form a grid", etc. so no need to apologize about that; it's my fault I suddenly get confused when you switch between different wordings.
Anyway, even if there are many different —equally functional— wordings for something one wants to say, shouldn't we strive to get all of them right? That's more patterns you can reuse as you get more proficient :) BTW keep up the good job, I'm not actively commenting because I have a lot to catch up with, but I take a look from time to time and I envy how you seem to have gotten round to seriously work on Russian -- I wish I could say so about my German! (and Russian, and Japanese, and so many other things ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4837 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 400 of 646 25 April 2013 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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THURSDAY, 25 APRIL 2013
Thanks for your comment, mrwarper! I'm trying my best. @Марк: Спасибо! 日本語 I have been diligently learning Japanese for the last few days. In fact, Japanese is the language in which I'm doing the most right now. It's so much fun! Everything in this language is totally new and I really enjoy learning kanji and kana. I have borrowed Heisig's Remember the Kanji from the library and am now starting to work on it. Heisig's approach is interesting, but I think it's not absolutely necessary for me to learn a story with every single character. I think this will only become more important for more complex characters. Moreover, my complaints about Colloquial Japanese were unjustified. I thought the casual mentioning of counter words and numbers in unit 3 was the only time counting would be mentioned in the book, but it turned out that later units will elaborate on this topic. Thank goodness! Learning all the intricacies of the Japanese numbers and counter words in just one unit would have been a little bit too much. In fact, Colloquial Japanese is going rather easy on grammar, especially if you compare it to Colloquial Russian. It reminds me a lot of Colloquial Icelandic, which had a similar approach. So yes, I love learning Japanese at the moment and I must admit I have neglected my other languages a little bit in favour of Japanese. It's simply much more interesting than Gaelic right now. I even thought about joining Team 桜Sakura, but maybe it's a little bit too late in the year and too early in my Japanese career for doing that. Here's a little self-introduction of me and my family in Japanese. It's a little elaboration on the sentences I posted over the last few weeks, so it's not entirely new. Nevertheless, there is some new vocabulary, new structures, and new kanji in it: 今日は！ 私はクリスチアンです。 二十八歳です。 ドイツに住んでいます。 大学生です。 私の誕生日は八月十七日です。 家は三人兄弟です、男の子が二人と女の子が 一人います。 上の子は女の子です、真ん中 と下の子は男の子です。 私は下の子です。 姉は結婚していますが、兄は独身です。 私も独身です。 今、日本語を習っています。 日本語が大好 きです。 さようなら！ Русский Я выучил несколько новых русских слов, значит я не впольне забыл русского языка. На следующей неделе я буду больше слушать Русский Подкаст и меньше читать тексты из «Ну что, поехали?». Я думаю, что сейчас это мне более полезно. Gàidhlig Cha do dh'ionnsaich mi Gàidhlig na làithean sa chaidh. Chrìochnaich mi an t-aonad a sia deug agus leugh mi an còmhradh an aonaid a seachd deug mar-thà. Bidh mi ag ionnsachadh a' ghràmair agus nam faclan gu nas fadalaiche. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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