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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5181 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 1441 of 1702 26 July 2014 at 7:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm getting into Korean a lot more than I expected. The vocabulary is starting to stick better thankfully. I think it'll get better the more comfortable I get with the sounds. Some of the consonants at the beginning of a word can get a little tricky but it's not too bad. I was thinking if I could see the hanja used to write words that would help but the resources I'm using to learn don't teach hanza until intermediate level. And even then it's just a little - although I would only be interested in learning a few hundred of the most useful anyway. But I'm starting to think it would just distract me (now that the vocabulary is sticking better). I think 漢字 is just a terrible writing system that should have been laid to rest.
I started watching kdrama (on Crunchyroll). I'm on episode 2 of Dr. Jin. It's surprisingly good and addictive. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4346 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 1442 of 1702 26 July 2014 at 10:41am | IP Logged | |||||
I presume you're saying that tongue-in-cheek, nevertheless, as a shameless weeaboo, I've got to disagree. Kanji may not be the easiest system to learn, but it's not that bad. Perhaps, instead of studying Kanji, just study vocab, written in Kanji (if it's usually written that way). I've also used RTK but I stopped after ~1500 Kanji. Instead, I've used the aforementioned approach. This way, I don't have to learn Kanji I don't need, I "learn" Kanji I do need, and I don't care if I don't remember what a Kanji means on its own, as long as I can understand the words it's written with. Like, I still don't know what 丁 means, but I don't mind, since I know what 丁寧 means. In short, it's better to understand a word, but not its Kanji; than a Kanji, but not its words. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5181 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 1443 of 1702 26 July 2014 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well I've always felt that Japanese would be much easier to learn as a foreigner if they would just drop the kanji and use kana instead. Korea did it. They don't miss the kanji. And their language is just like Japanese with lots of homonyms. I can read a lot of kanji because I've studied it so much, so I get that it's possible but it really just makes something a lot harder than it has to be.
You might think I'm crazy but the Koreans understand me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5646 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 1444 of 1702 26 July 2014 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It is impossible to read Japanese with kana only. Japanese doesn't space anything out in
the writing, thus making kanji essential. Kana doesn't have a one-to-one correspondence with kanji/hanja like hangeul does. Japanese also has much more homophones than Korean does. Lastly, hanja is very important if you ever want to surpass the low-intermediate levels in Korean. There are simply too many homophones in Korean, which is why a lot of newspapers and books will put the hanja in parenthesis next to the word to clarify what context can't. I'm part of the crowd that wants to see hanja return. I am lucky enough to have been studying Mandarin and Japanese, because my level of understanding in Korean would be much lower without hanja. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4769 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 1445 of 1702 27 July 2014 at 12:46am | IP Logged | |||||
As for the homophone problem, I think it tends to get overstated. If it really were debilitating, it would have made spoken comprehension impossible as well, forcing people to change words (as it was done in the transition from Old and Middle Chinese to Modern Chinese varieties, most notably Mandarin which went from a mostly monosyllabic language to one where the majority of words is disyllabic). Personally I wouldn't go as far as supporting the abolition of kanji in Japanese, for reasons both practical and aesthetic. A large scale reform of the writing system is nigh impossible to push through in an affluent and overwhelmingly literate society, and the costs of the transition aren't guaranteed to outweigh the benefits. What's more, I do genuinely find the characters beautiful, and I do appreciate the various creative, nuanced and playful ways they can be used in Japanese literature. But I do think that they're overkill for the problems discussed above, and aren't really essential for the language. The Vietnamese language seems to be doing fine after having dropped Chinese characters, even with its numerous homophones and non-indicative spaces. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5181 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 1446 of 1702 01 August 2014 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't think it's impossible to read Japanese with kana only without spaces. I think adding spaces would be obvious but I've had several Japanese teachers use kana only in some of their lessons and some manga leaves out the kanji completely (ドラえもん has very little kanji at all). I complained a little to the teacher because kanji + furigana is easier but really, that's a crutch. The teacher pointed out how I wasn't looking at the sentence as a whole. The word that I'm thinking of is 地震 versus 自信. Japanese sentences don't include tons of information so it's a little hard on the learner but a native speaker doesn't need the kanji. Nor does a student who is reading a text appropriate to their level.
That's my experience. Good luck convincing Koreans to go back to using hanja in everyday writing though. Based on the Koreans who were doing the lessons on koreanclass101 it is not likely to happen. They don't need it at all, they don't know it at all, and while they seemed interested in learning it some to help their students I couldn't picture them actually learning the hanja to a level where they could read and write their language without hangul unless you put a gun to their head. Edited by kraemder on 01 August 2014 at 9:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5181 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 1447 of 1702 01 August 2014 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I decided to get Rosetta Stone for Korean. They only offer levels 1-3 (just like Japanese) instead of 1-5 like the more popular languages. But I'm a total beginner so 1-3 is just fine. I bought a 3 year online access for $229. I was thinking Rosetta would be the best way to jump start my Korean, going from just vocabulary to actual sentences. I wasn't expecting this but the package came with 117 online studio sessions which is awesome. The sessions are short - only 25 min each. But that's actually ideal for a total beginner. I think more advanced students benefit from 50 minute sessions (which they used to have) a lot more and after a bit I'll be wanting 50 minute sessions I think. I guess I can just book two sessions back to back. This should be some good practice for when I walk into a class room in the fall. Nothing is more frustrating than being totally lost in a foreign language class. I have no idea how much English the teacher will use. I know the European language teachers switch to all target language really really fast. Asian languages probably not so much but I'm hoping.
I signed up for one of the studio sessions for tomorrow. I expect to be really confused. Rosetta, teaches zero grammar, but they do not use English at all. And my brain is not acclimated to Korean yet. I hear stuff I've studied and sometimes it clicks and I get it and sometimes not at all. One thing I've noticed regarding their writing system. They do not put a space between the particle and the word it's modifying. As such, it's treated as one word. I wish I had studied Japanese like that. I could have added vocabulary flashcards with the particle attached to the word to help me say things more naturally sooner. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4662 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 1448 of 1702 02 August 2014 at 1:01am | IP Logged | |||||
Am I reading those numbers correctly? You get an hour of lesson for less than $5? Is there some catch? Is a "studio session" something other than an online lesson with a flesh and blood tutor? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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