Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 145 of 479 03 June 2012 at 10:28pm | IP Logged |
The Real CZ wrote:
Stay away from Japanese idol music. It's terribad. |
|
|
Other than several Japanese releases of various Korean singers (Kara, SNSD, 4minute, BEG, etc.), a few albums each from AKB48 and Amuro Namie is about all I'd collected previously (all found while looking for Korean songs in the past; I've not actually sought out any Japanese music since starting Japanese). In fact, the only reason I'd even grabbed those two was due to recognizing the names from Korean TV. Honestly neither of those have impressed me all that much so far. Most of AKB48's songs seem to have this annoyingly exaggerated cuteness (as I noted above with my "cheesy" comment). Not to mention that the idea of a 48-person girl group is overly gimmicky by itself (and I thought the K-pop groups were getting out of control with group size). Yes I know they perform mostly in smaller groups, but even a 16-member subgroup is quite absurd. So far, Amuro Namie's style reminds me more of someone like Chae Yeon, but none of the songs I've happened across have really caught my attention yet.
Honestly, I'm not really sure I *want* to get caught up in Japanese music anyway, since doing so would inevitably reduce my exposure to Korean (which is the language of the songs that fill about 99% of my MP3 player right now). As I've stated before, if either Spanish or Japanese start encroaching too much on Korean, I'd rather trim them back than let them continue doing so. Korean is still my primary focus for languages at the moment and I want to keep it that way, at least for now. I know adding two languages has to take up *some* of the time that Korean could otherwise have, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to sacrifice the bulk of it.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 146 of 479 04 June 2012 at 3:56pm | IP Logged |
The sound set of Japanese is a bit different than I expected, though I think some of this is due to viewing it through the lens of Korean. I always wondered why the Japanese "u" sound was usually mapped to 으 rather than 우 in Korean (and not just at the end of a word like です (desu) where it tends to vanish completely), but after listening more closely, it does seem to lean more toward the Korean "eu" vowel than the "u" vowel. It doesn't quite match either one, though, but seems to be somewhere in between the two (and it obviously changes based on surrounding sounds). I had heard in the past that the a, e, i, o, and u vowels in Japanese were quite similar to their Spanish counterparts, however, this doesn't seem to be the case for "u" at all. I guess if you only know certain languages and thus have no reference point for an 으 type vowel, then perhaps "u" is a good starting point, but it's definitely not the same sound.
I've also noticed that some consonants in Japanese tend to sound a bit more tensed than their Korean counterparts (and I don't just mean the ones that romanize as double consonants as in けっこです (kekkodesu)). For example, "k" sounds in Japanese seem to often lean more toward "ㄲ" than they do "ㅋ" (while still maintaining enough aspiration to remain a "k" sound regardless of position).
Something else I've noted about Japanese is that the honorific system seems simpler than Korean thus far (though I'm not that far into it, so I could easily be mistaken here). For example, in Pimsleur Korean they often gave a different phrasing when using a verb for yourself or using a verb for someone else. Either the former was a humble form or the latter an honorific form. So far, I've not really seen this done in Pimsleur Japanese, even though the dialogs are very similar in content.
On a different topic, recently I had been wondering how one would most naturally express the term "sweet tea" (as in "sweetened iced tea") in Korean (e.g. when ordering it in a restaurant). My guess had been something along the lines of 달콤한 차 or 달 차. A couple days ago, I searched for this on Naver which came up with 달콤한 홍차 and 감차 as suggestions, both of which seemed likely. However, last night I was watching Music Core and was very surprised to hear Tiffany call out the phrase "달콤한 아이스티" during the MC dialog. I had never heard "Iced Tea" used as a loanword before, so I would never have even guessed at that kind of phrasing.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5647 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean
| Message 147 of 479 05 June 2012 at 1:55am | IP Logged |
Well, you have to figure that Tiffany is an American and that she uses English a lot when
talking.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 148 of 479 05 June 2012 at 2:35am | IP Logged |
True, but it wouldn't surprise me if the Korean version of that term ended up being non-native anyway, due to how regional that particular drink seems to be (even within the US). I was mostly just surprised that she even mentioned it given that I'd been looking up that exact term recently.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 149 of 479 05 June 2012 at 4:22pm | IP Logged |
I forgot to mention in my weekly update that I turned on all the "2 part" Kana characters in Anki last week (じょ, しゅ, つぇ, etc.), which added 96 new cards. I let them appear at 20/day, so they fed into my reviews over a 5 day period. The only facts that are still disabled in that deck now are the 4 "obsolete" Kana.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 150 of 479 06 June 2012 at 10:34pm | IP Logged |
Since Pimsleur has now introduced the last few of the numbers 1-10, I've modified the Anki cards for the related 漢字 characters and added the Japanese readings to them (in a new field) and rescheduled them as new. For now, they are only the Sino readings other than 4 and 7.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Ojorolla Diglot Groupie France Joined 4963 days ago 90 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English
| Message 151 of 479 08 June 2012 at 3:17pm | IP Logged |
Warp3 wrote:
On a different topic, recently I had been wondering how one would most naturally express the term "sweet tea" (as in "sweetened iced tea") in Korean (e.g. when ordering it in a restaurant). My guess had been something along the lines of 달콤한 차 or 달 차. |
|
|
달 차 should be 단 차. Interesting mistake. Hmm... Is it a common one? Just some curiosity from a native speaker.
And I never really understood why people would bother to learn east asian tongues but anyway, good luck with your learning Japanese.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 152 of 479 08 June 2012 at 4:00pm | IP Logged |
Hmmm...I'm not quite sure why I used 달 there instead of 단 (since the latter is obviously the correct form). Perhaps it is from constantly seeing all the verbs and adjectives on Hanja definitions in the -ㄹ form. In fact, 달 is usually given as the meaning for the 감(甘) character. Learning that character recently is actually what prompted me to search on Naver and see if 감차 was a viable word for that term.
---
On other topics:
I found a copy of of "Japanese for Everybody" (2008 edition) in "Used, Like New" condition on Amazon today for $20 shipped, so I've ordered it.
I've also modified the MP3 tags on my song collection to replace the mostly useless "Genre" field with the name of the Language. Now if I'm in the mood to listen to Japanese music (which I often do for the remainder of a trip after a Pimsleur Japanese lesson to keep my head in that language for a bit), I can just tell the MP3 player to play the genre of "Japanese".
1 person has voted this message useful
|