The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5650 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean
| Message 569 of 844 09 May 2012 at 1:03am | IP Logged |
I had originally planned on graduating in December before I left for the Air Force, but
since that is no longer possible, I dropped my classes for the fall too and will enlist
sooner and finish college next year or so.
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The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5650 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean
| Message 570 of 844 17 May 2012 at 10:18pm | IP Logged |
Leessang's new song is great. Korean rap is really
hard to translate. I thought about translating it, but when I got to Gary's verse, I gave
up. It wasn't making sense in English.
I've also decided that Korean will be the only language I'll ever learn, so I should
change the the title of the thread someday.
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Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5536 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 571 of 844 17 May 2012 at 10:55pm | IP Logged |
Does that mean you are giving up on Japanese completely or have just accepted it as more of a "dabble" language now rather than one you will ever learn to "completion"?
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The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5650 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean
| Message 572 of 844 18 May 2012 at 12:35am | IP Logged |
I gave up on Japanese last year. There isn't much music I like from Japan anymore, I
don't play JRPGs as much anymore, there aren't many good dramas, manga and anime coming
out anymore, so I lost any will to learn it. This may change in the future though. For
now, the only language I care about learning is Korean.
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Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5536 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 573 of 844 18 May 2012 at 12:50am | IP Logged |
Ahhh...I understand. It's kind of odd that you officially declare Japanese "dead" at almost the exact time I officially declare it a "go". :)
I'm still hoping you can offer me some insights into learning material if you've got any to suggest. I'll definitely check into the grammar books you mentioned in my thread, but I'm still trying to figure out what to use as beginner textbook material (Assimil is an option, but I'd prefer something that explicitly covers grammar points along the way). I've started on Pimsleur now, which should help with the pronunciation and starter vocabulary. I've also found a good "companion guide" PDF for Pimsleur Japanese 1 which contains the words introduced (in both kana and romaji) along with their meanings and will be adding those entries to Anki as I go through Pimsleur (something I desperately wished I had done with Korean).
Oh, while I'm here: You also mentioned that certain groups (like SNSD) didn't have the best pronunciation in their Japanese releases. What is your opinion of pronunciation on the other Korean artists that have released music in Japanese (BoA, CNBLUE, Kara, 4minute, Rainbow, Secret, BEG, etc.)? I'd rather avoid poor Japanese for the moment, but the Japanese releases of K-pop arists/groups would be a great segue into Japanese media.
Edited by Warp3 on 18 May 2012 at 12:54am
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The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5650 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean
| Message 574 of 844 18 May 2012 at 1:59am | IP Logged |
BoA and DBSK/Tohoshinki and Supernova (Choshinsei/Choshinsung). Kara is the only one
newer group in Japan with decent
pronunciation, and the rest of the groups can't even speak Japanese at all.
Those three grammar books are the best learning materials I had. Tae Kim is a good site
to learn the basic grammar structures. As you know, I used RTK to learn kanji meanings
and then learned the readings through learning vocab.
My favorite online Japanese dictionary
You can type in the words in romanji and it'll turn into kana. It's also great because
it's like Naver's dictionary where you can paste the word as it is instead of putting
it in dictionary form. For example, you could type 'tabete' instead of 'taberu'.
I'd also suggest to get a pop up dictionary for Japanese. I used Rikaichan when I still
used Firefox, but I have no idea if Chrome has something like that.
You also better get used to downloading, because Japanese shit is outrageously priced.
Edited by The Real CZ on 18 May 2012 at 2:01am
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Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5536 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 575 of 844 18 May 2012 at 5:52am | IP Logged |
I thought about them, but they don't do much for me in Korean, so I didn't opt to mention them.
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Supernova (Choshinsei/Choshinsung) |
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Ahhh...I forgot about them. Of course the only song of theirs I can even recall offhand is T.T.L. (the combo song with T-ara), so I can't remember how I felt about their own releases.
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Kara is the only one newer group in Japan with decent pronunciation |
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I was hoping Kara was one of the groups with better Japanese pronunciation as I started listening to "Go Go Summer" again the other day and I'm already starting to get hooked on it. Plus they seem to be focusing more on Japan lately anyway, so I might as well get *some* benefit from that fact.
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the rest of the groups can't even speak Japanese at all. |
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I've also noticed the trend among many groups is to ramp up the English notably in their "Japanese versions" as well. For example, 4minute's original Japanese release of "First" has a lot more English than the Korean version they included on a later album. CNBLUE seems to have followed this pattern with many of their Japanese releases as well. Then you've got songs like Kara's "Mister" where the Japanese release is an odd mix of Japanese, English, and Korean (sometimes all three on the same line).
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Those three grammar books are the best learning materials I had. Tae Kim is a good site to learn the basic grammar structures. As you know, I used RTK to learn kanji meanings and then learned the readings through learning vocab. |
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In the short time I've been really searching for Korean learning info, I've already found tons of people recommending the "Tae Kim" site, so that one's a definite source. In fact, I recall that one of the Korean grammar sites I used to use (until I started using koreangrammaticalforms.com which I like better), noted that it was started with the hope of being "the Korean equivalent of Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar site".
I'm still debating the best way to go about learning Kanji/Hanja now. In fact, reading up on how people learn Kanji (mostly using RTK-style methods) has me rethinking how I'm currently learning Hanja.
So did you just dive in and not start with *any* textbook-style material for Japanese? Grammar books are very helpful, but they really strike me as being far more useful after getting your initial grounding in basic vocab and grammar from a beginner textbook. Pimsleur will jump start my vocabulary somewhat, will work on pronunciation, and will give me several useful stock sentences, but that course tends to avoid any specific grammar discussion by design.
I'll definitely need a good dictionary site (like Naver/Daum is for Korean or Wordreference is for Spanish)...thanks. :)
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I'd also suggest to get a pop up dictionary for Japanese. I used Rikaichan when I still used Firefox, but I have no idea if Chrome has something like that. |
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Absolutely. I'd actually hunted for one of those for Korean, but didn't have much luck finding one. I use Opera for the bulk of my surfing (and have for a very long time) but lately I have been using Chrome/Chromium as my secondary browser. I'm sure there is something available as a Chrome/Chromium plugin or even an Opera extension, if I'm lucky.
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You also better get used to downloading, because Japanese shit is outrageously priced. |
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...and Korean stuff isn't? ㅋㅋㅋ
Edited by Warp3 on 18 May 2012 at 5:56am
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The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5650 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean
| Message 576 of 844 19 May 2012 at 7:12pm | IP Logged |
Japanese stuff costs way more than stuff we're accustomed to in the US. $100 for video
games, $30 for CDs, $80 for DVDs, etc.
The textbook I used to learn Japanese
Mine didn't come with audio, but I didn't really need it, since I used JapanesePod101
with it and had watched anime for years before I started learning Japanese, so I
already
knew most of the sounds in Japanese.
The book is quite good. 26 lessons and a final review lesson. It has over 2,000 words
and it teaches a lot of grammar. It gets rid of romanji around lesson 3 and introduces
kanji around lesson 6, easing you into kanji. It doesn't outright teach kanji like a
dedicated kanji book would, but you'll learn the really common ones and their readings
through this book.
It also has a lot of exercises, but I didn't do them, even though the answers are in
the back. I'm not a fan of exercises.
Edited by The Real CZ on 19 May 2012 at 7:18pm
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