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Learning the world’s most interesting language tag:ideogramme.ca,2005:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae Textpattern 2006-08-29T13:38:34Z Paul Davidson paul@ideogramme.ca http://ideogramme.ca/japan/ Paul Davidson 2006-08-29T12:56:00Z 2006-08-29T13:38:34Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-08-29:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/5dd1eac1ea40dfaa5fffb599a7bc0a0f <p>Generally I would not consider Japanese pronunciation difficult, but the odd word can be tricky. The hardest one I’ve come across so far is 雰囲気 (ふんいき), meaning “atmosphere, air, mood”. This word demonstrates the nasal ん at its best. Get a Japanese person to say this word for you if you aren’t familiar with it already!</p> <p>As a complete aside, I read this thought-provoking comment in an article at <a href="http://www.canadianbusiness.com/managing/career/article.jsp?content=20060106_145022_4460">Canadian Business Online</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p>Although many of us are daunted by the thought of trying to master a new tongue, the average Canadian could acquire one every year in the time he now spends watching television.</p> </blockquote> <p>Well, make that “every two years” for non-Indo-European languages like Japanese. But still, mastering any language or many languages is easily within reach for most Westerners, who typically waste hundreds of hours a year pointing their glazed eyes at the idiot box.</p> <p>(Of course, one must make allowances for exceptional shows like <em>Lost</em> and <em>Battlestar Galactica</em>.)</p> Paul Davidson 2006-08-19T14:16:00Z 2006-08-19T14:21:21Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-08-19:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/55ec62c4777e821a181c78ff5140e919

<p>I’ve commented on the site about how two seemingly equivalent words in English and Japanese can have unexpected differences when compared more closely.</p> <p>My tutor and I were discussing fruit and vegetables the other day. “Fruit” in Japanese is 果物 (くだもの), and “vegetable” is 野菜 (やさい) — if you look them up in a typical English-Japanese dictionary. Japanese tend to divide edible plants into these two categories (plus cereals) just as English speakers do. As usual, however, some surprises lurk…</p>

Paul Davidson 2006-08-18T09:08:00Z 2006-08-19T12:12:49Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-08-18:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/67b3242821cad0d5e30c46022acd018e

<p>This isn’t about learning Japanese, but it’s something interesting I’ve observed, and heard others remark on.</p> <p>Almost ninety-nine percent of the population living in Japan is Japanese, and as you can imagine, a fair number of Japanese words creep into the vocabularies of other people who live here, often because there’s no equivalent in English or Portuguese or whatever language one happens to speak.</p> <p>One curious case of language switching, I’ve noticed, involves money and numbers.</p>

Paul Davidson 2006-08-06T15:08:00Z 2006-08-06T15:09:12Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-08-06:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/8863d31249edf3f844c84ad504a3323b

<p>People who are starting out learning a language on their own — especially their first one — often don’t know where to begin.</p>

Paul Davidson 2006-07-10T15:05:00Z 2006-07-10T15:18:47Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-07-10:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/842d7e0355c74a83f66894ab742159a0 <p>As of July 3rd, those wishing to take the 2006 Japanese Proficiency exams (known as the JLPT, or 日本語能力試験) may obtain an application package and register. If you live in Japan, the process is simple enough; the package is available at nearly every bookstore for about 500 yen. All the forms and instructions needed for applying are included in the package. The main registration period ends on September 5th. </p> <p>If you don’t live in Japan, you’ll probably have to apply through the whatever local organization oversees the tests. There’s a complete list of <a href="http://momo.jpf.go.jp/jlpt/e/list_e.html">institutions conducting the overseas tests here</a>.</p> <p>Having a JLPT certificate to hang on your wall or stuff in a drawer isn’t terribly important in itself, but it’s a great way to mark your achievements and motivate yourself to continue your studies. Jobs that require Japanese may also require JLPT certification (typically levels 1 or 2) as proof of the applicant’s language skills.</p> <p>Myself, I’m aiming for level 2 this year. To all of you planning to take the JLPT in December, <em>ganbatte kudasai!</em></p> Paul Davidson 2006-06-20T11:45:59Z 2006-06-20T11:45:59Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-06-20:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/83f21eeccb889a5c6353b5a21f48b53c

<p>Those of us who love languages in general have trouble studying just one. I find myself wanting to get back into German a little now that my Japanese is at a fairly high level and progressing quickly. I figure I can fit in an extra 30 minutes a day, but that doesn’t mean my time spent on German has to exclude Japanese.</p>

Paul Davidson 2006-06-18T14:40:00Z 2006-06-18T14:46:10Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-06-18:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/8643ae418fa066392867d2fa3eea8125

<p>Unless you’re just starting out in Japanese, you’ve probably noticed that Japanese has a lot of verb pairs — two verbs with the same kanji and meaning but with differing endings. Examples include 開く・開ける; つく・つける; 出る・出す; and so on. The difference in each such pair is that one version acts on its subject, and the other acts on a direct object (marked with を).</p>

Paul Davidson 2006-06-11T13:55:00Z 2006-06-26T07:16:30Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-06-11:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/4533a668a31b2f34bae42bb54e0d6793

<p>Even if you’re not an aural learner, you can’t become proficient at Japanese without doing a lot of listening and speaking. While having native Japanese speakers at your disposal is ideal, there are plenty of audio courses that can provide the many hours of listening and practising you need to become fluent.</p> <p>The difficulty is knowing which audio course to get. Those available range greatly in price, quality, and breadth of instruction. I’m still looking for a good one myself, but here’s a rundown on what seem to be the most popular audio learning systems. <strong>Updated with more on the Assimil courses.</strong></p>

Paul Davidson 2006-05-29T09:42:12Z 2006-05-29T09:42:12Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-05-29:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/a723ffe353ff5e9888b18dec1c32505f

<p>This post isn’t about Japanese in particular, so you can safely skip it if that’s the main language you’re interested in learning. No doubt many of my readers, however, aspire to speak several languages, or perhaps already do. My own skills include French and German, which I’m not particular good at but intend to improve, plus a smattering of Thai and Mandarin.</p> <p>In most places and times, people with a desire for knowledge and have been drawn to languages for the access to information, improvement of mental skills, and greater cultural understanding they offered…</p>

Paul Davidson 2006-05-20T12:59:21Z 2006-05-20T12:59:21Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-05-20:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/56f589d5abb42ff06bc46e13c5c3ff29

<p>I’ve learned by now, as an intermediate student of Japanese, that this language cannot be understood without understanding something about <em>modality</em>. While I’m wary of scaring away readers with technical jargon, I think getting a handle on modality is important.</p> <p>Modality is what you have when you try to express more than a simple fact in any language. That something more might be attitude, intent, possibility, negativity, conjecture, desire, and so on.</p>

Paul Davidson 2006-05-13T13:05:00Z 2006-05-13T13:12:45Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-05-13:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/5ba8c7b780d7073fdb9e1ced189f02a0

<p>Takao Suzuki writes in <em>Words in Context</em> that if you look up “break” in an English-Japanese dictionary, you get a list of several words; maybe a long list, depending how big the dictionary is. However, most of those Japanese verbs only mean “break” in specific ways and situations, or for specific kinds of objects.</p> <p>Unfortunately, Suzuki doesn’t discuss further what the various Japanese words mean, so I’ve begun my own investigation…</p>

Paul Davidson 2006-05-03T14:44:08Z 2006-05-03T14:44:08Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-05-03:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/4cb8f2e4bba836aef8729b846907cb4f

<p>In a recent entry, I covered <a href="http://ideogramme.ca/japan/article/31/cool-or-warm-choosing-the-right-adjective">Japanese adjectives for temperature</a> and how they indicate not just objective temperature, but how favourable that temperature is.</p> <p>In <em>Words in Context</em>, Takao Suzuki refers to this aspect of Japanese as the “utility norm” — utility being one of the criteria one uses when selecting the right word for a comparison. Comparisons involve opposites: big versus small, hot versus cold, etc.</p>

Paul Davidson 2006-04-28T14:43:00Z 2006-04-28T14:57:29Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-04-28:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/04c896bf35f7434fe898f89b47b5f914

<p>In <em>Japanese: Words in Context</em> (<a href="http://ideogramme.ca/japan/article/28/book-review-words-in-context">reviewed here</a>), Takao Suzuki covers the differences between some English words and their supposed Japanese counterparts, so the reader can see the challenges of learning a word’s true definition.</p> <p>I ran into this problem today with one of the simplest of words: 会う, usually defined as “to meet”, and one of the first words you learn in a beginner’s Japanese course. </p>

Paul Davidson 2006-04-23T12:00:00Z 2006-04-23T12:02:51Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-04-23:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/99644414c602e35bf09d36c30b75999d

<p>Will at NihongoJouzu recently published instructions for <a href="http://www.nihongojouzu.com/2006/04/displaying_macr.html">inserting macrons</a> in text under Windows. Macrons are the diacritical marks that look like little lines over a vowel (e.g. ō, ī, and so on), and they’re often used to indicate long vowels in Japanese words when written in the Latin alphabet.</p> <p>Since I don’t feel there’s much use for rōmaji in general (not for the serious student, at least), I didn’t see much point in knowing how to type macrons at first. But I did come up with a few uses for it. For example, if you’re going to include Japanese personal names or place-names in an English text (or any language that uses the Latin script), macrons are pretty useful; likewise for using Japanese loanwords in a non-Japanese text. </p> <p>Since I use Macs, I figured I’d explain how to type macrons in OS X. Like most tasks on a Mac, it’s a lot easier than under Windows.</p>

Paul Davidson 2006-04-22T11:24:00Z 2006-04-23T11:19:53Z tag:ideogramme.ca,2006-04-22:bc17821751264078f6148dcbb32ae4ae/966ffd39540bf2fb94c875446ae040c6

<p>Before I came to Japan, I read stories by Westerners who claimed the Japanese people they met either wouldn’t speak to them, or—even worse—would only speak broken English to them. Well, I’m happy to say those tales are untrue; the only explanation for such stories I can imagine would be if the foreigner had such bad pronunciation as to be incomprehensible to Japanese people. (That’s probably not so uncommon, actually.)</p> <p>Anyway, if you can manage basic Japanese and have a good accent, you are likely to meet the following kinds of people, going by my own experiences…</p>