Japanese 101, part 2

[Mikazuki]

A new thread, picking up from the original thread.

Well this morning was the first day of class and of course our textbooks are still not in despite being told by the bookstore manager that it would be here by the end of August.

There are several students who, like me, studied on their own. Some are repeat students who are taking 101 after finishing the 201, 202 and 203 courses last year.

The teacher is Japanese, from Japan, so when she speaks in Japanese it's fast like you would hear in the real world. Thankfully I could understand her most of the time since a majority of what she said in Japanese I already do know.

We're learning Hiragana first and must master all of them within the next two weeks. We have a quiz next Tuesday already. After we learn Hiragana we will then have two more weeks to learn Katakana and after that the rest of the semester to learn 90 Kanji. Chapters 1 and 2, of our book, are in romaji while Chapter 3 and beyond are in kana and kanji.

Our final exam also consists of an oral conversation in Japanese only.

What did I get myself into? LOL That's ok, I can read some Japanese but the problem I have always had was speaking it which is why I decided to take the class. Least speaking Japanese on a daily basis will force me to get comfortable speaking it so hopefully I'll get an A or at least a B in the course. LOL

 

[JFC]

Good luck Mika! :thumbs:

 

[x1xBladex1x]

Sounds good Mikazuki, & best of luck to ya! I wish they had a course near here for Japanese, but when I graduate I'm going to go to Berea College (somewhere in Kentucky about 3 hours from here maybe a little farther) & learn Japanese. One of the teachers or something from that college said there would be good opportunity to go to Japan that way to, so I'll just take their word for it, not to mention the other things there I want to take, so it will be good for me if I get to do so. Anyway back to your subject, I hope you do good in the class & it's cool that you actually get to take it, so yeah. :thumbs:

 

[Exo_Kopaka]

Awesome. My sensei is from Michigan :laugh: . Damn, that oral component sounds hard. I always had to write it out before I plan out what I'm gonna say, but now I've gotten the hang of most of it, and can develop sentences on impulse. A serious problem people have is that they don't have that rhythm Japanese has. They say every character like once as if they were words, and never make it out to a real word. Hopefully, you can get the rhythm. :thumbs:

Man, this course seems to go like twice as fast as my class. We took a whole semester to learn Hiragana, sentence structure, and vocab, then over Christmas, learned Katakana, and then over the summer (which not a lot of people did), studied all the Kanji that are included in that Japanese Proficiency Test thingie, Level 4. I asked my sensei for Level 3's sheet. So far, he hasn't given me it, but I'm gonna keep buggin him about that. :laugh: He calls me a nut. :bawling: Make sure your sensei doesn't call you that :laugh:!

Good luck!

 

[Mikazuki]

Sensei told a bit about herself today and said she is from Sapporo in the Hokkaido prefecture.

I'm not crazy about the book mainly because of the spellings on many common things that I'm already use to spelling. Take arigatou for example, in the book it is spelled as arigatoo (ありがとう). The teacher liked how I was able to pronounce things - it made her happy (her words for the most part).

Here's the site that the book uses:
http://genki.japantimes.co.jp/

Here are the books. Japanese 101 uses the Elementary 1 textbook and workbook. Unfortunately, you can't really buy the books and extra stuff outside of school bookstores or places like Kinokuniya - Amazon.com doesn't have them in stock but Amazon Japan does (go fig).

Our exam next week will consist of greeting words and some hiragana. Spelling will be that of the book which means I have to "forget" everything I already know and start from scratch. Oh and one thing is for sure, as much as I recognize hiragana and katakana... I can't write it to save my life. I printed up the kana on 3x5 cards and plan on having the cards laminate then use a dry erase marker to go over and over the kana.

 

[Exo_Kopaka]

Take arigatou for example, in the book it is spelled as arigatoo (ありがとう).

That's how it's spelled. "ありがとう", which in Romanji (God I hate doing this) is a ri ga to u. The last う is silent, and only extends the と. It's not spelled wrong, unless the book has it in Romanji. I'm confused at what you're saying. :disappoin

Spelling will be that of the book which means I have to "forget" everything I already know and start from scratch.

I don't understand. Were you studying in Romanji by yourself or something? I don't understand how a book's spelling is different than the original. Unless you're being tested on Romanji, as opposed to the actual real spelling.

Oh and one thing is for sure, as much as I recognize hiragana and katakana... I can't write it to save my life. I printed up the kana on 3x5 cards and plan on having the cards laminate then use a dry erase marker to go over and over the kana.

It's ok. I studied by learning how to write them first, with the exact stroke order. For me, it took several hours of just sitting there and writing each character over and over and over and over until I could get it right, and then it will be come a habit over time and naturally come to me. I used flash cards, but I don't think it's necessary to laminate them.

Try setting up your flash cards like I do. For Hiragana, write the Romanji(ugh) on one side, and then the real character on the back. Then you can just be like "ah I foget" and turn it over. Then, just put the card in a seperate pile to practice more intensely on. Eventually, you won't need these flash cards, and you just have to recite them verbally as opposed to reading the disguisting Romanji. Then, as you recite, you can write! :thumbs:

But yeah, if you really want to master the basic characters, I HIGHLY reccomend writing the character over, and over, and over, and over. And over. It really helps. And I don't mean just 3 or 4 times. I mean like 3 or 4 pages worth of the same character. You'll be sure to master them in a few weeks. :thumbs:



This was the book I used last year:
http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Busy-People-I-Version/dp/4770019874

Now I'm using the yellow one. And yes, you do find these at Borders and such, but my Sensei orders them from Japan so that he can get them in bulk and cheaper, like your text book! :anime: Good thing about this book is that there is absolutely NO Romanji in it.

 

[wyyc]

You have no idea how much I envy you guys.

I live in Singapore, and once you're promoted to Secondary School, you have the choice to take Japanese as a 3rd language IF your English and Mother Tongue results are satisfactory. The main purpose of our evil government is to use us to exploit the Japanese economy, but so far their efforts have been fruitless. Not that I care.

I'm in Sec 4 now. In Sec 1 and 2, I took Japanese and learnt the basics, but I frequently missed lessons. Thankfully, I had a good memory, and I managed to cram in all the Kanji lists before major tests, but I didn't appreciate my chance. My teacher often told me to put my effort into learning Japanese, since I have a talent for languages, but I took everything for granted. At the end of Sec 2, my overall GPA didn't allow me to continue taking 11 subjects, so I was forced to drop Japanese in favour of English Literature. :shakefist

I fucking regret this decision, because English Literature is boring as ****, and because I only began to appreciate Japanese from Sec 3 onwards. Somehow, I feel that God is mocking me. During Sec 1 and 2, I didn't have much of an interest in Japan, or in Japanese culture and their products (i.e. Anime and Toku), but in Sec 3, after noticing the absence of Japanese in my life, I began to look for everything Japan. I had Japanese food 4 times a week for a period of time (my friends were like, "WTF, you're eating raw fish 4 times a week?"), watched a hell lot of anime and toku, read a lot of manga and also began reading up on Japan in general, especially their customs. Because I'm a student and thus have inadequate finances to attend any Japanese language lessons, I have to resort to learning Japanese words and grammar from anime and manga. Really, I regret not appreciating my time with Japanese in Sec 1 and 2. Once I get a part time job, I'm going to take lessons. Until then, I hope you guys appreciate and love your lessons. :thumbs:

Oh yeah... Mikazuki has money. That's one big barrier for me. It proves that money is everything. :disappoin

 

[kyo28]

Just want to jump in quickly to wish you the best of luck with your courses, Mika. And when it gets tough, don't give up. I've failed my last exam (intermediate-advanced level) mostly because I couldn't get enough time studying due to my job ... so if it gets hard, just keep hanging in there.

Regarding the romanization, various books use different methods and one is not better than the other, just different. Officially, these methods are accepted:
- Hepburn method (this one is mostly used by western people)
- Kunrei-shiki (this one is mostly used by Japanese)
- JSL (lesser used variant)

So a word like ありがとう will be transcribed as arigatou, arigatoo or arigato (with a line over the o) depending on the romanization method. All are valid methods but the most important things is that you know how to write in Japanese characters. In that way I think Kunrei-shiki is the best method as it distinguishes between づ and ず, something other methods tend not to do.

When studying characters, be it kana or kanji, it's very important to also learn how to write them (which is hard than just learning to recognize them). That's why I keep writing characters over and over when studying them. Of course, it depends on the level op proficiency you're aiming at ... but in my case it's an important aspect. A good book to learn the basic rules about stroke orders for writing characters is Kanji & Kana by Hadamitzky and Spahn. The forword takes 1/3 of the book and leaves only 2/3 for the actual characters but that way you'll have a good understanding of the writing system and how to study kana and kanji. If you're just aiming for recreational purposes, it might be a bit too much effort to learn to write so recognition should be enough.

I think Genki is pretty good text book for starters. I wouldn't recommend Japanese for busy people, on the other hand. Their grammatical explanations are too shallow, don't go deep enough so you'll have trouble making your own sentences down the line. A very good book to get deeper grammatical understandings is Japanese, the Spoken Language ... took me +/- 2 years to go through those 3 volumes but at the end you'll have a good understanding of basic grammar. A basic dicitonary of Japanese grammar and An intermediate dictionary of Japanese grammar are very good to study as well as reference works. I'm going through the intermediate dictionary now and I'm picking up some things (mostly newspaper style or very formal writing style) that I didn't know yet.

Quick question: how much do you guys pay and how many hours a week to you get?

 

[DigDoug]

I'm not crazy about the book mainly because of the spellings on many common things that I'm already use to spelling. Take arigatou for example, in the book it is spelled as arigatoo (ありがとう).

My textbook has the same problem. The title, in romanji, is spelled "Yookoso!" :shakefist

It didn't affect my spelling or pronunciation, but it does peeve me.

 

[Undrave]

Good luck Mika!

I'm jealous... I want to learn how to speak Japanese! I love to learn new languages. I want a chance to learn more Chinese too ><