日語 Japanese Ask Questions Thread2 質問

If you have a question about the language, ask it and fellow 4channers might see it and answer it for you.

Japanese - Ask questions thread
http://dis.4chan.org/read/lang/1174719097/l50

>>200
Haha, same here. I might come out of the closet when my Japanese is good enough to talk more or less fluently, but until then I don't want to be associated with the two weeaboo Kendo-fags I know.
Also, 一 often works the same way too.

>>201
lol I know just what you mean. One day surprise everyone! Saying that, as long as you do it in a non-weeaboo way that's fine really. I guess it just depends who you're with. Some people may think you're a faggot, others the complete opposite. I'd settle for something in between. As long as it's not the only other language you know, people should take to it fine.

Saying that though, I must look a right fucking weeaboo when I go to buy manga in japanese. Which is actually a great resource. It's not to heavy, rewarding, and (some) have furigana, which is a fucking godsend.

Also, on the subject of knowing kanji, does anyone know how much is enough to get by? Say, in playing a game in Japanese? My friend claims to know about 600 and he completed a few Gyakuten Saiban games in japanese, is this really enough?

>>202

SHIT!! ... >to heavy
fucking hell I should really proof read. And when I say it's not too heavy, I mean not too 'wordy'.

I'd say 600 is a good enough amount to get through a vidya game. But that depends on the reading level required, and the complexity of the text in the first place. And yeah furigana are good, but don't rely on them too much, as, like stabilisers, when they go all of a sudden you'll probably fall over the first few times.

It depends on what you mean by get by. Personally I think you should know 2000 kanji to get by, otherwise you'll be looking up kanji every sentence and that's no fun. When I got to the 2000+ mark I was then able to look at like any kanji, 99.8% of the time it seems like I knew the kanji. Also since I know how to write every single radical with perfect stroke order, if I do encounter a kanji past the 常用漢字 it'll be insanely easy to look up. Oh and if you run into pixelated kanji like 襲 or just a game with bad resolution then you're absolutely fucked if you don't know how to write/recognize the radicals.

when connecting two sentences with the て form, do they need to have any relation to each other?

>>206
it depends on the sentence, but grammatically no, they don't have to relate but, there are generally better ways to link sentences. then te form. Also you link it with other verbs it can mean u were doing the two at once

eg
食べて飲んでいる
eating and drinking

Noob question...

to say "is it okay if i go?"
is 行っても良いですか

so how do you say "is it okay to not go?"?

>>208
行かなくても良いですか

Is it just me or is 2ch so incredibly boring because it's only text and you don't really join new topics as they start you just join the 30th topic that currently has 500 posts and it's just bleh..

then 2chan futaba is nice but it's way too slow. Hard to visit those places for practice when they're so boring =/ are there any other forums out there that has a good population but not insanely huge as 2ch?

>>210
compared to most forums, futaba moves quite quick. your just too use to *chan boards

>>206
>>207
-て forms a sequential (and sometimes weakly causative) link. You can say ご飯をたべて、学校にいった but not 学校にいって、ご飯をたべた (unless you meant that you went to school and then ate your lunch).

Are there any sites that list kanji stroke order for non-jouyou kanji? I know a couple that do all jouyou but outside of that, I'm lost. Now I know all the radicals but there's ones that look different, but some sites say that they're the same radical.

examples being 僅, this right side is supposed to be the left side of this 勤 but they don't look the same, (but some font seems like it does look the same) so I'm not sure how I should write it. Another example would be 曾/曽 for 噌, the 前(月)　in 揃, etc

PS-I believe Vista and XP use different font, so if you use XP, you might not see it how I explained it

Are people shifting away from these odd radicals and I should just use the normal ones? Or the other way around? Or there is no only way for this?

>>213
Me again, I asked some random person and they said simpler because they have been simplified meaning they're more up to date

but the question lies, if that is true, then why the hell would Microsoft make their new Vista system use the outdated version when XP had the correct style?

>>214
That sounds pretty much on par with everything else about Vista, actually.

>>214
Not sure if this is relevant to your question, but I hear on 2ch that Vista fucked up Japanese fonts so some cities/prefectures/government sites forbid Vista to complete online applications, documents and such on their sites.

"一人暮らし"

if a girl asks you this, does she mean am i living alone or asking if i am single?

>>217
Most of the time, it means living by yourself, but sometimes it can mean living alone AND single depending on the context. Either way what she wants to know is whether you're living alone or not. If she was asking if you're single, she would have asked if you were 独身.

>>218
thanks a lot

this girl has got a crush on me and so i wasnt sure which meaning she was using

>>219
Did you leave her question hanging?

earlier it was mentioned how kanji onyomi merged like 作曲 was sakkyoku rather than sakukyoku and there was rules for it. I was wondering if there were rules for the kanji where the first letter in the second+ kanji take a different reading, e.g. 人々 is hitobito

>>221
What you're referring to involves several different phenomenons, but, in the case of your example, it's par of 連濁 (rendaku), which refers to a change of the first sound to 濁音 (dakuon) in the second component of a compound word. For example, "bi" in your example is the dakuon which was originally "hi."

This can also occur in a compound of two different words such as 株式会社 (kabushiki-Gaisya), which is 株式 (kabusiki, join-stock)＋会社 (Kaisya, company). It's too difficult to explain rendaku in detail, but in the case of compounds of the same kanji as in 人々, it's simple:

If the first sound of the kanji is k, s, t or h, then the corresponding sound of the second component changes to g, z(j), d or b, respectively.

For instance, 細々 (hoso+hoso) is pronounced hosoboso while 易々 (yasu+yasu) is yasuyasu.

As I said, there are many other things if you're talking about the sound changes of the second kanji in a word in general. For example, a bit complicated rule about rendaku says 山川 is pronounced yamakawa if it means "mountains and rivers," and yamagawa if you mean "a river running in a mountain." 云々 (un-nun) is an example that doesn't fall into rendaku. It may look similar to 人々 and such but actually follows another rule (and the pronunciation of the second kanji is altered).

That said, every rule has exceptions and you can get by with the simple redaku rule. In fact, no one cares if 山川 is mispronounced, and others like 云々 are rare so it's easier to remember each word than master the rules.

>>222
awesome, thanks

How do you express differences of age smaller than a year?

i.e. "A-san is 3 months older than B-san"

年上 and 年下 seem wrong somehow when talking about a difference of less than one year.

>>224
AさんはBさん方が＿＿＿です

replace the ___ with older or younger or whatever information is needed there

also used to say something is better
AはB方が良いです
A is better than B

>>224
Strictly speaking, 年上 and 年下 implies the gap is greater than one year or they are/were in different years at grade school (Skipping/failing a grade is quite rare in Japan). So, in written language, I would say:

AさんはBさんより３ヶ月若いです

or use a different wording like:

Aさんの誕生日はBさんより３ヶ月早いです or 遅いです
when A is older or younger, respectively.

That said, 年上 and 年下 are loosely used especially in spoken language. So it's not very unusual to say:

AさんはBさんより３ヶ月だけ年下です
AさんはBさんより３ヶ月年上です.

だけ ("merely" in English) is placed to emphasize that the gap is less than one year. I omitted the word in the second sentence because using だけ can be impolite when you're referring to an elder person depending on the context. Also, 年上/年下 may sound funny/humorous when the gap is measured by weeks/days/hours/seconds. So a Japanese twin may make a joke like "私は弟より１時間年上です."

>>226
Thanks, you're a great help.

'Nother question, I've noticed both men and women often use でしょ instead of だろ even in タメ口 speech.  Is だろ considered especially "rough" or is there some difference in meaning between でしょ and だろ besides politeness level?

>>227
The meaning of the two words is pretty much the same, but だろ sounds manly and quite assertive while でしょ is unisex and a little less assertive (compared to だろ).

As for "roughness," だろ sure is rough. I recommend you avoid it unless you're talking with close friends.

>>228
I think there is "u" in the end, i.e., it's a long "o" - でしょう, ne!?
<--NOW MY QUESTION-->
Why are Japanese Wikipedia's articles on cat and dog called ネコ and イヌ (instead of kanji)? Are there many words written in katakana, is it a growing trend?
(because I don't know any katakana and start to wonder if it's being used for something more than Engrish and onomatopoeia)

>>229
でしょ is a colloquial form of でしょう and has a meaning quite similar to だろ, which is also an informal word.

As for katakana in wikipedia's articles, it's because the words you're referring to are scientific terms. More specifically, katakana is often used in the nomenclature of creatures and plants to differentiate scientific definitions from loose meanings used in daily conversation.

For example, felidae is ネコ科, not 猫科 or ねこ科. So, if a feline has a very odd looking, maybe you don't refer as 猫 though it belongs to ネコ科.

On a side note: There are also many scientific terms written in kanji such as 哺乳綱 (Mammalia), but most of the time they are recognized as technical terms.

>>230
Gah! My English grammar! I should of taken a second look. Hope you get what I meant...

>>214
Sup, I'm your random person from /jp/ :3

>>232
I would recommend that you return to /jp/ with haste.

I am trying to learn the language and I downloaded:

Genki
Rosetta Stone
Power Japanese
Pimsleur

Is this everything I would need to get a basic grasp of the language? Is there anything that you suggest I add or don't use? I also have hiragana basically memorized and I don't plan on working on kanji till I'm done with understanding everything else.

Also could someone purpose a schedule for me to go through this stuff. I find that if I am the one who makes a schedule I am less likely to follow it.

>>234
buy a grammar book. half an hour of each thing every day, spaced out throughout the day. (assuming you don't have a job or any sort of life)

>>234
protip: you will probably fail

that aside, http://www.guidetojapanese.org should be very helpful

>>234
I don't plan on working on kanji till I'm done with understanding everything else.
Are you trying to fail?

>>234
Don't listen to them, you can do it! Kanji are very important, so I think you should study them even before you're done "understanding everything else." Genki is very good textbook, one of the best, but since you're still an absolute beginner I'd recommend Communicating with Japanese by the Total Method by Noah S. Brannen instead (http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/1531528/13876688/).

>>235
You can do that even if you have a life. And you don't need to be that hard on yourself; you'll retain things better if you don't study too much in too little time.

When I started learning the language I was all "fuck off kanji, i've just learnt 2 fucking syllabaries and now you want me to learn MOAR?!" but, given time, you'll become acquainted with certain common ones and without even intentionally trying to drill them in you'll soon know more than you had expected.

Still, they can be quite intimidating things, and as long as you learn them in context you'll be okay. That being said, you can just go old fashioned flashcard method and drill study like Japanese kids do, if you have a decent memory. I find it helps best to have example sentences. I use speedanki.com alot to refresh and learn kanij in context. It's great because the sentences only use other kanji according to the set JLPT level you're learning at.

Really hoping someone can help me understand the Japanese grammar particles.

の = Possession

は = Topic Marker

に = Marks a specific time

Those are the ones I know, except for は a little bit.  By a little bit I mean that I don't know which word it needs to follow in a sentence to be grammatically correct.