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

こんにちは～!
So, straight to the question, does anyone have a straight to the question, does anyone have a link to an online the question, does anyone have a link to an online kanji dictionary? Like not just charts for learning them like in school but an actual dictionary?

>>959
>>960
thanks

>>961
how did you fuck up your post that bad?
http://www.yamasa.cc/ocjs/kanjidic.nsf/SearchKanji3?OpenForm

How hard is it for a Chinese or Korean person to learn Japanese, and vice versa? It would seem pretty hard...but maybe I'm wrong. I think learning foreign languages with English has much more fluidity to it.

>>963
Koreans are by for the fastest at learning Japanese due to the languages being very similar. Koreans struggle only on Kanji.

Chinese are the second best at learning Japanese because they already know the Kanji (although slightly different but still understandable)

>>964
I really hope you were trolling just then. Seriously, Korean and Japanese being similar!? A Japonic and a possibly Altaic/ language isolate being similar? Even just an isolate being similar to anything astounds me.

I understand the Chinese, technically because the Japanese borrowed their kanji from Chinese hanzi (if I remember correctly, the word might be wrong.), but Korean and Japanese aren't similar like Dutch and German my good sir.

>>965

Not 964, but he's/she's correct.  The theory is that Korean and Japanese are closely but distantly related which explains the similarities in grammatical structure between the two.  Still heavily under debate though.

>>965 is an imbecile. "A" Japonic? As opposed to what? "Many" Japonic languages?
Also, please don't try to convince people that you know the first thing about the Korean and Japanese similarities or lack thereof. I bet you never heard that Turkish is similar to Korean and Japanese either. Idiot.

>>967
"Many" Japonic languages?
Yes. Learn about Ryukyuan languages.

>>967
Oh man, I thought /lang/ was free of retarded people...

>>965
964 here, I actually base my knowledge on first hand experience. I've lived in Japan for 1.5 years attending a Japanese school for foreigners. I've encountered tons of people from every single race. Out of them all, Koreans rise to the top faster than anyone. The way the languages work are extremely similar. My GF is also Korean so I've picked up Korean myself and found it the easiest language ever through Japanese. I use Japanese grammar and just swap the words and I have had grammatically correct sentences without ever learning grammar. Koreans also are better than everyone in Japanese accents than anyone else by a long shot. They also happen to already know 100s of kanji through Korean as well, you never considered that, did you?

Chinese (along with taiwanese) are definitely quick at learning the language too. They all seem to have a difficulty with pronunciation, as they forget if words used the dakuten  (゛) as they can't clearly hear the difference as we do.

Indonesia people seem to struggle more than anyone else as they have a deep accent which makes them hard to understand

There's a lot of requests and demands in Japanese and I'm curious where this one belongs as you won't ever learn it in class. It sounds like bad grammar but it isn't.

It's like this
待つんだ！
or
ここは俺に任せて先に行くんだ

Is it a request? Is it a demand? Is it even used in real Japanese (outside of TV)
Is it rude?

>>971
I always see people asking about this but I'm always terrible at explaining it myself. All it is is a shortened/informal form of の+です following a verb (in your examples, though it can be used after nouns, etc.)

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/particles3.html#part5
Has a really good explanation on the whole thing, it's the whole section on the bottom of that page (The 「の」 particle as explanation).

It's not a request or a demand, more of an added point of explanation, and usually it doesn't really have its own translation. And yes, it's used quite often in real Japanese, I see/hear it daily spoken and written. Hope that helps.

>>972
That is the same form and all. I understand how to use の＋です
but I think we're talking about two different things here. I wouldn't be surprised if it's just derived from that form and modified to make it a request though, but I'm pretty sure that the way it is supposed to work is different

You hear it when for instance, you see someone running away, and you yell, "待つんだ！" or "Stop!" to get them to do so.
However, it doesn't really make sense with the original の＋です meaning.

You could say お前が野菜を食べるんだ to a person who won't eat his vegetables.

>>973
I think it's still the same thing. While it usually adds an explanatory tone, I've seen it/heard of it used just to add extra emotion. Though, I'm only at an intermediate level with my Japanese so I may be wrong myself (if anyone else wants to come in and correct me!).

I just thought about looking it up in "A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar" series and heres part of the entry of it.

3. [Subject] のだ is also used when no information is shared by the speaker and the hearer and the speaker is not explaining or asking for an explanation about anything. In this case, the speaker is talking as if some information were shared with the hearer and the effects of this are, for example,
 (a) to involve the hearer in the affairs he is talking about (See (3) and (4) below.)
and, or
 (b) to impose his idea upon the hearer or, at least, to emphasize his idea emotively. (See (5) below.)

Examples:
(3)今日フットボールがあるんですが一緒に行きませんか。
(There is a football game today, wouldn't you like to go with me?)
(4)先生、困っているんです。助けてください。
(Sensei, I'm in trouble. Please help me.)
(5)日本語の文法は難しいですがおもしろいんですよ。
(Japanese grammar is difficult, but it's interesting, you know.)

The parts prior to that section are just explaining のです used in its explanatory tone and the fact that it can be shortened to のだ or んだ.

As I said before I may be incorrect myself and there may be another grammar point I don't know about yet, but every time I've seen んだ (and equivalents) used, it's always been this same form.
E

Anyone know where I can find some decent intermediate and advanced Japanese books? Or even anything where I can study them online? I can find so many beginner books, but barely anything above. 

Also, someone should make a new thread soon.

>>974
Yeah, I know what you're talking about but it's not that.
I did some google searching and came across this page which is going over exactly what I'm talking about. Pretty complicated, even these people who are trying to explain it all have different opinions.
http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/nichigen/issue/pdf/4/4-14.pdf
命令という発語内行為について「その表現が決意や命令であることを直
接的に指し示す標識がなくても、動作の内容と、“その動作がまだ実現していないこと”“その動作を実現させるべき人物が話手（聞手）であること”が何らか
の手段で示されれば、その表現は立派に決意や命令として理解されるものであ
る」と述べ、「動詞の原形や『～こと。』という形でも、文脈によっては決意・
命令の表現たりうる」と述べている。

So it sounds like to me it can be either a your strong decision or an order depending on the context
6　俺は行くぞ。行くと言ったら行くんだ。 （p.４９0「決意」の例）
7　立て、立て！立つんだ、ジョー！ （p.４９!「命令」の例）

mine is beyond basic but im trying to type some things im learning in my Japanese class. So i turn on windows japanese typing...thing. Can someone explain how this works, the little drop down menu giving options on what to type in? Naturally just starting to lean Japanese i dont know kanji at all so is there a kanji or wata and watashi?

腸?
私?
I type space after wata and watashi and i get these, is it auto correcting to kanji?
これ輪?
korewa?

わたし

any help will probably kick start my learning ten-fold

Can someone tell me what a proper method of learning kanji would be? At the moment I'm just studying arbitrary vocab using electronic flash cards in Anki, and trying to pick up ON-readings naturally from regular vocabulary. But is it better to try and study them individually in isolation with the expectation that in most cases I'll be able to infer the both the readings and meanings of words from the individual kanji, or should I continue as I'm doing and try and recall the meaning and ON-readings of the kanji from prior uses in full words?

>>18
There are a lot of japanese books on that. You have to look for 草書 (read "sousho", this writing style is the japanese cursive)

>>40
it does sound rather awkward and I'm not sure if a native speaker would actually understand what you were trying to say.
If I were in a similar situation, I'd show the person I'm asking a map or something and ask him something like 「ここはどこですか。」

>>977
You should get your kanji knowledge at least to a basic level (~ 100-150 kanji) before trying to type something in kanji; the IME can't do the thinking for you. It will propose the most likely kanjis for the reading you're typing in, but you still have to choose the correct kanjis yourself.

I don't know what you mean with "wata", but the kanji for watashi would be 私

Also, it's これは (as in: "this is"), not これわ. The は may be read as a "wa" but if you were to transcribe it properly, it would actually be written as "ha". Since the は in this place is a particle, you would never, ever, write it as a kanji. You could, however, write the "これ" as kanji, for which you could choose from 是, 之 and 惟. But then again, in modern japanese, これ is almost always written in hiragana.

>>978
You might want to try out a two-way approach. I am currently learning how to write a kanji -as well as their individual meaning- with one anki deck, and I use another deck with example sentences and kanji combinations to get a feeling for how they are being read and in what situations and vocabulary they are being used.
The first method analyzes and deconstructs the individual kanji in their different parts and ties them together with small stories. The kanji for "bright" (明), for example, consists of the kanji for sun or day, 日, and the kanji for moon or month, 月. You can use a short sentence like "It is really BRIGHT when the light of both SUN and MOON shine together" or something like this. There is a community collecting such stories for about 3300 kanjis at http://kanji.koohii.com/

If you want to learn the readings, you should http://www.readthekanji.com/ a try. Kana and the kanji for JLPT4 are free, and if you want to do the other levels, you can get yourself a lifetime account for just 10 $. I use the site almost every day and it is really worth it.

Hello

I wonder if someone could help me? There is a brilliant piece of Japanese porn on this link here:

http://www.mammothtube.com/cgi-bin/atx/out.cgi?s=75&c=1&l=no&u=/movies/48/483768/beautiful-asian-teacher-got-gangbang-by-her-students/

I would love to know why the teacher lets the students lift up her skirt, and then allows them to go further. Does she say anything to encourage them? Could someone who speaks Japanese please tell me what is happening here? Many thanks.

>>981

Trivialman again. I hope no one is offended by that question, but I heard, via an adult website, that somebody had posted a similar question on 4chan, so I hope that the question is acceptable. Needless to say, the video is for adults only.

>>978

Sort of what 980 said but, I just started an intermediate course in Japanese at my university and we use a book called Kanji Look and Learn. Every kanji in it has a little picture explanation with it and a short little "story" to it to help you remember it. It may seem silly at first but it really works pretty well, for me at least. For exemple:
親 (parent) - The parent stands (立) on the tree (木) and watches (見) the children.
And then there's a picture of a guy standing on a tree with an eye with legs (見) next to him.

Also, learning the individual radicals of complicated kanji will help out a lot.

Moji No Benkyou (1) is a free software that helps you studying Japanese characters (Hiragana and Katakana).

http://www.geocities.jp/katayama_hirofumi_mz/mojiben1/eindex.htm

Alright, so here's something I've been wondering about.

There are a lot of homophones in Japanese, but kanji make this no problem.

But what about spoken Japanese? How are you supposed to know what is what if there's so many homophones?

>>985
context

what does this say?

http://www.monometa.com/meido_cha04.htm

>>985
Context does help, but context would also help in reading too, so that answer is moot tbh

This is why Japanese is a seriously flawed language, the language wouldn't even work without kanji due to the crazy amount of homophones.

In speech however, vocabulary is less broad. You'll find yourself running into non-spoken words all the time when reading a book. I have a feeling this is partly because of homophones.

There is intonation which helps Japanese understand pretty decently. For instance, there is 箸 橋 and 端. All are spelled the same but have different intonations so you can kinda tell.

This still isn't enough sometimes, so you will often hear even Japanese people themselves saying stuff like
A)＿＿＿＿きせい
B)きせい？
A)規則のキだよ
B)あっ、規制か

Seriously, this is something you hear like everyday

Why is stroke order important?

>>989

a) dictionaries often use stroke order
b) try writing your post down on paper.  Write each word from last letter to first, and in the letter last stroke to first.  Compare what it looks like with your regular handwriting and how the letters should look - odds are it looks like shit.

REVIVE!

SURVIVE!

ALIVE!

Is stroke order for kanji important?

>>994
Yes

忘れはしないって忘れないと全く同じですか。

だいたい同じです。
「忘れない」は普通の（会話で使う）言い方です。
「忘れはしない」は、少し文学的な言い方です。

下げ for 日語

皆さん、このスレッドに参加して心よりありがとうございました！

This thread has over 1000 replies.
You can't reply anymore.