An idea for learning Japanese

[RamenRanger]

An idea for learning Japanese

I was just sitting here when i got an appifany. What if there a thread for just speaking in a romanji type way. that way while we read we can learn the words, be forced to pull out a dictianry to find the translation, learn the sentence structure of japanese, also reply to the poster in romanji, and if there some talented people out there the could give us corrections or suggestions.

personaly i have trouble learning japanese if i cant read the language. by this way i might become a little fluent and take less time looking for the right word and then move on to hiragana and katakana and eventualy kanji.

so if some of you like please give your opinion on this subject i would realy appriecate this.

i think my idea will help out a lot to the beginers

 

[Johnzaloog]

I like the idea, but my gran's computer (which is the one I use most, long story) cannot read Hiragana, Katakana or kanji. It just shows them as boxes. But the idea of romanji, I like. Now all I need is a japanese-English dictionary.

 

[SSJ Jup81]

I like the idea, but my gran's computer (which is the one I use most, long story) cannot read Hiragana, Katakana or kanji. It just shows them as boxes.

You can probably install something so that your computer can read it. If it runs windows, there should be something on the OS disc to install different language packages. My computer can read Japanese, Chinese, and Korean text. Even the computers I had with an older OS could. I'm sure there's something you can download with Japanese interface or whatever you would call it.

Now all I need is a japanese-English dictionary.

Yeah, a really good one. I have a English-Japanese dictionary (Webster) but it's so basic and not all that great and was quite inexpensive. My teacher has a really good Japanese-English dictionary, but it's probably quite expensive. Her dictionary tends to have examples and such and also included gerrunds for the verbs, iirc.

That aside, I feel it's a good idea, but I still think we should have the Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji included too. It'll help to learn it better, since not everything in Japan is written in romanji, though ideally, this would be nice.

Like I was told, before you can really learn Kanji, you should know your Hiragana/Katakana first.

For actually typing Japanese text, a Japanese word processor should work okay. You can just copy what you type through there, and post it here.

 

[onkeikun]

If you have Windows XP and want to type Japanese, check out this link.
To view Japanese instead of boxes, I think you do:
Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Languages > Check the box that says "Install files for East Asian languages"
Unless you have a really old PC, there's no way that you absolutely cannot view Japanese text.

I'm not going to mention dictionaries because there are plenty of free online ones out there, and I doubt you'll dish the money to buy the real hardcore ones. (You should only buy them if you want to know Japanese for life, and I've already seen a lot of people get discouraged and give up.)

RamenRanger, your idea isn't one that I'd ever teach personally (like SSJ Jup81 said, you really need a good command of hiragana/katakana first and that means knowing what each symbol stands for and how to pronounce them), but if you feel that it'll help you absorb information, then I'll humor you.

 

[RamenRanger]

Ah thought this is what im trying to show is that to able to use hiragana and katakana effectively do not need to know what you saying. so thus by learning though romanji at first you can learn the word and then make them into hiragana and katakana.

by this you will then be able to tell what the word is when you can read japanese and not go "Man i wish i knew what this was".

 

[onkeikun]

Well... I think you're going about it in a more complicated manner than you need to, but give it a shot and see how it goes.

 

[SSJ Jup81]

Ah thought this is what im trying to show is that to able to use hiragana and katakana effectively do not need to know what you saying. so thus by learning though romanji at first you can learn the word and then make them into hiragana and katakana.

by this you will then be able to tell what the word is when you can read japanese and not go "Man i wish i knew what this was".

Still seems that you'd be learning it backwards, though. To me, seems it would be more effective to learn the chart so that you'd know what each character meant, and then do the romanji. It'd be better practice, imo, to work out words written in Hiragana/Katakana and then convert to romanji instead of its being the other way around.

I know my teacher was and Pazuzu (I'm pretty sure he's said this), ironically, was saying that learning romanji to Hiragana/Katakana makes learning it more difficult since you're going to always expect everything to be in romanji. I guess when hearing someone say something in Japanese or a character in Japanese, instead of thinking of it with a Hiragana/Katakana character, you'll think of it in romanji first, which doesn't help you with actually reading the language. I know this is a problem with me, but I'm slowly getting out of it. I practice trying to read it, though, with stuff like anime title names. I might not know the kanji (if it uses any), but there is furigana, so I just try to read that. If I come across a character that I can't remember (or should know), I study it.

Either way, maybe you should do both. Romanji and Hiragana/Katakana.

How do you propose we start?

Edit: I just realized something. When it comes to writing it (literally with pen/pencil and paper), I do have to do so in English, then romanji, then Hiragana/Katakana. The only reason I do it this way, is so that I can compose my thoughts better, and English being my natural language, I guess it's only natural. I then write what I wrote in English in romanji so I can work out my grammar. I then write in Japanese text. Here's an example I did for class a while ago, to show you what I mean...

Last Tuesday, my cousin visited. Her name is Tracey. She is 21 years old. She is a nurse and she helps elderly people.

Senshuu no Kayoubi watashi no itoko ga uchi wo otozuremashita. Namae wa TOREESHII soshite ni-juu-ichi sai desu. TOREESHII wa NAASU desu. Anohito wa nenchousha no testsudai o shimasu.

せんしゅうのかようびわたしのいとこがうちをおとずれました。 なまえはトレーシィそして二十一さいです。 トレーシィはナースです。 あのひとはねんちょう
しゃのてつだいをします。

The homework every week now, is to actually write out some type of conversation before we come to class, so we pick something that occurred during the week and write about it. She's checking our actual writing of Japanese characters. Even if the characters have a kanji character for it, she said we can stick to Hiragana/Katakana (even though above, there, I used the kanji for 21, since I already knew how to write it...I know the character for "sai", but not the writing direction, so I stuck to Hiragana). For me, I always have to use this method (English > Romanji > Japanese), so I guess I see what you mean.

 

[RamenRanger]

Edit: I just realized something. When it comes to writing it (literally with pen/pencil and paper), I do have to do so in English, then romanji, then Hiragana/Katakana. The only reason I do it this way, is so that I can compose my thoughts better, and English being my natural language, I guess it's only natural. I then write what I wrote in English in romanji so I can work out my grammar. I then write in Japanese text. Here's an example I did for class a while ago, to show you what I mean...

so my idea is not that far out there is it?

 

[SSJ Jup81]

so my idea is not that far out there is it?

Maybe; I still learned most of my Hiragana/Katakana first.

 

[AznxLoneWolf]

It's sort of pointless to learn romaji because all romaji is, is just English letters that help you read hiragana / katakana. There's really nothing to learn there. The sounds are pretty simple. I mean, it's just the vowels, a i u e o, and then for each row, add a letter. For example, the second row is the K row, so ka ki ku ke ko. Pronunciation wise, it's just ah ee oo eh oh. Also, the way my textbook was structured, there's only romaji at the beginning to help you learn hiragana and then it all disppears.

 

[RamenRanger]

im not talking about the romanji of hiragana and katakana im talking about the words.

 

[SSJ Jup81]

It's sort of pointless to learn romaji because all romaji is, is just English letters that help you read hiragana / katakana. There's really nothing to learn there. The sounds are pretty simple. I mean, it's just the vowels, a i u e o, and then for each row, add a letter. For example, the second row is the K row, so ka ki ku ke ko. Pronunciation wise, it's just ah ee oo eh oh. Also, the way my textbook was structured, there's only romaji at the beginning to help you learn hiragana and then it all disppears.

That's how it is for my book. The later chapters, like the dialogue sections, are all in Japanese now, so we have to read it out loud without romanji. If we make a mistake, we get corrected though. For the kanji, though, it has furigana written with it. Furigana are the small Hiragana characters found over kanji so that you can read it correctly, right?

 

[AznxLoneWolf]

That's how it is for my book. The later chapters, like the dialogue sections, are all in Japanese now, so we have to read it out loud without romanji. If we make a mistake, we get corrected though. For the kanji, though, it has furigana written with it. Furigana are the small Hiragana characters found over kanji so that you can read it correctly, right?

Yup. That's really the only way you can learn hiragana & katakana. You can't learn romaji, really. It's like learning the alphabet and I'm pretty sure we all know that already or we wouldn't be on a forum.
. . .
Yeah ;;.