??????????????????? | Forums

[GoToAway]

????????????

(Today I bombed my Japanese midterm. Largely on account of not having slept in three months. In summary: ****. That class is my only hurdle to graduation at this point.)

[Treetop64]

I used to study Japanese a long time ago. Forgotten most of it.

One of the things I remember is how fundamentally simple Japanese is. Katakana and Hirogana is all syllable-based, and many of the words used with Katakana are of English origin. That was really surprising. I never got much into Kanji, though.

[GoToAway]

Originally posted by Treetop64:
One of the things I remember is how fundamentally simple Japanese is.

Until you have to conjugate something. Then all hell breaks lose.

But outside of that, it is pretty simple. Grammar is pretty loose aside from a handful of hard and fast rules. That's more than can be said of English. Some of the particles can be iffy, though. "Ga" in particular gives me a lot of grief.

Katakana and Hirogana is all syllable-based, and many of the words used with Katakana are of English origin. That was really surprising. I never got much into Kanji, though.

Katakana and hiragana are simple, but the language is useless without kanji. There are no word breaks, so it becomes fairly impossible to tell where one word ends, where another begins, what is a conjugation, etc., if just writing in kana.

Consider the topic:
???????????????????

That is a lot easier to parse than just writing it out:
???????????????????????

The same is especially true with verbs. For a crude example plucked off the top of my head (I'm sure it's missing a particle since I hate stacking verbs):
?????????????????????????
vs.
????????????????????????????????

The first is a hell of a lot easier to parse... assuming you know the kanji. Even if you don't, the borders between words are better defined.

That said, kanji could be completely eliminated from the language if they'd just add word breaks. That would certainly make my life much easier. Something like ? (language) is an absolute horror to learn when you can just write ? and be done with it.

[FlatSpinMan]

Do you study the 'dictionary forms' too? If you ever use Japanese with a native speaker they'll be handy. Stuff like "arimasen" (there is not/I don't have) is far more commonly expressed as 'nai', "nomima****a" (drank) is "nonda". If they don't I really recommend practising them as they are what people use most of the time.
Are you just studying for interest or what?

[GoToAway]

Originally posted by FlatSpinMan:
Do you study the 'dictionary forms' too?

You pretty much have to if you want to know how to conjugate a particular word. Consider "taberu" vs "kaeru." One is a ru-verb (taberu) and one is not. You won't know that without memorizing both the dictionary form and one conjugated form, and without the dictionary form, you won't know how to conjugate the te-form.

In other words:
taberu > tabemasu > tabete
kaeru > kaerimasu > kaette

You can't know that without knowing the dictionary form and at least one conjugated form.

If you ever use Japanese with a native speaker they'll be handy.

The professor is native. Sometimes it's hard to phrase a linguistic question in a way that makes sense to him, but the fact that he can instantaneously say whether something "sounds" right or not is a plus.

Are you just studying for interest or what?

I need 16 credits in a foreign language for my degree. I did an independent study of Japanese way back in high school (though I'd forgotten most of it in the intervening years,) so I figured I might as well pick it up again.

It was either Japanese or German for me, because none of the other available languages really interested me.
And since I'd rather deal with ridiculous verb conjugations than arbitrary noun gender, Japanese won out.

[GoToAway]

And to add to that:

Originally posted by FlatSpinMan:
Stuff like "arimasen" (there is not/I don't have) is far more commonly expressed as 'nai'

I'm aware of those, but the class is still using formal conjugations (da/desu based.) Sometimes this gets pretty ridiculous. Let me see if I can think of an example...

Ah.
Something like ??????? (benkyousuru - to study)
benkyousuru > benkyoushimasu > benkyoushimasen > benkyoushima****a > benkyoushimasende****a > (etc)

By the time you get to "benkyoushimasende****a," it's like, "there really has to be a better way." Talk about a mouthful.

I'm not sure if there are more truncated forms for adjectives, but I sure hope so when faced with things like ?????????????? (taihenjaarimasende****a.) I'd imagine so since I don't recall ever hearing people using adjectives conjugated like that in any Japanese movie I've seen.

[FlatSpinMan]

Verb conjugation in Japanese is a breeze relative to some languages. French 'to be'
je suis
tu es
il est
nous sommes
vous etes
ils sont etc

I agree though, the formal -masu endings are long.

My own Japanese is pretty poor given how long I've been here but yep, the dictionary forms conjugate too.Still can be quite a mouthful though.

aru - nai
have. there is - don't have/ there is not
atta - nakata
had/there was - didn't have/ there wasn't



taberu - tabenai
eat don't eat
tabeta - tabenakata
ate didn't eat

This one is hard to say, I find.
wakaru - wakaranai
understand - don't understood
wakatta - wakaranakata
understood - didn't understand

And about your last point, here's what you'd usually hear instead of "ja arimasendesh ita"

desu - ja arimasen/dewa arimasen = usually "janai"
past form is 'janakkata'