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I was hoping to find it on Youtube, so I could be all smug and go “is this the song you’re looking for?” but I can’t seem to find it. Sooo… gonna have to make do with this:
It’s real hard to give pronunciation approximations in English, especially considering how many different English accents you give. The Nakama textbook’s menmonic for the や kana involves the word “yacht”, but here in Australia, that’s pronounced “yot”. Still, it’s better than one website, which told me that “o” is pronounced like the o in “bow”… but there’s two ways to pronounce “bow”, and neither of them are very close to the Japanese “o” sound. “Reflect basic English pronunciation” is about the least helpful advice you could give.
My phrasebook has a pronunciation guide in the front, and its choice of words to use as examples for the vowel sounds is pretty good.
Mine’s published by Berlitz, but it’s rather old – 1993 edition. Picked it up for a few dollars in a second-hand bookshop, reasoning that the language hasn’t changed a great deal in the intervening twenty years (though it did suddenly occur to me while in Japan that its age means it’s missing words like “mobile phone” or “internet”).
It’s got a fair range of sections – travelling around (includes stuff to say at train stations and the like), sightseeing, relaxing, making friends, shopping, banking, post office, stuff to say at the doctor’s, and a general reference section (how to say the time, days of the week, public holidays common words and phrases, and a metric/imperial conversion chart that I didn’t look at once =P ) and a very brief dictionary at the back. There’s even a page on dating, but I kinda think if you’re using a phrasebook as a dating reference, you’ve still got a fair way to go. =P
There’s a nice spread of sentences, and all are written out in English, romaji and full Japanese. Some pages have lists of signs you’re likely to see (like entrance, exit, etc) and others have reference boxes that you’d basically show to the person you’re attempting to communicate with and get them to point at the right one, if you’re otherwise having difficulty understanding. There’s also a quick reference page of things to say in an emergency, which is very important in any phrasebook.
And all of that’s just about small enough to fit in a pocket. =)
I can generally recognise if music is Japanese by ear. =P
In all seriousness, what does “definitely out” mean? They couldn’t recognise it? Maybe try posting a sample here and see if good old fashioned “listening” does the trick? =)
You will see it written as “jya” around the place, but that a different romanisation, not a different pronunciation – it’s written as “jya” to fit the pattern of “kya” and “hya”, but there’s a reason that most people romanise it as “ja” instead.
バ and ヴァ are both ways of representing the Va sound. Both are technically correct, but the latter is a bit newer than the former, so you’re probably going to see the former more often. You’re not going to get funny looks whichever one you use, though.
ワニラ is probably how it was pronounced by whoever introduced the word in the first place.
Well, what you said was “That was a stupid movie I saw”. It’s a shade clunky, but not overtly wrong… I think. Feels a bit like two different sentences mooshed together – その映画はばか plus 映画を見た. If you wanted to say “that movie I saw was stupid”, you’d say その映画を見たのはばかです or その見た映画はばかです but both probably use grammar that’s a little above your level. =)
You can conjugate pre-nominal adjectives, but the overall meaning of the sentence is slightly different.
その映画はつまらない = “that movie is boring”
その映画はつまらなかった = “that movie was boring”つまらない映画を見た = “I watched a boring movie” and it’s still boring.
つまらなかった映画を見た = “I watched a movie that was boring” but isn’t any more (perhaps because someone explained the complex plot, so now I enjoy it more).たぬき たぬき たぬき たぬき たぬき たぬき たぬき たぬき キノコ キノコ！
Ah yeah, forgot about that – yeah, get a phrasebook. I picked up one fairly cheap before I went over to Japan, and it was a great help. Carried it in my pocket the whole time.
Wandering in google view seems a really fun idea too ! Although I’m a bit afraid to spend a lot of time to find the meaning of the kanjis I find, even more if they’re not very clearly shown.
Practice makes perfect. =P
That said, many of the kanji you’ll see on shop fronts may be proper nouns. Though speaking of proper nouns, one possible practice technique you might like to try – at least for pattern recognition – is to get maps of the train lines in Tokyo in both Japanese and English, and compare station names. =)
names of devices like Keyboard or USB Stick
Most of those tend to be English loan words in katakana. Case in point: keyboard is キーボード and a USB stick is ユーエスービーメモリー. =)
As far as the brain goes, is your interest more in psychology, neurology, or other?
“Other” meaning “zombie” or “building a body out of spare parts”? =P
One idea that I like doing myself from time to time: load up Google Maps, find some train station in central-ish Tokyo somewhere, then go into street view mode and just wander around reading the signs on buildings. If nothing else, it’ll give you a feel for what kanji you’re not going to get by without. For example, 立入禁止 = “no entrance”/”passage forbidden” sort of thing.
Someone once showed me a website with information about the buttons on washing machines and other electrical apparatus, but I wouldn’t have the faintest idea now where that would be…
Ya know, I can’t find it either. Basically, へ is similar to に (as direction-of-motion particle) but the emphasis is more like “towards” as opposed to “to”. Basically, に focuses on the destination, while へ focuses on the trip itself.
体にいい was another thought I had. =)
I’m thinking 健康 or 健全, but I admit I’m not entirely certain. One trick you can do is perform a sentence search for the English word you’re after on Jisho, and see what sort of words result. Viz:
http://jisho.org/sentences?jap=&eng=healthy
I could not see any thread for the opposite. That is what is the meaning of something in Japanese. If there is, then it would be nice of you to inform me about it.
That would be the How do I Say … Thread. =)
