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Lots of mechanical engineers around here. I started it too, finished about two years, but then moved to Australia. Years gone by, lost the passion for it, and completed the course that I always truly loved (Computer Science). I don’t like things unfinished and still hoping that I will complete it one day.
Hi Joel,
How would you compare Nakama/Tobira to Genki? OK to use both? I have to be honest, I have a feeling I am moving too quickly and trying to do as little as possible to avoid running out of resources to study anytime soon. I find Genki filling in very nicely, all the gaps I found on Textfugu from Seasons 4 and up.
Bienvenido Steven…
I spent 3 weeks in ABQ around Christmas time. WE had loads of fun with the family. I must admit, Japanese wouldn’t be at the forefront of my mind if I lived there so good on you :-)
Enjoy the journey…
Jasenko
…
Being surrounded by and listening Japanese constantly, the language gets into your ear and you hear some things a lot easier. What was not apparent to me is how they use particles. Here and in many textbooks, they are sort of written with spaces around them so I was always reading them like I would in English, like a separate entity. In fact, they are basically the extension of the preceding word. を is probably the only exception, because that one sounds like the addition of every verb. For example the sentence こんばん、レストラン で かぞく と すし を たべます。(not sure if it is 100% grammatically correct, but wanted to say, “This evening, I will eat sushi with my family at the restaurant). When spoken, the Japanese would make pauses after every particle, except を, so it sounds like こんばん、レストランで かぞくと すしをたべます。Also, you may be lucky and get some free lessons. I had a free lesson on i-adjective conjugation from okonomiyaki vendor in Hiroshima. When we finished the meal, I told him the food was おいしい he replied with おいしかった with a smile. I don’t think I will ever forget that.And with some words/kanji being everywhere, it starts to sink into your head in a similar way like they use now to teach kids to read English using sight words. I had that Eureka moment after I saw こちら for the millionth time 😊 I wasn’t even reading it, just recognised the shape of the word and knew exactly what I need to do, no thinking involved (by the way, for the absolute newbies, that word means “here”, but I was seeing it everywhere as it is used to show the path, as in “this way…”).
Don’t count that you will speak a lot of Japanese while there, I tried many times, started some simple sentences, but people are so quick to jump in with their English (they are also practicing) and I go with it. But you get brownie points for effort. While in Hiroshima, the guy spent 15 minutes, trying to get us seats on Shinkansen during the biggest holiday week in Japan (The Golden Week), just because I asked in nicely and in Japanese 😊
The best part for me is that now I know what I need to focus on to continue with my studies. Being in Season 6 now, I am noticing more and more complicated grammar that I don’t think is necessary at this stage, not until the vocabulary is up to a reasonable level. And checking some of my sentences on HiNative, a lot of feedback I got is that nobody speaks like that in Japan. Their sentences are very sharp and simple and to the point, I guess the rest will come with time. I am surprised now that Koichi chose to introduce some lessons that clearly contradict his 80/20 rule. Learn a lot of words and keep your grammar simple, for a start, you can go a long way to become fluent.
I will continue to focus on the kanji, but will try to find a way to learn the most usable ones first. I have seen the frequency lists but those are mostly based on what appears in the newspapers, have nothing to do with the real life. Probably the most useful one I have learned on Wanikani so far and you can see it everywhere is 空 (sky)。It is in the top 500 (maybe because it is in the word airport 空港 and they write a lot about it in the papers) but should be in the top 50-100, you can’t turn your head without seeing it somewhere, because it also means “available”. Available parking, available, taxi, etc. I won’t be learning 都 until level 12 on Wanikani, but that one is also everywhere if you go to Kyoto (京都) 😊. After returning back to Tokyo from Kyoto, I started seeing it a lot in Tokyo too, because it means “metro, metropolis area”. Another good one is 開, it’s in every train, bus, subway, etc. It means “open”. That one is level 10 on Wanikani, so I guess another couple of months away for me.
Thanks for reading, and happy studying…
Similar to what Joel wrote, I found this explanation on Tae Kim’s website:
All ru-verbs end in 「る」 while u-verbs can end in a number of u-vowel sounds including 「る」. Therefore, if a verb does not end in 「る」, it will always be an u-verb. For verbs ending in 「る」, if the vowel sound preceding the 「る」 is an /a/, /u/ or /o/ vowel sound, it will always be an u-verb. Otherwise, if the preceding sound is an /i/ or /e/ vowel sound, it will be a ru-verb in most cases.
The point here is kinda that if you start with that list of vocab, you’ll pretty much automatically learn that 来 = らい without having to memorise that reading on its own before you start.
The reason why I mentioned it, once you know the readings, you pretty much only need to focus on remembering meanings which are very odd sometimes
皮肉 - skin+meat=irony (what???) :-)
I forgot the third rule of Kanji:
-If you see a single kanji vocab word, it will use kun’yomi 99/100I think these rules should be somewhere at the front of every learning kanji section. Maybe they were there(most likely) when I started, but I either didn’t pay attention or the importance of it was not stressed enough for me to pay attention.
I was of the same opinion as Joel until I got deeper in Wanikani (which is another of Koichi’s websites, primarily focusing on learning Kanji and Vocab). I was also frsutrated in Anki and kept getting it wrong and was doubting the whole point of learning on’yomi readings. But more I am into it, in most cases, it is a lot a lot more valuable to learn the readings they suggest (in most cases, that would be on’) as you can find your way around vocab a lot easier and even guess some words without ever seeing them before. In Wanikani it helps that the required radicals, kanji and vocab use different colours and it is a lot easier to navigate.
I am level 5 over there, and here is a good example:
Kanji – 来 （on reading is らい and it means “come”）
Not sure if you got to the lesson for verbs yet, but this one comes up a lot (きます – polite form of “to come” so kun’ reading for this one is く by the way, it is also irregular verb)
But in the vocab section you have to learn all these words:
来年 － らいねん (come and year=next year)
年来 － ねんらい (year(s) (to) come=for years, future years)
来月 － らいげつ (come and month =next month)
古来 － こらい (this one is not so obvious but makes sense, old+come=ancient)
外来 － がいらい (love this one, outside and come mean imported, came from outside)
来る － くる (and finally sole kun’ reading on the list so far, meaning to come)As you can see, learning on’ reading was very useful, and after learning all the vocab words, there is very little chance you will ever forget it :-)
This saved me heaps of time, I am now making sure I spend some extra time studying whatever reading they recommend to learn. I wish somebody explained me some kanji rules before starting my journey. So here it is what I learned so far. Learn the rules and you will save yourself some frustration.
Jukugo words – (compound kanji like all above except the last one and no hiragana attached) always use on’ reading. There are exceptions, but they usually for common words and you will have to learn them anyway. And names, Japanese names are always kun’yomi.
If hiragana attached to kanji, so far, it is always kun’yomi. There are probably exceptions, but not so many to worry about and there must be explanation why they are like that.Ah, that makes sense. Thanks a lot!
To be honest, I think I need to get out and read more real-world Japanese for this stuff to stick. Textbooks are all well and good but it all falls apart when you try to read something “real”. Case in point, going through Wanikani I currently know over 400 kanji but when I see a wall of Japanese text, even with kanji that I know, my brain just goes “Nope!”.
That’s an interesting point, I think that is probably due to the way Wanikani teaches kanji and vocabulary. I have the same issue. I can recognise and tell you at least a couple of hundred kanji (level 5 there currently) but having trouble using any of it in my practice sentences. Also struggling to recognise them in the wild. Keep practising I guess until they are burned in the memory…
Fellow beginner here so please take my explanation with the grain of salt.
Just like in any other language, you can have multiple verbs in each sentence. The difference in Japanese is that the main “action” that defines the sentence comes at the end. In your example that is はじまる. Not much different than in the sentence I wrote in English just before the previous one. I have “is”, “defines”, “comes”, the main verb is “is”, the others are used to describe what is happening. In Japanese, that “is” would be coming at the end.
Not sure which Season you are working on at the moment, the lessons are becoming “verb” heavy in Season 4 and even more so in Season 5 (where I am currently at).
I just realised there was a full lesson on this in Season 6 :-)
I am not quite there yet, but I checked it anyway.
Some more tips to boot. Awesome…
Thanks heaps…
Oh wow… Congrats…
One more thing, are you talking about the spiritual or actual physical move? :-)
I was thinking Japanese probably adopted that word for their own purposes, in my favourite Japanese alphabet Katakana of course :-) it would be something like ジャム
And lo and behold a visit to jisho.org resulted in this:
ジャムる – Godan verb with ru ending
1. to jam ColloquialismAwesome response… Thanks…
Don’t get me started on German :-)
I spent 9 years studying it at school, and apart from vocabulary, I think my Japanese is way more advanced than German. I still can’t believe how much progress I manage to make in such short period of time. I know it is a long process but Textfugu made it so easy to get to the decent level so you can tackle more advanced topics. I do find Season 5 a bit heavy at the moment so spending more time reviewing older lessons.
18日 まで 日本 に いきます
