Topicless thread

[SleepyD]

I can't find anything useful or easy to learn Japanese (Romanji, not kanji or hiragana, Also the phrases and words.). My old Spanish teacher said that if I wanna learn something, read it 7 times; 1 time a day and then I will remember it for life. *exhales* What to do...

I'm currently using tae kim's guide to japanese: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/
It's a good start point and supplement to any Japanese course, I think.

Also, nitpick: it's rōmaji, not romanji. Rome = ローマ(rōma), characters are 字(ji) (as in kanji) hence, rōmaji = ローマ字.
And I must mention, learning in romaji often leads to really bad habits, so I HIGHLY recommend that you learn the hiragana/kanji writing system from the start.

[Chocofreak13]

learning romaji is just learning japanese anyway, since it's just spelling the words out in english letters, like sa-ku-ra.....

the video guide i gave you teaches you sentence pattern which is honestly a better way to start than learning just the phrases. think of it this way: if you learn the structure, you can form your own sentences, rather than relying on a stock set of phrases every time. it also means that if you start picking up new words you can easily put them into those sentences instead of wondering what to do with them. for example...

Haihai! Hikari desu, yoroshiku! Atashi wa Ni-juu-ichi desu, soshite otanjoubi no sangatsu juu desu. atashi wa suki ga Hanafuda desu. o namae wa? :3

Yosh! Hikari desu, yoroshiku! Ore wa onnanoko desu, fufu. ni-juu-ichi desu. ore wa otanjoubi no sangatsu juu desu. ore wa suki ga kuro desu. -w-

(i probably butchered that but i'm getting better. also, i feel like the second one suits me better, lol, despite "ore" being a masculine personal pronoun. ^^; )


so i finally got my teeth fixed, they look a lot better now. i really need to start taking the dentist's advice, though, he said i wasn't too far away from a root canal. and given that this was my two front teeth, that would have sucked ass. i've been avoiding it for so long, but it's time to start using straws....at least it wasn't worse, since it could have been. but the price they quoted us was about $300 under what it actually was, so we were both thrown for a loop there. +___+;;

[LeaflameSD]

@Choco: That's great, sucks about the price though ;0z0; And thanks!

I had an epic pillow fight with my cousin to Kingdom Hearts music ^z^

[Nichi]

@Kari: Glad it went well. Also, I have no idea what a root canal is, but I've always heard it's unpleasant ._.

[Chocofreak13]

my mother's had one or two, and from my understanding, it's just shy of getting the tooth pulled. i think it involves drilling all the way to the root to correct a problem. you need a cap after you've had one done. it takes a couple hours, costs around a thousand dollars, and is rather difficult, for both dentist and patient. it could always be worse, but the only alternative to a root canal is tooth extraction, so i think that says it all....

@leaf: np man, just giving you a heads up that it's easier in the long run. as for the price, we're gonna pay it over time, and i've been waiting to get this done for months, so i'm glad to just be off the hook for awhile. ^^;;;
also, cool on the pillow fight. sounds fun. xD


EDIT: oh yeah, guys, there's a new review up.
http://kkanimereviews.blogspot.com/2013/02/midori-days.html

[SleepyD]

learning romaji is just learning japanese anyway, since it's just spelling the words out in english letters, like sa-ku-ra.....

This link has a couple points I agree with: http://allnihongo.com/why-using-romaji-is-bad-for-your-japanese-health/

When you speak, you may be tempted to speak with an "English" accent"

The reasons why it bothers me is that for most people, it just ends up all wrong for them. They mispronounce things because they accidentally conflate the romaji text with English pronunciation rules. Some are subtle, some are just really bad. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YtwPPsBKGQ#t=1m36

Then they have to unlearn what they were doing from the beginning, which is much more difficult than learning it correctly in the first place. I'd love to spare Japanese learners the embarrassment. And for me personally, experiencing that sort of embarrassment would really kill my motivation to learn.

(I will admit that if it was, say, Spanish pronunciation rules instead of English being applied to romaji, you probably would be much better off.)

Reading kanji and kana is faster in the long run

Haihai! Hikari desu, yoroshiku! Atashi wa Ni-juu-ichi desu, soshite otanjoubi no sangatsu juu desu. atashi wa suki ga Hanafuda desu. o namae wa? :3

Yosh! Hikari desu, yoroshiku! Ore wa onnanoko desu, fufu. ni-juu-ichi desu. ore wa otanjoubi no sangatsu juu desu. ore wa suki ga kuro desu. -w-

This point holds true for me too. I just can't read the above quote very quickly at all. It's like reading a paragraph in all caps, that's what it feels like to me.

That's not to say romaji is pointless. No, it has its uses, especially in the beginning. But it's best not to ever be dependent on it and learn the kana as quickly as possible.

[Bella]

Full disclosure: My Romaji pronunciation is awful. I know it's awful, and honestly I don't care if it ever becomes less awful. I have a hard enough time pronouncing words in my native language correctly and miss the mark most of the time (ask Stew if you don't believe me), so naturally it's going to sound like I'm talking with a mouth full of cotton when I attempt to pronounce words from another language. >///>

@Kari: I'm glad you got your teeth fixed! ;^; That sounds really scary, but i had the EXACT same thing happen to me ...... if I hadn't gotten that molar filled when I did, they'd have probably had to do a root canal, which I can't even imagine since I was freaked as fuck just getting the filling put in. ><

[Chocofreak13]

my romaji pronunciation is so good i've caught myself pronouncing english words in japanese. so it can swing both ways. >x<

thanks on the teeth. they're still sore. and for some reason my flosser is missing. but otherwise i'm happy that it's done.

@sleepy: just for the record, it takes me a sec with some words in romaji too. but since i can't even read hiragana yet, that's at least something. at least i can instantly recognize terms like "boku no" and "kimi wa", considering the average learner would only be focusing on the basic terms and not the relaxed ones.

[Dr. Kraus]

Playstation 2013 conference was pretty cool today. Sad that nothing PSVita related other than streaming play from the PS4 was talked about while in Japan they got a bunch of stuff...

[Chocofreak13]

they're already up to the PS4? man...... >>;

[SleepyD]

my romaji pronunciation is so good i've caught myself pronouncing english words in japanese. so it can swing both ways. >x<

@sleepy: just for the record, it takes me a sec with some words in romaji too. but since i can't even read hiragana yet, that's at least something. at least i can instantly recognize terms like "boku no" and "kimi wa", considering the average learner would only be focusing on the basic terms and not the relaxed ones.

I've caught myself saying "Donde está el toire?" before.
Short phrases and words in romaji are fine. But once you start stringing long sentences, it's so much faster to read through kana. That's why it seems like such a chore to read romaji.

My Japanese friend has a similar feeling when playing Pokémon games in Japanese, since they were all in hiragana without any kanji. I'm not sure if they changed that in the new gen versions.

they're already up to the PS4? man...... >>;

PS1 was 1994. PS2 was released in 2000. The PS3 was released in late 2006. It's 2013, so we're due for a new console generation. haha

[stewartsage]

Last two days my back's been hurting pretty bad the last couple of days.  And now I'm getting a headache in class... awesome.

[Nichi]

@Sleepy: Hard to believe it's been that long. I have a PS1 on my desk right now with the LCD screen; the original PSP, if you will. I often bounce between it and my PS3 for older games :3

[Chocofreak13]

after hearing someone on facebook talk about the new "feature" involved with the next gen consoles, i think this is where my interest stops. i'll stick to collecting older games from now on. >>;

@stew: damn, that sucks. have some bengay or a heating pad?

[Nichi]

What new feature? The rumored "no used games because Gamestop = The Pirate Bay" feature?

Yeah...also, the lack of PS3 disc backward compatibility is also a turn-off for the PS4 :\