Enter the Linguistic Pagan! 参上！言語学の異教徒！

[Jembru]

Re: Enter the Linguistic Pagan!　参上！言語学の異教徒！

Indonesian grammar is really really basic haha. Definitely the easiest language to learn!

Yeah, I have an Indonesian friend and she says there are a lot of things you can't directly express in Indonesian because the language is so limited. She did also say there's a fair bit of regional variation that can be tricky for a learner.

Japanese is like learning the guitar; easy to learn, difficult to master! You can express yourself pretty well with the very basics, but there is so much superfluous grammar. I'm currently studying N1 (highest level of Japanese proficiency exam) and it's all literary, or formal grammar. There is not a single meaning in this book that I can't easily express with several different structures from N2 or N3 grammar (I can think of five ways just of expressing 'if' off the top of my head and know there are many others). However, because Japanese takes formality so seriously, just because I can technically say anything I want to in Japanese, I can't get away with not learning these things if I want to master the language. They're frequently used expressions that I'll come by often if I want to translate. It's a slog!

[Heka]

Yeah, I have an Indonesian friend and she says there are a lot of things you can't directly express in Indonesian because the language is so limited. She did also say there's a fair bit of regional variation that can be tricky for a learner.

I would disagree with this. I have never found anything that can't be expressed. Sure theres no cool words that English doesn't have like in German or Japan for different concepts, but I've never considered it limited.

Also regional variation doesn't matter. Yes theres 250 dialects/languages in Indonesia, but thats why the government 'invented' bahasa indonesia, so the country was unified under one language. Everyone learns it in school now, and while in some regional areas no one over the age of say, 50, speaks it, it's now the first language of many Indonesians

[Jembru]

Re: Enter the Linguistic Pagan!　参上！言語学の異教徒！

I would disagree with this. I have never found anything that can't be expressed. Sure theres no cool words that English doesn't have like in German or Japan for different concepts, but I've never considered it limited.

Also regional variation doesn't matter. Yes theres 250 dialects/languages in Indonesia, but thats why the government 'invented' bahasa indonesia, so the country was unified under one language. Everyone learns it in school now, and while in some regional areas no one over the age of say, 50, speaks it, it's now the first language of many Indonesians

Just repeating what she said (we were talking with another Indonesian student at the time who was agreeing, but they were both being negative about the Indonesian language so were maybe biased). Tanya didn't say you can't express some things, she said that you have to use descriptions rather than direct words. Kinda like how in English we have to say 'chocolates given to the person you have genuine romantic feelings for on valentines day' because we have no concept of 'honmei-choko'. She also said they use gestures a lot to add extra meaning to what they say (although this sometimes happens in Japanese when two or more concepts have the same sound, they'll draw the kanji on their hand.. it's rare, but does happen now and then).

I can ask her again and send you a screen shot of her reply if it's bothering you though! I'm sure she wouldn't mind! She speaks fluent English, Mandarin and Japanese, so maybe it's because she has a wider range of languages to compare to that she feels Indonesian is so simple in comparison.

[Heka]

Being negative about the official, national, semi invented language makes sense i guess. It probably doesnt have the finesse of the organic dialects.

I kinda like how you need bulk words to describe a thing. Makes it easier for me to translate concepts by describing them if I dont know a word!

[Jembru]

Re: Enter the Linguistic Pagan!　参上！言語学の異教徒！

Being negative about the official, national, semi invented language makes sense i guess. It probably doesnt have the finesse of the organic dialects.

I kinda like how you need bulk words to describe a thing. Makes it easier for me to translate concepts by describing them if I dont know a word!

I do this anyway!! More so when speaking than in writing because I have time to look up words. In speaking I'm just like 'that thing you put your card in to top up your gas...' or 'the thing you run on at the gym'.

Took me a long time to realise that in a second language you need to compromise and say what you can not what you want. It makes such a difference to your fluency once you make that mental switch. Hardly anyone notices that my Japanese is shite anymore! ^^'

[Heka]

I do this anyway!! More so when speaking than in writing because I have time to look up words. In speaking I'm just like 'that thing you put your card in to top up your gas...' or 'the thing you run on at the gym'.

Took me a long time to realise that in a second language you need to compromise and say what you can not what you want. It makes such a difference to your fluency once you make that mental switch. Hardly anyone notices that my Japanese is shite anymore! ^^'

Thing crashed every time i try to respokd to this thread...

Yeah i have suoer confident "i know 400 words of bahasa" lol

[Jembru]

Re: Enter the Linguistic Pagan!　参上！言語学の異教徒！

Thing crashed every time i try to respokd to this thread...

Yeah i have suoer confident "i know 400 words of bahasa" lol

Omg, I remember only knowing around 400 words in Japanese and thinking I was the bees knees. Strutting my stuff here on PF like 'yeah, you better believe I know how to conjugate adjectives!'

As a teacher you've probably come across the 4 stages of mastery. I miss the Unconscious Incompetence stage. That blissful ignorance of just how much you don't know, or how high the mountain is. Standing just a few steps up that mountain and thinking 'I must be at least half way up by now, maybe two thirds! '.

For me, it was a huge shock and knock to my confidence when I hit Conscious Incompetence. The clouds parted and I realised for the first time that this mountain is going to take years to climb! I remember crying here on PF about how dumb I am and that I just don't have the capacity to learn. I genuinely worried for a while that I had a disability!

Then DanieMarie and a few others were giving me pep talks about how much time and effort it takes to master a second language and reassured me that I'm normal (well, at least in terms of cognative ability).

[Heka]

Omg, I remember only knowing around 400 words in Japanese and thinking I was the bees knees. Strutting my stuff here on PF like 'yeah, you better believe I know how to conjugate adjectives!'

As a teacher you've probably come across the 4 stages of mastery. I miss the Unconscious Incompetence stage. That blissful ignorance of just how much you don't know, or how high the mountain is. Standing just a few steps up that mountain and thinking 'I must be at least half way up by now, maybe two thirds! '.

For me, it was a huge shock and knock to my confidence when I hit Conscious Incompetence. The clouds parted and I realised for the first time that this mountain is going to take years to climb! I remember crying here on PF about how dumb I am and that I just don't have the capacity to learn. I genuinely worried for a while that I had a disability!

Then DanieMarie and a few others were giving me pep talks about how much time and effort it takes to master a second language and reassured me that I'm normal (well, at least in terms of cognative ability).

Im at the consciously competent stage. I know more than 400 lol. Just seems like that sometimes. And i dont expect bilingualism. I live in australia. Not a priority here.

[Jembru]

Re: Enter the Linguistic Pagan!　参上！言語学の異教徒！

Oh.. I didn't think for a second that you only knew 400 words! I don't think you'd be teaching the language if that were true. I was just reminiscing about when I did only know 400 words.

I'm at different stages for different things. Reading and keigo (formal Japanese) are still way down in conscious incompetence, as are many structures that I don't use often or have only recently studied. Most other skills are conscious competence, but it varies considersbly. Like, there are some words and expressions that roll off my tongue without having to think about what I want to say. The problem is that these are so easy for me, that it stops me from pushing myself to use those grammatical structures and phrases that I know, but have to think about.

I kinda do want to be bilingual. My dream is to be able to quit my job and work with Japanese. Lots of people want that though, so I need to stand out from the crowd. It's why I want to get good enough to do youtube videos about paganism for a Japanese audience. It's about putting me out there, helping me to stand out and hopefully be noticed by potential clients, even if just because I posted a link to my channel. Seeing me, and hearing me speak decent Japanese, will hopefully help me to stick in their minds!

[Heka]

Oh.. I didn't think for a second that you only knew 400 words! I don't think you'd be teaching the language if that were true. I was just reminiscing about when I did only know 400 words.

I'm at different stages for different things. Reading and keigo (formal Japanese) are still way down in conscious incompetence, as are many structures that I don't use often or have only recently studied. Most other skills are conscious competence, but it varies considersbly. Like, there are some words and expressions that roll off my tongue without having to think about what I want to say. The problem is that these are so easy for me, that it stops me from pushing myself to use those grammatical structures and phrases that I know, but have to think about.

I kinda do want to be bilingual. My dream is to be able to quit my job and work with Japanese. Lots of people want that though, so I need to stand out from the crowd. It's why I want to get good enough to do youtube videos about paganism for a Japanese audience. It's about putting me out there, helping me to stand out and hopefully be noticed by potential clients, even if just because I posted a link to my channel. Seeing me, and hearing me speak decent Japanese, will hopefully help me to stick in their minds!

Every time i try and reply to this thread it crashes. Its just this thread uhhhhh

[Jembru]

Re: Enter the Linguistic Pagan!　参上！言語学の異教徒！

For anyone using HelloTalk and having the same issue I was having with the replies;

It turns out that so long as I've clicked on the person I want to reply to, the '@name' is added automatically, even though the faint '@name' vanishes when I start typing. So yeah, for weeks I've been starting replies with '@name,@name' by accident.

Only feel a little bit stupid... and old.. ^^'

[m00nst0ne]

Re: Enter the Linguistic Pagan!　参上！言語学の異教徒！

I started learning Nihongo last year and I can Hiragana and Katakana well but I'm still struggling understanding their Kanji. I'm still on the process of learning their grammar as well.

[Jembru]

Re: Enter the Linguistic Pagan!　参上！言語学の異教徒！

I started learning Nihongo last year and I can Hiragana and Katakana well but I'm still struggling understanding their Kanji. I'm still on the process of learning their grammar as well.

What method(s) are you using to learn kanji? I struggled with kanji for years and was stubborn about using Remembering the Kanji because it didn't teach them in an order that lets you actually READ until you've finished the book. Texts aimed at elementary school children for example, will use fewer characters so if you follow the same order Japanese kids learn in, you can start reading easy texts long before you master all 2,136 common use characters. Or you can learn in order of frequency they appear in newspapers which means you can read grown up texts, needing to look up fewer and fewer unknown characters as you progress.

Remembering the Kanji doesn't allow for either of these approaches. You learn really common characters like 気 (spirit, used in one of the first words you learn 'genki') or 声 (voice) in the latter part of the book because they just happen to contain 'elements' (the book's name for the parts that make up the kanji) that weren't taught earlier.

I just couldn't get the hang of the junior high characters though, so eventually gave in and used the Remembering the Kanji method. Very reluctantly. I have to admit it is very effective, and you actually remember how to write a good chunk of chatacters without having to practice them. I'm frequently surprising myself by writing a character I've never written before, just because I remember the mnemonic! If you don't want to buy the book, there is a free RTK course on Memrise. I had the book, but later on you're left to make your own mnemonics and I found the suggestions on Memrise helped me to come up with ideas, because I'd often draw blanks with some of the more obscure characters.

If you're already using RTK and struggling, what is it that doesn't work for you?

がんばって！

[m00nst0ne]

Re: Enter the Linguistic Pagan!　参上！言語学の異教徒！

I'm using Genki Elementary Japanese as my reference. Kanji has 2 readings, (1) On-yomi, the pronunciation originally borrowed from Chinese and (2) Kun-yomi, the native Japanese reading. You have to acknowledge these two types of reading so you which is which.

For example the kanji for both moon and month is 月 the on-yomi of it is getsu or gatsu that is used for words like Getsuyoubi (Monday) or Ichigatsu (January) and the kun-yomi reading of it is tsuki which is moon in Japanese.

Aside from that, continuous practice writing will help as well because it'll register in your muscle memory.

[Jembru]

Re: Enter the Linguistic Pagan!　参上！言語学の異教徒！

And there are many on-yomi for some characters!

Genki only covers around 300 characters mind you, it at least teaches the most common though so will help you to start reading things aimed at learners! You'll struggle with native texts though.

There are still many compound words that I don't know (although once you know kanji you can often guess the meanings so I try not to look up words if I can help it) and the readings continue to surprise me at times, but generally speaking I know all jouyou kanji and a handful of chatacters not considered jouyou but in everyday use (like 絆 I don't know why they don't just make that jouyou).

While my Japanese is still far from perfect, I've been studying Japanese on-off for almost 20 years and really got my head down these past 6 years. I run a conversation group with a Japanese friend, although we're pretty inactive at the minute. Still, I've met a lot of learners through that group so if there's anything you get stuck with, feel free to ask here because I've either faced it myself or can find someone who has.

Good luck!