/ot/ - Off-topic

Also, a basic guide to know if you actually want to learn japanese or not and some basic advice.

First of all, while japanese isn't nearly as hard as we all originally think, it's by no means an easy language to learn. What I mean is "this will take time". And a lot of effort too. So, the big question is: What do you want to learn japanese for? There are mostly 3 broad cases among japanese enthusiast, make sure you be listed in at least 2 wagons before even trying anything.
Do you do it for animu and mango? There are certainly hundred, if not thousand of translator teams working on seasonal or old shit, scan teams polishing manga and sometimes improving it, and they're all working their asses away for free just for your chinese porn. So no, if you want to learn japanese just to enjoy media, you're wasting your time.

Do you feel translations don't convey the true meaning of your chinese cartoons? Okay, you're getting closer there. Japanese does have, after all, a completely different pattern of sentence composing and order of parts. It's also a language that tends to be less straight than, say, other western languages such as french, english, spanish, etc.
In other words, clear translations are sometimes nearly, if not completely impossible. Now, this doesn't mean that if your favorite girl says "I think the one below the green is better", translator-chan decides to just write "I like the blue one" and skip all the unnecessary parts (though there are motherfuckers who do this shit).
My point is, while the meaning of a phrase may not be lost, it's the way it's expressed what fails to be translated. Japanese has a lot of subtle stuff in the grammar that conveys information that english simply can't process. And the translated version you get is 100% based in the opinion of what the translator believes is the best way to put shit in english, which isn't always the best choice.
So yes, if you want to be able to catch this shit, you're almost there, but not there yet. Remember what I said in my second paragraph; this is going to take a lot of time, if you think you can put up with that, proceed at will.

Do you enjoy japanese culture, society, lifestyle, and have some sort of interest in the language itself? Gotcha, you are in the correct path to improve your knowledge over dai nippun.
All languages were (originally) closely tied to the original culture who developed them, and Japanese isn't an exception. Just to put an example, the social standpoint of the speaker-listener combo status is stressed at nauseam (who is below/above who). You also have shit like yojijukugo, mostly based off drunken chinese writers and their stories.
You must put this stuff into consideration when learning the language. That means that you aren't just learning the language, but you also are learning their shit at the same time. If you just want to jack off to eroge, then it doesn't really makes much sense to take all this load of unnecessary bullshit if all you need to learn is 中出し,フェラ,パイ擦,アナル, etc.

So, TL;DR, learn japanese only if you have an interest that really makes you need to do so, otherwise stick to translations.

If you're one of the chosen brave heroes who will give it a try, some humble advice:

- Skip learning readings (except the main one) when you are studying kanji. It's a fucking W A S T E of time. Learn words, not kanji readings.　Things like 明, 上,　生, etc. have a lot of fucking meanings and readings, and you will never memorize them all. What's more, there will be cases where you won't even be able to know how to pronounce a compound word EVEN if you knew all the readings. So no, save your time, skip this shit.

- If possibly, don't even waste your time learning how to write stuff. There are hardly any chances you will ever use written japanese in your life, ever. An exception would be if you are a maso like or if you're planning to go live in Japan.

- Learn fucking words, not fucking kanji. I will never get tired of say this. You can know 2,000 kanji but if you can't even apply them to basic words then IT'S SHIT. Also, there are multiple kanji with the same reading and meaning, like, you will save a lot of your time if you don't deal with this.

- Anime japanese is artificial as fuck. It's good to train your ears for pronunciation and sentence understanding but the accent is extremely neutral. That means that you can be a pro at understanding anime but once you go to japan and see that all people just drag their tongues around and cut sounds just out of laziness, things aren't as fun anymore. So yeah, try watching real TV shows or movies, or something.
Of course, if you just want to spank the monkey with glorious 2D you can safely skip this part.

There may be more stuff but I don't remember what other problems do newbies face. Just ask.

>>14549
what a coincidence, I'm that lainanon.

I've been lazy as shit lately. but not just with the jap but thats not important right now. I'll try taking N4 in summer just to get a gist for the test. Until then it's a lot of learning. What have you been up to lately

>>14557
>what a coincidence, I'm that lainanon.
Wow, that's quite the coincidence. I was going to ask you if I could post it on another chan but I didn't want to bump a thread that seemed to be dead already.

>What have you been up to lately
Aside from translating some things here, I've been playing different games and digesting new vocabulary that way, but I think it's about time I try some guide and move into more advanced stuff, like writing large text things in japanese to improve my sentence composition and stuff.
I just downloaded the whole genki course to start working on pronunciation too, and I've been looking for pitch dictionaries as well but I couldn't find anything, so I will probably start my own document. Maybe anki will be better in this case for that, but I'm not really good with keeping up with decks.

Also, I'm starting to watch more real life stuff to improve my hearing/speaking; I like how my ear is at a level where I can easily grasp phrases in the normal speed of japanese speaking, but my lack of vocabulary is killing me. I've been too dependent on rikaichan and got a bit too spoiled.

Dear diary:
Yesterday night, I wrote a single line.
It was nothing special, yet I committed a crime.
Unaltered by the effects of alcohol doze,
and drown in the sleepless of my coffee's odor,
Thinking to sound more manly,
yesterday night I wrote 楽しかったけど
as the impious 楽しかっただけど.

Three hours later, while on my bed,
The pain aroused right in my head.
"You can't add だ to い-adjetives,
that's illegal, you fucking nigger."

Dear Diary, I can't learn japanese.
And I can't write poetry either.

I found this broadcast of kaidan stuff. It's pretty interesting since I manage to understand what's being told even if there are some blacks here and there, but I'm slowly developing an ear to everything. I even manage to write unknown words so it's been pretty cool for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxiz8jsWdXU

So while this thread was a failure a year ago, I decided to give it a try again since there seems to be users with an interest in learning japanese again this year. So, my approach this time will be to post simple sentences and you guys try translating them, then we see what errors are there and here and nuances and whatnot. I recommend to use rikaichan/zkanji/your favorite softare or dictionary if you can't read certain kanjis instead of pasting the line on google translate or similar. Bonus for translating the picture.

Easy:
>日本語を学習する事は出来ない筈です。
>花に囲まれるの季節は四季の中で一番好きな時期です。
>そんな風に雨で歩いたら風邪を引くと決まってるんでしょ。

Middle:
>奪うように強く抱いていいの。

Hard:
>壊れた鏡に映される景色は次第に暗くなったの時、そっと目を閉じ、小さくになってきたと感じていった。

>>17500
>日本語を学習する事は出来ない筈です。
(I, you, etc.) probably can't learn japanese
>花に囲まれるの季節は四季の中で一番好きな時期です。
All of the blooming flowers makes spring my favorite season.
>そんな風に雨で歩いたら風邪を引くと決まってるんでしょ。
If (I, you, etc.) walk around in the rain like that, you're definitely going to catch a cold.
>奪うように強く抱いていいの。
Hug me like you're going to steal me away.
>壊れた鏡に映される景色は次第に暗くなったの時、そっと目を閉じ、小さくになってきたと感じていった。
As the image reflected in the shattered mirror gradually faded into darkness, I softly closed my eyes and felt as if I'd become a little smaller.

I don't think it's worth me trying to translate that image without understanding the context for what exactly ライン引き is here. Programming? Drawing? Google brings up those things they use to draw white lines on sports fields.

Anyway, questions. Any tips for reading faster? I assume it's just a matter of reading more and making sure you're not slowly reading everything out voiced in your head.

Any tips for listening practice? Anime and VN stuff is pretty easy, and I understand a decent amount of what the japanese youtubers I watch say most of the time (mostly 兄者弟者 and 三人称 who I would definitely recommend), but I'm still lacking quite a bit in understanding fast conversations.

Also, I'd like to recommend https://honto.jp/ if you want to buy (digital) LNs and manga. There's lots of coupons and sales and even free volumes of manga often (and perhaps LNs, but I haven't noticed). When I signed up, I got a 30% off coupon which I used to buy 15 volumes of Slayers as my first foray into LNs.

>>17502
>(I, you, etc.) probably can't learn japanese
Yes, you can't learn japanese.

>All of the blooming flowers makes spring my favorite season.
Although the meaning isn't really that away from what I wrote, I'm gonna clarifying just in case with the most literal translation. (In fact, lately I've been thinking wording like this is better than being more literal).
"The time when I'm surrounded by flowers is my favorite among the four seasons"

>If (I, you, etc.) walk around in the rain like that, you're definitely going to catch a cold.
In this context it's understood that the speaker isn't in first person and therefore the person listening is either you or someone else. In english you'd word this like "If you walk like that in the rain it's obvious you're gonna catch a cold!". You pick this up because the "と決まってるんでしょ。" is like saying "I TOLD YOU!", and the ん specifically is there emphasizing the "TOLD" part in the english equivalent. (Remember that の works both to make ask for an explanation and to explain things).

The rest are okay.

The image is from an omake floppy disk of a thing that was fairly common in the 90's (and is still today), namely drawing yourself drawing yourself. Can't remember of what game though. As far as I'm aware ライン引き is what you're describing.

>Anyway, questions. Any tips for reading faster? I assume it's just a matter of reading more and making sure you're not slowly reading everything out voiced in your head.
Depends on what you consider reading faster. Do you mean reading (as in, word for word inside your head) faster, or reading text faster (this may include just watching the kanji's shape and okurigana to get the tense if it's a verb, even if you don't word anything of this inside your head)?

If it's the first, you need a good, solid grasp of all the symbols in your text. There are two phases of reading: First, you have to decode the symbols, and then "parse" the reading into your brain (i.e. this is what I call "reading"). After you pass this phase, you don't decode anymore, you just "read".
So, long story short, you have to train your brain so it doesn't decode things first and then read, but to read instead, like you read this text smoothly without pauses to wonder why X symbol is there in that word. So, if you're reading everything in kana, you obviously need to know all the kana; if you're reading text with kanji, having to look it up slows the process considerably, this is why I said you need a solid grasp of the symbols in your text. After that, you only have to read (or actually, skim) as fast as possible. It doesn't matter if you can't understand some of the text (meaning-wise, not the symbols), just read it all fast. You are training your brain to decode the symbols faster, not your skill to understand text.

If it's the latter, that's how I read if I don't know how to pronounce kanji, it's a bit weird and probably not good but I know more meanings than readings.

I recommend you to check "中上級者のため 速読日本語 Rapid Reading Japanese" by Miura Akira and Oka Mayumi, it comes with both english and japanese text, it was made to train this very thing. Note, though, that it's for advanced students (meaning you have to know already a good bunch of kanji by the time you read it).

>Any tips for listening practice?
Yes, do not listen to anything made for foreigners to learn japanese. The same goes for anime and VN's. They use an extremely clear (and unnatural) accent that no japanese people really has (unless they work on TV), which means that by the time you listen to real japanese you won't understand jack-shit and feel cheated.
I copped by watching doramas until I realized they were all shit, then I found about anime radios and that's been my main fuel. There, the voice actors talk without reading scripts most of the time, so they speak real japanese with their clusterfuck of blurred moras and tongue-twisting slangs. This will be particularly useful if you have problems with quick conversation because they talk really fast, usually.

I'm always open to other sources though (not a big fan of youtubers but I'll give it a try).

>Also, I'd like to recommend https://honto.jp/ if you want to buy (digital) LNs and manga.
Now that nyaa died this is good to know, thanks.

>>17503
>Although the meaning isn't really that away from what I wrote…
>In this context it's understood that the speaker isn't in first person and therefore…
I was translating it more into how I think it'd be worded in an english conversation rather than a straight blunt translation. There's so much more emphasis on context and interpretation in japanese that there ends up being quite a few ways you could translate something, though those options then narrow with more context.

>Depends on what you consider reading faster. Do you mean reading (as in, word for word inside your head) faster, or reading text faster (this may include just watching the kanji's shape and okurigana to get the tense if it's a verb, even if you don't word anything of this inside your head)?
Mostly the latter, because I'm almost completely certain the former is only a matter of reading more over time. I'm focusing on practicing more on skim reading from a combination of the shapes of the characters themselves, what context I have, general experience with japanese and specific experience with that piece of material in particular, ie. what a character is likely to say, what the author is likely to write.

Your reply there pretty much reinforced what I was thinking on this matter. I don't really have any difficulty with kanji anymore. Sometimes there's a new obscure or obsolete one I have to look up, and those are the only things I still bother adding to anki (as words when applicable), just because they can be a pain to actually look up sometimes.

>If it's the latter, that's how I read if I don't know how to pronounce kanji, it's a bit weird and probably not good but I know more meanings than readings.
I see this happen to japanese natives, too. I was watching a 実況 of Off and the translator used a bunch of obscure ones that were constantly tripping up the player.

>I recommend you to check "中上級者のため 速読日本語 Rapid Reading Japanese" by Miura Akira and Oka Mayumi, it comes with both english and japanese text, it was made to train this very thing. Note, though, that it's for advanced students (meaning you have to know already a good bunch of kanji by the time you read it).
This sounds useful, thanks!

Radio stations and podcasts are something I intend to check out more of, too. For the youtubers I mentioned earlier, I think 兄者弟者 is great for beginners because they talk pretty clearly and predictably. 三人称 is more of that loose, messy talk you'd often hear, but usually not to the extent that it's super hard to understand. I used to have an interest for watching streamers and LPers, so it was easy for me to get into them, but I understand such things aren't for everybody.

>Anon raises his hand and gestures to the thread.
>The thread shudders and begins to move!

Since we have new wizards initiated into the dark arts of moontongue, I propose to sacrifice a thread in /ot/ in order to continue our investigations and pursue our goal.

Do your fucking reps

>>19550
All hail the Great Necrobumper!

>>/fg/13739
i hope the link works or else i'll look stupid

>"masu stem"
>I mostly see them used as a "neutral" form of the て form.
Hmm… Is there any subtle difference in usage of te-form and this stem? I refuse to think that there is something completely similar.
https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/28513/use-of-verb-%E3%81%BE%E3%81%99-stem-when-%E3%81%A6-form-seems-possible — something I've found on the interwebs. Not too convincing thou.

I also see a lot of sentences (especially in those songs we're translating) _ending_ on stem form. Is this even legal? Or that's corrupted grammar everyone talks about? Because that means that the verbs in sentence don't have any form at all, right? I don't know… I'm confused.

>On a related note, I found an alternative translation for appeal.
>人々や世論などに広く訴えること。また、その訴え。「反核をアピールする」
Now that's just confusing when jap people use an English word but in completely different meaning than original.
Anyway that makes a lot of sense actually (your translation, not the fact that they're using this word this way). Let's be careful next time we see seemingly obvious katakana-things than!

>>19553
For crossboard linking, use >>> (triple "greater than" symbols).

>>>/fg/13739

>Is there any subtle difference in usage of te-form and this stem?
The difference between 連用形 and て形 is that the former sounds more neutral/formal and is mostly used in written language to describe things in an impersonal way, such as a dictionary (i.e. a wikipedia entry).
As to why it seems to be so popular in VNs and these songs, it's probably because the stem is shorter than conjugating the て form and thus they fit better in the lyrics, and in VNs it's probably because it's easier to read.

Yes, it is legal. As I said, just think of stem verbs as being conjugated in て.

Ubuu, do you have any decent Japanese grammar exercise book to recommend?

I've finished studying Tae Kim and several other grammar books. They provided a nice basis for knowledge but now I want to just grind out shit ton of grammar exercises to practice. I took a look at Genki's workbook but it's extremely slow-paced and contextual so I didn't quite liked it. I use Anki and shit, and it's surely good for learning new words and kanjis, but I still feel like I'm stuck and need decent exercise book. Any recommendations?..

P.S.Of course you can always practice by talking to people and translating stuff, and I'm doing this rn. Butttt… I feel like Japanese people are too polite to call out my shitty usage of grammar as long as they can understand what I'm saying. So I feel like I really need to just grind textbooks to understand what I'm doing, saying and understanding wrong.

>>19804
A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar. There's an Anki deck too.

Surprisingly bad thread. Nice links but some bad advice.

>>19818
Please elaborate?

>>19805
Oh, that's a neat book but that's opposite of what I've asked for… I mean, I was asking for textbook/book with grammar exercises to practice, not for more theoretic books.

>>19821
You can always try Tobira and/or Genki.

>>19822
Tobira? I've never actually heard about this one, looks interesting as hell. Thank you for recommendation!

Also speaking of books what are your recommended sources of getting physical copies of dictionaries/textbooks /etc, ubuu? Or does anybody use digital versions of books?

>>19824
Think most anons use PDFs, makes it easier to look up stuff. Only stuff I would recommend to get physical are exercise books, as copying them out or answering them indirectly on a notebook while looking on screen would probably be too distracting for most.

>>19804

Minna no Nihongo's textbooks are a little bit too rigid and formulaic for my preferences, but they might be what you're looking for.

>>19819
I mostly meant the comments by >>14550 but also some others

> if you want to learn japanese just to enjoy media, you're wasting your time

There's a lot of japanese media that doesn't have translations and is interesting. Even ones with translations can be more engaging without a translation. For example, not having to read subs all the time, you can look away and not miss some important dialogue. There are a tonne of websites in Japanese that either have no English equivalent or offer a different perspective.

>don't even waste your time learning how to write stuff. There are hardly any chances you will ever use written japanese in your life, ever

I can agree with this but, mainly in regards to kanji, writing can be helpful. Learning to write makes looking up kanji easier than using Jisho's (or some other dictionary) feature to build the kanji from radicals. It's just faster to write it. It can also help differentiate similar kanji that may differ by one stroke or something. 石 and 右 for example or 人 and 入. In the beginning, it can be confusing and thanks to misreading some kanji, you may not even understand what's happening anymore and have to reread several times.

>my approach this time will be to post simple sentences and you guys try translating them

Waste of time. You shouldn't practise translating but instead practise understanding, they're different skills. If you want to translate texts as a goal then sure go ahead but in terms of learning, it's a hindrance if you train yourself to go from Japanese to English.

>I really need to just grind textbooks to understand what I'm doing, saying and understanding wrong

Textbooks are very limited in what they can teach. You can master a textbook but natural Japanese often has its own grammar that's not in most textbooks. Grinding them won't help you understand natives better. Textbooks are good but if you want to understand and use natural Japanese then learning from natural Japanese is better, in my view.

Not to say I'm a master and you need to listen to me to learn Japanese but these were just some comments I disagreed with. Or at the very least, they differ from my model of how language acquisition can be expedited

>>19828
Why, 3 years and the first reply is here, who'd have tell

>There's a lot of japanese media that doesn't have translations and is interesting. Even ones with translations can be more engaging without a translation. For example, not having to read subs all the time, you can look away and not miss some important dialogue. There are a tonne of websites in Japanese that either have no English equivalent or offer a different perspective.

What I meant by this is that if you want to learn japanese just because you want to jerk off to untranslated loli, it's not worth it. Learning asian languages takes a lot of time, effort and patience, and if your interests are shallow then you should invest that time on something more productive.

>石 and 右 for example or 人 and 入. In the beginning, it can be confusing and thanks to misreading some kanji, you may not even understand what's happening anymore and have to reread several times.

You can learn that stuff without ever having written any kanji. Radicals are actually fairly easy to memorize if you really need to look up how to write that kanji that you always forget how to write, but actually practicing; hours of learning how to write a language that you aren't likely at all to ever use for real, is just not worth it.
Don't get me wrong, I actually learned how to write kanji because I like shodo and it's pretty much a must, but if your interests lies on watching anime without subs, reading manga or chatting with japanese people, it takes a lot of time and energy to learn those things that you aren't really going to use, ever.

>Waste of time.
Yes, waste of time because nobody really here studied japanese back then.

>You shouldn't practise translating but instead practise understanding, they're different skills.
For translating, you have to understand. To understand, you have to get the language. Translating adds a layer of work but the payoff is great because you understand the way the structures are constructed because when you translate that to a familiar language it's easier to remember. But that may be just me, if you want to go head-on against japanese and it works for you, fine.

>>19828
>You can master a textbook but natural Japanese often has its own grammar that's not in most textbooks.
I totally agree with you that grinding textbooks alone is not the ultimate way to learn the language in any way. That's true but as I've already said I try approaching different methods as well. It's just I enjoy writing in Japanese by hand so much that I want to have a purpose to do so everyday. Besides, you can't possibly find something interesting to read/person to speak in Japanese every single day to practice (or you just don't have the mood or time to do so/decide what exactly you should do), but exercises are something that you can do everyday regardless of your situation. Because I often feel stuck with thoughts as "I want to practice but I'm not sure what should I do today…" and I feel like textbooks might solve this problem. That's my opinion at least.

>For translating, you have to understand
While that's true, I feel like while reading/speaking non-native language your brain kind of switches to it and you just go with a flow without thinking about how can you translate what you hear to the language you naturally know. Translating something might be a good practice but I understand what anon meant by calling it waste of time. After all understanding =/= translating 'cause while translating you're kind of forced to mostly retell everything with the tools of your native language rather than actually translate what original text meant word by word ('cause everything will sound shitty and unnatural if you do just that). So if you're not into playing with words and diving deeper in your own language than you usually need I understand why you'll consider translating something a waste of time.

>I actually learned how to write kanji because I like shodo and it's pretty much a must
I've also learned how to write kanjis, but mostly because I've found it extremely relaxing thing to do. Like, you turn off your brain and just draw the strokes while imagining short stories about the meaning of kanji.

JLPT time!

>>20933
おk、じゃ日本語練習しようぜ
なんN等級を狙っているんだい？

Oyasumi nasai.

>>21198
おやすみなさい。良い夢を。

>>21199
Domo.

I want to speak to Japanese body-builders