Have I gone Japanese?

[Raleigh]

So where did you pick up the knowledge of the hiragana and katakana? I've been looking to learn the language for years but the best I've found is simply some of those worthless tapes that teach you how to verbally speak a handful of useful phrases.

[Mitera Nikkou]

To be honest? From a video game magazine about ten years ago. From there I simply got a book that teaches hiragana and how to write sentences, and a Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary. I've yet to try anything with audio, but I think I've got the pronunciations right. I probably could have learned Japanese long before now if I had the focus, but I don't, so I forgot how to write sentences, and some katakana and hiragana, and at best I've been able to focus enough to relearn the katakana and hiragana that I forget. My memory for kanji is much better for some reason, though I still haven't tried to learn how to write them from the ground up; what I know is simple memorization instead of application.

Japanese doesn't appear to be that hard to learn, so I bet it would be easy for me... If I could concentrate on it. -_-; It's a shame since my strength appears to be in the liberal arts spectrum of things.

[Alissa of Someday]

日本語を習うは難しいじゃありませんか。

[Mitera Nikkou]

I suppose it depends on the person.

(Using what I know, my dictionary and the context, I was able to figure out what you had asked. Or, at least, I think I did.)

I mean, there's this one guy who had been able to learn a new language from scratch in one week. And he wasn't exactly a savant, per se.

[Alissa of Someday]

(I think you got it right.)

T'be honest--I don't actually find the basic learning of Japanese all that hard--the memorization of kanji and tons of vocab can be a bit tough, but once you get hiragana down, it's difficulty is only moderate, I think--I'm in a class right now though, and I know many, many people who are struggling with it...

[Mitera Nikkou]

Classes wouldn't work for me... Not that doing stuff on my own works all that well for me, either. ;/

But I have katakana and hiragana down. Really I just need to relearn and use sentences enough for me to not forget it. Beyond that an expanded vocabulary would do me wonders. Kanji would just have to wait... Though I'm sure you can learn it without memorization. For instance, "go", in "nihongo", has "go", for "five", and below it "kuchi", for "mouth", and to the left of those two is "gen/koto" (I couldn't figure out which pronunciation was right), for "word." Well, that's the best I can guess, anyway. I don't know what purpose the "five" has there, but I think two out of three make the meaning of the kanji as a whole evident, that there is a reasoning behind it, since "go" in "nihongo" means "language." (Perhaps the five means the mouth is the fifth hole? XD;; )

But... You probably already knew that, or better. <_<; I'm bored, and this helps keep some of what I've learned fresh, so... An opening!

[Alissa of Someday]

Aye, I don't think classes always work for everyone...it's not a bad place to start, though.

Also, some combination kanji make sense...other ones though, really don't, at least to me--for instance, combining 'Rice patty' and 'Power' makes 'Man'. I can vaguely get an idea of hoe that might be, but it's not intuitive, really. Can help though, o'course.

[Mitera Nikkou]

It's probably more obvious to a native speaker and their culture. Rice has been an important crop for the Japanese for a long, long time, though, so that alone is enough to imagine how rice patty and power could mean that.

[Alissa of Someday]

Aye--my point exactly. I'm sure most of 'em make at least some sense...but lest so to a westerner such as myself...

Could be worse though--it could be actually as hard as people hype it up to be.

[Mitera Nikkou]

Awwww... Sounds like someone got kicked in the balls by foreign stuff. Their poor pride.

I think it's more a matter of approach and application that determines the difficulty of a language, and also what your definition of "difficult" is. For instance, even though I haven't been able to learn it after ten years, I can't call it difficult since I haven't been able to put a lot of effort into the task. Beyond that each person has a method that works best for them: some may do well in classes and/or tutors, others in books and studying, and some who would do better being around (or living among) those who speak the language. And then it comes down to how long and how hard you are willing to learn.

But I do notice that a common problem that people tend to have with the language, is the different sentence structure. Which is why there are jokes about translating English into Japanese, and then back again. I think that's the case because a lot of people try to learn the language in the context of their native language, so they try to understand it in English, not in Japanese. If you understood Japanese as Japanese, the sentence structure and meaning would make sense. But if you don't, what you get is a messed-up English sentence and problems with such things as plurals and prefixes/suffixes and such.

I don't really think it has much to do with being from the West, or even your language. It's about how you think, and your oral skill. Personally, I'd find several other languages harder, such as the ones that rely a lot on proper phonetics and inflections. I honestly don't know how I'd be able to use phlegm properly, for example... To me, that would be hard. Just rolling an R in Spanish is something I haven't been able to do; which, to me, makes the whole language difficult, since it's required for proper speech in that language. I haven't encountered such a problem with Japanese, so... Not as hard, I guess. *Shrugs*

[Just some lady]

Yeeeaaah, I would say that the sentence structure is probably what throws people off the most, (well once they manage to get Hiragana down). Luckily, I'm alright with both, although particles can throw me for a loop now and again, but I would agree with you--the easiest bit about Japanese in my mind, is definitely that it's pretty much phonetic in the way the words sound as compared to how they look--it's true that say, 'shita' is generally pronounced quickly, ('Shta', more or less), and ha wo and he can take on other pronunciations depending, but it's relatively easy to remember when compared with say, a foreigner trying to get the silent letters, soft c's, ch, ph, th, sh, etc. down in English....depending on where they come from.
French has always struck me as a language, for instance, that is much the opposite--with annoying amounts of silent letters...but then, I know nothing of French, so I'm geeeeeeneralizing...~~

((o_O I can't delete my posts in here, looks like...~~))

[Mitera Nikkou]

(Why would you want to do a thing like that? Either way... Mwa-ha-ha! You are trapped! That is always fun. ^_^)

[President Monoko]

But, my secret identity!

[Sophia Anieri]

Disclaimer: I voted a month later when your name was back to English.