My biggest mistake was not trying to find or make a community. Isolation hasn't been good for me.
This resonates. It's hard to maintain rigor, or even coherence, without interaction, and enthusiasm for projects wanes when not part of a community.
Who's the interviewer? Random blog, or does anyone know him?
I can almost pick my nose with my toe!
It would be possible to do scholarship as a leisure activity if you had an OK job, but to do that you wouldn't have time and probably not money for a "normal life", for example a family life.
So. Using Halpern's Kodansha, Hiragana charts, and the MS character map, I tried to turn the first line of Soseki's "First Night" into romaji just to get the sound and got it 90% right. 5% was about being unclear whether on'yomi or kun'yomi was appropriate in a case, and 5% was about attaching a 'n' to a syllable.
Then I checked at google translate, and could not associate what i was reading to what I was hearing, which will be a problem for the movies. I really want some japanese subtitles, preferably romaji.
Yes, I know what I said, but the on vs kun issue, and learning the pronunciation of kanji would be a very hard way to start.
Turning the Kodansha into flashcard wallpaper, up to 720. I think I might start disaggregating the compounds and idioms. But yah, I am now adding methods to tools. The MS Character map will help a lot, by radical, by kana. Scared about the loanwords, 20% of current Japanese, but I'll stick to classics.
40% through Seidensticker Genji, starting Cambridge 19th century, read Desser's book Ozu's Tokyo Story Tuesday for a break.
Tried to get the roommate to watch Yamada's awesome Twilight Samurai based in part on the lead stud having been on Lost, but she will have none of it. No subbed movies. Sigh.
Emerson! Carry on.
What a weird interview. The interlocutor keeps presenting somewhat formalized (and slightly precious at times) formulations of what he/she understands JE's views to be, and he keeps saying, No strong opinion there, not a formalized view, I'm not interested in that aspect of the matter, economics is vicious and stupid, Continental philosophy is not my area ... thanks.
My beard is longer, all white, and I have zero pattern baldness. So there Emerson.
5: If what you want is to watch movies, I recommend starting learning words as sounds written in kana, not as sequences of kanji that you put together. Trying to figure out pronunciations by putting together individual kanji will lead you astray very often (all the rare yomi and opaque phonetic rules for their merger). Plus so much of the language has no kanji component.
Trying to figure out pronunciations by putting together individual kanji will lead you astray make you stark raving mad.
But if you're really intent on following the language, you could get the subtitles as separate files (there are plenty of sites where you can find them), make them show up in Firefox (maybe email them to yourself), and use rikaichan to guide you through the pronunciations.
6: I think they were hoping to get Emerson the Troll, but instead just got John the Basically Smart Guy.
And it interests me why the online resources for learning Japanese are so many that it overwhelms.
8:Okay, as a beginner, one thing that scares me is that there are what 75 syllables and 2000+ Kanji. Reading through the Kodansha it's here's another "ji" and a new "cho" and yet another "ken". And opening Halpern at random I see that "musu" steam has homophones "musu" life, and "musu" give birth. Each of which has a different Kanji. And that's the kun. The on is "jo" and distillation is "joryo" Don't ask me about "ryo"
An online native told me that "Japanese is a visual language" and even natives sometimes sketch kanji on their hands in conversation.
And it's not just movies, but also literature, I want to read Saikaku to see where Mizoguchi fucked it up, Basho and Kenzaburō Ōe in the original because I love ambiguity in language and without getting all wappersorf, I think that culture formed with the language is fascinating.
And it interests me why the online resources for learning Japanese are so many that it overwhelms.
One word: nerds.
8:Okay, as a beginner, one thing that scares me is that there are what 75 syllables and 2000+ Kanji. Reading through the Kodansha it's here's another "ji" and a new "cho" and yet another "ken". And opening Halpern at random I see that "musu" steam has homophones "musu" life, and "musu" give birth. Each of which has a different Kanji. And that's the kun. The on is "jo" and distillation is "joryo" Don't ask me about "ryo"
Yep, largely because there was more variation in the Chinese pronunciations (consonants, tones, syllable-final consonants now worn away in Mandarin, etc.) that has been flattened out in Japanese. It's impossible to learn kanji understanding them as individual words with sounds and meanings; absolutely necessary to learn them in close conjunction with the compounds they're used in ("the dan in soudan").
An online native told me that "Japanese is a visual language" and even natives sometimes sketch kanji on their hands in conversation.
Pretty much the equivalent of our spelling out words verbally, I'd say. Beware essentialization.
Japanese is a full language that should be learned as such, not as an outgrowth of one of its character sets (which was created for another language that shares almost no phonetic or grammatical features with it; kanji would be almost entirely useless for representing Japanese if it hadn't imported so many Chinese words over the centuries). You'll do better if you start by privileging the language as spoken, and probably make faster progress in the difference between sounded-out kana and spoken language. Japanese children also learn kana first, followed by kanji.
arubaito, baito, and patto
Kodansho gives me a lot of romaji, whole phrases
Rekeichan, at least as loaded, gives me the kana but no romaji (or pronunciation, but I need to get the kana down.)
Spken Story Site ...still looks like a lot of Kanji in there, and no furigana. Damn shit's everywhere.
What little Nihongo subtitles I've seen are loaded with Kanji. I've been looking for American media with Japanese subs, but I'm thinking I need to look for those on Japanese sites.
Enough.
No, the guy was friendly. He's an undergrad at Aberdeen in Scotland. He's finding his own place in between academia and trolldom.
Hi John. It seemed friendly enough, just at slight cross-purposes. No worries.
Beware essentialization.
We have been here before. To say that everyone is different, or some like Burger King and some KFC who is to say, is to reduce people to the economists rational agents. It has always been the purpose of liberalism to attack and destroy culture and cultural identity as a condition contingent and inescapable, in service of market economics, because only the "free person" can be the capitalist's ideal worker and consumer. So "culture" becomes a free choice from a vast smorgasbord of options...culture becomes consumption.
Culture is not consumption. People are not free. Essentialism is partly true until the liberal fuckers makes us all clones.
Delurking to say: Bob, what you need to watch is a lot of subtitled anime. Luckily, there's tons out there, available for free, if somewhat legally questionable. You'll pick up a lot of vocabulary and even a pretty fair selection of kanji, although it will be somewhat oddly skewed, depending on what kind of shows you watch. Stick to bland dramas centered around high schoolers, if possible. Live action shows are better, if you can find them, but there's not nearly as many nerd-powered translation efforts. animesuki.com is a pretty good resource, I think.
(Yaaaaaay Emerson!)
Now that you mention it, yes, they do articulate a hell of a lot more clearly in anime than in movies.
There's a really excellent blogger on anime. Used to be a political blogger back in the day, but retired from the field of battle to watch more anime. Seems like an interesting, nice, and smart guy.
And not even a little bit into watching nude young girls. Nope nope nope.
18,19:Really? Thanks
...
Just checked it out. Have a few dozen anime episodes on my OnDemand Anime Network, rotating of course like all the OD stuff. "Akane Iro" and "KimiKiss" look appropriately adolescent. With bright yellow subs.
It does sound clearer, simpler, and slower than the movies, but I keep wanting to translate the subs into kana or romaji as I listen.
I have avoided everything but the highest quality anime.
Scared of what stuff like KimiKiss can do to my brain.
Let me recommend Kanji Damage, not because I know anything about Schultz's qualifications, but because I like his writing.