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And you think its Easy....

Reaver4kReaver4k Trainee in training
Very Funny

[url]http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~thoureau/japanese.html[/url]

Comments

  • Lord RefaLord Refa Creepy, but in a good way
    Thai is even more difficult..

    I accidentally started chanting "To kill! To kill!" once on my trip there.

    During the fullmoon party, so I dont think anyone noticed.
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    But... it is!

    He's right about katakana-ised foreign words, though. They're fucked up and hardly ever sound like the original. :)
  • BekennBekenn Sinclair's Duck
    I rather think the sentence structure makes quite a bit of sense... but I do agree that it is rather ridiculous to have three different character sets.

    Then again, we have two character sets: upper case and lower case. But at least there's a one-to-one correlation between them....
  • Reaver4kReaver4k Trainee in training
    Japanese Sentance structure is not that, alot Langauge's are like that.

    English is rather fucked up to, at times I dont get it... Exspecaly when it somes to thinks like "To, Too and Two"... and "Knife and Gnome" and other word that have an extra letter for some reason. and Night and Knight..... I would change Knife and Knight to K'nife and K'nigh or somthing.
  • CurZCurZ Resident Hippy
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Reaver4k [/i]
    [B]at times I dont get it...[/B][/QUOTE]

    You don't say? :D
  • [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Reaver4k [/i]
    [B]Japanese Sentance structure is not that, alot Langauge's are like that.

    English is rather fucked up to, at times I dont get it... Exspecaly when it somes to thinks like "To, Too and Two"... and "Knife and Gnome" and other word that have an extra letter for some reason. and Night and Knight..... I would change Knife and Knight to K'nife and K'nigh or somthing. [/B][/QUOTE]In Middle English (we spent a bit of time reading The Canterbury Tales in ME), all letters were pronounced; "knight" was pronounced "k-neekt," for example. I guess it just sounds odd, so we dropped it. :p
  • Vertigo1Vertigo1 Official Fuzzy Dice of FirstOnes.com
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Lord Refa [/i]
    [B]Thai is even more difficult..

    I accidentally started chanting "To kill! To kill!" once on my trip there.

    During the fullmoon party, so I dont think anyone noticed. [/B][/QUOTE]

    heheh

    Atleast you didn't start chanting "didi mao". :P (though thats vietnamese...)
  • Lord RefaLord Refa Creepy, but in a good way
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Vertigo1 [/i]
    [B]heheh

    Atleast you didn't start chanting "didi mao". :P (though thats vietnamese...) [/B][/QUOTE]

    Well, I thought my girlfriend "vittu" (every finn knows that).

    And she started shouting that in a netcafe.
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Bekenn [/i]
    [B]I rather think the sentence structure makes quite a bit of sense...[/b][/quote]

    As do I. It's really quite logical and easy to understand. I guess my mind just works in the right way for it.

    [quote][b]but I do agree that it is rather ridiculous to have three different character sets.

    Then again, we have two character sets: upper case and lower case. But at least there's a one-to-one correlation between them.... [/B][/QUOTE]

    Well, this is a bit different. The character sets are not independant of eachother. Kanji are needed in order to help convey meaning in written language that you would get from situational awareness in spoken language. In japanese there are a lot of words (both nouns and verbs) that use identical spelling in hiragana, identical pronounciation and have related but important subtle differences. You tell these words apart in spoken language from the situation and in written language from the kanji used to spell them. Also, the hiragana character set is the transcription of the sound whereas kanji does both sound and meaning. It is entirely possible to write japanese without using a single kanji but you lose a lot of meaning.
    As for katakana, that's an odd one. I don't know why they decided they needed another character set to transcribe words that came from foreign languages (other than chinese). That's not all it's used for, though. Katakana in japanese is similar to using italics in english to place emphasis on certain words.
  • BekennBekenn Sinclair's Duck
    Aye, I know what the character sets are for; I just think it adds needless complexity.
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    Apart from katakana, I don't think it does. Kanji does have one wonderful benefit of being very efficient information compression when reading. Unfortunately this is kinda offset by it being rather inefficient to write. :)

    Just out of curiosity, Bekenn, how long have you been learning japanese? I know, there's at least one other person here who can speak it (and speaks it significantly better than my pathetic level), but I can't remember who it is.
  • BekennBekenn Sinclair's Duck
    [quote] The Deer Caught In headlights are those students who took Japanese because either a.) they thought it sounded like fun, b.) they thought it would be easy, or c.) they just need a couple more credits to graduate. These students wear a mask of terror and panic form the moment they walk into class till the moment they leave, because all they can hear inside their head is the high pitched scream their future is making as it is flushed down the toilet. They are usually failing.[/quote]
    ^--- This was me, minus the terror and panic. I needed the language credits. Took two semesters, and they never taught us kanji. It was pretty poorly run.
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    I'm in that category too, for reason a. Only difference is that my mask of terror and panic comes from the fact that I spend 5 hours a week sitting in a room surrounded by young korean and chinese women (I'm the only white person and only one of 3 guys in my class of 25).
    I can hear half the board pledging to exact revenge upon me already...
  • Reaver4kReaver4k Trainee in training
    Is learning Japanese worth it? Becuase I dont realy know what Langauge to learn... I'm Consitering German as well.
  • [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Reaver4k [/i]
    [B]English is rather fucked up to, at times I dont get it... Exspecaly when it somes to thinks like "To, Too and Two"... and "Knife and Gnome" and other word that have an extra letter for some reason. and Night and Knight..... I would change Knife and Knight to K'nife and K'nigh or somthing. [/B][/QUOTE]

    Considering Modern English borrows from a lot of different languages, you have to expect things like you mentioned above.
  • [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Reaver4k [/i]
    [B]Is learning Japanese worth it? Becuase I dont realy know what Langauge to learn... I'm Consitering German as well. [/B][/QUOTE]

    If you want to learn a language you'd use more often, there's Spanish. Personally, I'd like to learn Russian or German (more likely Russian).
  • Reaver4kReaver4k Trainee in training
    Yeah Spainish is on the list.
  • in my opinion you should go for either russian or spanish.. there is, quite frankly, no real reason to learn german :D
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    If you want to learn a useful language, learn spanish or chinese. You only learn something non-useful if you're doing it for the hell of it. To learn a language properly requires a lot of time (I spend about 3 hours a day on japanese), so you need to know why you're doing it and if you really want to.
  • CurZCurZ Resident Hippy
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Reaver4k [/i]
    [B]Is learning Japanese worth it? Becuase I dont realy know what Langauge to learn... I'm Consitering German as well. [/B][/QUOTE]

    Maybe you should start with english?
  • Vertigo1Vertigo1 Official Fuzzy Dice of FirstOnes.com
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by CurZ [/i]
    [B]Maybe you should start with english? [/B][/QUOTE]

    Oooooh, burn! :D
  • Reaver4kReaver4k Trainee in training
    Shut up
  • TyvarTyvar Next best thing to a St. Bernard
    I'm pissed about the japanese stealing the chinese characters, BECAUSE THEY DIDNT TAKE THEM ALL!! NOOOOO THE BASTARDS STILL HAVE SOME TO INFLICT ON MEEEEE AAAAAAARGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!
  • Reaver4kReaver4k Trainee in training
    Maye Japan should invade again, and then they mite take em all
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