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Firstly my most highly recommended links: Collin's Japanese Language and Culture page Collin has nicely provided software for both PC and Mac that will allow you to search out the conjugations for hundreds of (if not all?) Japanese verbs. Also reverse conjugations. My basic Nihongo study tips: I have provided some examples of Japanese both in Romaji (Roman letters) and kana/kanji (Japanese letters) but you will need a browser capable of viewing Japanese characters if you want to view those pages. To speak Japanese efficiently one must understand the verbs and their conjugations. To learn any language this is so but in Japanese many comments or questions are of only one word, a verb, with a conjugation that supplies intent/potentiality/condition etc. When you start learning a new language you know next to nothing. *Every* word is an unknown. So each verb, though you may know a few, will sound totally foreign when conjugated in some form you have not mastered. Owning a good book on Japanese verbs is your key to getting this language under your belt. You can try my link to verbs to get you started. I recommend that you take the first few verbs you are taught and drill yourself through all the possible conjugations and their meanings. There are three groups of verbs which follow three conjugational rules. Take a verb from each group and perform all the conjugations. This will allow you to use that verb in all it's tenses, past, future, passive, conditional etc and make it easier for you to then understand the Japanese spoken to you. For I found this to be my largest problem. Whilst I had a growing vocabulary I still found I couldn't quite decipher what was being said to me as my knowledge of the conjugative possibilites was too limited. |
The Written Language: Whilst Japanese uses Kanji - the Japanese name for Chinese Characters which the Chinese call Hanzi (and in Mandarin, it sounds a bit more like hanzu or hanze) - making it a difficult language to learn to read and write, they also use a phonetic alphabet called Hiragana, and also an aural duplicate called Katakana. When writing words of a foreign origin they use katakana rather than hiragana although the two sets of alphabets contain the same sounds. Sound like a waste of learning/time? Maybe so but alas it is the way of it in Japan. So learning Hiragana at least will allow you to read and write the sounds of Japanese and so make many more books for studying available to you as well as making the possibility of studying with a Japanese person more constructive. Hiragana also break up strings of kanji which in itself is handy. There are no spaces in the Japanese writing system. Learning Katakana, being used for foreign words or as onomatopoeias, will help you with most bar & restaurant menues. My pages mostly contain study notes in only romanji (Roman letters) as well as Hiragana. I am also trying to add some basic Kanji as an intro/teaser to the fascinating world of Kanji. Although I currently lack a computer with a Japanese OS on it so progress is not the word of the moment. :) Pictographic language systems are, I believe, a little too cumbersome for practical use, but as many of us specialise in studies that fascinate us so too may Kanji fascinate you enough that you devote the large amount of time needed to memorise the 1800 Kanji you would need for "daily" use in modern Japan. There are *many* more combinations of Kanji than 1800 but this would give you a workable level of comprehension. How many Kanji are there? I read recently there are some 50,000. More considering that these can still be combined with themselves to create new meanings. I think a good Japanese dictionary may hold 3-6,000. A Chinese dictionary quite possible double that. But please email me if you have better figures. I read these figures some time back and I didn't write them down at the time. Apologies. Many students in Japan are losing the ability to read and write Kanji. Computers make it easier to write Kanji by providing the possible Kanji characters when the Hiragana sounds are typed in. The typist merely selects the desired Kanji. But the typist may not recall correctly which Kanji to use, especially if the meaning is sophisticated. Excepting this downward turn in the memorisation of Kanji each Japanese person you meet IS a specialist in a pictographic language. They have spent at least 2 years of their lives, during their schooling, studying the national language. If they go on through University to study another specialty they need to study more Kanji to keep pace with the new knowledge base. Tires me out just thinking about it. g'luck, have fun ;)Reading Japanese characters Your browser will need to be able to display Japanese characters, with a 56k modem the update for Win98 will take about 20 minutes. Those of you with Win 2000 or Xp should have some sort of built in Language pack and need only to find the "on" switch for viewing different characters/languages.
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