Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

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Mystes
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by Mystes »

Can someone tell me how do the や, the よ and the ゆwork when attached to another hiragana?
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by rpapo »

kira0802 wrote:Can someone tell me how do the や, the よ and the ゆwork when attached to another hiragana?
The small versions of these letters can be combined with the し、じ、and ち letters to change their following sounds from i to a, o and u respectively. Shi becomes Sha, Sho and Shu. Ji becomes Ja, Jo and Ju, and Chi becomes Cha, Cho and Chu.

し => しゃ、しょ、しゅ
じ => じゃ、じょ、じゅ
ち => ちゃ、ちょ、ちゅ

The exact same trick can also be done with katakana.
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by Zell_ff8 »

If you were asking how to type it on an IME, it's by normal wapuro (しゃ can be typed "sha", "sya", "sixya", ちゅう can be "chuu", "tyuu", "tuxyuu").
Adding an "x" makes it small (also "l" in most IME), if the character has a small form: ぁぃぅぇぉゃゅょゎっ/ァィゥェォャュョヮッ
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by Mystes »

And when 'ni' (に) is with 'ya'(や), do you say 'Niya' or 'Nya'?
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by rpapo »

kira0802 wrote:And when 'ni' (に) is with 'ya'(や), do you say 'Niya' or 'Nya'?
That would be following the system. Whether or not it's "really" allowed is another matter.
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by larethian »

kira0802 wrote:And when 'ni' (に) is with 'ya'(や), do you say 'Niya' or 'Nya'?
にや is Niya (2 syllables)
にゃ is Nya (1 syllable)

In Japanese, all syllables are of the same length. Of course, the actual speed (or rather, period of a syllable) is dependent on person. But the same person will maintain the same syllable length for all the words with respect to his speaking speed.
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by Zell_ff8 »

those are called yôon (拗音) and works like a diphthong. like larethian says they have the same length as ONE syllable, despite being TWO moras.

For example:
きよう = ki-yô (1 normal syllable, 1 long syllable) = 器用 (skillfull)
きょう = kyô (1 single long syllable) = 今日 (today)

To form yôon remember it's always the い段+small や行 (い段 are all moras ending in "i" i.e. きぎしじちぢにひびぴみり, and や行 are や、ゆ、よ -or ゃゅょ if part of the yôon-) and has duration of 1 syllable.


Apart from the yôon there is the sokuon who uses a small つ, that produces a kind of halt on the sound and emphatizes the following consonant.
There are several ways to romanize japanese, so don't follow it by romaji as its confusing. "chotto" and "tixyoxtuto" are both "ちょっと". Romaji is only useful when in need to transliterate, you shouldn't use it to learn or understand japanese.

*There are very few words with the syllable にゃ (the only I know is 若気) but it's quite common as a particle, it's a contraction of "には" (just like りゃ is a contraction of れば)
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by Mystes »

Thanks guys.

Also, two-three questions:

1. How is the future tense expressed?
2. Do sentence have an order? (Direct object, subject, verb positioning.)
3. Can kanjis change their pronunciation?
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by Poke2201 »

I can answer 2 and 3.
Japanese I heard is SOV -> Subject Object Verb.

Kanji has 3 ways of being used, but I have no names for them.

Theres the original chinese words
Next is the Japanese words
Finally theres Names.
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by Zell_ff8 »

kira0802 wrote:1. How is the future tense expressed?
2. Do sentence have an order? (Direct object, subject, verb positioning.)
3. Can kanjis change their pronunciation?
1. Use a time indicator ;), even if its once on a previous sentence and you can maintain it in the context. So the future of 行きます is 明日行きます :D . 90% of the time it's implicit on the context or on the use of the verbs. e.g. if ~v1てから~v2 determines that v2 is an action posterior to v1. If v1 is conditional or present then v2 is implicitly in the future. There is no change or any special conjugation to difference a verb in present from one in future.

2. Usually, the "standard" is: SUBJECT + D.O./modifiers (no particular order) + VERB.
But the subject is often omitted (99% omitted if its the same as the previous context).
Direct Object and modifiers can come in any order as long as they are together, i.e. 優しくて器用にリンゴを or リンゴを優しくて器用に , but not 優しくてリンゴを起用に.
Obviously every part can be another sentence, like verbal phrases or nominal sentences (one sentence inside another).
e.g. 去年卒業した頭がいい姉の彼氏は昨日買ったばかりのリンゴを優しくて器用に剥きました。
You should be able to separate the parts of the main sentence and going from outside to inside sentences:
[去年卒業した頭がいい姉の彼氏]は[昨日買ったばかりのリンゴ]を[優しくて器用に]剥きました。
[去年卒業した頭がいい姉の彼氏] -> subject is a sentence, with its root: 彼氏
[昨日買ったばかりのリンゴ] -> d.o. is another sentence, with its root: リンゴ
[優しくて器用に] -> verb modifiers
So the reduced sentence is to its basic meaning is: 彼はリンゴを剥きました。
As a general rule verb is always at the end. But this can be ignored in certain expression styles, specially giving the o.d. after the verb,
e.g.: 忘れないでください、あの日約束したことを…

3. Of course. Most kanji have 2 or 3 on readings and 3 to 5 kun readings. Some has over 5 on and over 20 kun readings. Most kanji are polyphonic, and even compound words can have multiple readings. You have to tell them from context if no furigana is given. I've seen dozens, maybe over 100 of those cases. For compounds (as 99% kanji have multiple readings, pick your chose) I can only recall now "大人気". It can be read "おとなげ" which is something like "adult-ness" and "だいにんき" which means "very popular". It depends if you take 大 as a prefix or 気 has a suffix. "人気" also can be "にんき" (popular) or "ひとけ" (pressence of persons, like in "人気のない場所", "a deserted place").

Kanji in names are another issue, it just adds tons of pronunciations to kanji.
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by Mystes »

I have another question. Though it's not really about the order of the sentence, but rather a question about the 'thinking way'.

Normally, should the entire clause [去年卒業した頭がいい姉の彼氏] (in Zell's example) be the subject, or is it just the root (彼氏) with the other words completing it (the root)?
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by Zell_ff8 »

All inside the brackets acts as the subject. Its a noun phrase, with the main noun (root) being 彼氏. All the rest is additional information about 彼氏, not about the apple or how he peel it.

It's a good exercise for reading comprehension, specially on long sentences where you need to identify where starts and where ends each sub-sentence (the exercise being removing all seasoning elements and reducing it to its minimal expression -the OUTER sentence-, once you understand the broader action, start analyzing the included sentences and giving more details).

In the case of my example what you need to identify at first is that minimal expresion, "he peels an apple", then you go back adding the elements, "the boyfriend of my sister peels an apple", then "the boyfriend of my sister who graduated last year peels an apple" -> "the boyfriend of my sister who graduated last year peels skillfully and carefully an apple" -> "the boyfriend of my sister who graduated last year peels skillfully and carefully the apple I bought yesterday".

Japanese can have really, REALLY long sentences. You need to be good at recognizing sentence structures. I remember on the novel 人間失格 a sentence of almost two pages. A single sentence of over 30 -vertical- lines.
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by Doraneko »

Zell_ff8 wrote:Japanese can have really, REALLY long sentences. You need to be good at recognizing sentence structures. I remember on the novel 人間失格 a sentence of almost two pages. A single sentence of over 30 -vertical- lines.
Indeed. Many of the lines get really long by the later part of the story. Sometimes I feel like running out of breath when I read lines like this. :lol:
お弁当箱に食べ残しのごはん三粒、千万人が一日に三粒ずつ食べ残しても既にそれは、米何俵をむだに捨てた事になる、とか、或いは、一日に鼻紙一枚の節約を千万人が行うならば、どれだけのパルプが浮くか、などという「科学的統計」に、自分は、どれだけおびやかされ、ごはんを一粒でも食べ残す度毎に、また鼻をかむ度毎に、山ほどの米、山ほどのパルプを空費するような錯覚に悩み、自分がいま重大な罪を犯しているみたいな暗い気持になったものですが、しかし、それこそ「科学の嘘」「統計の嘘」「数学の嘘」で、三粒のごはんは集められるものでなく、掛算割算の応用問題としても、まことに原始的で低能なテーマで、電気のついてない暗いお便所の、あの穴に人は何度にいちど片脚を踏みはずして落下させるか、または、省線電車の出入口と、プラットホームの縁(へり)とのあの隙間に、乗客の何人中の何人が足を落とし込むか、そんなプロバビリティを計算するのと同じ程度にばからしく、それは如何(いか)にも有り得る事のようでもありながら、お便所の穴をまたぎそこねて怪我をしたという例は、少しも聞かないし、そんな仮説を「科学的事実」として教え込まれ、それを全く現実として受取り、恐怖していた昨日までの自分をいとおしく思い、笑いたく思ったくらいに、自分は、世の中というものの実体を少しずつ知って来たというわけなのでした。
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by rpapo »

Zell_ff8 wrote:Japanese can have really, REALLY long sentences. You need to be good at recognizing sentence structures. I remember on the novel 人間失格 a sentence of almost two pages. A single sentence of over 30 -vertical- lines.
An acquaintance of mine, a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan, who happens also to be Japanese, found this to be a slight problem when he first started working there. He wrote a report or paper (I don't know which) full of huge sentences in English, and received a certain amount of criticism for having done so. He was simply writing in English the way he was accustomed to doing in Japanese...

Takemiya's long sentences are my personal bane, followed closely by the slurs found in hurried colloquial speech. Two very different extremes in the language.

In the other direction, I had the occasion a month or two ago to watch the entire Chobits anime series. I found listening to Hideki teaching Chi how to speak Japanese to be quite interesting . . . and easy to understand, since it was quite basic Japanese.
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Re: Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

Post by Mystes »

Anyone knows a beautiful way to translate "百合の都"?
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