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Japanese

Japanese: a Failed Experiment – Part Deux

I attempted to write this post previously but it took on a tone I didn’t like, so I’m going to try to redo it.  Last time I talked about why I consider learning Japanese a personal failure.  Now I want to talk about why I don’t think it is. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I failed at Japanese.  But it did serve a very important purpose, and I may yet pursue it for other reasons or considerations. I remember when I first truly became interested in learning Japanese.  I don’t… Read More »Japanese: a Failed Experiment – Part Deux

Japanese: a Failed Experiment (But Not Entirely)

Ever since I began this blog, there have been a few ongoing themes.  The one that really permeated the entire blog was the following question:  Why am I bothering?  Over the last few years, it’s perhaps the most important question, and the one I had the most difficulty answering. I think I might have the answer.  And it ties together nearly all of the threads that have been weaving this blog from the very beginning.  So let me start. The first thread was:  why I started to learn Japanese.  Something… Read More »Japanese: a Failed Experiment (But Not Entirely)

Introducing… Hidden Japanese!!

I’ve been busy!!! So, as I was looking back on some of my earlier posts, I had made a few observations of discoveries I’d made about Japanese, but they got lost in the noise of my emo angst and whining.  So I decided that it would make sense to make a new site with only observations like those.  No blog, no whining, just information. You can find it at https://hiddenjapanese.com What this site is, is a clearinghouse with short pages of information on concepts and words that I think will make… Read More »Introducing… Hidden Japanese!!

Hentaigana, and the Frustration of Learning Japanese

While I was doing research for another project I was doing, I went down a bit of a rabbithole.  I was trying to explain (and make sure I understood) the uses of voiced vs. unvoiced consonants.  I found a bunch of interesting things.  One was that there are some kana that are not well known and aren’t taught.  Another is that there are specific origins for hiragana, and some of them went down some rather odd roads before settling on their current form. Now, Japanese teaching and learning is a… Read More »Hentaigana, and the Frustration of Learning Japanese

The Heart of Japan

I tend to annoy my coworkers with discussions of Japanese and all things Japan.  Some of them find it interesting.  Some just recite “press 1 for English”.  But at the end of the day, the discussions can be interesting at times. One of my coworkers made the statement that “the best representation of Japanese culture is anime”.  I vehemently disagreed.  He then asked me the very fair question, “okay, then, what is it?”  After some thought, I answered. But before I tell you what that answer was, let me go… Read More »The Heart of Japan

Immersion

My first true exposure to Japanese language was Rosetta Stone.  In fact, I remember the first word I ever learned:  otokonoko.  I became very disillusioned with Rosetta Stone very quickly, and decided that it wasn’t worth it, particularly for the price. But lately I’ve been studying the kanken books.  You see, in Japan, there are ten levels of kanji certification.  I could probably pass test 10 right now, but honestly, so could most first graders.  But what really interested me was the beginning of the book.  Because, you see, there… Read More »Immersion

How Would I Have Done It?

Let me preface this by saying: this is only a thought experiment. I have no illusions that this will ever happen. I’m not even seriously proposing it. But I do like to think about these kinds of things. So, that said, how would I redo Japanese if I were God? Well, my first thought is, expand the syllabary. Add a couple of vowels and a couple of consonants. Then, redo the syllabary to something that is logical, something like the korean hangul. Make the rules regular and predictable – this… Read More »How Would I Have Done It?

The Two Pillars of Success

There are two pillars to success when learning any language: vocabulary and grammar. The thing about them is, they are actually rather orthogonal to each other. Even in Japanese, as long as you learn the dictionary form (or to some degree even the polite form of the word) you don’t need to worry too much about how to use it to know the word. You need to know both, obviously, but you can work on both separately, and not lose anything when it comes to learning whatever language you’re trying… Read More »The Two Pillars of Success

The Other

Western people know many Japanese place names. Osaka, Tokyo, and even for more unsavory reasons, Hiroshima, Nagasaki… But what many western people don’t know is that these are actually very ordinary names in Japanese. Hiroshima, for example, means “Wide Island”, and Tokyo means “Capital City” (or something similar). The fact that the names are in a language we don’t understand makes them sound exotic, but they’re not exotic at all. Just like, for example, “Austin” might sound exotic, but it’s just a random guy’s last name, and “Round Rock” is… Read More »The Other

Japanese is Biased Against Beginners

As I have been learning Japanese, one observation keeps coming to mind, one I can’t shake: Japanese is incredible, amazingly, spectacularly biased against beginners. What I mean is this: when you start learning Japanese, there is a hump. The hump seems almost insurmountable. You have to learn an entirely new way of thinking about language – the grammar is exactly backwards from English, there are several different writing systems that are completely unfamiliar, and (at least for any practical purpose) you have to learn them quickly, because you’re not going… Read More »Japanese is Biased Against Beginners