I'm jealous, yes jealous of the LDS missionaries here in Okinawa that are IMMERSED in the Japanese language from the moment they descend from the plane fresh from the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah. In a matter of months, they master the basics of Japanese conversation. I, on the other hand, live surrounded by Americans, albeit in a beautiful ocean-front apartment facing the East China Sea.
For my second language input, I seek out Japanese friends and schedule time for them to come to my home. Once a week a few Okinawan acquaintances come and teach me Japanese while I teach them English. Since people commonly make decent money teaching English, I feel like it's a pretty fair trade off.
I've lived in Okinawa since 2000. I also WORK surrounded by Americans at an elementary school of mostly Marines' kids. We have two full-time Japanese language and culture teachers on staff. They are my only contact with Japanese within the confines of that camp.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
ka, ki, ku, ke, ko - the ABC's of Japanese
The first thing I recommend that a new learner tackle is hiragana. Yes, you can learn Japanese by using Romaji, the romanized spelling of Japanese words, but if you want to communicate more efficiently, you'll take the time to learn at least hiragana. You can spell any word in Japanese using hiragana, their phonetic alphabet, or more precisely, syllabary. The Japanese government has provided you with a free set of flash cards: license plates. The complex characters on the top denote where the prefecture in which the plate was issued. The simple few strokes that precede the four numbers, THAT'S your hiragana.
If you're paying attention, you'll start to notice a few things about which cars are assigned which hiragana. Taxis are always vowels: あ、い、う、え、お (a, i, u, e, o). Huge vehicles like buses and dumptrucks also get the vowels and the KA row: か、き、く、け、こ (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko). Rental cars are always わ(WA). Only a handful of hiragana are NOT featured on license plates, notably the (grammatical) object marker WO.
There are several books that teach cutesy ways of remembering how to recognize and draw the hiragana correctly. Or simply come up with your own silly way. HI (pronounced hee) looks like a grin tipped to the right. Hee-hee-hee should be pretty easy to remember.
Tim R. Matheson has a simple hiragana drill web page that requires no download and no prior knowledge of Japanese.
But wait there's more...
After hiragana comes its evil twin, katakana. I'm always forgetting a katakana here and there. Frankly, they're irritating to me. The Japanese call attention to their imported words by writing them in katakana. ホッチキス spells Hotchkiss and is a stapler. Apparently that was a hot brand of stapler when they were first imported to Japan.
It makes sense to me that office implements would be relegated to the world of katakana, but many fruits and vegetables are also rendered in the FOREIGN word syllabary: オレンジ (orenji, orange); レタス (retasu, lettuce).
Another complaint I have about katakana stems from my experience teaching English to the Japanese. Most of their English-learning books use katakana to indicate pronunciation. The fifty or so syllables available in the Japanese sound palette DO NOT match up with the sounds of English. L vs. R, TH, short a, short i, short u, schwa are just a few of the sounds that get mangled in katakana. Japanese learners of English need to learn to pronounce using our sounds from the beginning. That's a good argument for US using THEIR sounds and letters from square one.
Inspired Missionaries
I went to a Saturday morning Japanese class that our missionaries were teaching. I only went a few times, which is the typical complaint of such classes: you're always stuck on lesson one or two. In the Missionary Training Center, they've really developed second language learning to an art. The most valuable piece of information that I received from them was a song about verbs.
The -te and -ta Verb Forms
Sung to the tune: Silver Bells, "City sidewalks, busy sidewalks..."
That's it! Remember you heard it here first.
Japanese verbs aren't conjugated like so many western languages: yo hablo, tu hablas, él habla, nosotros hablamos, ellos hablan, etc. They are no respecter of person (1st, 2nd, 3rd, singular, plural). OK, there's the politeness factor, but that's a whole 'nother story. If you know the present form of the verb, you know it for he, she, they, we, I, everybody! The above song gets you through one of the trickiest forms, the -te and -ta verb endings.
A few uses of -te and -ta forms
The -te form + iru or +imasu gives you the progressive form.
For my second language input, I seek out Japanese friends and schedule time for them to come to my home. Once a week a few Okinawan acquaintances come and teach me Japanese while I teach them English. Since people commonly make decent money teaching English, I feel like it's a pretty fair trade off.
I've lived in Okinawa since 2000. I also WORK surrounded by Americans at an elementary school of mostly Marines' kids. We have two full-time Japanese language and culture teachers on staff. They are my only contact with Japanese within the confines of that camp.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
ka, ki, ku, ke, ko - the ABC's of Japanese
The first thing I recommend that a new learner tackle is hiragana. Yes, you can learn Japanese by using Romaji, the romanized spelling of Japanese words, but if you want to communicate more efficiently, you'll take the time to learn at least hiragana. You can spell any word in Japanese using hiragana, their phonetic alphabet, or more precisely, syllabary. The Japanese government has provided you with a free set of flash cards: license plates. The complex characters on the top denote where the prefecture in which the plate was issued. The simple few strokes that precede the four numbers, THAT'S your hiragana.
If you're paying attention, you'll start to notice a few things about which cars are assigned which hiragana. Taxis are always vowels: あ、い、う、え、お (a, i, u, e, o). Huge vehicles like buses and dumptrucks also get the vowels and the KA row: か、き、く、け、こ (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko). Rental cars are always わ(WA). Only a handful of hiragana are NOT featured on license plates, notably the (grammatical) object marker WO.
There are several books that teach cutesy ways of remembering how to recognize and draw the hiragana correctly. Or simply come up with your own silly way. HI (pronounced hee) looks like a grin tipped to the right. Hee-hee-hee should be pretty easy to remember.
Tim R. Matheson has a simple hiragana drill web page that requires no download and no prior knowledge of Japanese.
But wait there's more...
After hiragana comes its evil twin, katakana. I'm always forgetting a katakana here and there. Frankly, they're irritating to me. The Japanese call attention to their imported words by writing them in katakana. ホッチキス spells Hotchkiss and is a stapler. Apparently that was a hot brand of stapler when they were first imported to Japan.
It makes sense to me that office implements would be relegated to the world of katakana, but many fruits and vegetables are also rendered in the FOREIGN word syllabary: オレンジ (orenji, orange); レタス (retasu, lettuce).
Another complaint I have about katakana stems from my experience teaching English to the Japanese. Most of their English-learning books use katakana to indicate pronunciation. The fifty or so syllables available in the Japanese sound palette DO NOT match up with the sounds of English. L vs. R, TH, short a, short i, short u, schwa are just a few of the sounds that get mangled in katakana. Japanese learners of English need to learn to pronounce using our sounds from the beginning. That's a good argument for US using THEIR sounds and letters from square one.
Inspired Missionaries
I went to a Saturday morning Japanese class that our missionaries were teaching. I only went a few times, which is the typical complaint of such classes: you're always stuck on lesson one or two. In the Missionary Training Center, they've really developed second language learning to an art. The most valuable piece of information that I received from them was a song about verbs.
The -te and -ta Verb Forms
Sung to the tune: Silver Bells, "City sidewalks, busy sidewalks..."
-u, -tsu, -ru >>> -tte
-bu, -mu, -nu >>> -nde
-ku >>> -ite
-gu >>> -ide
-su >>> -shite
are the -te and -ta verb forms.
That's it! Remember you heard it here first.
Japanese verbs aren't conjugated like so many western languages: yo hablo, tu hablas, él habla, nosotros hablamos, ellos hablan, etc. They are no respecter of person (1st, 2nd, 3rd, singular, plural). OK, there's the politeness factor, but that's a whole 'nother story. If you know the present form of the verb, you know it for he, she, they, we, I, everybody! The above song gets you through one of the trickiest forms, the -te and -ta verb endings.
A few uses of -te and -ta forms
The -te form + iru or +imasu gives you the progressive form.
oyogu >>> oyoide iru
swim>>> (I am) swimming.
The -ta form is the simple past
write >>> wrote
kaku >>> kaita
This language CAN BE LEARNED, but you gotta know where to start.
posted by Okinawa tuba at 1:05 PM
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