Job Discussion Forums

[chirp]

Looking for some honest opinions here...

I will be coming to Japan in a few months and have been busting a gut trying to learn hiragana. How helpful will this really be? Would I be better off practicing common Japanese phrases with a language CD?

My Japanese immersion class has me (roughly) saying things like the following although it is still early yet. I don't actually know exactly what I am saying in English since the class is taught exclusively in Japanese and I don't have the ability to type hiragana characters so this is my best guess:

Sensai: (holding a picture of a dog) Is this a cat?
Me: No, that is not a cat.
Sensai: Is this a goldfish?
Me: No, that is not a goldfish either.
Sensai: What is it?
Me: It is a dog.



I have to make a decision ASAP about whether to continue with Level 2 so let me know if you think this will actually help me.

Thanks!

[fluffyhamster]

Hiragana (and katakana) ARE worth learning: they'll obviously help you to progress onto reading authentic Japanese (as opposed to being confined to texts written in romaji), aid you when looking up info or kanji based on kana input (e.g. when sending a message in Japanese on a Japanese mobile phone), and improve your pronunciation/phonological awareness. That being said, I don't think you should be worrying too much about learning them (especially if you're totally new to east asian languages) until you're somewhat familiar with the sounds of the language and some basic lexis and grammar.

As for the course you're doing, hopefully it will show some evidence of serious planning at some point, and not underestimate the amount of learning that lies ahead (likely, beyond such a course). Demonstrative pronouns, are they ever ellipted? Are full-sentence answers the norm? What things exactly are honestly often subject to questioning/doubt (specifically, in conjunction with demonstratives/ deictic processes)? I must admit that I don't really know (especially not in Japanese), but then, does your teacher?

Of course, some will argue that the students can work out what's what for themselves, and that it isn't so terribly important anyway, but what usually happens is that more than a few students put their mind on hold, perhaps subconsciously begins to doubt or resent the teacher despite all the "fun" everyone's having, and are left none the surer about how the language really works. If I were in that class I'd certainly want to see more convincing "dialogues"...perhaps these will come once the "content" words (vocabulary, such as verbs etc) picks up.

In the meantime, maybe you should try to pick up something like Jorden's 'Japanese: The Spoken Language' course (3 vols). You can search inside them on Amazon.com.

[angrysoba]

I think it is definitely worth learning hiragana and I would also avoid using romaji texts to learn Japanese. The pronunciation of Japanese words written in romaji is often counter-intuitive for alot of English-speakers.

[isanity]

I would say that yes, you should learn them, but only on the grounds that education is never a waste. However, you should think about why you've been trying to learn them. If you have no intention of ever learning the kanji, then you will never be able to read any real Japanese texts. If you just want a means of recording phrases you're learning to speak, then a consistent romaji system is just as good as hiragana. But if learning hiragana is essential for continuing your immersion class, then you should certainly keep going. (It's not that difficult!)

[chirp]

lol - no, learning hiragana isn't that difficult... And the class will certainly build my confidence in speaking Japanese aloud. I guess that the bizarre vocabulary we are learning at the moment is to help us learn the correct pronunciation of the sounds.

[abufletcher]

Two immediate SURVIVAL JAPANESE TIPS:

1. Learn katakana because lots of product packaging (for example, in supermarkets and convenience stores) has labels in katakana. Think of katakana as the rough equivalent of "bold" or "italics" -- it's used to make text stand out and with foreign words. Anyway, if something's written in katakana there's good chance that it's actually an English word and you'll be able to understand it.

2. Learn how to pronounce English words as if you were speaking in Japanese, for example, baseball = basubaru. It's surprising how often a strategically placed "Japanglish" word will solve a problem.

Hiragana is useful, but more as a first step on the (long) road of learning of written Japanese.

[alexrocks]

If you just wanna be able to read some things in Japan while on a short-term (i.e. one year or so) stay, then I think KATAKANA would be best, as all foreign words are written this way. It's useless to know hiragana if you don't know the meaning of the word in the first place, right? For example, if you want to rent a video, a lot of the foreign movie titles will be in katakana, not hiragana.

As for language CDs, they're okay, but not terribly effective. I tried them myself and I remembered a few useful expressions like "Where's the toilet," "Excuse me" and "Hello". I think the particular CD I used was best for introducing pronunciation as it had some good practice tools for that.

Good luck!

[alexrocks]

Damn, Abu beat me to the point by two minutes while I was typing....

[Apsara]

As far as the practicalities of living in Japan go, any Japanese characters you can learn will help you a lot. For example, your train has just stopped at a station and it is very crowded so you can't see an English sign (and at private line's stations as opposed to JR there is sometimes little English anyway) You can see the stations's name in hiragana though, so you know where you are.

If I were you I would get onto katakana very quickly too as this will help you with the menus in coffee shops and some of the fast food chains where there is no English on the menu- usually most of the food items in these places are written in katakana.

And some of the more simple kanji that are often used in place names, like yama- mountain, kawa- river, shin- new, ya- valley, north, south, east, west, small, big etc- I know that that kind of thing was what I found most useful when I first arrived.

Don't worry so much about learning to write any of it at first- you probably won't have to do that much anyway, recognition of characters comes much more easily and is the more important skill when you arrive here. Good luck!

[PAULH]

I will point one other thing: Japanese often have trouble trying to decipher words that are written in romanji even if they are grammatically correct Japanese. Japanese 'think' in hiragana not in Roman letters and if you write a sentence they not always read it well

e.g bobu ha futatu no ringo wo motte imasu.

In Japanese these may be easy to say but doesn't 'look' Japanese. If you put things in hiragana you are then 'thinking' in Japanese and not in Romanji or English.

2nd. there are several ways of writing Romanji lettering and I think the most common one is the Hepburn system, which to me makes for very odd pronunciation of Japanese. You see it on train station names sometimes e.g "tsu" in Japanese becomes "tu", "chya" becomes "cha" etc. Make sure you know what is the 'best' and easiest way for you, if you learn hiragana there is only one way of saying each phoneme.

[kdynamic]

Yes. Learn the kana. It shouldn't take you that much time. Just make some flashcards and carry them around with you. Both hiragana and katakana add up to what, less than 100 characters? you can do it.

[chirp]

That was very helpful!

I didn't know that product packaging was in katakana because until recently, I couldn't recognize the difference! So you are absolutely bang on - must learn katakana too!

As for hiragana, I will press on with my class until my departure I think, if only to make me more comfortable communicating in Japanese. And while I doubt that I will ever have to use the Japanese word for "goldfish", there is lots of time yet for the vocabulary to take a more useful turn.

Thanks for the input!

[PAULH]

[shuize]

My honest opinion. What are your goals? If your plans are to eventually read and write Japanese, you should already be done with hiragana and katakana. If you're "busting a gut" to learn either, give up now. Really.

On the other hand, if you're just coming to hang around, there are many who survive on less than you already know. Hell, I've met people who've been here for decades that can't hold a simple conversation about the weather without mangling the Japanese.

[wolfman]

http://www.msu.edu/~lakejess/kanjigame.html

very helpful in learning kana