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luckyloser700
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 308
Location: Japan
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 Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:06 am Post subject: |
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Chirp,
Get a Japanese girlfriend (or boyfriend if you prefer). If you hang out together a lot here, your Japanese ability will skyrocket past that of the average nerd who studies the language for 2 years, comes here, and spends all of his or her time reading Anime and hanging out with other gaijin. |
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Hoser
Joined: 19 Mar 2005
Posts: 694
Location: Toronto, Canada
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:16 am Post subject: |
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| Well I know hirigana so that helps me when I'm texting my girlfriend. However I don't know a lick of katakana which is a real pain in a butt because I actually have a chance of actually being able to understand it if I could read it. Currently I can read hirigana but I usually have no idea what it means which is really quite useless. |
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Hoser
Joined: 19 Mar 2005
Posts: 694
Location: Toronto, Canada
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:18 am Post subject: |
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| luckyloser700 wrote: |
Chirp,
Get a Japanese girlfriend (or boyfriend if you prefer). If you hang out together a lot here, your Japanese ability will skyrocket past that of the average nerd who studies the language for 2 years, comes here, and spends all of his or her time reading Anime and hanging out with other gaijin. |
Oh and make sure you get a Japanese girlfriend who knows LESS english than you know japanese. Otherwise your japanese language really won't improve that much. I've been going out for 4 months now and I would say that I learned far more from going to a japanese class in canada than I have from her. On the other hand I now know how to talk like a japanese woman. |
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luckyloser700
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 308
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 4:14 am Post subject: Japanese Girlfriends |
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| Yeah, but Japanese men know that most gaijin men who talk like Japanese women do so because they date Japanese women. There's definitely no shame in talking that way. Besides, if you befriend any Japanese guys you'll end up speaking like them sooner or later anyway. But, you're definitely right about the relative language abilities. Luckily, some of the most aggressive Japanese women (meaning the ones who might approach a foreigner for chat or something more) don't speak any foreign languages well at all. They tend to be particularly shy about speaking English anyway, given the difficulty in pronunciation. The ones who speak English well, but have never been out of the country are the ones to be wary of. Probably had a lot of English-speaking boyfriends. |
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sallycat
Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 303
Location: behind you. BOO!
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 5:43 am Post subject: |
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| PAULH wrote: |
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. |
dude, i can't read that sentence in romanji, either.
i think the hepburn system is the one that uses "tsu" and the kunrei is the one that uses "tu". i'd say hepburn is the best, though i think they still teach kunrei in schools out of national pride.
as for learning, i'd say go for katakana, hiragana and the kanji for things like food eg, 豚、牛乳 and basic places around town if possible. |
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PAULH
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 6:10 am Post subject: |
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| sallycat wrote: |
e.g bobu ha futatu no ringo wo motte imasu.
e. |
| Quote: |
dude, i can't read that sentence in romanji, either.
i think the hepburn system is the one that uses "tsu" and the kunrei is the one that uses "tu". i'd say hepburn is the best, though i think they still teach kunrei in schools out of national pride.
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Bobu is Bob in Katakana. "ha" is the particle "wa" between subject and object. you type 'ha" to get the hiragana. wo is the "o" in Japanese before the verb.
Translation: Bob has two apples. |
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PAULH
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 6:14 am Post subject: |
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| luckyloser700 wrote: |
Chirp,
Get a Japanese girlfriend (or boyfriend if you prefer). If you hang out together a lot here, your Japanese ability will skyrocket past that of the average nerd who studies the language for 2 years, comes here, and spends all of his or her time reading Anime and hanging out with other gaijin. |
get a Japanese girlfriend and you will end up speaking japanese like a 22 year old office lady or one of those "gay" guys on Japanese TV who talk and act like women.
She: Iku wa yo.
He Iku no?
She: hai. Watashi to iku?
Hai, watashi mo iku no yo. |
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luckyloser700
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 308
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 6:19 am Post subject: |
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| PAULH wrote: |
| luckyloser700 wrote: |
Chirp,
Get a Japanese girlfriend (or boyfriend if you prefer). If you hang out together a lot here, your Japanese ability will skyrocket past that of the average nerd who studies the language for 2 years, comes here, and spends all of his or her time reading Anime and hanging out with other gaijin. |
get a Japanese girlfriend and you will end up speaking japanese like a 22 year old office lady or one of those "gay" guys on Japanese TV who talk and act like women.
She: Iku wa yo.
He Iku no?
She: hai. Watashi to iku?
Hai, watashi mo iku no yo. |
Jeez! What was I thinking?! You're right! Chirp, don't get a Japanese girlfriend! Especially not a 22-year old hottie. It really was a lousy idea. Sorry, man. |
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PAULH
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 6:24 am Post subject: |
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| luckyloser700 wrote: |
Jeez! What was I thinking?! You're right! Chirp, don't get a Japanese girlfriend! Especially not a 22-year old hottie. It really was a lousy idea. Sorry, man. |
Except if your little 5 foot-nothing hottie speaks japanese like a truck driver, then you will be OK. |
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kdynamic
Joined: 05 Nov 2005
Posts: 562
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 6:56 am Post subject: |
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| PAULH wrote: |
get a Japanese girlfriend and you will end up speaking japanese like a 22 year old office lady or one of those "gay" guys on Japanese TV who talk and act like women.
She: Iku wa yo.
He Iku no?
She: hai. Watashi to iku?
Hai, watashi mo iku no yo. |
Bahahahaha I know one guy in particular who is a 'cassanova' with the Japanese ladies (or so he'd like to think) who talks just like this due to learning Japanese from his girlfriend. I tried to tell him that saying 'no' at the end of a sentence was just something he didn't want to be doing, but he didn't want to hear it! I'd feel sorry for him but... nah hahaha. |
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luckyloser700
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 308
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 7:28 am Post subject: |
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| kdynamic wrote: |
| PAULH wrote: |
get a Japanese girlfriend and you will end up speaking japanese like a 22 year old office lady or one of those "gay" guys on Japanese TV who talk and act like women.
She: Iku wa yo.
He Iku no?
She: hai. Watashi to iku?
Hai, watashi mo iku no yo. |
Bahahahaha I know one guy in particular who is a 'cassanova' with the Japanese ladies (or so he'd like to think) who talks just like this due to learning Japanese from his girlfriend. I tried to tell him that saying 'no' at the end of a sentence was just something he didn't want to be doing, but he didn't want to hear it! I'd feel sorry for him but... nah hahaha. |
Why feel sorry for him? He's doing fine, I bet. Even if you've got the manly Japanese down, no Japanese guy's ever gonna say "Man, that gaijin sure speaks some manly Japanese!" And women are just going think it's funny that you can do a perfect imitation of a Japanese man. Most of the time Japanese women who want to date gaijin guys are looking for something different; not another guy that can rattle off a sentence or two using the Kansai dialect. |
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kdynamic
Joined: 05 Nov 2005
Posts: 562
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 7:47 am Post subject: |
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| luckyloser700 wrote: |
| Why feel sorry for him? He's doing fine, I bet. Even if you've got the manly Japanese down, no Japanese guy's ever gonna say "Man, that gaijin sure speaks some manly Japanese!" And women are just going think it's funny that you can do a perfect imitation of a Japanese man. Most of the time Japanese women who want to date gaijin guys are looking for something different; not another guy that can rattle off a sentence or two using the Kansai dialect. |
Dude. Girls do not want to date girlymen who can't speak with conviction. If you talk like your girlfriend, you will sound gay. If she likes that, good for you, but after you break up with her and you're on the pull again, it's not going to win you any points beyond 'oooh look at the cute gaijin! I'll have him for my pet!' 
And if you ever get into the 'real world' in Japan, you definitely need to speak Japanese appropriate to your age and gender or you'll never be taken seriously at all. |
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shuize
Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1270
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 8:05 am Post subject: |
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| Although "の" at the end of the a Japanese sentence does not always equate to feminine speech, your point is well taken. It sounds pretty gay when some foreign guy annouces, "Atashi mo ikitai wa ~" |
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angrysoba
Joined: 20 Jan 2006
Posts: 446
Location: Kansai, Japan
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 8:50 am Post subject: |
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| PAULH wrote: |
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. |
Paul, isn't it "romaji" rather than "romanji"? |
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PAULH
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan
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| Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 9:12 am Post subject: |
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| luckyloser700 wrote: |
| Why feel sorry for him? He's doing fine, I bet. Even if you've got the manly Japanese down, no Japanese guy's ever gonna say "Man, that gaijin sure speaks some manly Japanese!" And women are just going think it's funny that you can do a perfect imitation of a Japanese man. Most of the time Japanese women who want to date gaijin guys are looking for something different; not another guy that can rattle off a sentence or two using the Kansai dialect. |
Loser
correct me if Im wrong but you are rather defensive about guys who speak like women. No, no one will say anything and Japanese are too polite to correct your Japanese. they just say 'Nihongo jouzu desu ne...." as they marvel at your linguistic prowess.
Just make sure your drinking buddies are not 50 year old salarimen and they say "washi" instead of "boku" or "watashi". "Washi" sounds REALLY weird coming from someone under 50, and your girlfriend will think you are like an old man. You will have REAL problems if you start tossing "omae"(you) around too. Many women do not like their boyfriends calling them "omae" (or worse, "temae"). Fighting talk, that is.
Most Japanese women want someone they can speak English with, not in Japanese. |
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