Anyone know where I may be able to find the Japanese symbols for the game, "Go?" More specifically, the Japanese symbol(s) that mean the word ate(atari)? Any help would be greatly appreciated - I've had no luck in finding it.
Japanese "Go" Symbols?
Anyone know where I may be able to find the Japanese symbols for the game, "Go?" More specifically, the Japanese symbol(s) that mean the word ate(atari)? Any help would be greatly appreciated - I've had no luck in finding it.
http://www.ntsc-uk.com/tech.php?tech=GuideToJapanese
A guide to learning basic Japanese... and also shows you the three Katakana symbols needed to spell Atari
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The best I can find is あたり/当たり, which means "a hit," or "on target." That first form is straight Hiragana, and the second is with the Kanji for the first syllable.
MY GOD talk about though to learn languageOriginally Posted by Mayhem
http://www.ntsc-uk.com/tech.php?tech=GuideToJapanese
A guide to learning basic Japanese... and also shows you the three Katakana symbols needed to spell Atari
um, what language is that?[/quote]MY GOD talk about though to learn language
My life and perception has changed, but my principals are the same.
I wouldn't rely too much on that article's description of the language.
Not hardly. The language is insanely simple. It's the mounds of Kanji characters that are intimidating. But the Hiragana and Katakana character sets have probably less than 50 in each, with some combinations for pronunciation changes.Japanese is a very complicated language to learn,
Look at it this way. I took four years of Latin in high school. Latin uses the standard Roman alphabet, minus a couple letters. And I'm nowhere near fluent in Latin. Japanese is a modern conversational language, on the other hand, and that's the most important requirement for comprehension. So don't let the writing scare you off. If all goes well, I should be able to speak recognizable Japanese after a semester or two.
True. Spoken Japanese is no harder than any other language, and actually quite a bit easier than learning English (for non-native speakers). Written Japanese however, is quite difficult, as in practice Kanji is used extensively.
Yup. It's only the writing system that will get you. And until Japanese video games are dictated, we're screwed. ;-)
Having taken two years of Japanese myself in HS, I can confirm what the others are saying. Speaking Japanese is no harder to learn then any other language -- plsu the vowels are the same in Spanish, so if you know Spanish it gives you a heads up.
Writing, though, is a *(!()# for any Western, cause it's so TOTALLY different then anything else. We spent one semester just learning Hiragana and the next Katakana. Did'nt even TRY Kanji till year two.
Actually, once you master Hira and Kata, you can read a fair bit.....but good luck with any games.
"Four o'clock and all is well.....wish I was in bed, Sir."
-- Guard in the Imperial City, Oblivion
Don't ever say a langauge is simple until you can actually speak it and are moderately literate.
Some important facts to think about:
1) Yes, the written language is extremely complex. While there aren't near as many characters at the Chinese languages, there are multiple readings which take a lot of studying and time to learn. They don't always "follow the rules" though. Can you live with out them? Yeah, but you shouldn't aim to do so. Reading comes in extremely handy.
2) Spoken langauge "isn't harder than any other language" is a bit dismissive. Languages are usually relative to what langauge you're coming from. Japanese is an exception as the spoken language is derived from nothing. IE, an English speaker can much more easily learn Spanish, and to a lesser extent the other three romantic languages due to Latin roots. Spoken Japanese is a language on it's own, and isn't related to any other spoken languages. In that, it makes it hard. If you've got a knack for langauges though, I could see it being easy after living here for a few years. The exception are the words that are derived from English, but these alone will get you nowhere.
3: You won't be able to "speak it" unless you live in Japan. This holds true unless you're surrounded only by Japanese people in your home country that only speak Japanese. Since the latter is usually unfeasible, the former applies. Also throw in the fact that a school/teacher will teach you textbook Japanese. Actually using your Japanese in real life scenarios teach you real Japanese.
4: Hiragana and Katakana are easy. Yeup, they sure are. With that, you can pick out the non-Japanese words, tell what tenses the verbs (written in kanji) are, and a few words here and there. In other words, you REALLY need the Kanji to say you know Japanese, and that takes a while to learn.
5: Pronunciation is a piece of cake. This, is defiinitely true -- this is the only part of Japanese that I'd consider insanely simple. Especially w/ the relation to Spanish.
6: Grammar. If you bust your ass on grammar for two years straight... you'll have it down. There's not a WHOLE lot of grammar to learn, b/c the language generally follows its own rules quite well (much better than English). Sentence structure and whatnot is pretty easy to learn since it generally stays the same and they've got nice markers to show the particle of speech. However, it' so foreign from western langauges, it might take a while get it "flowing." I think it's got the best return on your time. 2-years hard, and you can teach yourself grammar.
I studied for 3 years in college (30 credit hours), as I had no clue what I was going to do w/ my life except that I wanted it to be international something (business perhaps). I did a 3-month study-abroad, and was able to get around quite well, and was complimented on my Japanese. Studied 3-4 hours a day, then home for a year. Moved back indefinitely and two years later, the same people were telling me, "Wow, your Japanese got good." "Huh...? It wasn't good before?"
I guess what I"m trying to say is there are lots of levels of "good", especially in this langauge. A few years can take you far, but it's really just the tip of the iceberg.
Man... sorry this got so long.
But of course. You need to practice conversational skills, so you'll at least need someone to do that with.
And as far as grammar goes, it looks vastly different from any Germanic language, but it seems to be for the better. From what I've seen, it looks like it's all quite straight forward.
For writing practice, buy a book that has a bunch of spaces to practice character writing. That's really the only good way.
Reading practice is no sweat, what with the Internet and all. http://www.konami.co.jp/am ;-)
I highly, highly disagree with this statement (and I've studied both here and abroad). Your learning will be accelerated in Japan, and you'll learn more natural "daily" Japanese, but I know several foreigners (to Japan) that "spoke it" before they came over. And in one case, read/wrote it at translation-level. I worked with a guy in Japan who majored in Japanese at college, came to Japan, and within months was working for a large company translating. Those few months surely helped his Japanese, but he definitely knew Japanese before he arrived.
I've spent two semesters studying Chinese at Penn State... I can regonize a bit of Japanese characters when I see them (Kanji is based off Chinese characters aren't they?) No matter how much I practiced I still can't speak Chinese fluently enough to communicate with a native speaker.
In fact... I'll never forget taking the spoken final in Chinese my first semester. I'm as white and pastey as they come, my language partner was a colored guy, and we were both trying to communicate with each other in Chinese... boy was that a disaster.
Sometimes I wish I took Japanese just so I could read a little bit of those imports.
Again... there are differentl levels of "knowing" Japanese. Also - reading/writing, even at a translation level is not a very good argument. There are Japanese who can translate but can barely string a sentence together.
As my first post said... I was "speaking" Japanese before I got here, but again, it was the tip of the iceberg. I thought I was hot shit, but then a few years later, don't see how I survived.
A guy I went to church with my whole life "learned" Japanese in his college. Moved here and was the first whitey to work on the design team at Toyota, where there were very few, if any English speakers. His Japanese was fantastic even before coming. But, he graduated valadictorian of his high school, magna cum laude (or whatever) from his university (which was coincidentally MIT), and later went and got his doctorate from MIT.
Are there people that can pull it off? Yeah, sure? Are they the average people that we're addressing in this thread? Nope.
BTW - I got the "You have to go there" quote from the guy mentioned above. That should tell you something about the power envelopment. Even he - Mr. Brainiac, said learning Japanese was extremely difficult. I guess it really dependso n what your idea of "learning" is.
Well, I can confirm that Chinese and Japanese are still kinda similar to this day. I had a professor in one of my Master classes who was from China (native). He said he could pick up a Japanese newspaper and read and underestand about half of the Kanji.
And my teacher for Japanese, although as white as your truly, spent three years in Japan as a translator, so she knew the language quite well.
In fact, that reminds me of a story she said once -- she was visting the Great Wall in China, and happened to overhead two older Japanese people (a couple) talking about her and calling her a 'foriegner' (I forgot the Japanese word for that this late at night.) She walked to them and told them, in Japanese, that since they were'nt IN Japan that would make them 'foriegners' as well. The Japanese couple was shell shocked.
For a semester we also had the bonus in the class of a older Japanese native woman (in her 70's) who helped us with reading and speaking skills. She was old fashioned but she recalled being a kid during the Second World War and had many stories to tell us. Since her English was only passable (I'd say High School level) often those stories were translated to us by our teacher.
Another semester we had a vist from some Japanese exchange students, and they told us they were 'shocked' (that's a word I did'nt expect them to use like that!
I wonder how much English most Japanese students learn?
"Four o'clock and all is well.....wish I was in bed, Sir."
-- Guard in the Imperial City, Oblivion
More than you might think... hence the whole "English chic" look about many Japanese games today that use English almost exclusively (Ikaruga and Soul Calibur II being examples). The few young Japanese people I know understand English well enough for me to hold a normal conversation with them. I just wish I was good at languages in general and could converse back to them to the same level in Japanese
Written-wise... yeah, kinda sorta. Japan uses a fraction of Chinese characters as Japanese. *I* can even make something out of a Chinese sentence. Probably even tell the difference between the sign for exit and the sign for the shitter. I'd go so far as a Chinese person is more likely to pick up Japanese quicker b/c they just don't have to go through that whole "learn how to write" thing.
However, I was referring to grammaer, sentence structure, pronunciation, etc. etc. In that sense, they're worlds apart. All my friends in that said Chinese and English are closer to each other than Japanese is to either.
I had some bitch in a chatroom (Chinese - living in Hawaii) tell me that Japanese was totally based off of Chinese, and that I should study before I speak. I didn't fail to mention soon after that I had a Japanese major and an Asian Studies minor (which involved history classes of both countries, not to mention Inida and other parts of Asia).
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