How do you know... ON/KUN and beyond

[Toritoribe]

Hm, so if I am understanding this correctly, you use the Kanji for formal uses and the mix of Hira + Kanji when not in formal occasions?

As you might know, 窶堋ｳ窶堙ｱ is an honorific/title of respect. It's same that you don't use "Mr." when addressing yourself.;-)

 

[Glenn]

Right, it's like I said above like 日本人 being nihonjin because the word is nihonjin. 父 and 母 are ちち and はは; お父さん and お母さん are おとうさん and おかあさん. That's just what the words are.
Incidentally, I just realized that I was wrong about the kana spelling of おとうさん above. As you can see, it's とう, not とお.

 

[grapefruit]

Right, it's like I said above like 日本人 being nihonjin because the word is nihonjin. 父 and 母 are ちち and はは; お父さん and お母さん are おとうさん and おかあさん. That's just what the words are.
Incidentally, I just realized that I was wrong about the kana spelling of おとうさん above. As you can see, it's とう, not とお.

This is off-topic. But, I wonder what are the original meaning of "とう" and "かあ". Does anybody know?

 

[Toritoribe]

This is off-topic. But, I wonder what are the original meaning of "とう" and "かあ". Does anybody know?

Interesting!

御方様(おかたさま)/対屋(たいのや)/母(はは) → おかあさん
お母さん／おかあさん - 語源由来辞典

ち → ちち → てて/とと → ととさま/とっつぁん/とうさま → おとうさん
父／ちち - 語源由来辞典

お父さん/お母さん is spread by Meiji Government.
お父さん - Wikipedia
お母さん - Wikipedia

They are relatively new words.☝

 

[Putrefaction]

Ah...well, I've just moved on to lesson 3, which is grammar and stuff...this is so damn hard! Aaah! Ru verbs and such.

 

[grapefruit]

Interesting!

御方様(おかたさま)/対屋(たいのや)/母(はは) → おかあさん
お母さん／おかあさん - 語源由来辞典

ち → ちち → てて/とと → ととさま/とっつぁん/とうさま → おとうさん
父／ちち - 語源由来辞典

お父さん/お母さん is spread by Meiji Government.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/お父さん
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/お母さん

They are relatively new words.

Thank you Toritoribe-san. It's interesting.

 

[Amigo]

I agree. Native speakers would never memorize 窶藩 as "rai". It only becomes "rai" with "窶督｢窶藩? or "ﾂ渉ｫ窶藩?. By the way, native speakers always say something like "mirai no rai" ﾂ（ﾂ"窶督｢窶藩?"窶堙個"窶藩?"ﾂ）to refer to on-yomi, which suggests that in mental lexicon "rai" does not independently exist.

That's the way I study the Kanji's phonetic.

 

[Amigo]

Recently I found this word in a text, ﾂ静倪?転ﾂ。

I could read the first Kanji, but, how to read the second one slipped completely my mind.

When I was going to use a dictionary, certain word came to my mind, ﾅ?ﾃｳ窶転ﾂ。

I knew that word and I could read it. So finally I could read ﾂ静倪?転.

The more words you know the more words you know how to read.

But you need a lot of ﾅ?ﾃｳ窶転ﾂ 窶堙仰！

 

[Putrefaction]

Well the first part of that is what, setsu, cut. I got no clue what the second one is, it has seven, the sun/moon (too small to make out) and probably owner/jewel/ or something.

 

[grapefruit]

Recently I found this word in a text, ﾂ静倪?転ﾂ。
I could read the first Kanji, but, how to read the second one slipped completely my mind.
When I was going to use a dictionary, certain word came to my mind, ﾅ?ﾃｳ窶転ﾂ。
I knew that word and I could read it. So finally I could read ﾂ静倪?転.
The more words you know the more words you know how to read.
But you need a lot of ﾅ?ﾃｳ窶転ﾂ 窶堙仰！

Yep. That's how native speakers of Japanese guess readings when they encounter some words they haven't seen before.

 

[Putrefaction]

So for reference, what does that mean?

 

[grapefruit]

setsubou (suru): to desire earnestly, crave for, long for, yearn for

 

[Amigo]

And ﾅ?ﾃｳ窶転 ﾂ「窶堋ｫ窶堙壺?堋､ﾂ」means hope, wish, aspiration

 

[Coolie4]

Hi. I'm much like the OP. I'm a New Yorker who always wanted to learn but never had the time until college, only difference is I'm 18 lol. Unfortunatly, my college doesn't offer Japanese, so I've decided to study on my own.
Though I should practice more, I've been able to learn both katakana and hiranga, but don't know where to start when it comes to vocabular and Kanji.

Should I just learn the hiranga of words and what they mean first to build my vocabulary or should I just tackle the giant that is Kanji? Now that you guys have given the best explanation I could find about on and kun, maybe it wont be as overwhelming.
Can you guys suggest any material or aids in learning vocabluary/kanji. Free is always better, however you can't put a price on knowledge. At the moment I don't have any textbooks or reading materials that give any methods in learning. Just lists of Kanji and there On/kun/meaning.

Thanks in advance

 

[grapefruit]

Hi. I'm much like the OP. I'm a New Yorker who always wanted to learn but never had the time until college, only difference is I'm 18 lol. Unfortunatly, my college doesn't offer Japanese, so I've decided to study on my own.
Though I should practice more, I've been able to learn both katakana and hiranga, but don't know where to start when it comes to vocabular and Kanji.

Should I just learn the hiranga of words and what they mean first to build my vocabulary or should I just tackle the giant that is Kanji? Now that you guys have given the best explanation I could find about on and kun, maybe it wont be as overwhelming.
Can you guys suggest any material or aids in learning vocabluary/kanji. Free is always better, however you can't put a price on knowledge. At the moment I don't have any textbooks or reading materials that give any methods in learning. Just lists of Kanji and there On/kun/meaning.

Thanks in advance

Why don't you learn all of them at the same time? You can use ordinary textbooks to build up grammar, vocabulary, kanji, etc.
If money is your concern, you can borrow textbooks from the library in your college.

 

[Coolie4]

What I meant was are there any specific book titles or websites that anyone has found useful or recomends. Money really isn't an issue, I'm just cheap and would rather not pay for stuff if I don't have to lol.

 

[Putrefaction]

Well, I can give you a suggestion, but:

a) Not legal.
b) Will not do good without constant practice.
c) Much better to buy the books than download...I bought a copy so it's on my computer.


I will share my methods as they are not illegal.

1) Genki. Get it. Genki Vol 1. Worth the 60 bucks just for the first two lessons. Pronunciation is explained in here but you may want to spend the extra money to get the CD's as well, possibly the workbook. I did.
2) kana Don't be a bandwidth hog, just download the Hiragana and Katakana files. Memorize them (took a week for me, and I'm a med student) and their stroke orders. I still get some mixed up, such as Hiragana Mo (doesnt follow traditional).
3) For Kanji, just...spend the 10 bucks and get PG O'Neill's Essential Kanji. I'm up to 188 or so. Has the kanji, stroke order, ON/kun, and two examples of how to use it, sometimes even three.

For Kanji you can also go to List of jōyō kanji - Wikipedia but it does not have stroke order, unfortunately.

Please note that you can't half *** this like I did in the beginning...my recognition of hiragana and katakana is quite poor, in retrospect, i'm doubling back.

 

[Coolie4]

thanks! btw i didnt mean anything illegal >.> i just meant if there were any good free resources, not pirating copyrighted material. books are the hardest thing to find pirated anyway lol. i expected to buy some books at some point, just didnt know which were best.
what i meant is like that katakana/hiragana website. thanks for that. I know both kana pretty well, but i didn't learn the stroke order, so sometimes my hiragana come out looking diformed.
Genki volume 1 is what....? vocabulary?
Thanks again. I'll head by Barne's and Nobles and see if they have those after my class today.

 

[grapefruit]

thanks! btw i didnt mean anything illegal >.> i just meant if there were any good free resources, not pirating copyrighted material. books are the hardest thing to find pirated anyway lol. i expected to buy some books at some point, just didnt know which were best.
what i meant is like that katakana/hiragana website. thanks for that. I know both kana pretty well, but i didn't learn the stroke order, so sometimes my hiragana come out looking diformed.
Genki volume 1 is what....? vocabulary?
Thanks again. I'll head by Barne's and Nobles and see if they have those after my class today.

I think the webiste Glenn-san was referring to seems good.
Java program to draw hiragana strokes
Java program to draw katakana strokes

 

[Coolie4]

hm. yea runs on flash. thanks. better than 100+ .mov files lol. thanks.

 

[Putrefaction]

Well no, I have Genki downloaded, but I bought it first. I just got so tired of lugging it to school along with my Organic Chem and Bio books that I downloaded the eBook, workbook, and CD's. Yeah I guess that site is better, I just prefer to have everything saved to my HD so the site doesn't lose any more bandwidth due to me.

 

[Coolie4]

I was able to get Essential Kanji. I like it alot, though im having some trouble memorizing them. Learning 69(x2) kana seemed alot easier than learning 10 kanji >< I'm learning them in compounds like Glenn suggested, but its coming slowly. I still need a real japanese textbook. So far all I know is the kana, and a list of Kanji. I still need to study grammer and vocabular that isnt (or isnt usually) written with kanji.

I couldn't find Genki at the closest bookstore, but I'll keep looking. It would be nice to have the eBook, but id rather be able to take it to school to study in between classes or something. Maybe I could read it from off my PSP.

Also I noticed that flash site on stroke order has a kana named "hu" XD i found that amuzing.

 

[Putrefaction]

It'll become easier, brute force'em on yourself. I take two days off and then go over them, the hardest I had to deal with were summer spring winter fall.

 

[Putrefaction]

Why make a new thread? I just spent a few hours doing the first 150 Kanji in the book. I have ~180 memorized but did forget a lot during finals week.

Not that bad for my left hand!

 

[Coolie4]

wow thats an inspiration. Ive dropped the ball on japanese lately, ive gotten lazy. but the semester ends this weeks so ill be able to get back into it.

btw, why were you using your left hand??