Hi.
I recently started studying Japanese. I really like the language and am further motivated to learn it by my plans to travel to Japan and stay there for awhile while working as an Assistant Language Teacher. I've run into many problems, but for now I'm just going to ask about the one most on my mind right now, and that problem is...
How do I know what a word means when I hear it spoken? As I learn vocabulary, on one hand I feel like I'm getting somewhere because I can recall various words and what they mean. However, when a word has more than one or two meanings, how am I supposed to figure out what meaning is being used? When writing, this problem is avoided by using different Kanji for the same word - but you can't see Kanji when people speak! For example, here's a word I recently learned: 'hazama' (I'm using Romaji because using Kanji would make the meaning clear).
When I looked up 'hazama', this is what I got:
1. Interval; threshold; interstice
2. Valley; gorge; ravine
3. Loophole; eyelet
For me, the easiest meaning to remember was 'valley'. And because 'valley', 'gorge', and 'ravine' are all similar land forms, I can just combine them all into one idea that I associate with 'hazama' (basically, I can think of it as "a dip in the land"). The third list of translations seems to have meanings that aren't likely to appear in conversations, so I can just ignore it until later, when/if I am learning more advanced Japanese.
The first list is a lot more difficult though. 'Interval', 'threshold', and 'interstice' may all relate to the concept of 'space', but they all have very different meanings. So when I hear 'hazama', my first thought is the combined idea regarding land forms, and my second thought is 'threshold' (because that's what stuck in my mind from the first list). But what about 'interval' and 'interstice'? How do I know when that meaning is being used. For instance, in this line from a song, I can't figure out if it means 'valley', 'threshold' or 'interval'. The song itself seems to be about sound (it's called 本当の音, by KOKIA). Here's the line:
Genjitsu to yume no hazama de hisshi ni tatte iyou to shita
I'm still really bad at particles, but I know the basic ones. I know 'genjitsu' means 'reality', 'yume' is 'dream', 'hisshi' is 'frantic' or 'desperate'. I looked up the others just now, but they seem somewhat vague in translation, or at least they aren't standard vocabulary words that can be plainly translated (tatte = strongly hoping? iyou = strange? shita = to do; past tense?) In any case, on one hand, 'hazama' is followed by the particle 'de', which usually indicates the location of an action(?). A 'valley' would make the most sense in terms of location. However, you could also say that a 'threshold' can be the location of an action. I'm just going to guess that the 'to' after 'genjitsu' is indicating a comparison (#37 at Japanese Grammar – Particles – NIHONGO ICHIBAN So I guess the line would mean something like: "Reality is like a (the) dream of the valley..."
I'm sort of blanking on the rest. Relying on only the basic 9-10 particle meanings is probably causing me a lot of trouble. I don't understand how 'hisshi' can be a location ('ni' particle), when it's still probably still being used as an adjective because it's used as such at another point in the song.
Thanks for helping!
________________________________________
On another note, how do you recommend approaching the study of Japanese? I've always been bad at organized planning and routines, so I have a bad habit of 'starting in the middle' of anything I'm trying to learn. I did start by learning Hiragana and Katakana, along with some basic grammar. I've also learned about 200 Kanji. Or at least, I can recognize 200 based on their meaning, but I only know the 訓読み for around 50-70 of them. I've always communicated better with writing, so I wanted to start with written Japanese, and I also felt it would be best to avoid studying via Romaji as quickly as possible (but I haven't made it that far yet...) More recently, I've been working more on being able to understand Japanese when I hear it, so I've mostly been working on vocabulary. People always tell me that you should always learn to speak a language before trying to learn to read/write it. I'm starting to understand why, but it also seems difficult to pick up grammar from only speaking/listening.
Thanks again!
I recently started studying Japanese. I really like the language and am further motivated to learn it by my plans to travel to Japan and stay there for awhile while working as an Assistant Language Teacher. I've run into many problems, but for now I'm just going to ask about the one most on my mind right now, and that problem is...
How do I know what a word means when I hear it spoken? As I learn vocabulary, on one hand I feel like I'm getting somewhere because I can recall various words and what they mean. However, when a word has more than one or two meanings, how am I supposed to figure out what meaning is being used? When writing, this problem is avoided by using different Kanji for the same word - but you can't see Kanji when people speak! For example, here's a word I recently learned: 'hazama' (I'm using Romaji because using Kanji would make the meaning clear).
When I looked up 'hazama', this is what I got:
1. Interval; threshold; interstice
2. Valley; gorge; ravine
3. Loophole; eyelet
For me, the easiest meaning to remember was 'valley'. And because 'valley', 'gorge', and 'ravine' are all similar land forms, I can just combine them all into one idea that I associate with 'hazama' (basically, I can think of it as "a dip in the land"). The third list of translations seems to have meanings that aren't likely to appear in conversations, so I can just ignore it until later, when/if I am learning more advanced Japanese.
The first list is a lot more difficult though. 'Interval', 'threshold', and 'interstice' may all relate to the concept of 'space', but they all have very different meanings. So when I hear 'hazama', my first thought is the combined idea regarding land forms, and my second thought is 'threshold' (because that's what stuck in my mind from the first list). But what about 'interval' and 'interstice'? How do I know when that meaning is being used. For instance, in this line from a song, I can't figure out if it means 'valley', 'threshold' or 'interval'. The song itself seems to be about sound (it's called 本当の音, by KOKIA). Here's the line:
Genjitsu to yume no hazama de hisshi ni tatte iyou to shita
I'm still really bad at particles, but I know the basic ones. I know 'genjitsu' means 'reality', 'yume' is 'dream', 'hisshi' is 'frantic' or 'desperate'. I looked up the others just now, but they seem somewhat vague in translation, or at least they aren't standard vocabulary words that can be plainly translated (tatte = strongly hoping? iyou = strange? shita = to do; past tense?) In any case, on one hand, 'hazama' is followed by the particle 'de', which usually indicates the location of an action(?). A 'valley' would make the most sense in terms of location. However, you could also say that a 'threshold' can be the location of an action. I'm just going to guess that the 'to' after 'genjitsu' is indicating a comparison (#37 at Japanese Grammar – Particles – NIHONGO ICHIBAN So I guess the line would mean something like: "Reality is like a (the) dream of the valley..."
I'm sort of blanking on the rest. Relying on only the basic 9-10 particle meanings is probably causing me a lot of trouble. I don't understand how 'hisshi' can be a location ('ni' particle), when it's still probably still being used as an adjective because it's used as such at another point in the song.
Thanks for helping!
________________________________________
On another note, how do you recommend approaching the study of Japanese? I've always been bad at organized planning and routines, so I have a bad habit of 'starting in the middle' of anything I'm trying to learn. I did start by learning Hiragana and Katakana, along with some basic grammar. I've also learned about 200 Kanji. Or at least, I can recognize 200 based on their meaning, but I only know the 訓読み for around 50-70 of them. I've always communicated better with writing, so I wanted to start with written Japanese, and I also felt it would be best to avoid studying via Romaji as quickly as possible (but I haven't made it that far yet...) More recently, I've been working more on being able to understand Japanese when I hear it, so I've mostly been working on vocabulary. People always tell me that you should always learn to speak a language before trying to learn to read/write it. I'm starting to understand why, but it also seems difficult to pick up grammar from only speaking/listening.
Thanks again!