Feuryn
後輩
- 31 Mar 2015
- 9
- 0
- 11
Hi everyone,
I'm new to the forum; though having come across the website during work earlier, I thought it would be a good place to ask for any help/advice.
I'm teaching myself Japanese, for now; that may change when it comes to actually speaking it, in which case I might look into some sort of mentor/etc to talk to on Skype. I'm trying to be as logical as possible in my approach; learning the Hiragana and Katakana first. In regards to these alphabets, i'm doing a lot of work (several hours a day) in order to get to the point where the characters are as easily recognized/recalled as the English characters I am accustomed to. My reasoning for this is that because of the Japanese scripts, not having to waste time trying to decipher the characters would be a huge advantage; particularly when, what follows, is deciphering the words they create.
In any case, i'm going on a bit of a tangent. I'm going to Tokyo for 2 weeks in January; my aim for the approximate 8-9 months I have to work with is to be at least conversational by that time, or at least more fluent than the average tourist. So far (since last Thursday) i've been working on memorizing the Hiragana; ideally to the point where I know it like the back of my hand, if not better. Whilst doing this, however (using the TenguGo Kana smartphone app, and various other resources), i've encountered a few quirks/inconsistencies; and I would love if anyone would be able to help me in this regard. They are as follows:
1) My app tells me that the character ふ should be pronounced 'foo' as in 'food'. In spite of this, having listened to and translated it from various sources, I have on occasion heard it pronounced 'hoo' as in 'who'. In one way this seems more believable, as ふ falls within 'h' characters of the hiragana (は, ひ, etc), though i'm not sure which to believe.
2) Is there any way of knowing where there is a space in Japanese, or is it literally just a case of getting to the point where you recognize the words and are able to separate them on that basis?
3) My app tells me that the character き(chi) should be pronounced...well, chi. Having done some translating earlier, I came across the combination きょうは (Kyō wa); which confused me. Are there circumstances in which 'Chi' becomes 'Ky'?
Thanks in advance
I'm new to the forum; though having come across the website during work earlier, I thought it would be a good place to ask for any help/advice.
I'm teaching myself Japanese, for now; that may change when it comes to actually speaking it, in which case I might look into some sort of mentor/etc to talk to on Skype. I'm trying to be as logical as possible in my approach; learning the Hiragana and Katakana first. In regards to these alphabets, i'm doing a lot of work (several hours a day) in order to get to the point where the characters are as easily recognized/recalled as the English characters I am accustomed to. My reasoning for this is that because of the Japanese scripts, not having to waste time trying to decipher the characters would be a huge advantage; particularly when, what follows, is deciphering the words they create.
In any case, i'm going on a bit of a tangent. I'm going to Tokyo for 2 weeks in January; my aim for the approximate 8-9 months I have to work with is to be at least conversational by that time, or at least more fluent than the average tourist. So far (since last Thursday) i've been working on memorizing the Hiragana; ideally to the point where I know it like the back of my hand, if not better. Whilst doing this, however (using the TenguGo Kana smartphone app, and various other resources), i've encountered a few quirks/inconsistencies; and I would love if anyone would be able to help me in this regard. They are as follows:
1) My app tells me that the character ふ should be pronounced 'foo' as in 'food'. In spite of this, having listened to and translated it from various sources, I have on occasion heard it pronounced 'hoo' as in 'who'. In one way this seems more believable, as ふ falls within 'h' characters of the hiragana (は, ひ, etc), though i'm not sure which to believe.
2) Is there any way of knowing where there is a space in Japanese, or is it literally just a case of getting to the point where you recognize the words and are able to separate them on that basis?
3) My app tells me that the character き(chi) should be pronounced...well, chi. Having done some translating earlier, I came across the combination きょうは (Kyō wa); which confused me. Are there circumstances in which 'Chi' becomes 'Ky'?
Thanks in advance