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Speaking Japanese


yes, it was followed by masu. funny thing, is after talking with you guys, i figured out that kiteimas meant "to wear" (shirt), when i drew it out in the translator it came back "to come". .....seems like a pretty big boner to have the phrase be kiteimasu, when it clearly should be kiruimasu.

this is the first time that I have a genuine beef with Rosetta stone... but how it works, is that it teaches you the language like you would learn it as a child. they wouldn't spell out for you the differences, they would just point out and tell you. Rosetta stone just shows me without explaining it, I understand what they are trying to do, maybe the order that i'm doing the exercises in is messing me up.

as long as i figure it out, that's all that matters.

I can't complain anymore though, no matter what. I want to move to Japan one day, so i have to know the language. so no more complaints, i just have to make it happen
 
Well, you've had the pleasure of meeting multiple Japanese words that are covered by one word in English. And now you have the pleasure of meeting different Japanese words that are read the same but have radically different meanings...Oh, and one of the two irregular verbs in Japanese.

きる（着る）[kiru] "to wear"
くる （来る）[kuru] "to come"

くる is irregular and its te-form is the same as きる (to wear). There's another きる（切る）that means "to cut", but its te-form is きって.
So きています[kiteimasu] does mean "wearing" (progressive tense) assuming that it makes sense in context.

And if you wanted the ます form of きる it would be きます (once again, the same as くる)...unless you want that on the "to cut" きる, then it would be きります.

Is it wrong that I'm getting just a little kick out of introducing someone to some of the unique qualities of Japanese?
 

Not at all, I imagine that is exactly why this forum exists
 

No...as thirty minutes spent with any material that actually teaches Japanese conjugation would reveal.

You're REALLY cheating yourself by not using a proper textbook, much as I hate to keep hammering this same tired old point, because with a very few exceptions the only thing more regular than Japanese conjugation is an atomic clock. You learn a few simple rules and you're pretty much done and can apply them to practically every new verb you encounter in Japanese. (Adjectives also conjugate, by the way).


No....that is the LIE of Rosetta Stone and why it SUCKS, not how it "works".

They use the seemingly sensible but in fact utterly bogus notion of teaching you just the way a child would learn and it does three things for them:

1. Lets them put out a half-baked product with no actual "teaching" (explaining) taking place,
2. Lets them jack up the price.
3. Makes the consumer think "well...it must be me, I guess" when the thing doesn't work.

Adults do not and can not learn a language like children do. Humans are "hardwired" to pick up language when we are very young, but the ability atrophies as neurological changes take place in the developing brain. If this weren't the case, you would expect adults who have moved to Japan to pick up Japanese like natives in a year or two, with little to no effort. Ask anybody here if it they have ever known that to be the case. You're not an infant and your brain doesn't work like the brain of an infant (most of the time, anyway). You're not going to just intuit Japanese conjugation, and other aspects of grammar/syntax just from looking at a bunch of pictures and listening to the audio files the thieves at Rosetta Stone sold you. Ain't gonna happen, so don't beat yourself up when it doesn't.Rosetta Stone may or may not be useful as secondary reinforcing material; I don't know. But I do know that it is crap primary material and that the time and effort spent in trying to pick up anything from it would be far more productively used in doing a few lessons from Genki or Minna no Nihongo or practically any other proper textbook on the market.
 

And with all due respect, as I have told you. Rosetta stone is NOT my primary, i use it for pronunciation more than anything else. which is why this little flub wasn't super devastating to me. I know you have issues with Rosetta Stone, and your not wrong.

but PLEASE stop insinuating that i'm using that and solely that when i have told you multiple times that is NOT the case. nor has it been after the first week or so of study.

I imagine that if i would have read further in either of the other resources I have a bit more the issue i had with Rosetta stone would have been rendered moot. But i got to the chapters on days of the week and months of the year, and I wanted to do more pronunciation so i switched resources.

I have proper materials, I am understanding the issues you have with Rosetta Stone. but again, i do NOT need any more texts, i have MORE than enough at my disposal currently

again, thank you very much for your input, and your views on the topic. but ENOUGH about needing a "proper text" there are more than enough resources that are as good or better than any physical text at my fingertips.

and i'm not an idiot, i do know how to find them.
 
That being the case, then, at least go do the lessons on verbs.
 
Mike Cash said:
That being the case, then, at least go do the lessons on verbs.
Click to expand...

Fair enough

to be 100% honest with you, the verbs are a little intimidating. I still have a ways to go in my studies before i reach that chapter in all of my other materials

in the stuff I am reading, the Verbs are towards the end of the books.

chapters 19 out of 40 in one
and the final 3 chapters in the other 21-23

it is a little intimidating, any advice before i dive into it? I am going to do some studying on Verbs outside of those books. any suggestions or advice as i dive in?
 
Jdzspace said:
it is a little intimidating, any advice before i dive into it? I am going to do some studying on Verbs outside of those books. any suggestions or advice as i dive in?
Click to expand...
It's really not so bad. There are two groups of verbs, and then two irregular verbs, する and 来る.

The one kind of verbs are super-easy, because they just have stems that they use. ie. 食べる＞食べます＞食べている＞食べた Those are no problem. The other kind takes a little more memory, but isn't so bad. They all have a conjugation based on the final letter. And you have to memorise them and their conjugation patterns. That takes a little time. But it's not so hard.

No more difficult than learning the rules of English of when to use 'er' and when to use 'more' with comparatives, and then when to double the consonant. A few days study, and a few months using it.

Remember, only two kinds of verbs
 
Anything that doesn't bother with verbs until near the end strikes me as not very practical learning material. Quite often, a Japanese "sentence" may be nothing but a verb. (Complete sentences, as we think of them in English, are not required in Japanese and elements not entirely essential can be and usually are left unstated. Often, that will leave you with just a verb). I can't imagine why anybody would try to make materials that put off something so essential until so late in the lessons, or what on earth they're filling in all the lessons before with.

My standard stock advice for approaching learning Japanese in a productive and effective manner has been repeatedly rejected (as it practically always is in the internet age...it isn't just you, so I certainly don't take it personally), so I'm afraid I really don't know what to tell you. The main benefit of traditional texts is that they were prepared by people with a background in or understanding of pedagogy and underwent "field testing" in academic backgrounds and benefited from feedback and revision. That's something that all the well-meaning folks who have created lessons, apps, and web pages for learning Japanese don't have going for them, and it means that their material is often slipshod, incomplete, poorly explained, inconsistent, misinformed, presented in a confusing order, etc etc etc. I know nobody likes to hear it, but the folks who learn with the old-fashioned and professionally prepared stuff generally have an easier go of it and display more progress and proficiency than the folks who learn with the internet. The net bringing about an explosion in the availability of Japanese learning materials hasn't produced a similar explosion in actual acquisition of practical Japanese skills.

Whatever you're studying, if it is well and professionally prepared, should certainly already have you introduced to verbs and some simple conjugation. Same for adjectives. If you're hours and hours and hours into this and it hasn't come up yet, I would question the efficacy and quality of the material.
 
What books are you using that "verbs" is a specific chapter(s)? (!!!)

There is a difference between reference/grammar "dictionary" type books and textbooks.
For example you might get a reference book with a big chart of conjugations but this is not a good way to initially learn the conjugations - just something you can check back on if you forget.

A textbook (or similar resource) would normally slowly introduce verbs with conjugations/patterns as it goes through (alongside appropriate vocabulary and other parts of grammar like particles). e.g. first explain "masu" form in one of the first chapters, then past tense in another chapter, and then te-form later on - probably taking a few chapters to go over multiple uses of the te-form since it is the foundation of a number of useful sentence patterns.

I linked a couple of things earlier - have you looked at them? If you are only using Rosetta Stone for listening practice, something like Erin's Challenge would be a lot better - the skits there have transcriptions (in romaji, kana, or with kanji if you prefer) and translations which can be turned on/off.
 

the resources i'm using are basically introducing basic verbs along with vocab. which is how i know the desu and imasu ones up to this point. but it has a HUGE chapter in about 5-6 chapters that is ALL ABOUT VERBS. i don't exactly know what it's going to be about.

but as i said, i am fairly intimidated by the concept. so i'm spending a lot of time making sure i have the basics down before i get there.

you may call it stalling....i call it, being prepared
 
Mike Cash said:
<snip!>
Click to expand...
As a contrast, I want to say that I started with the Japanese for Busy People texts. It was the text used at the Japanese governments' Japanese Cultural Centre where I first introduced myself to Japanese. And those texts start with the ~masu form of the verb, and don't touch the dictionary/casual forms until somewhere in the second book.

I agree with your notion that fundamentals are important, and that diving into Japanese with the バラバラ approach is problematic (I would have rather started with a more fundamental text, in retrospect), but it's also fair to say that there is room for texts that aren't aiming for fluency so much as survival skills beyond please and thank you. I think those texts are relevant. A case in point is my retired mother, preparing for her seventh (!) visit to Japan, and wants to be able to comprehend things a little better. Case by case, ね
<I only used an emoticon since I know you hate them >
 
If it spends five or six chapters just going through the basic conjugations, then yeah, you should sit down and work through those chapters as soon as possible. My suggestion is that you keep trying to work forward through that book, and then go back and re-read/test yourself on previous chapters occasionally. You don't need to be 100% perfect before moving on to the next chapter.
 
Verbs are "the basics".
 
Mike Cash said:
Verbs are "the basics".
Click to expand...

I agree, without knowing how to use verbs, you're stuck with phrases you've memorized instead of being able to form your own sentences. Basic knowledge of Japanese verbs really isn't as hard as you may think, it just takes a lot of memorization. At least you don't have to worry about gender and number cases of verbs like a lot of languages. It is pretty straight forward when you learn most of the rules, you can focus on the complicated things later, but at least learn the "basics" of verbs.
 
Last edited:
Yay! We're talking about verbs! That means I get to link to the post I wrote about verb conjugations...again. I'm just proud of it is all...don't judge me...

Verbs, congugations. Are there patterns for this?

EDIT: It'll at least give you a look at what you're up against. But don't get discouraged, they aren't that bad...Except those evil causative, passive, and causative-passive conjugations which I still have to think out in my head every single time...
 
I tried signing up for that JA Sensei thing yesterday so I could look at the material, but so far no mail from them so I can't access it.

The way they have the categories broken down across the top doesn't look encouraging.
 
in my on going quest to learn this language, I have decided i'm going to start listening to more japanese. Movies are easy, so many amazing ones out there where all i have to do is turn the subtitles off.

but music....podcasts.......i'm at a loss.

I was initially going to find a Jpop group or something that i know would be catchy so it would get stuck in my head and i could enjoy without fully understanding it. But of course, since I am not a teenager, I am reluctant to go this route.

any suggestions?
 
You could try out the Podcast, Japanesepod101. I used to listen to it years ago, and found it interesting for language, but also cultural details. I haven't listened in a long time, but I decided to resubscribe since I should keep studying. I never study anymore, but I'm not 100% fluent.
 
Mike Cash said:
I tried signing up for that JA Sensei thing yesterday so I could look at the material, but so far no mail from them so I can't access it.

The way they have the categories broken down across the top doesn't look encouraging.
Click to expand...

I like Ja Sensei, but I have limited exposure to the web site, i usually stick to the app. I can give you a basic run down of it though.

it is initially broken down into 9 sections.

1. Lessons (which is obviously where i spend the majority of my time), it has 23 "chapters" or sections inside of that, in which verbs are the final 4 chapters. the rest is spent on pronunciation,how to address people, describe things and things of that nature. and of course learning the sound systems and sylabiaries (excuse spelling)

2. Kana (one of my favorite) it has the Kana and Katakana in this section. basically it walks you through stroke order and how to accurately write each character. this is where i have spent the 2nd most amount of time.

3. Kanji, i'm not sure how legit or worthwhile this one is. I have looked at it once.....can't report much about it other than it has about 2000 Kanji and a "kanji extractor" where you can copy internet text and extract a kanji.

4. Vocabulary, it is what it sounds like. it is NOT super extensive. while it has a ton of adjectives, animals, biological things, anatomical things etc. etc.
it does not have some of the things i was looking for like just basic (I,we,they, them, us). but for what it is, i guess it is fine.

5. Travel Phrasebook, which is self explanatory. and i have no touched.

6. Numbers, which i also haven't touched. I learned my numbers through my "Human Japanese" text. but I imagine it's fairly straight forward

7. Verbs, which could be good.it has a conjugator, but since i have no idea how to use it, i have not. it is beyond my current level

8. Grammar, which i haven't really looked into. I hunted online for a lot of what i have learned about grammar up to a certain point, and Human Japanese has firmed up most of the basics. so i can't say much about this section

9. Particles, useful i'm sure. but i printed out a particle cheat sheet that i tend to rely on more than this section.

10. counters, i have no idea what this is.....guess i'll find out at some point.

the vocabulary section has a point where it will just randomly say words first in japanese then in english, which i sometimes fall asleep listening to.

it has taught me a lot thus far. but that is what it is, in a nut shell
 
For listening I watch anime. I also go to a local Japanese learning group that has native speakers there. That one helps the most, because you go over material and the person that is there that is a native speaker can listen to how you sound and help you get it right.
 
Agnes Scott College and UC Berkeley have quite a few Japanese class lectures up on iTunes U. That might be decent learning material. I have all the videos downloaded, but haven't actually gotten around to watching them.
 


wow......game changer. not only do the audio lessons a great help, but the videos ones are too. will make it much easier to study on the go while driving around.

thanks alot
 
ok, got another one for you guys. on the subject of counters. RS is teaching me about counters,

now rosetta stone is giving me one thing i.e. "tamago Ikko" which means "one egg. which is confirmed through S Translator (is it wrong one of the main reasons i wanted the new Galaxy S4 was for the translator? )

but when i went to my other sources (Ja Sensei and Human Japanese) they BOTH have very different "counting phrases" (though the same phrases respectively" saying that phrase SHOULD be "tamago hitotsu"

what is the connection? what is the difference? is the "hitotsu" maybe for living objects? or something to that effect?
 
こ is the counter for small objects, so it's not incorrect. つ is the general counter used for things that don't have a special counter already, or when you can't think of/don't know the appropriate counter.

ひとつ (一つ) is specifically ONE thing. In this case, the kanji ichi (一) is read ひと.

EDIT: In other words, both are correct. Also, here's an nice big list of counters for you: Japanese counter word - Wikipedia
 
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