ak_wolf2024
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- 11 Apr 2023
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- #26
that's pretty intense :O
Sort of but it was worse way back when. Check the poster in this article.
A while ago, I put together a thread about various apps that people can use for online Japanese language exchange.
Finding online language exchanges
There are people out there who are interested in finding online language exchanges, but the process can be quite daunting. I thought it would be fun to start a thread on the subject. Does anyone know good webpages or apps to do online language exchanges on? Is anyone willing to share their...jref.com
One thing I learned from doing that thread was that many people think language exchange is exchanging text messages via an app. I disagree, I think that language exchange means seeing, hearing, and talking. Are you doing this on those two apps?
I also learned that security is necessary for people wanting to do an online exchange with a total stranger they know nothing about. There are a lot of bad people out there, so what many of these apps do is have two people do a fair amount of text messaging before they can see and hear each other via the app. (Sounds wise to me.)
But the main thing is to do just that, see and hear each other and have audible conversations. To get back to your question, yes, they are good as long as you are seeing and hearing each other and having conversations (instead of only texting).
One benefit to sending text messages is that they can be sent any time of day, then we just wait for the other person to respond, even hours later if need be. But with a face-to-face meeting, the biggest problem is the time difference. Both people must be online simultaneously. But 8pm Tokyo time is 4am in some parts of the US. The huge problem, then, is finding a time of day to meet online which works for both people.
It's a natural abbreviation though. So it will be coined naturally on occasion by people with no knowledge of the historical background. So I think the context has to be taken into account.This is a topic that maybe will arouse a lot of opinions, but to me the word "j@p" is always offensive, as it kind of grew out of an era when the US saw Asian countries as areas to be dominated, and Asian people were likewise inequal/inferior. And it saw heavy use in WW2 as a pejorative. It took some decades for it to finally fall out of use.
This is a topic that maybe will arouse a lot of opinions, but to me the word "j@p" is always offensive, as it kind of grew out of an era when the US saw Asian countries as areas to be dominated, and Asian people were likewise inequal/inferior. And it saw heavy use in WW2 as a pejorative. It took some decades for it to finally fall out of use.
"Gaijin" is kind of complicated because its shorthand for Gaikokujin, but its a shorthand that doesn't carry quite the same pejorative power that j@p has. In the past two decades, the foreign community has made it clear they feel insulted by it, and so it is widely avoided on TV and radio, but its still used in casual conversation. It hasn't gone completely underground. Even amongst ourselves we can use it with intention to be funny or self-deprecating, ironic, etc... and it doesn't have the same cringe-power of j@p - which instantly feels out of place anywhere. (For some reason Singaporeans still kind of use it from time to time with no ill intent. Language is a strange thing.)
Edited to fix a glaring typo. The use of "gaijin" has NOT gone completely underground, even though people are mostly aware it sounds offensive to the foreign community.
Yes. Start immediately. Ask us lots of questions about things in the textbook. Give us frequent updates as to how it is coming along.
What is your first question about something in your textbook? (There are many Japanese speakers on this forum who would be more than happy to answer your questions.)
My two cents. I have been a casual studier for years. I still consider myself a beginner but all that time has taught me a few things. Some resources I like are:
Coto Japanese academy on youtube for grammar pattern study. The explanation is in Japanese and they speak in a way that is easy for an experienced beginner like me to follow the meaning. Sambon Juku is another obviously good youtube resource but I need to improve a bit before I can understand everything. Campanas de Japanese has excellent videos for learning to speak.
Tofugu.com's grammar explanations always seem clear and there are other very professional and excellent resources - maggie sensei... is down at the moment it seems and tae kim are both well regarded. The textbooks Genki! and Minna no nihongo are both good methods for learning the basics. In fact the advice to follow a beginners book at least once is good advice. From there the basics that are absolutely necessary are learned.
All listed above teach textbook grammar which is the same as written Japanese. Also be aware of casual/colloquial language. A youtuber like Japanese Ammo no Misa is a great resource in this regard.
Takoboto.com's 'find kanji by radical' function is very useful. Also drawing the kanji on a phone is possible, I have enjoyed the android app Kanji Recognizer. Personally I think it is a good idea to learn the English names for as many kanji parts/radicals as possible and spend time recognizing them within the kanji as you study this will train the eye. With Furigana I find myself reading without looking at the kanjisRepetition and plenty of exposure.
I hope one of my suggestions is of interest.
where to start! ha ha ha. no seriously that's my big issue right now,
but have a difficult time translating the japanese in my head into english. so at the end of the day I don't really know if I'm translating in my head the japanese correctly. I mean the japanese is pretty self explanatory...
there is one person I talk to that's japanese we spoke on the phone once
chinese people tend to send audio messages to me more than others. (studying Chinese too!).
Finish reading that textbook cover to cover. The sooner, the better.
Your goal is to become able to think in Japanese. Your goal is not to be constantly translating back and forth inside your brain between Japanese and English. If you read something in Japanese, understand it in Japanese, and can respond in Japanese, that is plenty good enough. Avoid constantly translating everything back and forth into Japanese, it will only slow you down. (This is why your textbook is all in Japanese, not in Japanese and English side by side.)
See if you can set up a day where the two of you meet on the phone regularly. In addition, I think it would be good if the two of you can see each other. Use FaceTime on an iPhone. FaceTime can also be used between an iPhone and an Android.
你在学习中文吗？好的！加油、加油！
Snow,
I think you are ready to start doing online language exchanges with Japanese people. What do you think?
Another thing you can do is study with one of your friends who is also studying Japanese (preferably one whose Japanese ability is about the same as yours). Here is how to do it. Work together as a team and put together a short, four-line dialogue. First write it in English, then work together to translate it into Japanese. For example,
A. Where is that bookstore?
B. It's downtown.
A. How do I get there?
B. Take the subway.
Once you have completed translating it into Japanese, take turns saying the lines out loud, first by looking at the paper, then without looking at the paper.
Try to keep this a conversational speaking activity, not a kanji-learning activity. But at the end, you may want to write out all of the kanji in the dialogue.
Never write any Japanese sentences in Romaji, always write them in hiragana/katakana. If your partner has trouble with this, you may want to help them learn hiragana/katakana.
I should probably go to the meetup group in Charlotte and find a partner to study with then!
I think I'll benefit better starting from absolute basic than the more advanced textbook, because I did skip over some basics or didn't absorb them the way I could've.
I actually have a language exchange partner that I'm scheduling to talk to on the phone soon!
Good idea.
As long as you use a textbook or study program that covers all of the beginning and intermediate grammar points, that should work out fine.
By the way, I have found that people don't want to do more than one language exchange a week. When I was in China and studying Chinese, I of course wanted to do a language exchange everyday, so I set exchanges up with seven different people, one for each day of the week. This worked out very well.
Let us know how your language exchange over the phone turns out.
knowing how to read and write IS a major study method, I think it would be exceedingly difficult to learn Japanese without those tools. Get hiragana and katakana down cold and start tackling kanji. Study the bushu (parts/radicals) of kanji so you can have a systematic understanding of it; being able to identify radicals is one of the main ways of looking up new kanji. The radicals will usually give you an idea of the meaning and onyomi of a kanji, so it's useful to know.hey I got a question for you.
How do you study exactly? Like when you're studying, what do you do?
For example, I have a journal next to me and I'll sometime write down stuff. Do you find writing down is easier, or do you just read off the content and it sticks that way?
Like I can't figure out the japanese that I do know, how I learned it... I guess just listening and reading it I learned?
Am I wasting time studying writing system since I don't actually live in japan (or china for that matter)???
knowing how to read and write IS a major study method, I think it would be exceedingly difficult to learn Japanese without those tools. Get hiragana and katakana down cold and start tackling kanji. Study the bushu (parts/radicals) of kanji so you can have a systematic understanding of it; being able to identify radicals is one of the main ways of looking up new kanji. The radicals will usually give you an idea of the meaning and onyomi of a kanji, so it's useful to know.
View attachment 102543
You don't have to memorize them necessarily, though it's sometimes helpful to know the most common ones. Like I said they often hint at the meaning, like 氵 often refers to liquid (It's called 三水、さんずい, literally "3 water," referring both to the three marks that make up this bushu, and the fact that it means "water/liquid"). Just being able to identify them is enough to help you look up new kanji in the dictionary.ohh gosh I need to study those? should I be able to write them down too? or can I just skip over that?
at one point I had about all N5 and N4 kanji,,, I'm going through a book right now to refresh my memory. I got all my hiragana down,,, just sometimes I forget some katakana.
You don't have to memorize them necessarily, though it's sometimes helpful to know the most common ones. Like I said they often hint at the meaning, like 氵 often refers to liquid (It's called 三水、さんずい, literally "3 water," referring both to the three marks that make up this bushu, and the fact that it means "water/liquid"). Just being able to identify them is enough to help you look up new kanji in the dictionary. Like looking at a kanji like 臓 and then identifying the constituent parts:
View attachment 102545
Breaking kanji down into the radicals is like taking a long number and "chunking" it into groups of three or four digits, like a phone number. It's far better than trying to remember it all by rote, with no systematic approach.
For katakana practice, practice writing and reading random things in katakana; it's usually used for loan words, so it's best to just practice to the point that you can read things phonetically without having to think too much about it. My friends and I used to write Spanish sentences using katakana, or just write random names or English words in katakana for the other to read. That sped things up considerably, especially for recognizing unusual character combinations that don't show up in native Japanese words.
ノープロブレム。cool great information thank you!
I printed out a katakana sheet and hung it above my computer XD I'll study the bushu!
ノープロブレム。
I edited my post to be a little more specific to the process of looking up a kanji by radical, but I see you had already responded to the older version
How do you study exactly? Like when you're studying, what do you do?