日本語会話: The Japanese Conversation Thread

[jena]

I am starting to teach myself Japanese using my friend's Genki textbooks. Any advice for a beginner?

[GoktimusPrime]

Avoid Romaji. Learn all Furigana (Hiragana and Katakana) before doing anything else if you haven't already. The problem with Romaji is that students often become too dependent on it and it's ultimately NOT a very good way to learn Japanese. It's handy for people who may only want to know a few phrases for travelling, but if you actually want to learn the language, then forget it. Learning Japanese without Furigana is like trying to learn English without learning the alphabet.

I strongly advise using flashcards for learning Furigana (and Kanji). Some people like learning languages by putting labels all over their homes with words in their target language.

[jena]

Avoid Romaji. Learn all Furigana (Hiragana and Katakana) before doing anything else if you haven't already. The problem with Romaji is that students often become too dependent on it and it's ultimately NOT a very good way to learn Japanese. It's handy for people who may only want to know a few phrases for travelling, but if you actually want to learn the language, then forget it. Learning Japanese without Furigana is like trying to learn English without learning the alphabet.

I strongly advise using flashcards for learning Furigana (and Kanji). Some people like learning languages by putting labels all over their homes with words in their target language.

I am ignoring romanji because I want to actually learn the language properly, like you said.

I have a couple of digital flashcard programs already but I need to do more learning before they become useful.

Oh boy, my house is going to become covered labels now, that's such a good idea. The people I live with are going to hate it

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

Oh God yes, the bloody JET Japanese Beginner course is all romaji and it drives me crazy. Couple that with the weird grammar points and it's just not worth doing - I just study with Genki (my JTEs help with the Osaka-ben) and just muddle through the JET tests.
Seriously, how can a Japanese course for people who are guaranteed to be in Japan not use furigana, and/or the occasional kanji? It starts three or four months into the job fer crying out loud!
Seriously, if you get over here don't bother signing up for the CLAIR language course, it's a major waste of time.

A note or two on Genki - it's really good as far as texts go, but it does sometimes teach textbook Japanese. Generally people here don't use some of the words in the book (i.e. 話す hanasu for 'to speak (a language)' - people on the ground actually use しゃべる shaberu 'to chatter'), and it's all Standard Japanese so if you make it over here on JET there'll almost definitely be some regional differences in your hometown. People will still understand and be able to use Standard Japanese just fine (it's the official national language, and is used for keigo or polite/formal speech), but most places here have their own regional dialects which can be a bit or even quite different. I came here with no Japanese whatsoever besides the usual 'konnichiwa, sushi, etc' words everyone knows, and now I'm learning both Standard and Osakan Japanese. As Goki can attest, the two can be pretty different.
Osaka-ben is better, obviously.

[GoktimusPrime]

I am ignoring romanji because I want to actually learn the language properly, like you said.

I have a couple of digital flashcard programs already but I need to do more learning before they become useful.

I taught myself Hiragana and Katakana just by cutting up two sheets of paper into palm sized squares as flash cards. Took me 30 min to memorise all the Hiragana and 60 min for Katakana. I was reading super-slowly, but at least I could recall each character and more importantly, not allowing myself to ever become used to reading Romaji.

When I was living in Japan I knew an American dude (a staff member in charge of looking after international students) who learnt Japanese in Romaji. At the time I met him he'd be living there for some 8 years or so... his spoken Japanese was fluent... but he could NOT read any Japanese text at all (not even Hiragana). He told me that he'd become too dependent on Romaji and just couldn't ween himself off it no matter how he tried. And as fluent as his Japanese was, I later realised that it wasn't as fluent as it should be for someone who'd been living in Japan for so long... and of course it was his Japanese illiteracy that was holding back the development of his spoken Japanese.

Oh boy, my house is going to become covered labels now, that's such a good idea. The people I live with are going to hate it

Hmm... if you're in a shared accommodation situation you might wanna check with your sharemates first. Maybe just start with your own room - use small discreet labels. You don't need to be able to read them from afar, just whenever you're near them or using them. For example a former colleague of mine (who's a Japanese native) was learning Italian and he'd labelled everything in his home with stickers in Italian - each label with size 12 font Times New Roman in upper case. Just before he finished working with us (he was a casual) our staffroom's microwave died, so he gave us a spare from his home. While the sticker has long fallen off the door, the Italian word for Microwave has become the adopted name for our microwave oven. Whenever we get a new teacher in our faculty (e.g. casual, praccie, intern) I say, "This is our microwave, Microonde."

Seriously, how can a Japanese course for people who are guaranteed to be in Japan not use furigana, and/or the occasional kanji? It starts three or four months into the job fer crying out loud!
Seriously, if you get over here don't bother signing up for the CLAIR language course, it's a major waste of time.

IMHO the best way to learn Japanese if you're in Japan is to just hang out/party with locals. I learnt way more Japanese from 飲み会 than any book!

and it's all Standard Japanese so if you make it over here on JET there'll almost definitely be some regional differences in your hometown.

Unless your hometown is in Kanto (as mine was).

People will still understand and be able to use Standard Japanese just fine (it's the official national language, and is used for keigo or polite/formal speech), but most places here have their own regional dialects which can be a bit or even quite different.

Everyone understands 標準語 (ひょうじゅんご), but a few people don't (won't) speak it. When we were in Osaka there was a Chinese restaurant across the road from our hotel. The manager was an immigrant from Shanghai who's been living in Osaka for 22 years; she married a local man and they have kids etc. -- now she speaks 大阪弁 just fine, but because she learnt the language as an adult and wasn't schooled in Japan, I don't think she learnt 標準語... cos I kept speaking to her in 標準語 and she kept speaking back to me in 大阪弁! (my daughter was even more confused as she'd never had someone speak to her in 大阪弁 before!)

Then when we were in Kyoto my daughter spoke some Japanese to this one store attendant, who "corrected" her 標準語 into 京都弁! Mind you, it's widely known that Kyoto people are rather proud of their dialect which they consider to be the old traditional/imperial language of Japan (as Kyoto was the former capitol of Japan until the Edo Period).

So yeah, sometimes you get people who don't/won't speak 標準語 for one reason or another... but they are admittedly quite rare. 99.9% of the population can/will speak 標準語 if you can't speak their local dialect (although they may do so with a local accent). And sometimes people just accidentally slide into their hometown dialects (force of habit). I had a friend in uni who was from Osaka and while the rest of the people in our circle of friends would speak 標準語, she'd often slip back into 大阪弁. e.g. one time we'd just finished eating at a restaurant and the plan was to head off to Karaoke afterward, so she turned to me and said, 「カラオケに行かへん？」 - I just automatically replied in 標準語, but a second later realised that we just had a bi-dialect conversation!

Osaka-ben is better, obviously.

お前何言ってんだよ、ウィリス？

[jena]

30 minutes!? I spent an hour with my nose in a hiragana chart today and I literally only remember a and n.

The people I live with are used to my crazy antics, they won't care if I label everything. They know me well.

[GoktimusPrime]

30 minutes!? I spent an hour with my nose in a hiragana chart today and I literally only remember a and n.

Well with those two Hiragana alone you can now read/write in Hiragana the Japanese word for red bean paste! Congrats!

Flashcards work a lot better than staring at a chart.
What I did was to go through each card in order from beginning to end, then end to beginning; each time I'd look at the hiragana character and challenge myself to remember it without looking at the back for the answer. I'd say what it was out loud to myself, then turned the card around to check my answer. Then I turned the cards around and looked at the Romaji and traced the Hiragana in the air, then turned the card to check my answer. Then I shuffled the cards and did it all over again in random order, then reshuffled and did it again and again and again.

The problem with just looking at the chart is that all the Hiragana is in order and of course you have the Romaji for each character sitting right next to them (or if not you can guess what they are because of the order). The beauty of flashcards is that they hide the answers from you, and you can randomise it.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

Unless your hometown is in Kanto (as mine was).

JET tends not to send ALTs to many places in Kanto and/or big cities, it's usually pretty 田舎 (inaka/countryside). I really got lucky getting the outskirts of Osaka.

30 minutes!? I spent an hour with my nose in a hiragana chart today and I literally only remember a and n.

The people I live with are used to my crazy antics, they won't care if I label everything. They know me well.

It took me about a month-odd to memorise all the hiragana/katakana, though I was working full time and getting settled in as well and I'm often a really lazy student who gets distracted easily. My advice (the way I did it) is just work on sets of 5 at a time, and do both hiragana and katakana.
i.e. get あ/ア い/イ う/ウ え/エ お/オ down pat, then move onto か/カ き/キ く/ク け/ケ こ/コ etc. etc.
Note also that the font/style of the text can really change how the characters look, especially for characters like ko and ri in my experience.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

From here...

I'm sure your Japanese will be totally ぺらぺら long before next year.

The Japanese is going slowly but surely. I'm further along than I thought I'd be (I can hold simple conversations in mostly Japanese, with a fair bit of dictionary hunting), but juggling study with full-time teaching work and trying to live a life as well is tricky - especially since I've taken on a heap of extra work at my shogakko. Couple that with being a terrible procrastinator as a student and it's very much slow and steady. I give it another year before I'm pera-pera-ing away with any noteworthy degree of competency, and maybe another year after that before I'm what you could stretch to call 'good'.
On the upside, my kids' English is getting really good. My 6nensei shogakko kids from last year have started at my chugakku this year and their English is leaps and bounds ahead of the 2nensei kids, and a few of the 3nensei students as well. So, you know...not great for my Japanese study, but by all indications doing damn well at my actual job.