# Forum Other Languages All other languages Japanese  kon-nichiwa

## MasterAdmin

kon-nichiwa, ogenki-desu-ka 
Hello. How are you?

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## JJ

Genki desu. 
Anata wa? This is a good site of Japanese language

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## scotcher

amari benkyou shinai hito wa jouzu ni naranai yo. 
unn.... boku wa heta desu kara ne  ::

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## Jasper May

I wish I could speak Japanese...  ::  
What is more useful, Japanese or Chinese?

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## N

- How would you say российские дороги in Japanese?
- Toyama tokanava   ::

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## Mile-O-Phile

> What is more useful, Japanese or Chinese?

 If China completely embraces capitalism then Chinese; otherwise Japanese. 
I think Japanese has more of a cultural presence in the Occident than Chinese due to the mass exporting of Manga, Pokemon, anime, cinema, etc.

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## scotcher

Heh, just realised that my second sentence doesn't actually make sense.  
So... thanks Masterrussian for making me realise just how rusty my Japanese has become  ::

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## Jasper May

Ok then, but what if I don't like manga, anime, Japanese cinema or Japanese films, can Japan offer me more than that? They don't have a particularly rich history (compared to China that is - I mean, Japan was only inhabited since the 8th century or something), I don't know of any good works of literature to come from Japan... China does have all that.

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## scotcher

> Ok then, but what if I don't like manga, anime, Japanese cinema or Japanese films, can Japan offer me more than that?

 Watching the Kurosawa back catalogue in its original form is, IMO, worth the effort all by itself.   

> They don't have a particularly rich history (compared to China that is - I mean, Japan was only inhabited since the 8th century or something),

 What, you mean 1200 years of history isn't enough?  ::    

> I don't know of any good works of literature to come from Japan... China does have all that.

 Bare in mind that to read any literature from either culture in its original form you would need to master their writing systems. Both are a lifetime's study in any event, but Japanese is significantly more simple than Chinese by all accounts (you only need to know about 2000 kanji characters + two easy-peesy syllabaries to be up to native school-leaving standard, whereas Chinese has tens of thousands of unique characters). 
I've still no idea which one would be more useful though  ::

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## Jasper May

What's Kurosawa?   

> What, you mean 1200 years of history isn't enough

 Well, you know, the first couple of hundred years don't really count as they've still got to invent pottery and the wheel.  ::  Samurai are cool, of course, as is the Golden Age, in which Holland was the only nation to get to trade with Japan. And of course their video-games and gadgets aren't too bad either... Maybe learning Japanese _would_ entertain me briefly.  ::  But I still think Chinese could be more interesting.
I'm not much of a visual learner, so how on earth can I learn all 2000 kanji (or 10's of thousands of Chinese characters)? How did you do it, Scotcher? Or were those sentences the only ones you knew?  ::

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## bad manners

> Ok then, but what if I don't like manga, anime, Japanese cinema or Japanese films, can Japan offer me more than that? They don't have a particularly rich history (compared to China that is - I mean, Japan was only inhabited since the 8th century or something), I don't know of any good works of literature to come from Japan... China does have all that.

 Actually, it may be that all that long history of China is a fake. For example, the Chinese have long boasted that they knew advanced math a lot earlier than Europe, and they would frequently cite a table of logarithms published God knows how many centuries ago. However, I recently read somewhere that the book had been found to contain errors, which is not all that unexpected for a table of logarithms calculated with lots of pebbles and sand. What was unexpected was that the book had exactly the same errors as a table published in Europe in the 18th century. 
Likewise, the great wall appears to have been constructed quite recently, too. Which of course can be explained by the need "to renovate", but still.

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## Mile-O-Phile

> What's Kurosawa?

 Legendary film director famous for such films as _Throne of Blood_ (a sumarai retelling of _MacBeth_) and _The Seven Samurai_ (which was later brought to English speaking audiences as _The Magnificent Seven_). 
Without Japanese/Hong Kong cinema then all of Quentin Tarantino's projects would be excessively dull. You can see a lot of influence from today's Japanese _enfant terrible_, Takashi Miike in Tarantino's films.  
"Beat" Takeshi is another excellent exponent of Japanese media - actor, director, singer, painter, writer...

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## Pravit

Bah! You blasted Japanese are all the rage around here...  ::  CHINESE, man, CHINESE! It's all about the ZHONG WEN!  
I would definitely say Chinese is much more useful. There are Chinese everywhere - we, ahem, they, are the real businessmen of Asia. Japanese may have lots of wide-eyed cartoon characters but they mainly stay on their little island, methinks. Chinese, however, we, ahem, they, are all over.  
Also, if you wanted to join MI-5 or whatever, you'd be in much higher demand if you spoke Chinese. I don't remember Japanese being on the CIA's hot list of "We'll pay you 50,000 bonus upon joining if you know this language."  
As for the writing system, Japanese has tens of thousands of unique characters too which they borrowed from Chinese. The thing is, they don't use most of them, and the same thing applies to us,ahem, the Chinese.  You only need to know a couple thousand to read Chinese newspapers. With Japanese you've got to learn two "alphabets" and use them in grammatical endings and stuff.  
Chinese grammar is much easier than Japanese. Japanese is filled with all sorts of set phrases you've got to learn, and there's so many of them, and let's not even get into past - negative - honorofic forms of "i" adjectives combined with "de wa arimasen" and so on. The verbs seem at first very unmenacing, until you have to start combining them and using the different forms with all sorts of crap.
In Chinese, however, you don't even have to conjugate verbs. The grammar is really simple and in my opinion much more 'fluid' than Japanese. I also think Chinese sounds nicer, but let's not get into that... 
I won't argue with bad manners over Chinese history, at the risk of losing one of my greatest benefactors on this board, but let's just say that most people agree China has one of the richest and greatest histories of any world civilization. Better than "living on an island then borrowing bunches of stuff from the Chinese and later Europeans, losing a war, then becoming beloved in the West for funny cartoon characters, cars and karate", IMO. Let's not go into "kung fu vs. karate", but you know where I stand  ::  
I'm no economist or anything but personally I think China will become much greater and more powerful in coming decades.  
So as to your choice: Learning BOTH is always an option.  ::

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## deep6

..aren't there a couple distinct languages called 'Chinese?' 
i.e. Mandarin Chinese, which is the only one I know of off-hand.. 
or maybe I'm just dumb.. I don't really know anything about far Eastern languages.. 
but if so.. which Chinese language are you [Pravit] talking about here?

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## Jasper May

Well, the two main ones are Mandarin (Northern) and Cantonese (Southern, Taiwanese, Hongkong). Mandarin is the official language of China. I believe there's also an 'educated' language, like the french of nineteenth century Russia, but I've forgotten the name. 
All dialect differ in speech, but not in writing. If you write something down, every (literate  ::  ) person in China can read it.

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## scotcher

Jasper:  

> I'm not much of a visual learner, so how on earth can I learn all 2000 kanji (or 10's of thousands of Chinese characters)? How did you do it, Scotcher? Or were those sentences the only ones you knew?

 To be honest, I didn't really try to learn Kanji. I learned both Hiragana and Kitakana (the two syllabaries/ alphabets) inside a couple of days, but I was more concerned with the spoken language and didn't really foresee any need to use Kanji regularly enough that I wouldn't just keep forgetting the characters I'd already learned. Even then, just through occassional interest or notes in my textbooks, I probably knew upwards of 300 really common characters. There is an absolutely fantastic dictionary out there called The Kanji Learner's Dictionary, published by Kodansha, but even armed with that I suspect you'd still have to learn by just practicing your strokes (  ::  ) over and over and over and over again, like the natives have to do when they're at school. 
Pravit:  

> Chinese grammar is much easier than Japanese. Japanese is filled with all sorts of set phrases you've got to learn, and there's so many of them, and let's not even get into past - negative - honorofic forms of "i" adjectives combined with "de wa arimasen" and so on. The verbs seem at first very unmenacing, until you have to start combining them and using the different forms with all sorts of cr@p. 
> In Chinese, however, you don't even have to conjugate verbs. The grammar is really simple and in my opinion much more 'fluid' than Japanese. I also think Chinese sounds nicer, but let's not get into that...

 Can't argue with you as I don't know any Chinese myself, I was just going on what I'd been told by others who do. You're right about the complex grammar in Japanese if you take into account all the different 'levels' of speech of course, but as a wide-eyed gaijin in Japan you won't ever be expected to understand, let alone use, most of them (probably only the 'normal/ intimate' form + 'desu/ ~masu' form, tops), so it's only really as complicated as you want to make it. Maybe I just didn't notice how much of a ball-ache it was because I found the system so interesting.

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## bad manners

> CHINESE, man, CHINESE! It's all about the ZHONG WEN!

 Оптимисты учат английский, пессимисты китайский, а реалисты - автомат Калашникова.

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## Jasper May

Почему только оптимисты учат английский? Мне кажется что было бы ужасно если все на свете знали бы английский язык. Было бы скучно... 
But what I wanted to say is: Create a forum for the study of 中文 (zhong wen - Chinese)!! If needed delete the Norwegian and (it breaks my heart)Dutch forums... Can't see anyone seriously wanting to learn those languages.

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## bad manners

Согласен. Но зато как удобно. А то приезжаешь, например, в Хельсинки, а в аэропорте ни один таксист по-английски не говорит. Равно как и по-русски. Но, странное дело, многие говорят по-немецки. Странные там таксисты. Но, что характерно, никто не говорит по-китайски. Не пессимисты, что не может не радовать. И все как один, наверное, ворошиловские стрелки.

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## Pravit

> but as a wide-eyed gaijin in Japan

 Ahem, ahem....I think I've made it clear from this thread and many others that I am most certainly not white or wide-eyed(not that that's a bad thing).  ::  Sure I have said my family was from Thailand, but do remember...."we are everywhere  ::  " Ah, enough subtlety already! I am Chinese! *pumps fist* I've heard there is a bit of racism in Japan(against non-Japanese), is that so? At least they don't get violent about it... 
You could use those books which explain the origin of the characters. If you break it down into radicals and learn what each one means, gradually each of the characters comes to mean a story. I used to keep forgetting "wo"(I) until I realized it was "hand" and "pike", like a hand holding a pike, or "I".  
BTW, today's the first day of Chinese New Year....yay....yay....I need some red bean cakes...

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## Propp

Will be there ever a separate Chinese forum? We could *shuo zhong wen* and *xie han zi* with Pravit then...  ::

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## Pravit

Yeah! Glorious Chinese language is certainly in need of its own forum. This language is much more glorious than Japanese, in my opinion.  ::  At any rate, we have 4 people asking for Chinese, and only 1-2 people asking for Japanese. 
With such we can give each other motivation to learn, and so on, if there is some sort of competition. Competition is the way I learn best. There were 2 other people in my German class who spoke German almost as well as I did. So I got mad and resolved to learn to speak German really well, and now I'm way better than them. In comparison, there is noone that comes close to me in French class. And I speak French very badly, and don't have much drive to learn it any more.

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## Jasper May

Yeah, come on, create a Chinese forum already! I'm now going to the library to pick up a fully fledged course on Chinese, so you'd better watch out, Thailander...   ::  You've already beaten me with German, Arabic (on the other hand, maybe you haven't...) and Russian, but you won't take away my Zhong Wen!

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## Pravit

> Yeah, come on, create a Chinese forum already! I'm now going to the library to pick up a fully fledged course on Chinese, so you'd better watch out, Thailander...   You've already beaten me with German, Arabic (on the other hand, maybe you haven't...) and Russian, but you won't take away my Zhong Wen!

 Hehehehehhh...I wouldn't be too sure about that, Dutchman. I have a very, very, very secret weapon. As I said before, my family is from Thailand, but we are Chinese  ::   ::

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## Jasper May

Yah, sewer... And you know neither language.  ::

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That might sound weird but I think Japanese is so cute when they pronounce English words and put it in their vocabulary collection - Esekeretu, erebetu, (escalator, elevator) 
Recommended book: Japanese for busy people

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## Pravit

You mean like "wapuro" and "burausu" and such? Personally I find it kind of annoying, but that's just me. What's more annoying is being expected to pronounce English words incorrectly to be understood.

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## Zuku

Hi. I'm new here, and I'm learning Japanese. Once upon a time, I used to speak quite a bit of Japanese (just couldn't read kanji or kana) but I never used it, so I forgot it. Now I have to start from scratch mostly, but the problem is I don't seem to be advancing that well. So I thought I'd come here to say kon'nichi wa and I hope to be posting in here from time to time.  
Oh, and one last thing... Anyone got any cool Japanese bands I should check out? I love Japanese music, my favorite band is Pizzicato Five (unfortunately, they broke up). Thanks!!

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## Pravit

What about "The Pillows"? Heh...and don't forget Kosaka Riyu's "Candy(Heart)".....<3 <3 <3

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## roxfan

If you liked p5, check out Fantastic Plastic Machine and Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. I have a friend who loves p5 and she likes those two too.
I'm not really a fan of them though, so I'll mention some of the stuff that I like.
I came to like Japanese music through anime, so most of my favorite singers/composers are from anime. First and foremost it's the Yoko Kanno/Maaya Sakamoto combo. Yoko Kanno is probably the best anime composer around. She did soundracks for Cowboy Bebop, Escaflowne, Earth Girl Arjuna, Macross Plus, Turn-A-Gundam, and recently Wolf's Rain and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, other anime, many games, a few movies, and several JPop artists. Her music is very diverse: she can write almost in any genre, be it a classical orchestral piece, catchy pop, heavy metal, jazz or techno, and always does it amazingly good. Though many singers worked with her, Maaya Sakamoto is her longest partner, and probably the best ^_^. She has a beautiful voice which works very good with Kanno's music and quite deep lyrics. I like her albums "Lucy" and "Shounen Alice" the best, though the rest is also good ^_^.
Anyway, enough on Kanno. Other composers that write good soundracks are Yuki Kajiura (Noir, .hack//sign, she's also a member of See-Saw duo), Ichiko Hashimoto (RahXephon), Joe Hisaishi (all of Hayao Miyazaki movies, most of Takeshi Kitano ones), Hajime Mizoguchi (Escaflowne, Jin-Roh), Susumu Hirasawa (Berserk, Millenium Actress).
I also like some of more "mainstream" JPop: Nanase Aikawa, Utada Hikaru, Ayumi Hamasaki, Kokia.
Well, I hope my rant wasn't too long. Here's a link with a site that has the newest stuff from Japan (doesn't mean it's the best though ^^): http://www.jpmp3.com/

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## Zuku

Thank you, roxfan!  ::

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Konnichiwa! 
Nihongo wa totemo omoshiroi to omoimasu kara, sannen mae kara benkyou wo shimasu. Dareka ga watashi to nihongo de hanashi-takereba denshi-meeru ni kaite kudasai.

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Now that they have a seperate Chinese forum they need a seperate forum for Mandarin and contonese. hehehe. Actually, now there's no one on the Japanese forum.

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## Immortality

> I wish I could speak Japanese...  
> What is more useful, Japanese or Chinese?

 well, if "which is more useful" was your question, then Chinese definately.  I'm not saying this because I myself am Chinese.   
Reason one - Since China's economy are so heating up, Chinese language is an open door to a huge job market in those places where Mandarin is the language of commerce like Mainland China, HongKong, Taiwan and Singapore.  now there're thousands, no perhapes millions foreign business men are learning the language for their own sakes.   
Resason two - chinese culture. if you want go deep into one's culture, then learn it's language is the first step.  China have 5000 years existence, and as one of world's most advananced civilization.  contributed numberous significant achievements to the human social.  to explore what's in it, you need understand the language first.   
Reason three - The second most widly spoken lanuage in the world.  well, without saying, English so far is the international spoken lanuage, and most popular one.  and mandarin chinese just right after it, then spainish.   mandarin chinese is quickly becoming the second language in many Countries like Japan, korea, Cananda and U.S.   according to the reserch, there're over 3000 more universities from 85 countires of the world already offered Chinese language course. 
however, if you are a hardcore fan of japanese anime, video game, etc. and if your perform japanese culture over Chinese.  then go for japanese.

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## volavimus66

Well, Jasper May, it matters if you like technology, then Japanese is for you.  If not, then choose Chinese.  You must pick a dialect of Chinese.  I reccomend Mandarin because it is the main language of China, Singapore and Taiwan.  Yet the Chinese language is _extremely_ difficult.  If you say a word in the wrong tone, no one will understand the true meaning of your sentence.  But as everybody else pointed out, Japanese grammar is much harder.  Hope it helps.

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## Mikeb

As for which language is more useful, I'd say Chinese (especially if you work in healthcare). China seems to be coming up, while Japan seems to be receding. Furthermore, learning Japanese is a nightmare compared to learning Chinese. 
Japanese is easily the hardest language in existence if you are distance learning (i.e you have to read to learn). For one, Japanese kanji, though limited, aren't as easy as people make them to be. Japanese kanji can have upwards of 10 different readings based on position and other factors, which means that you will likely never know how something is actually read. Hanzi on the other hand are usually read with one reading only no matter where they are in a sentence, making chinese infinitely more forgiving in this respect.  
Chinese has its downside as well. Apparently Chinese people refuse to speak to foreigners in Chinese, so if you are planning to travel there and speak with them, you're likely sol.  I've never heard of the Japanese doing such a thing, though it's probably true for them as well. 
I've personally studied Japanese for several years, and I would say that kanji are the main stumbling block in learning the language. For learning kanji, I highly recommend "Kanji Can", which is an flashcard program based on James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" series. This will teach the meaning of all 1945 Jouyou kanji, with a mnemonic story for each character. Personally, I learned all 1945 characters in a weekend using this program (granted like 4 6+ hour study sessions and I already knew about 500+).  
Also I'd recommend StacksJ, another program. This one is great for general flashcarding... basically you can highlight any japanese text anywhere and have the program generate flaschards based on the dictionary file you get with it. It's insane, and if you're just starting the language, it would be an incredible boon.

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## Mina

> amari benkyou shinai hito wa jouzu ni naranai yo. 
> unn.... boku wa heta desu kara ne

 I think your Japanese is very good  ::

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## Mina

> - How would you say российские дороги in Japanese?
> - Toyama tokanava

 The Russian roads ??  ::   
In Japanese Russian roads = roshia no michi  ::

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## N

> In Japanese Russian roads = roshia no michi

 but it does not sound funny.   ::   
It's an old Russian joke and it is more like about quality of Russian roads than Japanese language. This phrase just sounds "Japanese" (at least to Russians). No offensive meaning there. 
То яма, то канава - holes and ditches every here and there.   ::

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## Mina

Oh it was just a Russian joke ? But I didn't know that, and I just translated it.

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## traveler

this is probably a little(very)late to say but JAPAN RULES!of course that my opinion but i also think JAPAN IS BETTER THA CHINA! oh and kon'nichi wa, watashi wa ______ cody desu ka! (for those of you who don't know)hello, my name is cody ______.

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## Mina

kon'nichi wa, watashi wa cody desu ka! 
This sentence is really good, but I need to correct a little  ::   
For example: 
kon'nichi wa, watashi wa cody desu. 
( Hello I am cody. ) 
kon'nichi wa, watashi wa cody desu ka ? 
( Hello am i cody ? ) 
* " desu ka " is used when you ask something to someone, so if you want to say I AM CODY, you don't have to add " ka " of desu ka.

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## Pravit

Chugoku wa taihen subarashii desu ne!

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## Mina

> Chugoku wa taihen subarashii desu ne!

 Pravit, maybe you were wrong the place to post ?  ::   
Chugoku wa taihen subarashii desu ne!
China is so wonderful, isn't it ? 
This is the Japanese Lounge...  ::

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## Pravit

> China is so wonderful, isn't it ?

 Well, it is, isn't it?  ::

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## volavimus66

Yes, Pravit, it is.  But so is Japan, and do not forget that this is the japanese lounge.

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## Pravit

I didn't say Japan was bad, did I? Since when did it become a terrible breach of Japanese manners to say China is nice? I even said it in Japanese, for goodness' sake! :P :P :P :P   ::   ::   ::  
PS: You are welcome to say "Japan is nice" in Chinese in the Chinese lounge.

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