Re: Anime DVD For Sale!

In article <1157680775.031836.220260@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
starcade@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Eric Schwartz wrote:
starcade@xxxxxxxxx writes:
I've wanted, more and more, to learn some Japanese watching anime. The
problem is not with me personally, but what I see might happen in
America at large.

Just FYI: You'll never learn more than a smattering of Japanese
watching anime, and what little you do learn will probably be wrong,

I should clarify. It's that, from watching anime, I become a bit more
interested in learning the language.

and very likely to make you sound like a teenage girl, unless you are
a teenage girl, in which case you'll sound like a 70-year-old Yakuza
member. Just as an example, I "learned" that ÉCÅ[ meant "hey,
listen!" from an OMG! OAV episode.

Eep.

Break down, take a class or buy some tapes or software. Suffer.

Suffer probably is the best word for it -- I demoed the Japanese
Rosetta Stone software. Yipes. That's a language to wrap oneself
around.

Don't be daunted too early in the game. Granted, one of the
hard parts to begin with is learning the kana, but in many ways
it's worlds easier than English or some of the other European
languages. One symbol == one sound, with a few exceptions.
Sometimes the sounds might be shortened (ask a native speaker
about their father. You might never be able to make out the
word "chichi" in the answer.) but they are consistent. Grammar-
wise, the rules are somewhat different, but consistent, as well.
They're not going to vary too much in underlying ways, because all
humans form and interpret language based on common mental
processes, because that's how our brains are wired.

Now, learning the kanji is another matter. But even then, there
are patterns that can help you learn by identifying common ideas
or at least common roots. An advantage to kanji is that it can
make writing the language much more compact. A big disadvantage
(for me, so far) is not knowing exactly how to pronounce the
kanji, not only are there often two main ways (on-yomi, for the
original Chinese pronunciation, and kun-yomi, for the Japanese
pronunciation) but sometimes there's more than one Chinese or
Japanese pronunciation ( kanji for "sun", I'm lookin' at you!)

I'm planning on taking a long trip over there next year, and I
decided to prepare by taking Japanese locally at George Mason
University. The courses here are good, in that all the teachers
are native Japanese speakers, and the department head also teaches
at a university back in Japan during the summer. She teaches
teachers how to teach Japanese to English speakers! I'm also
using (occasionally) the Pimsleur audio course, to practice
native cadence and pronunciations, as well as some vocabulary
and grammar rules (although Pimsleur isn't very formal, they
try to make the rules instinctive by practice).

Oh, and it's never too late to try, I started in summer school
last year, and I'm 48 years old. It's hard, but I've made a
lot of progress, and have been making solid B's in the courses.
I've got a long way to go, though. (drags out kanji dictionary)
*sigh*

Cap.

--
Since 1989, recycling old jokes, cliches, and bad puns, one Usenet
post at a time!
Operation: Nerdwatch http://www.nerdwatch.com
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