Japanese Lessons

Oh come on, you didn't like hearing phrases like:

Gonna' grind some mash
That's some ono grind brah!
da kine
Hows it?
and my favorite "the stink eye"

 

All I'd really like to be able to do is read (for video games) and understand it spoken (for newer video games and for anime). I wouldn't really care much for speaking japanese. Wouldn't have anyone to talk to anyway and I don't plan on going to Japan anytime soon. But it certainly would make importing things more fun to actually be able to read and understand it. It's on my list of things to do someday.

 

Or even worse, "I never thought I was gonna see you today".

 

Guess this is a good thread to express my surprise & hapiness. Got my JLPT-1 test reults back today. passed, with 296 / 400. 74%. Pretty amazing considering I sucked massive cocks on the first two parts (68 & 63, each out of 100). Basically the 3rd part (which I got 165 / 200 on ) is considered the deal-breaker.

 

How easy / cheap(!) is to to get Japanese lessons in Tokyo? I am going to be staying there for 4 months in a long holiday and I will be staying with my fiancee who has demanded I learn more nihongo...

 

ray: ray: ray:

 

Depends on how good you want them. Google around. Very easy to get into a school. Curious though.. where are you from, and what type of visa will you be on? I assume you'll be on working holiday, as 4 months won't fly as an American unless you do the ole in and out.

:thumbsup:

 

Congratulations GaijinPunch ! Have a paint on me !

Yakumo

 

No paint stores around here. I might be able to find a pint if I look though.

 

oops. What a spaz I am.

Yakumo

 

Yakumo-sama. I think I have said it, before . But here goes anyway, when you are in a country long enough, then you will in the end, think, speak, and dream in the language of the country. If you of course learn the language and in some ways you will probably feel more Japanese, than the opposite, just like William Addams did in the end. Where something like 2 years before he died, there Tokugave gave him permission to take a ship home, but he felt. That he had become a Japanese man, and what was he going home to ?

A filthy, and dirty England in every bad way, where he was a nobody. But in Japan he was a somebody, who was helping alot. But enough of my babbling

 

Not without conscious practice. Japanese is not a language you will learn by accident. I can point you to quite a few people who've spent years (far more than me) in Japan and can speak far less than the average anime dork. That doesn't mean you have to take classes, but you will definitely have to put forth some type of effort.

 

Ok then, but when I try to learn a language, then I feel the best way of learning a language, is also learning to think in the language I am learning. Meaning when I write English then I think English, and not just writing it. Since that is to me true bilinguality.

 

I would agree w/ that 100%. To speak the language, you have to think in that langauge (at least is the case w/ two REALLY different languages). You could probably go far thinking in English and speaking Spanish...even more so w/ another romantic language.

The point was, being in the country unfortunately doesn't help on it's own. You have to be in the country AND attempt to learn. Osmosis won't really work, other than for bare balls survival anyway.

 

Well, I think osmosis was the reason why I learned the English language, Since I only had about 3/4 year in public school of English(I was 11), but as a side interest. I had computer, and I bought some UK official Nintendo magazines, that I didn´t understand that much off, back then. But it was English words, and I saw how they fitted together in sentences. And I began listening to the English language. And well when I was 12 I had my first real hard nut to crack in English. Since I met a lovely black woman who didn´t speak Danish. But she was on vacation in Denmark and lived with a family. And I had my first real English conversation with her. With quite a few mistakes in my English language, but we understood eachother, since my brain worked in overdrive to translate what she was saying. But it was a fun time being with her for those few hours. And speaking English for the very first time without any kind of "safetynet".

Then some time afterwards I became quite "famous" for my knowledge in the English language.
Because I spoke with some Dutch people at the special school I was at.

But to me it is not important, to me it is more important to speak a language very clearly without alot of accent. Since an accent when it is heavy, is distorting the understanding from one person to the other. So if you met me one day, then you would probably hear either a copy of an American accent , or a British accent. With very little original Danish accent.

Ok, I think I will stop now . But I agree with you all the way.

 

I think certain non-Asian langaues can be "picked up". The asians ones just kind of suck for that, other than a few phrases. That's what I meant. Japanese has a pretty high barrier even for some people that really want to learn.

There was an article I read somewhere on the internet about picking it up w/o taking classes. Pretty good read.