Learning Japanese!

Yeah in Japan the language is a lot different to what you are taught in books/classes. When me and Phinn went in a lift for example, I commented on the fact nobody used "kai" when talking about which floor to go to. In the station similary, I asked "which platform does the train for wherever leave from" something I commited to memory especially, and people just use "nan-ban desu ka?" (which number is it?) which totally threw me.

In a restuarant I asked for chicken pate using the proper word for chicken meat which made the waitress (so damn cute...) laugh at me but they just use "Chickin"

The stuff they teach you and real-world Japanese are a world apart. But it depends if you want to say enough to get by, or speak proper innit.

 

@ that kanji stuff: aaaah stop that

tachikoma: that sounds very interesting

 

The Japanese are probably the worlds worst for in-constancy in many areas believe it or not. Oh, they're great at all following each other like sheep but that's not what I mean. Take what Tachikoma was saying about chicken. The actual animal is called Niwatori (The last part, Tori meaning bird.) while food is called Chicken! Why? F*ck knows! Also I've seen people struggle to tell me what Niwatori is in English when they already know the dam word.

The Japanese use a lot of words from other countries but most of the time have no idea to the meaning. Also their way of Spelling words in Katakana leaves you scratching your head at times. Oh and add the inconstancy in the spelling of some words such as Fantasy.

Yakumo

 

When was the last time you asked for a cow at MacDonalds?

 

You forgot Toriniku as well!

 

Yeah, but the name for a burger isn't the same as the animal now, is it. So why use Toriniku (as Tachikoma kindly pointed out) and Chicken? There must be a reason behind it.

Yakumo

 

To give it a Western touch/appeal. Go to a restaurant serving Japanese meals and you will most likely only find the Kanji word. I see this as an advantage of the language - to be able to use different words with basically the same meaning but a different connotation.

 

I don't think it's good, take bovine products for example:

Ushi - Cow
Gyuniku - Beef
Biifu - Beef
Gyunyu - Milk
Miruku - Milk

People looked at me weird for using the Japanese words. It's most odd, people even asked why I was speaking in Japanese. Excuse me for trying... I didn't want to look like those American tourists I saw that were just taking photo's of people in Kimono's on the street without even asking then just bowing like a moron and walking away going "wow a geisha!"

 

Tbh. things like the chicken example and inconsistency is normal in most languages. Swedish for instance feels like it have more exceptions then rules when it comes to how something is spelled/pronounced. And I'm pretty sure this is true for most other languages too, so this is nothing unique to Japanese.

 

I can't speak for any other language other than Spanish, but English is at least as worse of an offender as Japanese in terms of inconsistencies. Look at all the exceptions to pronunciations.

Why do black people (in America anyway) call it "bird"? It's just the way language goes, but I'll go out on a limb here and say it's from the influence of western dishes. After all, they still eat Yakitori.

 

So what about those of us who just want to learn the language, but have absolutely no desire to visit Japan? :lol:

 

Someone who has lived there for a year will not only be exponentially better than someone who hasn't, any studying from then on out (assuming they stick with it) will be easier/yield better results.

Of course your mileage may vary.

 

Bird meat? h:

 

Yeah one of the words for chicken meat. Gyuniku is beef, but Ushi is cow. I think it comes from Wa Gyu which is a Japanese black cow.

 

Ushi is the kunyomi reading. Gyuu is the onyomi. They are the same character (which is cow).

 

Ah that would explain it then, thanks. That's another thing to remember when learning Japanese, the "well the character says X but it reads Y" thing.

 

Ugg...just thinking of that bugs me for some reason.

 

and beside of the "y"-reading, there mostly also the "u, v ,w & z" readings.

and since it seems to be almost impossible to learn all those readings out of a book, the only way to learn them fo'sho is by using 'em daily.

 

The same happened to me in Greece. Whatever language you learn is going to sound and often be completely different when you go to a place that speaks it natively. They have localizations, dialects, slang etc that you will not learn in class. German is the same. I thought I was pretty good at German until I tried to use it with some German tourists a few times. Then I stuck to English unless they couldn't speak it :lol:

 

Anime and manga is only supplementary (sometimes they teach curse words so not a good idea to include that...)

Itadakimasu (commonly in anime) - Let's eat.
Daishobu - okay
Gambate - I'll do my best/Good luck/Hang in there...
nani? - what