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ON MY OWN! Dang near impossible!

Some one told me english was the hardest language well I disagree! There are just as many exceptions to the japanese grammar rule of thumb as there are in english! How am I suppose to remember all this?

any one have advice or excellent resources would be appreciated. Any other person out there learning or already fluent in japanese? Or am i the only idiot trying to master something like this!

the most hilarious thing I've run across so far

"Suru is a very useful verb thingy.  It is used where no other verb dares to go! (Foreign words, nouns, and other scary things...) Think of it as "to do..."
ã,¸ãƒ§ã,®ãƒ³ã,°ã€€ã™ã,‹ jogingu suru - to (do) jogging
ã,·ãƒ§ãƒƒãƒ"ンã,°ã€€ã™ã,‹ shoppingu suru - to (do) shopping
ã,µã,¤ãƒ³ã€€ã™ã,‹ sain suru - to sign (autograph) "

Yes some one describing suru as "a very useful verb thingy" has my vote for being a genius at teaching!

oh yeah that was found here

http://thejapanesepage.com/grammar/chapter_three/suru

English is the hardest language?! LOL who said that? All its brilliance is that it is NOT a hard one.

Japanese is rather easy once you stop trying to translate it in your head. My technique for learning a language is that I try to think in that language as soon as possible. I haven't spoken a word of it in like 3 years, but I got pretty fluent for awhile when I was still using Rosetta Stone and taking classes on a regular basis.

If anything, the language I have the most trouble with is Spanish, because it has like a billion conjugations for every word. Japanese has... I dunno, 3, maybe 4.

Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on January 12, 2016, 11:30:22 AM
...that I try to think in that language as soon as possible. ...

Honestly, I don't think there is another way. The more he interacts with the culture the better.

I agree immersing one's self in any culture is the fastest way to learn any language. But I don't have access to that, all I have are books that I'm trying to translate.


Ironically it is the kanji that is the easiest to translate. the words in katakana and hirigana are like a jigsaw puzzle.

Any language that isn't phonics based is going to be difficult for me. I tried mandarin a few years back - speaking some of it wasn't too bad, but the variations in inflection were very difficult for a limey like me.  As for written mandarin.... no chance.  :017:

Japanese is hard lol. I have pimsleur, via recommendation from Wolf. It's actually quite good and I got the knack of it quite quickly, all things considered. (I've always sucked at learning new languages)

You can probably find a download of it somewhere.

Quote from: Youssuf Ramadan on January 12, 2016, 12:31:48 PM
Any language that isn't phonics based is going to be difficult for me. I tried mandarin a few years back - speaking some of it wasn't too bad, but the variations in inflection were very difficult for a limey like me.  As for written mandarin.... no chance.  :017:

the hirigana and katakana are the phonetic parts of the language! I still can't figure them out!

The kanji the symbol part is easy. You just look it up in your kanji dictionary (which takes a minute to master but once you learn to use it, it's easy) and it means what it says it also lists compound words and so forth so finding it is easy!

I was on a bus in Berlin back in the '70s and sitting behind two young ladies who were practicing their English on each other. At one point they were stumped for a word and frantically looking through their school books. I leaned forward and made a suggestion that they liked. A minute later they were stuck again. One of them turned to me and in a very grumpy voice said (paraphrased) "Do they really teach this stuff to children?"

Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on January 12, 2016, 01:59:56 PM
I was on a bus in Berlin back in the '70s and sitting behind two young ladies who were practicing their English on each other. At one point they were stumped for a word and frantically looking through their school books. I leaned forward and made a suggestion that they liked. A minute later they were stuck again. One of them turned to me and in a very grumpy voice said (paraphrased) "Do they really teach this stuff to children?"

:rotflmao:

I have studied languages off and on since elementary school.  I have studied Japanese off and on for 50 years now ... and I am just finishing up on a one year self paced review.  Before that I did a three year self paced review of Chinese.  Get better at any language each time I try.  It is very hard to do more than one at the same time ... but if it is two you already know fairly well, I can make it work.  I reviewed Biblical Hebrew over the last month, for Hannukah, while I am finishing up with Japanese.

There are four different skills, and depending on your circumstances, some may be difficult to practice.  Reading/writing is a pair, as is speaking/hearing.  Pedagogy and motivation are a big difference.  I was motivated to review Japanese, because I had decided to study a book of the history of haiku.  It has about 1000 short poems in it.  I was motivated to study Chinese also because of poetry.  Just memorizing grammar or vocabulary is no fun, and it is hard to stay motivated if you aren't having fun.  I have studied to shallow or deeper extent, over 20 languages, because I treat them as a pastime like others do crosswords.  And I usually study the history and culture at the same time ... again to increase my motivation.

According to some, Japanese is the hardest modern language to read/write ... because of using four different writing systems at the same time.  Chinese only uses one system ... but I find it harder to speak/hear.  Chinese people have the same problem, there are several major forms besides Mandarin, and there are a lot of regional dialects the farther you get from Beijing.  Similarly, in the far boonies, Japanese deviates from the Tokyo standard.  I am mostly interested in the reading part ... but with E Asian systems, you really have to learn to write it (by hand, not by computer) so you get kinesthetic learning along with visual learning.  Full immersion of course would add aural learning.  Arabic, Farsi, Hindi, Urdu are hard to say/hear because they have more consonants.  Chinese and Vietnamese have tones ... Cantonese being unintelligible as speech to a person in Beijing, but they can write to each other.  Portuguese vs Spanish I am told is a problem, one side can understand the other's speech, but the other can't reciprocate.

My advice on reading Japanese, is you have to diagram your sentence ... the Japanese don't use much punctuation anyway.  Of course Americans are usually unwilling to study a foreign language, let alone diagram their own English.  Once you have a good system, it is just practice, practice.  But if your system is bad, you simply repeat the same mistakes over and over.

Thanks baruch

sorry I was in special ed because I had add so bad as a child so I didn't learn how to diagram sentences in english let alone japanese. There's a lot of things I didn't learn in school. But I am good at book learning or I use to be. So I'm hopeful.

I'm just going over a lot of information in one sitting which is probably a bad idea. I have a little note book that I'm writing notes in because there is no way I'm going to remember all of that right away. I am slowly learning though just slowly. Translation really is an art form I'm finding out.

At any rate I do write out the sentence before I try to translate it. It's bringing back memories of things I learned when I was younger but have forgotten. I've tried to translate before with great difficulty.

I just think it's funny that every one claims English is so hard yet I feel like Asian languages are so different from European languages your looking at a whole new animal.

Review basic English grammar ... if you haven't already.  If you aren't an ace with indirect objects and subordinate clauses ... you won't be able to do that in any other language.  You will be stuck with "See Jane catch the ball".  Not that there is anything wrong being at an elementary level.  You have to start somewhere.

Use example sentence patterns, using simple ones first.  Then substitute in different nouns, verbs, adjectives etc.  This is basically a structured way a child learns.  With paradigms.  Vocabulary is secondary, provided you start with good grammar.  Don't memorize conjugation tables either.  Just learn to do one thing at a time, really well (lots of practice).  Then it will become natural.  But short of immersion in a Japanese elementary school, you really can't do it how they do it.

As I pointed out ... at first regular Japanese is too hard, because of where you are starting from.  Try using your paradigms, with added vocabulary to write your own dialogs or short stories.  Going thru a whole book, will familiarize you with the material, but no mastery.  It isn't a bad idea, but it is just a first step.  Eventually repetition will make it so familiar, that you won't have to look things up (if you keep it simple).

English is hard in a different way ... because of the many arbitrary grammar exceptions ... but then most languages have that.  Japanese has some of the simplest grammar around, if you have good pedagogy.  I love hard things, but also easy things.  Spanish is relatively easy, Mandarin is relatively hard.  I love both.  The trick with E Asian languages is the writing.  You may have to stick with roman letters for quite some time ... then move to characters later.  I don't recommend doing characters in a beginning study ... but you could just study characters and not worry about the language.  Doing both is too hard.  Doing Japanese at character level ... is intermediate level, not beginner level.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 12, 2016, 11:19:28 AM
English is the hardest language?! LOL who said that? All its brilliance is that it is NOT a hard one.

People learning it have a horrible time understanding things like the following. "They're going over there in their car."

Quote from: Nonsensei on January 12, 2016, 07:34:29 PM
People learning it have a horrible time understanding things like the following. "They're going over there in their car."

English isn't the most phonetic language, since it is a hybrid of Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French ... plus Latin and Greek for technical terms.  I still struggle sometimes when I am too phonetic with my English spelling ... but auto-correct has helped ... also hindered.  Japanese is very phonetic, but only in Roman letters.

well not doing symbols is going to be hard as I have a book coming from japan all in japanese. So if I want to read anything in it might need to know what the symbols are.  Which isn't the problem I have a really awesome kanji dictionary and I know how to use it.

But yeah I might have issues with japanese grammar since I didn't even learn english grammar too well.

Now the good news is that this book is an art book and I actually bought it for the pictures. But I thought I might try to translate some of it because well I'm kind of nosy and I want to know what it says.

Quote from: doorknob on January 12, 2016, 07:39:58 PM
well not doing symbols is going to be hard as I have a book coming from japan all in japanese. So if I want to read anything in it might need to know what the symbols are.  Which isn't the problem I have a really awesome kanji dictionary and I know how to use it.

But yeah I might have issues with japanese grammar since I didn't even learn english grammar too well.

Now the good news is that this book is an art book and I actually bought it for the pictures. But I thought I might try to translate some of it because well I'm kind of nosy and I want to know what it says.

You have a motivation ... that is good.  Not idle curiosity.  But coming at it from the direction you are taking ... that is going to be hard.  Let me give you a few quick tips ....

Most loan words (other than Chinese) are in katakana.  A few loan words are in hiragana.  Some native Japanese words are in hiragana only, but most are headed by one or two kanji, followed by some hiragana.  The hiragana are the grammatical part that modify the kanji.  Generally rather than pre-positions ... Japanese uses post-positions ... aka particles.  These are usually one-hiragana words.  There are no spaces in a sentence, except for the Japanese version of the comma.  And then the end of the sentence is the Japanese period.  There are no question marks.

The grammar is based on subject-predicate ... same as English.  But the predicate is different ... either the question is implied, or the particle "ka" is at the end.  The structure of the predicate is ... indirect object - direct object - verb.  The verb is the last thing in a sentence (except for "ka") or the last thing in a clause.  Usually the ordering of things within a phrase is the opposite of English ... the adverb modifying the verb leads it, same as English, but adjectives precede nouns like in Spanish.

Watashi wa namae no Baruku desu ka.
Me about, name my Baruch, is?
My name is Baruch.

Watashi wa = subject ... watashi = I, wa = topic particle
namae no Baruku desu = predicate ... direct object preceding stative verb
namae no Baruku = direct object .. namae = name, no = possessive particle, Baruku = proper noun
desu = stative verb
ka = question particle

私は名前のバルã,¯ã§ã™ã‹ã€,

Quote from: Nonsensei on January 12, 2016, 07:34:29 PM
People learning it have a horrible time understanding things like the following. "They're going over there in their car."

"I read about the red reed."

大日本帝国/大日本帝國

ถ้าà¸,,ุà¸"à¸,,ิà¸"ว่าเรียนภาษาญี่ปุ่นเป็นเรื่องยาก à¸,,ุà¸"ก็ต้องพยายามเรียนภาษาà¹,,ทย

Yeah well there are days when I feel like I might be trying to translate the voynich manuscript but I won't give up!~

https://archive.org/stream/TheVoynichManuscript/Voynich_Manuscript#page/n3/mode/2up

Quote from: Atheon on January 13, 2016, 01:04:56 PM
ถ้าà¸,,ุà¸"à¸,,ิà¸"ว่าเรียนภาษาญี่ปุ่นเป็นเรื่องยาก à¸,,ุà¸"ก็ต้องพยายามเรียนภาษาà¹,,ทย

Thai?

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 12, 2016, 11:19:28 AM
English is the hardest language?! LOL who said that? All its brilliance is that it is NOT a hard one.

Right. Back in the 50s, French was as much the world language as English. Many Southeast Asian countries and some Polynesian countries spoke French. English dominated because the U.S. became the dominant country and every country adapted. There are still places like Tahiti where French is still in use, but not dominant.

Quote from: stromboli on January 13, 2016, 03:14:08 PM
Right. Back in the 50s, French was as much the world language as English. Many Southeast Asian countries and some Polynesian countries spoke French. English dominated because the U.S. became the dominant country and every country adapted. There are still places like Tahiti where French is still in use, but not dominant.

I translated a book about that last summer. It's a Cambridge press lecture(s) on how European languages became European languages. It's fascinating, strom. Like how there weren't actually languages the way we understand today just 200 years ago. The reasons why French has become a dominant language at some time and then English or before all that which one...

Also I am working on another one about social history of languages in Europe. Mostly social linguistic theory and Early Modern. Learned tons. Amazing. There are many references about the cultures from outside Europe too. Ancient, contemporary, Ottoman, Maori, Chinese...

For example, 'literacy' has nothing to do with the literacy we know today in early modern. It's weird. We are so lucky and unlucky at the same time it's weird. Like a weird mirror.

It's a fascinating subject and actually very related to religious bullshit.

Quote from: Shiranu on January 13, 2016, 02:37:34 PM
Thai?

Yes

ถ้าà¸,,ุà¸"à¸,,ิà¸"ว่าเรียนภาษาญี่ปุ่นเป็นเรื่องยาก à¸,,ุà¸"ก็ต้องพยายามเรียนภาษาà¹,,ทย
"If you think learning Japanese is hard, you should try learning Thai"

Quote from: Atheon on January 13, 2016, 11:45:23 PM
Yes

ถ้าà¸,,ุà¸"à¸,,ิà¸"ว่าเรียนภาษาญี่ปุ่นเป็นเรื่องยาก à¸,,ุà¸"ก็ต้องพยายามเรียนภาษาà¹,,ทย
"If you think learning Japanese is hard, you should try learning Thai"

Thai, I understand, has lots of tones.  But the writing system is regular.  Trying to Thai one on?

Empires of the Word by Ostler ... is a good general introduction to linguistics.

I'll stick with japanese for now. One thing at a time.

While we are all here... any one want to try to translate my thrift shop trashcan? :P

(http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/ad231/Shiranu3/0113162036_zpsjfksjcsr.jpg)

Unrelated note; it has a beautiful tone to it. It could be an instrument with how well it rings.

Quote from: Shiranu on January 14, 2016, 02:57:12 PM
While we are all here... any one want to try to translate my thrift shop trashcan? :P



(http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/ad231/Shiranu3/0113162036_zpsjfksjcsr.jpg)

Unrelated note; it has a beautiful tone to it. It could be an instrument with how well it rings.

I think you'll need a native speaker (reader?) for that. That's some pretty blurry writing.

Not native Chinese myself, but that is definitely Chinese.  The "chop marks" are the signatures of people who have owned a rare work of literature, so that would make it Classical Chinese, not Mandarin.  Structure is too paragraphed to be poetry ... so I am betting something by the Confucian school.  Most Chinese poetry comes in stanzas of 4 lines each, each line being 5 or 7 characters (syllables) long.

I think it goes like ... "In distant future, sayings from this scroll will be printed one at a time, in their millions.  Unfortunately will be too dead to collect royalties" ;-)

Perhaps "Pier 1" Dynasty ;-))

Quote from: Shiranu on January 14, 2016, 02:57:12 PM
While we are all here... any one want to try to translate my thrift shop trashcan? :P

(http://i939.photobucket.com/albums/ad231/Shiranu3/0113162036_zpsjfksjcsr.jpg)

Unrelated note; it has a beautiful tone to it. It could be an instrument with how well it rings.

It's a famous poem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantingji_Xu

Quote from: Atheon on January 14, 2016, 11:56:51 PM
It's a famous poem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantingji_Xu

Oh nice :D. Thanks.

It describes one of the most well-known events in the history of Chinese poetry: the Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion. Essentially it was a group of poets playing a drinking game. Cups of wine were floated down a stream, and where they stopped, whichever poet was closest to it would have to down the cup and compose a poem on the spot. The poems were recorded and and compiled into a collection. The poem on your trash can is the preface to the collection.

Atheon - are you fluent in Classical Chinese?

The Chinese say about China, that poetry is their greatest art form.  Confucian texts are prose, and the 之 character I see is usually found in prose.  So, a prose work describing a poetry session?  That was one of the more courtly activities of the literati.

Not Classical Chinese... that's HARD! In some ways it's hard because grammatically and vocab-wise it's so simple that it leaves a lot up to interpretation, and good interpretation requires a lot of background knowledge of history, culture, literature, tradition, etc. Classical Chinese is packed with metaphor and vagueness. It's very different from modern Chinese, but lots of modern people like to show off by peppering their modern writing with classical or classical-like phrases.

The character 之 (often a simple possessive, but it has many other uses) is very common in classical Chinese or classical-style phrases and idioms, both in prose and poetry, but poetry is usually so terse that they leave it out where it would otherwise be included. For the most part, in modern Chinese, its function has been replaced by çš,, (which also has its own range of uses).

wow impressive

Atheon ... I am not doing Mandarin right now ... but if I get back into it, and have questions, I know who to ask.

老朋友

finally all the books I ordered came! yay! I was so excited I could barely contain myself. Now I can tackle translating things. I'm starting with the simple looking things. Like small sentences.

Wish me luck!

Quote from: doorknob on January 19, 2016, 05:36:32 PM
finally all the books I ordered came! yay! I was so excited I could barely contain myself. Now I can tackle translating things. I'm starting with the simple looking things. Like small sentences.

Wish me luck!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67-bgSFJiKc

バンã,¶ã,¤

"Ten thousand years"? Baruch, give doorknob some credit!  :smile2:

ixnay on the uckingfay apanesepay anguagelay...

What do you do with japanese?
There is no use...

I find japanese to be very useful in my life. Translating is one example but I also like to impress and confuse people by blurting out appropriate japanese phrases at the correct situation. You'd be surprised how many people are some what or even minutely knowledgeable about japanese. 

Learning japanese phrases is fine and sometimes on rare occasions helpful but not very useful for translating.

Quote from: SoldierofFortune on January 20, 2016, 06:33:20 AM
What do you do with japanese?
There is no use...

You can shout ã,´ã,¸ãƒ©æ¥ã¦ã,,ます

Quote from: SoldierofFortune on January 20, 2016, 06:33:20 AM
What do you do with japanese?
There is no use...

Learning a second (or third or...) language is extremely useful to the overall intelligence of the individual. While it may not be the most "practical" language in terms of making money... the overall benefits of learning how to learn a new language are simply worth the time and effort it requires. But seriously... go look up the studies on how bilinguals perform in education and in terms of their gray matter and mental aging compared to monolinguals.

On topic... I am dropping Spanish and really considering Japanese.

I can't fucking do the Romance languages. I have failed and failed and failed them and I am just too frustrated with them now. The Spanish class I passed last semester was literally the first time in like... 4 or so tries (counting high school) that I passed a Spanish or french class. But then I get to Spanish two and the professor is 3 chapters ahead of where mine had left off and my class missed so many rules that I cant understand 80 percent of what she is saying.

I just cant put up with that frustration. I don't even care that la chica next to me is smoking hot and I actually managed to say more than two words to her... that's how serious I am about how over Spanish I am.

I have passed German before so perhaps I should take it but... I want something as far removed from European languages as I can take and that leaves Arabic or Japanese at Texas State. I am just so over anything remotely close to french or spanish.

Quote from: Shiranu on January 20, 2016, 08:18:08 PM
Learning a second (or third or...) language is extremely useful to the overall intelligence of the individual. While it may not be the most "practical" language in terms of making money... the overall benefits of learning how to learn a new language are simply worth the time and effort it requires. But seriously... go look up the studies on how bilinguals perform in education and in terms of their gray matter and mental aging compared to monolinguals.

On topic... I am dropping Spanish and really considering Japanese.

I can't fucking do the Romance languages. I have failed and failed and failed them and I am just too frustrated with them now. The Spanish class I passed last semester was literally the first time in like... 4 or so tries (counting high school) that I passed a Spanish or french class. But then I get to Spanish two and the professor is 3 chapters ahead of where mine had left off and my class missed so many rules that I cant understand 80 percent of what she is saying.

I just cant put up with that frustration. I don't even care that la chica next to me is smoking hot and I actually managed to say more than two words to her... that's how serious I am about how over Spanish I am.

I have passed German before so perhaps I should take it but... I want something as far removed from European languages as I can take and that leaves Arabic or Japanese at Texas State. I am just so over anything remotely close to french or spanish.

yes...you perform a lot of cognitive effort while reading a foreign language, which helps you enhance your cognitive abilities...for example, bilinguals can memorize easier than monolinguals can...but you must learn the language between the age of 0-5 to be a bilingual...but for those who learn after that age...you may know the language very well and can make social communications comfortably and understand academic literature...how ever when it comes to be a bilingual; it's another level of language that you're a speaker who speaks like your mother tongue...

Quote from: Baruch on January 20, 2016, 07:09:26 PM
You can shout ã,´ã,¸ãƒ©æ¥ã¦ã,,ます

i won't be taller if i shout... :)

why japanese don't latinize the language in writing...they would be more integrated to the rest of the world; namely europe and amerika...: ); or else i think they think they protect their culture remaining the tradition in writing...Atatürk made the letter revolution in 1928...the arabic alphabeta had been used to write turkish for 8 century...because it was said that the arabic alphabet which is used to write kuran is holy...actually turkish was written in 8 different alphabet along the history...arabic alphabet is very useful and suits perfectly to write arabic but does'nt suit to write turkish...it has no wovel...

Quote from: SoldierofFortune on January 21, 2016, 10:55:56 AM
i won't be taller if i shout... :)

why japanese don't latinize the language in writing...they would be more integrated to the rest of the world; namely europe and amerika...: ); or else i think they think they protect their culture remaining the tradition in writing...Atatürk made the letter revolution in 1928...the arabic alphabeta had been used to write turkish for 8 century...because it was said that the arabic alphabet which is used to write kuran is holy...actually turkish was written in 8 different alphabet along the history...arabic alphabet is very useful and suits perfectly to write arabic but does'nt suit to write turkish...it has no wovel...

Super question!  But first Shiranu ...

Ask yourself, in the grammatical order of a sentence, to you prefer SVO, VOS, SOV.  Subject, Verb, Object is English etc.  Verb, Object, Subject is Israeli etc.  Subject, Object, Verb is Japanese etc.  Is that what is blocking you?  Spanish and French are very close to English, maybe too close not to be confusing, particularly all the loan words.  But German, Hindi and Japanese have the verb at the end (usually).  Arabic and Israeli have the verb at the beginning.  The writing system for Japanese is very challenging ... so it depends on if you want to read/write vs speak/hear.  But to properly learn to speak/hear you have to immerse yourself ... you can't do it from a book, like you can read/write.

Soldier of Fortune is correct ... there are two breaks in human language development.  You learn all the sounds you will learn (but you can mimic more) by the time you are one year old, from listening to adults.  Newborns can do every possible vocal sound, but they lose the ability to do most of them in the first year.  So it isn't possible for a native English speaker to learn to speak good Hindi or Arabic as an adult ... you will always have an English accent.  This is why native Japanese can't separate R from L.  Children learn the language, beyond the phonetics, by the time they are six years old.  This has been demonstrated in neurology.  A bilingual child will show uniform development in the language center.  But for a person who learns a second language after six ... there are striations.  Each striation is a new neural development, one for each additional language.

Writing systems are limited by the vocal systems.  Ancient Egyptian, Chinese, Japanese ... are homonym rich and variety poor.  In Chinese, there are 24 different words that all are pronounced "ma".  Though there are 4 tones in Mandarin, this still means when you say that word in isolation, it could be any of 6 different meanings.  Natives learn by context, and such languages, you have to beat about the bush, like Irishmen talking, for people to understand you.  Greek on the other hand has very few homonyms ... each concept has an almost unique phonetic construct ... context isn't necessary if your vocabulary is good.  This impacts writing systems.  Only high variety languages can use an alphabetic, consonantal or syllabic writing system.  Consonantal systems like Arabic ... the vowels are implied.  In alphabetic, the vowels are clearly shown.  In syllabic, there are more than the usual number of consonants ... they were originally consonantal, but because of greater difficulty, the vowels were added as jots and tittles, like in Hindi.  All of these writing systems are easily managable.  High homonym languages, you simply can't read it, without an indicator as to which of the 24 or 6 different ideas the sound could represent.  In this way, China and Japan, could have easily surpassed the West long ago, if they hadn't been stuck with a Cuneiform/Hieroglyphic system of writing.  Semitic languages and even Egyptian, eventually were able to drop the "character" based writing, once their variety increased.  But Chinese and Japanese are still stuck back 2000 years ago.  Otherwise the Chinese Bill Gates or Japanese Steve Jobs would have been building low-wage factories over here.

Quote from: SoldierofFortune on January 21, 2016, 10:55:56 AMwhy japanese don't latinize the language in writing

Because China is closer.

So far I've translated "ayato problem child, 3rd son of the sakamaki family."

Thank you kanji dictionary for being straight forward and easy to use. The next sentence none of which is in kanji is giving me a hell of a time! determination and more studying is needed. But I swear I will learn damn it!

Quote from: doorknob on January 24, 2016, 12:29:11 PM
So far I've translated "ayato problem child, 3rd son of the sakamaki family."

Thank you kanji dictionary for being straight forward and easy to use. The next sentence none of which is in kanji is giving me a hell of a time! determination and more studying is needed. But I swear I will learn damn it!

Kanji at the start of most word that aren't grammatical particles.  Only a few words are only hiragana.  Loan words (other than from Chinese) are katakana.  Conjugations of words are in hiragana.  You have to separate the words.  Japanese gives you inadequate punctuation.

Quote from: doorknob on January 19, 2016, 05:36:32 PM
finally all the books I ordered came! yay! I was so excited I could barely contain myself. Now I can tackle translating things. I'm starting with the simple looking things. Like small sentences.

Wish me luck!

大日本帝国/大日本帝國 Dai Nippon Teikoku

ã,´ã,¸ãƒ©æ¨£ Gojira sama

To the actual dominant life forms, we are just bugs.  Unless you can melt a car with radioactive breath, after an all night bender ;-)

Quote from: Atheon on January 26, 2016, 08:04:56 AM
ã,´ã,¸ãƒ©æ¨£ Gojira sama

Domoarigato.

Quote from: Baruch on January 26, 2016, 07:59:21 PM
To the actual dominant life forms, we are just bugs.  Unless you can melt a car with radioactive breath, after an all night bender ;-)

Sadly misunderstood, those 121.92 meter fire-breathing mutant lizard-thingies.