>you will never be able to learn kanji, as only young children have a hope of memorising that all
>sadfrog.jpg

The Japanese are ass-backward in everything they do, and will never make sense.

how many words are there in the english language again?

how many of them do you know?

japanese wasnt to bad... untill they incorporated chinese characters and gave them different meanings

You gotta give props to a writing system based on Chinese puns, though.

>>46696574

Why does word count have to do when you're comparing alphabets/syllabaries? You think most Japanese words are one kanji? PFFFTHAHAH

>>46696574

We do not create different letters for every new word.

>>46696370

So... what sane writing system would you propose for Japanese?
A syllabary only is not sufficient - try writing an essay in Japanese using only kana - it'll be unreadable.
A phonetic alphabet would not only be insufficient, but also redundant.

What now?
Kanji are perfect, it's only dumbasses who are too lazy to learn them that complain.

>>46696574
It depends on whether or not I have to use them. If I'm trying to sound smart I can usually pull very advanced vocabulary out of my ass.

Why does english have all sorts of retarded grammar rules?

>>46696574
It's a bit different when you can logically construct each word with 26 letters even if you don't know the word you can still read it.

On a related note, how the fuck do the japs type with a keyboard.

I tried to learn Japanese once in hope of going to 2chan and reading manga without scanlations, but gave up after a month, then forgot everything I had learned after a week.

>Why can't Japan into sane writing system?
Hm... English hard. He accidentially the sentence.

>>46696621
I'm probably wrong but I always figured they had a completely different alphabet for typing.

I actually like the Chinese/Japanese system, it separates phonetics from meaning at a mental level.
>>46696599
kanji is not an alphabet. if you really think that's a valid word to describe it you know nothing of East Asian languages

look at what the dumbass Koreans did with hangul, they virtually sterilized their own language. Japanese has come dangerously close to adopting kana-only at various times as well. I'm quite happy they keep a more flexible language around, even if it's a bit harder to learn

>Chopsticks
>Katanas
>Kanji

They're always one step behind Western civilization.

Learning Kanji is far easier than learning english.

>>46696636
I just want to read my Spice and Wolf novels before Yen Press finishes translating them in 2thousandfucking80.

Just to let you guys know, even the Japanese have trouble, and even hate kanji. However, if you were to actually learn Japanese, you'll be thankful that kanji exist, since it makes it a lot easier to understand a sentence.

>>46696621

>even if you don't know the word you can still read it

The same is true for Japanese. Kanji readings are very easy to guess once you know how. And as a bonus, you can also guess the meaning of the words from the characters.

>>46696610
>Kanji are perfect

Kanji are not perfect, even the Japanese complain. English has a shitton of homophones in everyday usage, with the typical solution being to make it into a heterograph for writing, or to simply rely on someone being able to intuit a sentence via context. Japanese is not more special than English in that it could not be feasibly written this way, but it requires a Romanized alphabet to do so because Kana are also shit.

>>46696621
there are kana keyboards but ive heard they actually find it easier/quicker to use a standard keyboard and type romaji and then convert with the IME into kana/kanji


also, a lot of english words dont sound like theyre typed because we have fucking retarded borrowed pronunciation everywhere

A Korean-style system would work wonderfully for Japanese.

Also, unlike, say, Greek or Russian, most people who read English don't actually see individual letters inside words, but rather see the first letter and the shape of the word and get it. Having capitol and lower-case letters lets us do things like that.

Also, trade-offs in reading speed: Kanji >> English, etc. >> Greek, Russian, etc.

>>46696621
some of them (especially younger people) type in romaji on qwerty and it's converted to kana, then they can convert it to kanji using an IME

some of them use a qwerty layout that has each of the 46 kana printed on the keys (direct input)

either way, they type phonetically

Chinese is the best language.

English is the worst.

Native english speaker here

>can't be bothered to create proper written language
>make a different scribble on a piece of paper each time you think of a word
>???
>superior japan master race

Hirangana/Katakana is sane as a syllabary, it would be cool if they replaced everything with romaji but that's incredibly unlikely. However kanji is just fucked.

>PICTOGRAMS/LOGOGRAMS/CHARACTERS, LETS HAVE A NEW ONE FOR EVERY NEW WORD
>FUKKIN' GENIUS

>Kanji is difficult

Imaging explaining to a foreigner the difference in our language between telling "THE truth" versus telling "A lie".

Plurals, nigga.

>>46696735

Except a Romanized alphabet, well, any alphabet actually, would completely ignore such trifle things as morphology and phonetics. I agree that a Japanese text in latin characters would be easier to read than one in kana, but it would still be impossible to understand it.

Sure is delusional weeaboos in here.

>>46696749
>i pretend to know about languages

English is bad and is only popular because of british conquest

>>46696778
This scribble now stands for "snookered"

at an early age our memory system is top notch and has absolutely no problem memorizing vast quantities of information. As we get older this kind of shit becomes impossible to grasp.

tldr: too late to memorize unless you become a hermit

>>46696809
God do you know how many professors at university whinge about this like any of us native English speakers care.

>>46696821
would you expect any less?

why are /a/mericans so ignorant?
if you write an article without kanji, there will be too much word that sound the same,
but have different meaning. it would be confusing without kanji.

for example 口内射精大会 and 校内写生大会 sound the same
but they have totally different meaning.

fyi 口内射精大会 blowjob contest
校内写生大会 school sketching contest.

>>46696749
Since when did the spoken Japanese language have few homophones?

>>46696809
I've done this while student teaching in ESL. It isn't as insanely difficult as you think.

That said: Kanji are stupid, and the Japanese have molded the way they use language to fit it because you can omit an awful lot from a sentence if you're still using ideograms. Writing it in roman letters means writing in proper Japanese, which while probably better for everyone, would be a pain.

>>46696370
The English system isn't much better. Some estimate the number of English words to be as many as 1,008,879 but Oxford weeds down most of the archaic ones. It then deems only 171,476 of the remaining to be worthy of the dictionary, most of which, are not used in daily conversation anyways.

Also I find that Kanji is fairly easier to read than Kana, as it relies on meaning then phonics, rather than phonics then meaning.

And wtf is up with that chart OP, is "何" seriously part of the Jōyō kanji?

Name one language that has all of the retarded rules that English does.

English is more than just knowing words, you have to know the rules behind the words, and those rules are retarded. Other languages have the decency to be straightforward.

>>46696675
>Learning Kanji is far easier than learning english.
Good luck learning all this shitty kanji with 2-8 readings each one.
It was much easier for me to learn English, than learning this shitty hieroglyphs.

>>46696610
>hieroglyphs
>perfect

how exactly are we communicating with english right now? is this magic?

>>46696778

Kanji were created in China. Chinese wouldn't work with an alphabet - they'd have to create an insanely complex system of diacritics to denote pitch features and it wouldn't be useful because the spelling of every word would be vastly different in every little province.

>>46696866
>kounai shasei taikai
>kuchi nai shasei taikai

not quite

>>46696888
>It was much easier for me to learn English, than learning this shitty hieroglyphs.

But you haven't learnt English well at all.

>>46696883
>English is more than just knowing words, you have to know the rules behind the words, and those rules are retarded. Other languages have the decency to be straightforward.
>Never studied a language where you had to learn the gender of random objects like fucking tables and onions.

>>46696883
English has a lot of catch-22s, yes. But it is easily read, even if you don't have a grasp of most of these rules, say, like most Americans.

>>46696370
>japanese is too hard for me, so it's shit and stupid

>>46696911
Actually, kinda. <_<

But no more magic than languages with 18 genders, or 12 cases, or counters (like Japanese and Chinese), or only 3 vowels.

>Superior spanish
>mfw english only has one word for ser/estar (to be).

I really love spanish cause it's easy to learn other languages.

>>46696866
They why are japanese so stupid that they give three words the same reading.

>>46696853

Respectfully agreed good chap, lets all stop caring and continue with complaining about Japanese. Because it's so incredibly easy and requires no perspective as to how difficult the language actually is.

HURR DURR DEM NIHONGO SCRIBBLES MAKE MAH EYES RAIN

>>46696932
Good enough for people to understand him.

Well, at least SPEAKING Japanese isn't too difficult. The grammar is odd, but not impossible to master in your 20s. The Kanji...that might be out of reach for foreigners.

>>46696942
>_> Uhhuhuhu

>>46696942

MAXIMUM TROLLING.

>>46696882

So, those 2000-3000 kanji encompass all words used in daily conversation in Japan?

when i say "god fucked me with a cucumber" people actually understand what I am saying? fucking awesome

Each kanji is composed of parts, called radicals.

The radicals are generally consistent in looks, so really each kanji pictograph is just a rearrangement of 1-6 or so radicals. Considering that some of these radicals give meaning, and occasionally, sound, it really isn't that hard. Factor in English words like "thorough", bred vs bread, etc, and Kanji is only a little tougher than learning English to an acceptable degree.

How many of you decided to major in Japanese as second FL just for anime?

>>46696950
On the other side, most essential japanese words are fucking short. Like two sillables at most. That's pretty useful.

>>46696920
learn to tell from onyomi and kunyomi, now that is another conundrum of the Japanese language.

Kanji =/= alphabet.

When you learning kanji you automatically learning lots of meanings and words.
What you get by learning English alphabet? Nothing. You must to learn 10000+ words to speak it.

>>46696943
Not quite.
"Soy de los Estados Unidos"
"I'm from the United States"
Same shit.
"Ellos estan en la casa"
"They are in the house"
Same shit. Spanish is easy, yes, but learning all the proper usage for tons of verbs is annoying as fuck.

>>46696990
Heterographs are easy shit, I have no idea why people often say this is a hard point of the English language.

This post is pretty much directed to all those who are on the fence about learning JP, but are intimidated by threads like this one.

Kanji isn't that bad. At first, I was overwhelmed like OP, but honestly, if you enjoy learning the language, it's not as troublesome.

To put it into perspective, if you're a pokemonfag like me, you know all current 649 by heart and you didn't even make a conscious effort to try. If you're really dedicated, you can accomplish a lot of retarded things.

letters: 26 letters

kanji: 3000 kanji

japan status

[ ] not told
[ ] told
[X] 漢字猫漢字猫漢字猫

>>46696621

Japanese have either keyboards with the latin alphabet (the alphabet we use) or with kana on them.

From there they can spell out the word they want phonetically. then they press enter, it will cycle to the most commonly used configuration. If they don't want that, they can press space instead and it'll go down to multiple possibilities and different spellings or the same thing written in different kana.

>>46696749

I don't understand why you say people don't analyze words the same way in Greek/Russian as they do in English. Granted I don't speak either Greek nor Russian, but I can read both of them, and it's the exact same system as Latin characters.

Maybe your argument would work with Arabic script because of the lack of short vowels? Maybe? But Russian and Greek both have standard alphabets.

http://kanjidamage.com/

This will make Kanji make sense.

>>46697020
>What you get by learning English alphabet? Nothing. You must to learn 10000+ words to speak it.
Not to mention a rediculously large number of phonemes and dipthongs in the language. Which is why so many people sound retarded when they speak english (including americans).

>have a letter
>its supposed to be a basic unit of language
>IT MAKES FIVE DIFFERENT SOUNDS

Nice one

>>46696977
Kanji isn't as difficult as advertised. Japanese grammar is where foreigners lose their minds.

I honestly find Mandarin simpler than Japanese.

>>46696988
Excluding things like slang, accents, and other things like that.

>>46697061
accents are also fun with vowels

>>46696988
Actually, not even. There are plenty that you are supposed to know, but don't really have to.

>>46697036
Yeah well, I wouldn't really know how to explain the difference between each of them.
Without giving like a 100 examples. Even then you'd probably only remember the examples.

KANJI ARE NOT HARD

THE ONLY RETARDED THING ABOUT JAPANESE IS THE GRAMMAR

ITS FUCKING STUPID

ENGLISH IS WORSE OVERALL

SO IS KOREAN

>>46696839
It's a wonder why we aren't rushed to learn everything we can as infants and toddlers. Life would be a lot easier that way.

Ever notice how the child prodigies have parents who essentially started teaching them shit the moment they popped out of their mother's vagina?

>>46697020
Learning the alphabet lets you construct words from just hearing them, or to invent new compound words easily. Because it is the recombining of the same symbols every time, you can easily put together what a word ought to look like. Etymology is different than it would be for ideograms, but is also still there.

It's easy to get working (not proper, but working) English, both written and spoken. Spoken Japanese is easy as well, but writing is a pain in the ass.

>>46696655
Western civilization =/= Asian civilization

>>46696882
Learning a new word is not nearly as difficult as learning a new kanji.

>>46697100
What you talkin' bout Willis? Spoken Japanese is not hard.

>>46697100
>THE ONLY RETARDED THING ABOUT JAPANESE IS THE GRAMMAR
Grammar, actually, is one of the easiest things about Japanese language.

>>46697113

This. Languages like German with completely phonetic spelling have it even better, of course.

>>46697058
The way I described reading English? Where the shape of the word allows us to recognize it without having to actually figure out what each letter in the word is? You can't do that in Greek or Russian. Their alphabets are almost perfectly phonetic, and also are written with far less vertical irregularity, so you actually have to read each letter to know what a word is.

>>46697100

The only reason Japanese grammar seems fucked up is because we learnt the English one first.

Having the adjective at the end of the sentence is just as dumb as having it in the middle.

>>46697020
>Implying that you don't have to learn 10,000+ words in order to speak any language

Japanese isn't that hard.

The grammar is unique, but not overly complex.
The Kanji is intimidating, but formulaic and easily retained.

Most people just lack the resources required for necessary immersion.

>>46697187
Even more, people get overconfident and believe anime is enough material for immersion.

Kanji isn't hard. It's much easier to remember words visually than it is learning long strings of letters. I'm a translator but I honestly get a headache when trying to read Japanese written our in romaji. Kanji makes it much easier to read and understand.

>english
>difficult
>many rules

what the fuck

spanish speaker here, english is easy mode only lazy faggots can't learn it

ITT: Nips, weaboos, and cultural relativists trying to defend the fucktarded view that logographic systems are as good or superior to alphabetical systems.

>this thread
we shall solve the mystery's of the written language on /ɐ/

People still have problems learning the language of the yellow man?

Do you know how many free resources are out there for you? All you need is the want to learn and the will to practice and it's easy as pie.

Or just listen to this guy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZEA54VJEdE

Also, Japanese grammar (at least as much I learned in the two years I studied it) is retardedly simple. I was actually creeped out by how regular it was, compared to 5 years of studying German and speaking English and Russian natively. Japanese grammar is unbelievably easy. No irregular forms. Barely any case marking. Almost perfectly agglutinating morphology (as in, every part of the word is just sitting there, unlike German, where "-es" might mean, like, "plural 3rd person female dative").

>This thread
>implying young japanese people know more than 500-1000 kanji.

Actually gaijin who can speak&write japanese, know kanji better than young japanese people.

>>46697237
English is especially simple for you because Spanish and English are not too distant in structure.

>>46697221
Kanji is definitely better than trying to read strings of romaji or hiragana, but only because the language itself can be very confusing without some way of identifying all the different "dou's", "ji's" "kan's" etc.

>>46697237
Spanish here too
C'mon, english has a lot of retarded rules that whouldn't exist.
Like, read/read. Oh god, it's written the same but read differently, WHY.

>>46697237
>>46697237
>Retard spanish fag doesnt understand how language works

English easily holds the title of most complex language in popular use today.

Linguists ALL agree on this

>>46697221
>It's much easier to remember words visually than it is learning long strings of letters
Huh? No it isn't I have shit for visual memory, so letters are choice. Not to mention that it promotes rote learning much better

>>46697149
Gonna agree with this anon. I didn't find Japanese grammar to be hard at all, although granted I only took a year long intro level college course so it probably gets harder as things go on. But still, compared to the two spanish classes I took in freaking high school the college Japanese course was, imo, much easier. There's not a lot of exceptions with Japanese grammar which is really nice compared to the clusterfuck of grammar rule exceptions you get with European languages.

What really got me with Japanese though was the kanji. I just cannot make sense of that shit. I've tried studying before and I never get anywhere because there's so much information to absorb with each character (way to write it plus the meaning plus god only knows how many different readings).

it sure is /int/ in here, why don't you just go over there?

>>46697217

This. I'm sick of people thinking anime is good enough for immersion.

>japs speaking shitloads of gobbledegook fast that you can't understand it

If you're going to immerse yourself through a form of entertainment, at least use visual novels.

Not only do you have the text right infront of you, in glorious 日本語 but you can replay what they are saying a million times to hear it and see how it is spelt.

>>46697277
English is easymode, yo. Especially because I can flagrantly ignore tons of rules and still be perfectly understood.

English does have certain advantages. I.E. you won't gravely offend someone if you're pitch is off slightly in the pronunciation of some modifier you add to their name based on gender, social status, and the phase of the moon.

>>46697330
Every language has that.

>>46697275
same as spanish got more verbal times than neccesary...and fucking written accents

In the future people will read binary code and have a vocabulary consisting of over 2,000,000 words, concepts and mental images.

Such is technology.

>>46697306
i can understand about 15% of spoken Japanese now, go me!
>from just watching anime
>mostly intent, relationships, and questions, insults, reactions

>I can't read this language, therefore it must suck more than languages I can read

Is Chinese harder than Japanese?

>>46697330
All languages are this way, though, for native speakers. Human languages is incredibly noise-resistant.

>>46697241
>implying that you could devise a logical spelling list for all Japanese homophones

>mfw japanese writing
da fuck? its north to south instead of west to east to read this shit

>I.E. you won't gravely offend someone if you're pitch is off slightly in the pronunciation of some modifier you add to their name based on gender, social status, and the phase of the moon.

For fuck sake this.

When I was living in Japan I failed job interviews because I said 'ore wa' instead of 'boku wa' and 'da' instead of 'desu'.

For fuck sake.

Letters let you learn words by rote.

C A T is cat.

D O G is dog.

And so on.

Learning by rote may not grant you the depth of knowledge that learning a character and its various meanings will, but it does get you writing and speaking much, much faster.

You think that's hard? Go Chinese. No hiragana at all.

>>46697061
>Which is why so many people sound retarded when they speak english

I've been curious about this: Do non-native speakers sound just as terrible in any language as they do when speaking English, or is it rare for a person to have lived in a country for decades and still have trouble with the grammar like what you see a lot of with non-native English speakers?

I can understand the cultural aspect but fuck, if a team of linguists banded together to create the most convoluted and insane writing system it'd be something like kanji.

>>46697384
ORE WA QUALIFIED FOR THIS JOB...DESU WA~

>>46697169
That's not true. I'm russian and I can read without looking at every single letter just fine.

>>46697384
I'm sure this is completely the company's fault and not a result of your blatant ignorance.

>>46697344
Written accents are a must dude. It's essentially to recognize read from read. Which is what I'm bitching about.

About verbal times.. I really don't know what to say, do we really have that many?

>>46697384
At least they didn't find out that you're korean.

>>46697380
It could be done. Perhaps with the use of accent marks in addition to standard heterographs.

Or, we could just adopt a universal language and actually learn it. That would be cool too.

>>46697409
decades? constant exposure to a different culture morphs memory to a different core language
in as little as 2 years

>>46697421
Eh. I'm just repeating what I've heard about in research findings. It might be more prominent in Greek or something.

>>46697384
>ore wa
Are you fucking kidding me, really? Do you think you're some kind of badass or was that some sort of artifact from anime?

>>46697460
KISAMA!

wow this is like the 3rd thread in 24 hours. get over yourselves weeaboos. moonrunes are shit.

>>46697454
Is this...the power of immersion?

>>46697384
>When I was living in Japan I failed job interviews because I said 'ore wa' instead of 'boku wa' and 'da' instead of 'desu'.

If your Japanese skills were still at the level where you were using fucking "ore wa" and short forms in formal conversation then it's not really surprising at all that you failed job interviews. Even a first year Japanese major would have it drilled into them not to do that.

>>46697460
anta
full baka

That reminds me of a Chinese language professor that said that character-based languages will be dead in a century. His quote was something like, "Do you really think the traditional image of a Chinese person sitting down and writing characters without having to stop and think and remember is true?"

>>46697384
That's basically the equivelant of using slang and mouthing off during your job interview. You shouldn't be surprised.

ore is very casual. It's not even that different from things you could and do do in english.

>>46697384
you would use watashi, not boku or ore, and of course you would use desu and long forms in a fucking job interview. people know that 2 weeks into learning japanese. how fucking retarded are you? your argument in english would basically be "I went in to my job interview and quoted things from Full Metal Jacket using fuck every other word, for some reason I didn't get a job, STUPID LANGUAGE"

>>46697469
>Kono gakkou de ichiban tsuyoi no wa dareda! ?

>>46697422

>implying I said it was the companies fault

If anything it's the languages fault and my shitty Japanese teachers fault.

>>46697435

God yes. Koreans and Americans they hate. I was treated distantly when I got there until people found out I was a New Zealander. Then I was just another bloke. Whenever I met knew people I emphasised my New Zealand accent so they wouldn't think I was american.

>>46697469
here is an interesting question

the english "sounded out" words of Japanese, they don't really exist do they?

"Nani", "Kisama", they don't exist, but are just americanized sounded out word jumbles correct?

>>46697049
You do realize that *no one* got the joke? Or did you just pass that through Google Translate like all the other fakers on the Internet?

> To put it into perspective, if you're a pokemonfag like me, you know all current 649 by heart and you didn't even make a conscious effort to try. If you're really dedicated, you can accomplish a lot of retarded things.

Oh god. There's Pikachu and then there are other ones .. Slowpoke? Well, that's two. Then there's the blue one. Um, Mudkip? Ah, ...

>>46697495
>I went in to my job interview and quoted things from Full Metal Jacket using fuck every other word, for some reason I didn't get a job, STUPID LANGUAGE

This is how I got my job, though...

>>46697516
NANI?

>>46697516

>>46697384
>I said 'ore wa' instead of 'boku wa' and 'da' instead of 'desu'.
Dude you just said,"What up BIATCHES??" at a job interview, dumbass.

OP here, I go away for 30 mins and....

What the fuck happened here oh god I've created a monster

>>46697495
>>46697485
>>46697460

Yes my Japanese was shit when I first moved.

Due to the fault of my shitty Japanese teacher. Fortunately I met some nice people over there who taught me the ways of the world.

But my Japanese teacher in college didn't bother teaching us the polite parts of the language, just taught us what things meant.

>>46697495
Ore - badass
watashi - neutral
boku - usually used by males. Works just fine.

>>46697564
B-BAKEMONO DA!

>>46697330
>>46697337
I dunno wha you guize are be talkin' about but I guess itz okay by me.

My brother gave me his little Japanese guidebook the service gives him when he got back from there and it said to use "ore".

>>46696786

Kanji and Egyptian glyphs are intuitive for the same reason... if you know the meaning of the radicals, you can figure out the meaning of a Kanji character more or less.

My younger brother is fluent in ancient Egyptian, and figuring out the meaning of their glyphs is the same deal.

The only issue is that neither of these techniques give you an insight into how to read the character.

That said - all of you complaining that Japanese is too difficult because of the writing system - I'm willing to bet that all of you would give up on trying to learn any other language as well, regardless of what alphabet it used.

Learning Kanji is not that difficult, you just learn a few more each week and make sure to review the old ones. If you're reading something and you don't recognise a character, you look it up in Jisho or Rikaichan or similar.

>>46697443
yeah, like the Germans

>>46697603
Yeah. When you're the customer.
Not when applying for a job. Or working at one.

Seriously though, why does English have so many stupid bullshit exceptions to rues.

>>46697603
Use "ore" to get laid, not try to get a job.

>>46697617
Learned French, Spanish and German. Fuck your shit, Kanji are stupid.

>>46697617
Well, it sounds like you aren't talking completely out your ass so explain me this: What happens when two Kanji Ideograms are put side by side?

>>46697637
must of been a snooty type of job. Work in the rice fields, I bet they take anyone that can use a hoe

ダブスゲット

>>46697639
Russian is kind of like that as well. The rules are easily bent.

>>46697639
You can ignore the exceptions. People will still understand you.

>>46697566
Then your Japanese teacher was going out of their way to be shit because the usual way to teach the language is start out with long forms because:
1) The rest of the language builds off of them
2) Long forms are more or less "safe". You're not likely to offend anyone by using them and will, at worst, just come off as oddly polite

>>46697665
Fukou da

>>46697649
Even weird non Indo-Germanic languages are made tolerable by the use of Roman script. Malaysian/Indonesian is okay because of the script, even though there are zero common words shared unlike French/German/Whatever in Europe.

>>46697639
English grammar was created in the 19th century wholesale by adapting what they felt was the perfect language: ancient Latin.

It wasn't a big deal then since, "Grammar school" meant Latin grammar, for over 2000 years.
So they bullied and shoved English in to having Latin rules.

Also shit like having double negatives bring a positive, that from math logic, not language.
Most language have double negatives and use it fine.

>mfw Arabic has half the number of speakers, zero related languages and the same difficulty as japanese

>>46697641

>use ore to get laid

That'd be like using dattebayo at the end of your sentences. People would think you were immature and stupid. And if you used dattebayo they'd probably think you're an Otaku.

Ore would probably only work on naive teenage sluts... if you were lucky.

>>46697578
I always assumed that after about the age of 14-16, you dropped boku completely.

>>46697703
Not to mention the long forms are harder. If you master them, using da, ru, and yo are easy as shit.

>>46697748
Why would they put it in the service books, then? To purposefully make them sound like boisterous machos?

>>46697732
I was under the impression that all the fucked up aspects of English were due to the fact that it's the bastard offspring of Old English (a Germanic language) and French (a Romantic language). So basically two very different grammar systems got combined with two very different vocabularies, which is why English not only has a ton of exceptions but also often has two (very subtly different) words for every meaning.

>>46697651
The meanings influence each other much in the same way prefixes, suffixes and words with combined etymology do in English.

It can get a bit tricky here with the reading method, because the way it's read can change sometimes minorly or sometimes drastically, but it's almost impossible to mistake the meaning of a word made up of composite Kanji when you know the meanings of all of the characters in that word.

>>46697756
Most Japs. at least those who hold decent jobs, will use Boku until they become old old, then Washi or some shit. Watashi is formal, work related, Ore is gangsta/low class

>>46697791
It's to keep the stereotype that all gaijins are annoying and rude, obviously.

>dutch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shv4ErMRyo8&feature=related

>>46697756
It's often used by feminine characters in anime/games and young boys.
IRL it's often used by young men and salarymen, while addressing superior.

>>46697817
This makes me remember about
Itoshiki+nozomu=zetsubou
Mind blown.

Pera, pera pera pera!

>>46697838
Dutch is a language designed by comedians to make The Muppet Show funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu7XI22vjbg

>>46697756
no, it's just that the personal pronouns have a lot of different subtle meanings. boku isn't always used by (young) males and ore doesn't always mean you're being a badass. you can generalize them to those rules and it will work but it's not the whole picture. there's a buttload of other pronouns each with their own history and nuances and acceptability

tl;dr just use watashi professionally, boku also fine if you're a male but may sound a bit more casual

>>46697791
Probably because it was a crap guidebook written by people who didn't know/care about politeness levels.

>>46697870
Yeah, Gym teachers are dumb in my country too.

>>46697816
No, it's messed up Latin grammar.
The thing about English is, compare to most other modern languages, there is no "official" form.

Unlike French, German, Spanish, Italian, Jap. Korean, Chinese, etc... there is no governmental body saying this is so, this is not.
The grammar books are purely descriptive, proscriptive.

All the shit your Englsih teacher told you was a lie, srsly. You can use English however you like, and enough people use it the same way it WILL be accepted, though frowned upon by old farts.

>>46697878

>>46697822
>Ore is gangsta/low class
>low class
>mfw men use it to emphasize their manliness, not low class.

>>46697922
*descriptive, NOT proscriptive...

>>46697922
Again, this is true of every language ever. Fuck the French Academie right in the ass.

english has around 8,000 sounds.
the japanese language only has 110 sounds.

we should invent some new kanji

>>46697943
lol, real life is not yakuza or animu, faggot.
You'll use Ore informally to known friends and chicks you're fucking...

It's like saying NIGGER in America, in doors, unless you wanna be treated like one.

>>46697986
Um, what the fuck are you talking about? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology

>>46697986
THE POWER OF PHONETICS AND RIPPING OFF EVERY LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD AT THE SAME TIME

>>46697780

Can someone explain what these 'long forms' are?

Is it just using 'desu' instead of 'da' or something?

>>46697986
>english has around 8,000 sounds

>>46698004
There are still plenty of Chinese Hanzi they forgot to borrow, so just use those.

>>46697943
>pic
it always startles me how uncannily girly-feminine her mouth is

>>46698041
>use simplified
Kubo it!

>>46698017
>俺, おれ ore informal form for men and boys, women not being feminine/polite; distinctly masculine, sometimes vulgar
>low class
>yakuza
fullretard.jpg

everyone knows you're supposed to use sesshun and de gozaru if you want to sound cool

>>46698028
>>46698021
>>46698025
>mfw americans glide all over the place and turn every vowel sound into a schwa.

I always have the urge to use Atashi, even though I'm a guy. (It is supposed to be for gurls right?).
Is that my subconscious calling?

>>46698127
It just means that you want to take it in ass.

I want to learn kanji. What's better for the start Heising's Remembering the Kanji or this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyōiku_kanji?

>>46698127
Use Watakushi and be fabulous.

>>46697878
Dutch is German + French + English + a special weirdness in words that only the Dutch know. It's pretty cool. I speak G+F+E already, so when I arrived in The Netherlands, I was able to read newspapers right away.

Oh, spoken Dutch? Not as Germanic as I expected. Z was a 'zuh' sound not a 'tze' sound like German. Just remember:
- j is a vowel
- words ending in 'en' usually lose their 'n'.
Goed? Ja hoor!

>>46698026
That's part of it. It refers to verb and adjective endings as well though. I'd post examples but I just realized how much I've Japanese I've forgotten in the last several months ;_;

>>46698127
More like laziness. "W"s are a pain

>>46698026
desu and da are not perfectly interchangeable, da is typically dropped in spoken language unless you wanna sound really masculine, and is never used in question sentences unlike "desu ka"

long form means sentence-final verbs end in -masu/-masen/-mashita/-masendeshita, sentence-final adjectives end with -desu, etc. etc. the rules for words in clauses inside sentences is different

>>46698127
Japs make fun of white dude who learn Jp from their girlfriends and pick up woman's speech patterns.
So a lot of white dudes in Japn living the dream, but speak like chicks...

Do a little research. The difficulty of learning another language is directly related to how different it is from the language/s you already know. For example, English-speakers have much less trouble learning Frisian or Spanish because of phonetic and grammatical similarities.

It has also been postulated that English is easy to learn on a basic level but extremely difficult to master.

In closing, Japanese play on words? They love that fucking shit. How does kanji writing help people when they're speaking directly? They seem to get along just fine through context in spoken word, I think they could make do in written as well.

>>46698152
I thought that watakushi was the "lowest" of self-addressing forms. It's hard being fabulous while using it.

>>46698028


would you say...10 million?

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH

>>46698191
Hmm, must have been confusing it for something else.

>>46698122
Not really.
America is pronounced Uh-mer-uh-kuh. Only three schwas out of four vowels.
President is Pres-uh-dent. Only one schwa out of three.
Not too shabby.

There's plenty of Uhmeruhkun words.

>>46698191
I believe is the feminine form of watashi (even though watashi is neutral). SO I think you're wrong.

>>46696621
If I remember right, kanji is similar too. It is constructed by using kana (hira/kata) + special (short list) kanji chars

unfortunately, I only took 1 japanese class, I didnt learn how to read kanji, only kata/hira.

>>46698166

Ahk. That's what I thought.

I've been learning Japanese for about a year now and I'd never heard of long forms/short forms before. But I know the difference.

So since English is my second language and I can use it with perfect mastery then I guess I should learn Japanese since it's easier!

Thanks for the heads up /a/

>>46698248
atashi is the feminine form. watakushi is an even more formal form of watashi and equally neutral, used to be used a lot more than it is now. watakushi would likely make you sound like a salesman.

>>46698191
isn't that the word that animu characters with OHOHOHOHOHO laughs use?

>>46698248
You're thinking about atakushi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_spoken_Japanese

This thread goes to show that /a/'s complete lack of understand about things extends beyond anime.

>>46698166
I still remember reading Ariel's blog about the time the Yakuza boss phoned his landlady to inquire if he was okay, and he heard her dropping more honorifics than he knew existed.

english at a classy level is easy or med difficulty

nigger and hip-hop bullshit is what makes communication so difficult


seriously i can detect niggers playing online easily

>>46698259
it's a rule of thumb for self-taught japanese speakers. more sounds = more formal.

>speak spanish and english fluently
>couldn't get into french

maybe because i just don't like the fucking language


and this thread is making me try Japanese, to a serious level

>>46698269
Watakushi sounds stilted and formal to modern Japanese ears, so yeah, the typical bratty anime ojousama uses it to sound more refined than the lowly commoners around her.

>>46698316
Well there's like 3 separate people here who seem to know wtf they're talking about. Better than usual.

Well, most people have left now but this was fun.

the syllable "kou" has at least 40 different meaning in Japanese depending on the context and I know, let's put an ordinal number after the romanised syllable and rote learn them..oh wait

Is it even necessary to interact with kanji if all you want to do is speak the language?

Can one survive by learning from romaji alone?

>sure is weekend /a/ in here

Kanji is a fucking terrible system, and this is coming from somebody who spent years of elementary school in East Asia learning thousands of characters. You spend your homework writing characters over and over again just so you can remember how to write it (Because even a misplaced dot or slash somewhere means you fucked up), then you spend even more time looking the character up in the dictionary just to learn what other characters it can be combined with, which often results in a new meaning greater than the sum of its parts. Then there's the fact that characters can have multiple pronunciations depending on context. The alphabet system is much more preferable - even if you don't know how to spell something you can sound it out and people will still understand you despite minor errors. If you forget how to write a character, you're shit out of luck. With an alphabet, you can expand your vocabulary passively, just reading stuff. Remembering where each slash, dot, and line goes for characters is not so easy.

>>46698452

Essentially no. But learning Kanji better helps you understand what certain words could mean. Of course, you wont be able to survive very well in Japan if you can't read or write.

>>46698448
Why number them when the usage should be apparent from the context?

Just like when someone mixes up their and there but we manage to know what the shit their talking about anyway.

This thread is absolutely hilarious.

Spanish/Italian/French are the most convenient native languages.

With little to no effort you can understand each others conversations and
after 1 or 2 years of study you can easily write grammatically correct sentences in each language.
If you are bored you could also learn Latin.

English has piss easy grammar, it's simply a matter of learning a couple of new words everyday.

So yes, if you speak only your shitty English native language then Japanese might not be for you,
but if you already are multilingual master race then it's only a matter of constantly memorizing kanji.

Useful resources in no particular order:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar
http://www.cjas.org/~zalas/AIR/moin.cgi/JapaneseResources
http://forum.koohii.com/index.php
http://kanjidamage.com/

I also recommend Kanji Odyssey
http://www.coscom.co.jp/ebook/e-2001kanji.html
'though I don't know if there is still a seeded torrent around the net, I downloaded it a long time ago...

>>46698452
A lot of learners consider using kanji a shortcut, in many ways.

You're able to read more things which will help vocabulary, and occasionally there's an "AHA" moment when two things have the same radical, or Kanji, making them easier to remember.

>>46698535
Yeah, it definitely helps you pick up the vocabulary quicker, I think. It's tedious just memorizing words to meanings - when you get into kanji, you're able to start breaking up words into parts (Like in English something like geology can be broken into geo for "Earth" and logy for "study of")

>>46698703
You...need to do that to memorize words?

english vs japanese:

cardiovascular
cardio = heart
vascular = tubes/vessels

心血管
heart
blood
tube

>>46698734
I've never understood why Japan doesn't use the latin terms for scientific and medical concepts and things like the rest of the world.

ITT: Children and Man Children discussing language structure without ever studying language structure. You all need to learn that grammar=/=syntax.

>>46696610
It may not be quite as easy for some languages, but if you're seriously implying that any language could not be written using an alphabet, you're full retard.

>mfw chinese simplified their kanji, while japanese still use the old ones
Why japan can't into kanji?

>>46697421
This is how written language of any form works. The brain interprets the overall structure of the characters/letters as a whole and assigns meaning to it from that nearly instantaneously. No one reads letter by letter and then realizes its a word, then assigns a meaning to that word, then moves on to the next word and does it all over again. If people did that, it would take them the rest of their lives to read a single novel, probably.

>>46698894
I know. That's why I said he was wrong.

>>46698733
You don't NEED to, but it helps. Also, if you encounter a word you've never before, you can figure it out if you know the components.

>>46698894
I swear I can do this with entire sentences.

>>46698957
Interestingly enough, braille is the same way. I have a blind friend who says he doesn't even read the letters when he's reading, they just automatically form words in his mind. it's also been proven that reading braille stimulates the exact same part of a blind person's brain as reading does to a sighted person's.

>people caring about any other language other than English

>>46699041
What, you mean break it down like that? Do you do it on purpose, or is that just how you read? I can break it way down, but I actually have to make a conscious effort to stop and do it.

>>46699119
Think he meant glancing at a sentence and recognizing the whole thing from shape.

>>46699119
It's something I do automatically when I come across kanji/characters. I'm the Anon who spent years of elementary school in East Asia, so I'm sure the whole business comes to me more naturally than it would somebody who grew up with just English or whatever.

>>46699196
If that's the case, then point proven. If not...

>>46698498
because the complete compound word may have a different meaning. Besides, if it were that simple the Allied Occupational Powers would've introduced it

http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/zetsubosensei/zetsubou.htm

Please translate. It's my favorite song in the series and I lost the translation for it.

>>46699219
Oh, OK.

I can 'read' (recognize, at least) alphabets, mostly due to their comparative simplicity to writing systems such as kanji. Where letters are relatively simple, with only one or two major strokes/lines/parts to them, kanji has multiple elements to each character, which make it more difficult to readily recognize. Reading kanji feels more like trying to memorize a design or a picture than a couple of lines that make up an alphabetical character and the series of those that form a word.

I don't know if I explained that well enough or not, but there you go.

>>46699277

Japan is ass backwards in almost every other department, why can't they be the same in language too?

interior
inferior

wow, one tiny little curve and the entire meaning of the word changes! english = hieroglyphics

>>46699470

>word changes when you swap the fucking letters

no shit

It's pretty hard to mess up wwhen riting t/f by hand though

>>46699632
>It's pretty hard to mess up wwhen riting t/f by hand though
>wwhen
>riting
Sure is hard to mess up.

>>46699649

>add 'when' after writing sentence for extra clarification
>implying moving cursor to slightly incorrect location has anything to do with writing by hand
>implying you aren't a faggot

romanisation may work for commonly used words but it will be of little good for technical compound words, scholars and practitioners alike need to conduct etymological study of these words, many of them are derived from Chinese cognates that are pronounced remotely different.

>>46699714

>>46699755
wo ai ni

tudents in the west learn long multi-syllabled technical words by observing the spelling that gives clues to its meaning from related simple words in Latin, Greek or other European language. In contrast Japan's ancient literary core is Chinese so Latin and Greek languages are widely ignored in school.