Okay Buonaparte, if you don't even know what you mean by it then I guess I shouldn't wonder either lol!

I figured I might as well start trying to look around to see what from Japan is translated. Here is a list from Wikipedia:

Ranpo Edogawa (江戸川乱歩): "Unu Bileto", "Ora Masko"
Saburo Koga (甲賀 三郎): "Dezerto"
Eisaburo Ishihara: "Verda Karto: socio post 50 jaroj"
Takeo Arishima (有島 武郎): "Deklaracio", "Senbedaŭre amo rabas"
Naoya Shiga (志賀 直哉): "Krimo de Fan" (范の犯罪)
Kan Kikuchi (菊池 寛): "La Patro Revenas (父帰る)", "Amo de Toojuuroo kaj alia teatraĵoj (藤十郎の恋)"
Nobuko Nakata: "Inkubo"
Ujaka Akita (秋田 雨雀): "Fonto de sudroj", "Danco de skeletoj", "Nokto ĉe landolimoj", "Tiuj, kiuj ĉirkaŭas la ĉerkon"
Souseki Natsume (夏目 漱石): "La Turo de Londono (倫敦塔 - The Tower of London)"
Youbun Kaneko (金子 洋文): "Lavisto kaj Poeto"
Yuuzou Yamamoto (山本有三): "Infanmurdo", "En la Nebulo"
Kidou Okamoto (岡本 綺堂): "Epizodo en Ŝuzenĵi"
Kosetsu Fujisawa: "Gracia"
Fusao Hayashi (林 房雄): "Bildlibro sen bildoj"
Sunao Tokunaga (德永 直): "Malsato en Riĉa Rikolto"
Ihara Saikaku (井原 西鶴): "Kvin Virinoj de Amoro (好色五人女 - Five Women Who Loved Love)
Yasushi Inoue (井上 靖): "Loulan (楼蘭 - Lou-Lan)", "Fremdregionano"
Sawako Ariyoshi (有吉 佐和子): "La edzino de kuracisto Hanaoka Seisyû (The Doctor's Wife)"
Mori Oogai (森鴎外): "Rakontoj de Oogai (selected works)"
Kawabata Yasunari (川端 康成): "Neĝa lando (雪国 - Snow Country)", "Dancistino de Izu (伊豆の踊子 - The Dancing Girl of Izu)"
Tsuyuki Kiyohiko: "Ŝtala Biblio de Samurajismo"
Takeyama Michio (竹山 道雄): "La pokalo el blankdiafana porcelano"
Tatsuzou Ishikawa (石川 達三): "Vivantaj soldatoj (生きている兵隊 - Soldiers Alive)"
Osamu Tezuka (手塚 治虫 - manga): "La Flambirdo (火の鳥)"
Nakazawa Keiji (中沢啓治 - manga): "Nudpieda Gen (はだしのゲン - Barefoot Gen)", about the Hiroshima bombing
Masao Miyamoto (宮本 政於): Wrote and translated a bunch of stuff, a list is here: http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Masao

Here is a list of around 260 translations (not original works), from Japanese to Esperanto, this also has the Author's name and Japanese title of each work. Since the list was made in 2013 there's probably a few more out by now:
http://www.jei.or.jp/evento/2013/tradukajxoj.htm

Prince Toneri (舎人親王他): "Kroniko Japana (日本書紀 - Nihon Shoki / The Chronicles of Japan)". Readable here along with about 10 other things, has many footnotes for help: http://vastalto.com/librejo/kartoKroJap1.html

"Rakontaro Genĝi (源氏物語 - The tale of Genji). Translated in parts and given out by the periodical "La Movado", doesn't seem to be complete. Some parts are readable online here:
http://verkojdetacuo.net/rakontaro-kiricubo.html

Mini-grammar of Ainu:
https://web.archive.org/web/200602090720...karoj.html

A few works seemingly in Japanese and Esperanto but not English:
Teru Hasegawa (長谷川 テル): "Du Pomoj Perditaj"
Masumi Fujii (藤井, 真澄): "Nova Satano"
Chan Hyokchu: „Forpelataj Homoj“ (쫓겨가는 사람들)
Márkus Gábor: Ruĝa Suno kaj Verda Stelo (赤い太陽と緑の星 - Original in Esperanto, later translated to JP and Hungarian)
Tadao Umesao (梅棹 忠夫): "Sepdek-sep ŝlosiloj por la japana civilizacio"
"Moderna Historio de Orienta Azio" (about China, Korea and Japan). 300-page book that you can also buy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Not actually sure if this has been published or if it's simply in progress or what.

Here is a book about who's written and translated what in Esperanto but I am not going to go through it to find the Japanese stuff:
https://books.google.se/books?id=-Z_8CG9...g=PA206&dq

Nonfiction that could be of some use (probably too outdated by now though?):
"Esperanta terminaro de fiziko..." Esperanto-Japanese physics term dictionary
"Enciklopedieto japana" - Japanese encyclopedia in Esperanto

This blog (based on a quick glance) is usually in Esperanto, sometimes it's half Esperanto and half Japanese, but if they translate text they tend to show the original Japanese too.
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/shiro-kurage/

Some awful anime (ex. Sword Art Online) and light novels have been partially translated but from all that I've seen, they haven't been translating directly from Japanese so I'm not going to count them. However the "Devilman" manga is currently being scanlated directly from the Japanese.

captainporridge Wrote:Okay Buonaparte, if you don't even know what you mean by it then I guess I shouldn't wonder either lol!

d'Esperanto would sound too much aristocratic (at least to my French ears), that's why I chose a plebeian hyphen instead.

Isn't using Esperanto to help learn Japanese kind of like using romaji to help learn Japanese?

john555 Wrote:Isn't using Esperanto to help learn Japanese kind of like using romaji to help learn Japanese?

Yeah. It's also like using RTK for learning kanji, like I mentioned. Did I write my earlier posts too confusingly? Sorry, I can try to fix them later (I have to leave for some errands really soon).

john555 Wrote:Isn't using Esperanto to help learn Japanese kind of like using romaji to help learn Japanese?

No, it's not. It's like learning a piano, which you can then use the foundational theory to learn guitar.

RandomQuotes Wrote:

john555 Wrote:Isn't using Esperanto to help learn Japanese kind of like using romaji to help learn Japanese?

No, it's not. It's like learning a piano, which you can then use the foundational theory to learn guitar.

I can see the logic. I guess in the end it depends on how much time a person has available.

john555 Wrote:I guess in the end it depends on how much time a person has available.

Across its various studies it's been found that a person who learns Esperanto is generally 15-50% better or faster (grammar, pronunciation, coming to terms with stuff) at the new foreign language than people of the same linguistical background are who don't know Esperanto... (edited out more info here since it's boring) The point that people usually make is that, for example, if you study Esperanto for one year and French for two years, by the end of the three years you're either on par with or better than your peers who studied French for three years straight. Meaning it actually saves you time in the end, even though it's a detour in the beginning. The other part is that, to paraphrase someone else, Esperanto was a language designed for illiterate farmers who only had 15 minutes to spare a day.

So what most people would say, is that if you have time to spend a year (or two, or five) studying Japanese, or if you take the train to work, you also have time to spend/experiment with studying Esperanto for a few minutes a day and see if it actually does help you in any way.

But who knows how much it helps with Japanese, or how much it would help you personally. The benefits are supposedly on par with the benefits of having learnt Latin, but how much does knowing Latin help with Japanese? (Especially if you already know, say, a Latin-esque language.) And who knows if you or anyone else really doesn't have time to study it. I'm a NEET, so I have nothing but time and there's no problem for me to try different stuff out lol.

I guess my question is, isn't there something better than Esperanto to help with Japanese?

I personally find my knowledge of Latin and Greek VERY helpful in learning Japanese because it gives me a frame of reference (plus as an added benefit I got to read the Aeneid and most of the Odyssey in the original languages).

john555 Wrote:I guess my question is, isn't there something better than Esperanto to help with Japanese?

I personally find my knowledge of Latin and Greek VERY helpful in learning Japanese because it gives me a frame of reference...

I'm pretty sure there's a lot of things better than Esperanto to help with Japanese. So many Finns learn Japanese that there's probably something special going on there... : PP But the point of the thread isn't to talk about what's /best/, it's just to talk about how Esperanto might help if someone were to know/learn it (that's what the OP of the old thread was wondering about). Though it would be interesting to look at which languages in the world help in learning Japanese the most and least and to see where Esperanto falls.

What do you mean by frame of reference?

EDIT: Now I got some feedback from other people when I asked about how Latin/Esperanto would help for learning Japanese (Since people say that Esperanto has about equal benefits as Latin in terms of knowing it as a second language). Here it is paraphrased:

"It's not something to scoff at, that Esperanto helps people get used to foreign word order and compounding so fast. That's usually the biggest problem for adults learning a foreign language."

"English natives are really, really bad at the things that are weird in English so anything that helps them get over that faster (like Esperanto or another language) is really good. They just can't think outside of their English box and have a hard time realizing that other languages aren't English. For example, all the time you see people making threads 'How do I say x in Japanese? Is it like this?' and you have no clue where in the world they got their wrong idea - it's because English is so weird. Even if they're fairly good, they still get tripped up by things like when English uses an irregular wordform compared to other languages (ex. English uses past-tense where others use present-tense)."

"I don't think Latin would help with Japanese aside from its cases making word order more free, and it being a foreign language in general."

captainporridge Wrote:

john555 Wrote:I guess my question is, isn't there something better than Esperanto to help with Japanese?

I personally find my knowledge of Latin and Greek VERY helpful in learning Japanese because it gives me a frame of reference...

EDIT: Now I got some feedback from other people when I asked about how Latin/Esperanto would help for learning Japanese (Since people say that Esperanto has about equal benefits as Latin in terms of knowing it as a second language). Here it is paraphrased:

"It's not something to scoff at, that Esperanto helps people get used to foreign word order and compounding so fast. That's usually the biggest problem for adults learning a foreign language."

"English natives are really, really bad at the things that are weird in English so anything that helps them get over that faster (like Esperanto or another language) is really good. They just can't think outside of their English box and have a hard time realizing that other languages aren't English. For example, all the time you see people making threads 'How do I say x in Japanese? Is it like this?' and you have no clue where in the world they got their wrong idea - it's because English is so weird. Even if they're fairly good, they still get tripped up by things like when English uses an irregular wordform compared to other languages (ex. English uses past-tense where others use present-tense)."

The above comment about "English natives" is not only bullsh*t but also a prejudicial and insulting attack on native English speakers that has no place on this or any forum.

captainporridge Wrote:"English natives are really, really bad at the things that are weird in English so anything that helps them get over that faster (like Esperanto or another language) is really good.

I'm not a native English speaker, but I haven't found anything weird in English or any other language. (But, of course, d-Esperanto is not a language.)

The comments weren't my opinions, they were by people I asked. Sorry if someone finds them wrong or insulting, but I don't think it's a problem since for me it's just "someone else's summarized view (who doesn't have an account on this forum)". I know Buonaparte's doing enough of a job being insulting on purpose that I shouldn't add in any more negative stuff, but on the other hand, Buonaparte's also seemingly totally allowed to be rude, so I thought no one would really mind. (I'm joking - I honestly didn't even think about it because every day I insult Swedish and think it's only natural that someone can insult a language if they want.)

My dad thinks Japanese is a completely useless language and will get you nowhere in life - doesn't mean he's right, but well, it's an opinion someone can have : P

(English has a lot of problems but when you learn it from a young age you forget/miss a lot of them. When you teach it to or generally hang around with people who are learning it at a lower level, you start to realize all the inconsistencies, illogical phrases and so on that it has. The simplest examples I can think of that's not about spelling - sheep/sheeps, cow/beef/veal, swim/swam/swum but hit/hat/hut, "I could care less". As an example of vagueness, "a Danish teacher" could mean "a Danish person who teaches any subject" or "a person of any nationality who teaches the Danish language". "No power" means both "no power to help the situation (ex. no political power)" and "no electrical power (blackout)". There are some more hidden things, like how there's no "whose" regarding inanimate objects in English ("the chair, whose legs were freshly painted...??") as Scandinavians love to point out.

In other languages for example, some of these things are always clear due to grammar or vocabulary differences. I'm not claiming English is the worst language in the world but when someone's mother tongue doesn't have as many of these problems, coupled with having been forced to learn English in school since third grade all the way into University, they might end up not liking English for those reasons. Personally, it's my native language so I don't think too much about it.)

...Well, I've given up trying to research more on the "does Latin help with Japanese" idea because simply no one is talking about it. Though I found this funny opinion:

"Saying that Latin will help you learn other languages is like saying that dating your girlfriend's grandparents will help you get to know her better."

I also think that while researching how Japanese people think Esperanto helped them with English might be interesting in general, I don't think stuff is so backwards-compatible (not sure what to call it) that I could think hardly any of it also applied to English speakers learning Japanese. Except of course word order but that's already covered in the opening post. So, I don't think that aspect is worth looking up/considering for this thread. But if anyone has any other ideas they can think of, I'll try to look those up.

Generally speaking, native speakers of any language only have only a cursorily knowledge of their own language's grammar system. Native English speakers don't really know English. Native Japanese speakers don't really know Japanese. Native Swedish speakers don't really know Swedish. All languages have idiosyncrasies, their historical remnants, their vague sentences, and their idioms. The only real way most people become aware of these things, is by teaching their language. English has a Germanic core with a Latinate outer shell. Japanese has an extreme amount of homonyms. German has extremely long compound words. Swedish adjective have both a strong and a weak inflection and some bizarre idioms [hello jump in the blueberry forest]. English is no better nor worse than any other language.

Well this thread went up like a sun but down like a pancake, eh??

If you think all languages are totally equal, it's okay. I personally don't see them as equals. I think all languages are equal in terms of "all are worth learning and preserving (even if I personally have no interest in learning it)", but I don't think that the languages /themselves/ are equal in terms of ex. "amount of exceptions and irregularities per language" or "difficulty of spelling when you only know the spoken".

——————————————

I lied earlier, I was convinced there must be some info out there so I kept looking for what Latin helps with and I found an overwhelming conclusion that "Latin is just as much help as learning almost any other language would be, it's not special" (apparently it was actually slightly detrimental to people who learnt Latin first and then Spanish after, mostly due to grammar differences).

Then for how Esperanto is actually close to Latin, "Most vocabulary roots are the same, and word order can change similarly, but otherwise there is no similarity at all and the similarities people talk about are simply those same ones that Latin shares with every foreign language".

The closest I found to about if Latin helps with Japanese specifically was "I think Latin helped my Chinese because it helped me learn basic grammar". And of course that the word order can move around. So no new info there either.

So now I'll just spend some more time looking up how many Japanese clubs exist and stuff to fill out the old posts some more, for when people see this thread in the future.

Something for d-Esperanto lovers:
http://www.goethe-verlag.com/book2/EN/ENEO/ENEO002.HTM

captainporridge Wrote:...Well, I've given up trying to research more on the "does Latin help with Japanese" idea because simply no one is talking about it. Though I found this funny opinion:

"Saying that Latin will help you learn other languages is like saying that dating your girlfriend's grandparents will help you get to know her better."

I also think that while researching how Japanese people think Esperanto helped them with English might be interesting in general, I don't think stuff is so backwards-compatible (not sure what to call it) that I could think hardly any of it also applied to English speakers learning Japanese. Except of course word order but that's already covered in the opening post. So, I don't think that aspect is worth looking up/considering for this thread. But if anyone has any other ideas they can think of, I'll try to look those up.

hmm, I've learned Latin in school for 6 years and I must say it was not only very interesting, but also helped me understand the grammar of my own mother tongue (German). One the main benefit was learning how to tackle grammar/vocabulary efficiently, rather than the content of what we learned.

So yes, I would say that experience in learning any language is a benefit to learning other languages just because you get more familiar with the process and optimize better.

Okay, I updated the original post a little.

Now there are two links to some pages I made that show the word order/usage in Esperanto compared to the Japanese much more clearly. They're simply colour-coded sentences. (I'll make more later - I'm not making this for this thread, I'm making it in general since it's easier for me to understand the JP with EO rather than EN).

Okay, I updated the original post again.

I started making Esperanto-Japanese grammar lessons only a few weeks ago, but I can't really put into words all the stuff I've realized that Esperanto makes a lot easier. I had zero clue it would help this much, I only expected that it would help a little with sentence structure and nothing else.

I first start out translating information from a textbook, and I grab some example sentences from the internet/other people's lessons, and look up modern English lessons for the same subject (since the book I'm using is old). Then, pretty much without fail, either during that time or some days after, I have an epiphany about how it "really" works or what it "really" means, or how to word it better, and then practically no further explanation is necessary in order to teach that specific point. (What I mean is, Esperanto often needs a single sentence where English seems to need at least a paragraph + exceptions).

My Japanese is not good. I've read over grammar pages and made my own lessons and notes before, in English. But suddenly I'm learning and remembering tons of grammar points without fail now, that I never even studied before, thanks to doing these Esperanto lessons. I really think it's just because Esperanto can be so much closer to the Japanese.

Captainporridge, I am following this thread with considerable interest. What's your Esperanto level? Advanced?

Well, I'm glad it's interesting, but if I were more diligent I would have copied down a bunch of the helpful things as I found them... instead I get too absorbed in writing/fixing the lessons so then I only end up remembering the biggest items. If I were smarter I would have started keeping a list from the very beginning so I could write a paper on it and submit it somewhere haha.

I don't think all (possibly even most) of these helpful things would be obvious if someone simply /knew/ Esperanto but wasn't using it as their main language to learn Japanese. As in, I think even if you knew Esperanto fluently, if you were using English lessons instead of Esperanto ones to study from then I don't think you wouldn't make the connections.

I would say my level is intermediate. The grammar I have down, except there are probably some nuances or other little things that I don't know (and I still make mistakes but it's just like typos since I tend to do everything on a lack of sleep lol). I'm also not always sure what's "allowed", as in "it should be fine to say it this way or use grammar this way, but is anyone else ever doing it? would someone not understand if I did it?". Most of the time I have doubts but after I Google I find out that other people are indeed using things the same way, just maybe not the majority of them. So I'm still "not solid" I guess. It's one thing when you're writing to yourself, or writing fiction, but it's another when you want it to always be easily understandable to every single other person who speaks the language even half-decently.

Most of the time I don't have to look up words for what I want to say, even if I'm writing fiction. Words for stuff I hardly ever or never use (ex. non-basic math terms, or plant names) are another matter, since I haven't gotten around to learning "all words" yet. In general it's not like the first word that comes to mind is necessarily the best one, so especially when translating I tend to go back and change things later.

After I finish making all these Japanese grammar lessons and get a friend who knows both Japanese and Esperanto to check it over, I'm going to put them in a book, and I will make two versions. The first is just normal and the second is for Esperanto-learners, so I will mark compound words (like varm'stato, "warm'state", instead of varmstato) and reword the explanatory sentences a little, so it's easier for them to look up words and so on. That way, even absolute beginners at Esperanto can start learning Japanese from it more easily.

Obviously, learning any language will help with Japanese. If only because it improves a person's language learning skills.

Here's a better question: is learning Esperanto more helpful than learning an easier natural language first? I think it's not. If someone asked me for advice on a roundabout way to learn Japanese, I'd tell them to learn German first. German is more similar to both English and Japanese than Esperanto. So it's a better choice.

john555 Wrote:The above comment about "English natives" is not only bullsh*t but also a prejudicial and insulting attack on native English speakers that has no place on this or any forum.

He wasn't talking about English natives, he was talking about native English speakers. So it's OK. If it was English natives, that would be different. Then he'd be going way too easy on them. They're terrible, terrible people, with bad teeth and horrid dispositions.

I would be interested if you made a page like one of mine on the site linked in the opening post, and took some of the same Japanese sentences I have, and wrote the German and did similar colour-coding, so I could see the difference between the Esperanto and German. (Maybe it'd help some other people too.) Although my pages aren't finished so not all of the colour-coding/translations are done/correct, that doesn't matter anyway since you would be redoing it for German.

I've been thinking about learning German at some point in the future, so it would also be interesting for that reason.

captainporridge Wrote:That way, even absolute beginners at Esperanto can start learning Japanese from it more easily.

This! +internets!