Tobberoth Wrote:Personally I have no problem with one letter changed. I think it depends on how much you rely on romaji, that is, how used you are to kana. If you THINK in kana, you shouldn't have that problem because くらい and からい are as different as からい and ずらい, in a sense.

My personal guess is that it's because English cares less about its vowel sounds than Japanese. With English you can drop all the vowels from a text and it's still generally comprehensible (partly because unstressed vowels are often all just schwa anyway), whereas I think Japanese puts more 'information' into its vowels. (More concretely, the case where more than one vowel sound in the word is important to disambiguate occurs much more often.) So I think it's more of an audio-processing/memory problem than a written-representation one -- I don't rely on romaji (and never have) except when I'm being lazy typing forum posts :-)

In terms of difference in mouth shapes and movements I would contend that く and か *are* closer together than か and ず , incidentally.

pm215 Wrote:whereas I think Japanese puts more 'information' into its vowels.

Well, that is more or less what I'm talking about. The whole concept of vowels contra consonant makes little sense in a language where you write using syllables. To a Japanese, there is no k and a in ka, there's just ka. While I agree that ka and ku are created in a similar way (mouth movement etc) I don't really see how that makes karai and kurai easy to mix up. Though I suppose it could indeed be something to do with English, I don't know since I'm Swedish and it's possible Sweden has more focus on vowels as you say.

What I meant to say from the start was that if you process Japanese like English and think in terms of single letters, it's easier to mix it up than if you think in terms of kana/syllables like the Japanese do.

mentat_kgs Wrote:@stehr
Meh, they have kanji, why these Japanese use so much katakana?
So much easier to read!

No kidding!

Tobberoth Wrote:

pm215 Wrote:whereas I think Japanese puts more 'information' into its vowels.

Well, that is more or less what I'm talking about. The whole concept of vowels contra consonant makes little sense in a language where you write using syllables.

I think you're confusing the writing system and the language here. All languages have vowels and consonants -- it's a phonetic distinction. I guess if you remember words by 'seeing' them in written form in your brain then kana vs romaji would make a difference, but personally I 'hear' them.

pm215 Wrote:My personal guess is that it's because English cares less about its vowel sounds than Japanese. With English you can drop all the vowels from a text and it's still generally comprehensible (partly because unstressed vowels are often all just schwa anyway), whereas I think Japanese puts more 'information' into its vowels.

This is a very Western-centric way of thinking. If you think along these lines, Chinese puts more emphasis and information in pitch than Western languages, but where does that observation get you?

Interesting, but it won't help you get very far in learning Chinese...

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I think the real issue is, when you are faced with new vocabulary and sounds that have no binding to anything you have previously experienced, how do you produce a binding that helps you remember?

If you previously had binding from readings that からい is spicy and くろい is black, there is no way you could get them mixed up, in listening or in reading. Whereas if you had never heard of からい and くらい, and you are trying to learn the vocabulary without bindings to the known Kanji, it may be easy to get them confused.

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I am actually facing a similar problem these days with multi-syllabic kunyomi vocabulary that I have never heard before.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=2246

For example, when faced with new vocabulary like:

滞る とどこおる to get stuck in traffic

how do I memorize the pronunciation? With no previous binding to this word, I can mis-memorize the reading as ととこおる or とろこおる or とどこうる.

This issue is very much related to your mis-bindings between certain readings and words: without bindings to known meanings or previous learned (and heard) sounds, it's easy to make mistakes.

The Japanese sounds sound too similar to our foreign ears and we get confused...

@kfmfe04
I try to outnumber my reading time with listening time 10:1

Meh, being able to read kanji somehow affects my listening comprhension. When I'm listening and I catch a word I cannot understand, I start to wonder witch kanji it uses before figuring out the meaning. Ahuah.

pm215 Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:

pm215 Wrote:whereas I think Japanese puts more 'information' into its vowels.

Well, that is more or less what I'm talking about. The whole concept of vowels contra consonant makes little sense in a language where you write using syllables.

I think you're confusing the writing system and the language here. All languages have vowels and consonants -- it's a phonetic distinction. I guess if you remember words by 'seeing' them in written form in your brain then kana vs romaji would make a difference, but personally I 'hear' them.

I think you're wrong here, making a distrinction where there is none. It's like phonetic language. You hear an r, you think r. You hear an l, you think l. But when Japanese here either, they think the same thing. It's not a difference to them, but it's a big difference to us. We make a distinction where they do not. Same with kana, when a Japanese person hear a new word, they probably parse it by syllable, not by consonant and vowels. They hear "ka", you hear "k" and "a".

kfmfe04 Wrote:

pm215 Wrote:My personal guess is that it's because English cares less about its vowel sounds than Japanese. With English you can drop all the vowels from a text and it's still generally comprehensible (partly because unstressed vowels are often all just schwa anyway), whereas I think Japanese puts more 'information' into its vowels.

This is a very Western-centric way of thinking. If you think along these lines, Chinese puts more emphasis and information in pitch than Western languages, but where does that observation get you?

Well, it gets you (a) this is irritating (which is where we came in) and (b) this is something I need to pay more attention to. Your analogy with Chinese is apt in that (a) I suspect English speakers would be more likely to forget the tone than to make other errors of recall and (b) it needs attention when learning vocabulary.

I think that if you're trying to consider the needs of English-speakers learning Japanese as a second language, Western-centric thinking is quite a good plan, actually. For example, the language school I went to had separate 'improving your accent' classes for English-speakers and Chinese-speakers because the typical problems each group has are completely different.

pm215 Wrote:For example, the language school I went to had separate 'improving your accent' classes for English-speakers and Chinese-speakers because the typical problems each group has are completely different.

My school was similar. Early on, the teacher simply said words and we students had to write them down (words we didn't know at the time, obviously). Turned out, koreans and westerners (mainly swedes at my school) had an equal amount of error... but at completely different words. Swedes have the most problem with お and おう, it's extremely hard for Swedes to hear whether it's one or the other when they aren't used to Japanese (My guess is it's the same for English speakers to an extent, why else would it be Tokyo and Kyoto?). Koreans have big problems with tenten since the korean system is completely different (newbie Koreans often say たいがく instead of だいがく).

stehr Wrote:

mentat_kgs Wrote:@stehr
Meh, they have kanji, why these Japanese use so much katakana?
So much easier to read!

No kidding!

if it were easier to read kanji, they'd use kanji.

since it's not, they use katakana.

pm215 Wrote:(a) I suspect English speakers would be more likely to forget the tone than to make other errors of recall and...

In my experience, the tones are actually easy to remember. The Japanese lack of tones makes recalling and hearing the sounds much more difficult. Ma ? Ghost, mom, horse, tombstone, rice seedling, what?? Chinese have tones to distinguish between these words, so it easy to pick up new vocabulary.

Ex: the first time I heard 乗馬　じょうば, "horse" didn't pop into my mind at all, I thought it was something more like 場所....

However, in Vietnamese, when I heard "ha?i ma~" the first time, I knew it meant "sea horse," because ma has a tone "~" (海馬 【かいば】 (n) sea horse)

TGWeaver Wrote:

stehr Wrote:

mentat_kgs Wrote:@stehr
Meh, they have kanji, why these Japanese use so much katakana?
So much easier to read!

No kidding!

if it were easier to read kanji, they'd use kanji.

since it's not, they use katakana.

What I'm saying is, why use Katakana at all ? Why use not romaji for foreign words? Katakana may be easy to write, but it's still difficult to read. Maybe I'm just slow, but I have to sound out Katakana whenever I read it, why don't I have this problem with kanji? For me, Kanji-compounds are short and easy to distinguish, compare 野球 to バスケットボール. Just a pet peeve of mine, I'm not really trying to prove anything..... Still can't figure out カ vs. 力 though...

stehr Wrote:What I'm saying is, why use Katakana at all ? Why use not romaji for foreign words?

Because romaji isn't any easier for them to read, and it looks a bit out of place in Japanese text?

kfmfe04 Wrote:For example, when faced with new vocabulary like:

滞る とどこおる to get stuck in traffic

how do I memorize the pronunciation? With no previous binding to this word, I can mis-memorize the reading as ととこおる or とろこおる or とどこうる.

Looks something like とどまる(留まる) and　こおる(氷る)...
But I know what you mean. Some longer words I don't see often trip me up...like もよおし　たがさす　 よそおう　ほうむる etc.

stehr Wrote:In my experience, the tones are actually easy to remember. The Japanese lack of tones makes recalling and hearing the sounds much more difficult. Ma ? Ghost, mom, horse, tombstone, rice seedling, what?? Chinese have tones to distinguish between these words, so it easy to pick up new vocabulary.

I agree with you - monosyllabic sounds with pitch (Chinese) is easier to remember than kunyomi (Japanese). Not only that, if you miss your pitch in the context of saying a Chinese sentence, many natives will still be able to correct your mistake in their head and still understand you! This doesn't work as well with mispronounced pitch without context, as the number of characters that map to a single sound+pitch is just too many in Chinese...

yukamina Wrote:

kfmfe04 Wrote:For example, when faced with new vocabulary like:

滞る とどこおる to get stuck in traffic

how do I memorize the pronunciation? With no previous binding to this word, I can mis-memorize the reading as ととこおる or とろこおる or とどこうる.

Looks something like とどまる(留まる) and　こおる(氷る)...
But I know what you mean. Some longer words I don't see often trip me up...like もよおし　たがさす　 よそおう　ほうむる etc.

Yes, I'm ashamed to say it, but I have been resorting to those UGLY memory tricks, not unlike what you have listed above...

I had the hardest time with 承る (うけたまわる)
Then I realized it was like 受けた+回る

The prevalence of katakana. It's tacky.