Misaki works fine for me under Vista 32bit. What error do you get? Perhaps a stupid thing to say but have you restarted, some voice I have installed required a restart before working properly.

I've only been playing around with Misaki for a bit tonight, but I adore using it. Not bothering to record sentences, but conveniently you can set up a hotkey so that anything you Highlight she will read out to you. So is really useful when reviewing in Anki, I am amazed how good she sounds as well.

Straying off from the Misaki train of thought a bit.

I don't intend to be done with RTK for at least 3 or 4 weeks. However, success stories abound with this, I may as well get prepared.

I see people pushing going straight to monolingual. Would it be best to start out looking up the word in a Japanese dictionary, then using a J --> E to translate the definition to English? Or start with looking up the word straight to English, and then later on begin going monolingual.

I suppose my outlook on all learning methods is a bit too negative. Something for me to work on after I finish Japanese.

Wouldn't going cold turkey into monolingual definitions be kinda...pointless?

Like, you don't know a word. Therefore, you look it up in a monolingual dictionary. In the definition, you don't understand half the words. So you pick a confusing word, look it up in a monolingual dictionary, and find that you don't understand half the words of THAT definition.

Or, am I reading AJATT the wrong way, and it is really meaning to use a J <--> E to translate the Japanese definition of a word you do not know.

I only suggest going monolingual if you really can do "AJATT", meaning that you have a lot of free time to spend on Japanese.

It also might be worth it in the beginning to look up in English words which you also don't know and are part of the definition. If you use the same J-J dictionary over and over, you'll see the same stylistic and word choice repeats. Understanding these will open understanding to many words.

You might also want to set a time limit on trying to understand a word through J-J. It can be really easy to get a definition that is way above you or is hard to grasp the word from. Just go to J-E and continue on. Just like it is kind of hard to define things like "Experience", understanding what word the definition in a foreign language points to is likewise difficult.

If you can't spend a lot of time everyday on studying, just use J-E and plow through words quickly. IMO the advantage here is you quickly learn the words and get more input from (hopefully) real life usage.

You need to have a certain level of Japanese language under your belt before you go monolingual, and that means going J->E for a while. Some people need more time to do it than others. If you don't understand what you're reading, what's the point in going monolingual?

AJATT is a neat approach. It has a lot of neat ideas to make learning Japanese "fun," but don't try to look at it as One True Way you Must Follow. I look at it as a site with some good ideas for making the time I spend on Japanese more effective.

If going monolingual isn't effective for you at this point, then don't do it. Wait and try again later. If you're just starting out in Japanese, I wouldn't press too hard to go mono at some arbitrary magic number of sentences. Just do it when it feels right. When you can read a sentence in Japanese and not think about it in English, you're definitely ready. You can probably do it sooner, but it's going to take more effort.

Going monolingual will help improve your Japanese a great deal-- you just have to figure out when it's right for you.

And there's nothing wrong with being suspicious of learning methods that don't follow convention. But then again, conventional wisdom when it comes to education is about 100+ years behind. Everyone has a different style of learning, so find one that fits your style.

Although I have a fair Japanese knowledge already I am waiting until my reading skill improves until I go J-J exclusively. At the moment I am taking sentences from ADBJG, but as I am OCRing the whole thing its quicker for me to copy and paste the Japanese and the English and any Grammar explanation I want from there. I already know what the sentence means usually, but I see no real harm in putting the English there. Any completely new words I come across I check in Sanseido and Edict and put the definitions in, if I can understand it anyway. And by understand I don't always mean read, but just get the gist of. E.g

だおれ ［倒れ］ - （１） 立っているものが横になる

Even if I couldn't read that, just using Heisig keywords and basic Japanese you can understand the meaning. And now, if I can't read it, Misaki will read it to me!

Alright, now that I have TextAloud set up and everything, she works fine. However, she still doesn't sound quite up to what she did on the sample on the website, in my opinion.

Oh well, it's definitely really good and nothing to complain about really.

Thank you all for your input. It's still a while off, but if I can get the preparation done ahead of time, in the time I can't use to study RtK, all the better, right?

tomusan Wrote:Although I have a fair Japanese knowledge already I am waiting until my reading skill improves until I go J-J exclusively. At the moment I am taking sentences from ADBJG, but as I am OCRing the whole thing its quicker for me to copy and paste the Japanese and the English and any Grammar explanation I want from there. I already know what the sentence means usually, but I see no real harm in putting the English there. Any completely new words I come across I check in Sanseido and Edict and put the definitions in, if I can understand it anyway. And by understand I don't always mean read, but just get the gist of. E.g

だおれ ［倒れ］ - （１） 立っているものが横になる

Even if I couldn't read that, just using Heisig keywords and basic Japanese you can understand the meaning. And now, if I can't read it, Misaki will read it to me!

I hoep you don't mind me asking, but what is ADBJG?

A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. An excellent reference book published by Japan Times. You should be able to find it at amazon.com, or amazon.ca, in your case.

It does a really good job of explaining various grammar points, in alphabetical order.

There's also A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar as well, but it's a bit harder to find.

I d like to do the grammar book advised by Khatzu : there are more than 2000 sentences . There aren t that much sentence in other books like mnh jfc , kodansha dictionary

nest0r Wrote:So what's the deal with 'nga' instead of 'ga'... is that common?

Funny you should mention that.

My current 先生 says that all the time. I haven't asked her what part of Japan she is from, because it keeps slipping my mind, but I assume that's a dialectical thing.

So, to answer your question, it isn't wrong, but I don't know if it is common or not.

*P.S. - I have also only ever heard it said by women.

they use 'nga' in Pimsleur all the time, but I haven't noticed it particularly in any of my friends speech. Will listen more carefully from now on...

If you're looking for the dictionaries of Japanese grammar, then here's some places you can find it if you're outside of Japan. If you're in Japan, you should be able to find it at a larger bookstore.

http://www.thejapanshop.com
Friendly service, good prices, and it's an independent business, so it's always nice to support the little guy when possible. He'll ship anywhere, but he's based in Florida, so the closer you live, the faster/cheaper it'll be. If you're in the US, he uses the USPS, so it's especially cheap.

And if you're outside of Japan but need to order some books, I suggest:
http://www.bk1.jp
Mainly because their shipping options are much better, and much cheaper.

And don't forget that the Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar ought to be out any day now. The Japan Times Book Club site says it was released April 25th or so, but I haven't seen it on any internet sites yet.

Huh. Would んが just be a contraction of のが? Sort of like how んです is a contraction of のです?

Although I looked at my reference books, and couldn't find anything on のが, maybe it's just the use of a combination of の and　が? Or it could just be a pronunciation thing.

Glad to hear they're putting out an advanced dictionary out... I'm not too surprised that it's not find-able yet, tho. I love the Japan Times books, but sometimes their distribution systems leave me totally puzzled.

I noticed the Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar at Kinokuniya the other day, so it's definitely out. Maybe still percolating to the online retailers.

I found it. It's not selling at Amazon though.

http://bookclub.japantimes.co.jp/act/en/...do?id=1295

Wish I could see the inside of it.

rich_f Wrote:Huh. Would んが just be a contraction of のが? Sort of like how んです is a contraction of のです?

I'm pretty sure what they were referring to is a pronunciation thing, completely unrelated to んです. I have heard a few people use it too, usually in a situation where they're saying a sentence that ends in ですが, but the が has ん right before it.

As to what dialect it is, or how common it is, I couldn't tell you. It might be a fairly "countryside"-type thing since the people I know who use it aren't from big cities.

It's when the g sound sounds like there and n mixed in there... I was thinking about this recently because it appears a lot on the voice blog thing here http://www.voiceblog.jp/nippon/
I've only listened to the Geisha/maiko clip, but it's not just が,　you can here it in そのご　and にぎわって etc, too.

I mean, I knew about this before, but now I'm wondering how common it is, or if it's an accent(I use it myself too).

The velar nasal "ŋ" (as in "nga") seems to be "associated with prestige pronunciation or at least with some sense of correctness" [1]. Used in Kabuki, Noh drama and by cultural elites in Tokyo alike. Does not affect meaning.

[1] John Stuart Goodman, "The Velar Nasal in Japanese: Phoneme or Allophone?", The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Mar., 1968), pp. 153-156.

I had actually heard that spoken many times, and I eventually assumed that it was the normal way to pronounce the が sound in most occasions. Besides the ん sound before it, the が itself sometimes is softened so much that is becomes almost inaudible. The sound is halfway between んが and んな.
Is this something I imagined or someone else noticed it too?

I've been working with TextAloud some today, working on my pronunciation, and I've noticed a few things.

1. It's much easier for me to "shadow" Show, even though he doesn't sound as nice as Misaki or Miyu. (He sort of sounds like he just smoked 4 packs. >_>)

2. If it does weird things to pronunciation, change things up a little. For some reason, it had problems reading 五年前 as ごねんまえ. It read it as ごとしまえ. When I changed it to ５年前, it had no problems reading it as ごねんまえ.

I also had a problem where it read 少し塩　as すこしえん. No idea why, there. I wound up using a comma after 少し and 塩　(しお), and it read it properly. Weeeeird.

But it's still amazingly handy for working on pronunciation.

Incidentally, is there any place I may happen to "stumble" across some kind of "non-pay" version of show?

One thing I've noticed with Misaki-- she tends to say んが instead of plain old が. You can hear it more pronounced if you slow her down to about -7 or -8. (She talks pretty fast at 0.)

Oh, and Ghinzdra-- I'd be interested to see what your teachers thought of Show's pitch accents-- I know he sounds a little more computer-y, but does he get the pitch accents right, or do they sound unnatural?

nest0r Wrote:Yo! It's only $35 bucks, cut 'em some slack. Plus, let's try not to get the forums in trouble.

I'm not trying to rip the company out of $35. I just don't currently have that money to spend. Not for another month or two, at least. And when I do, I will definitely compensate the company for it.

Also, I would like to test them out before I buy them. I want to know if it is honestly worth it.

I mean, these voices seem pretty good, but honestly I don't think anything can ever beat a native speaker or listening to music/movies/TV Shows.

Hell, I think the only reason Khatz switched it up to the voice for the question is because he's doing Chinese now and that is heavily based in pronunciation and tones (which suck). And if he did Chinese the same way he did Japanese, by just reading... Well, he'd be screwed to say the least.

So really, I don't know what all the fuss is over Misaki and Show. I mean, I have Misaki, but I'd never, never shell out the $350 for her. Especially after testing her out and finding that the version on the computer isn't as good as the demo on their website, which I find to be deceptive and sneaky.

This is also why I'd like to demo the real Show before I pay $35.

I have a Mac and a really slow PC in a closet somewhere. Is my only alternative to go back to the PC?