Aijin Wrote:I was tutoring someone recently that did this to me, and it was indescribably irritating. He is in elementary Japanese, and tried to correct me on using ある for an animate object in a sentence because his textbook and teacher, naturally, taught him いる = animate　ある = inanimate. I tried to explain that that's the explanation used to teach complete beginners because teaching them exceptions and the finer details of usage would just be unnecessary at that stage and end up confusing them, but he would have none of it. Ended up arguing about it for nearly half an hour before just giving up in sheer frustration.

Evidently my entire life experience is trivial compared to the erudition gained from a few weeks of Japanese classes. Hum de dum.

Teachers of Russian usually prevent such situations by telling their students from the start that Russian is an extremely illogical and inconsistent language where every single rule has tons of exceptions that y'all don't need to worry about at this point. Dunno how well that would work for Japanese though.

"Our Japanese conversation club had a cosplay group turn up once, as if it wasn't awkward enough trying to find the balls to speak Japanese to natives at that point without sitting next to someone dressed as a gundam pilot."

I laughed so hard!


I once went to a camping-outing and there was one kid wrote his name in カタカナ. His name was sean (pronounced shawn) but he wrote セアン. I asked him if his name was pronounced セアン, because I was unsure of how to say "sean", and got told off. From then on, he told everyone else that I was faking Japanese (I was helping other littler kids writing their names in カタカナ). It really pissed me off that everyone thought I was faking but I later found it funny.

Actually that pretty much describes my experience with "normal" people and me studying Japanese. No one believed me until I had some Japanese friends. They then kept asking me, "How do you say XXX?" 8)

Aijin Wrote:

Thora Wrote:...I shall join forums with Japanese members and inform them that their Japanese is "unnatural" and "incorrect". ;-)

I was tutoring someone recently that did this to me, and it was indescribably irritating. He is in elementary Japanese, and tried to correct me on using ある for an animate object in a sentence because his textbook and teacher, naturally, taught him いる = animate　ある = inanimate. I tried to explain that that's the explanation used to teach complete beginners because teaching them exceptions and the finer details of usage would just be unnecessary at that stage and end up confusing them, but he would have none of it. Ended up arguing about it for nearly half an hour before just giving up in sheer frustration.

Evidently my entire life experience is trivial compared to the erudition gained from a few weeks of Japanese classes. Hum de dum.

Oh dear, he's in for a fun time, isn't he. The arrogance of some people never ceases to astound me. Maybe start correcting him on his english. For starters, see if he knows what the word erudition means lol. Your *english* is better than quite a few native speakers i know. It'd take serious balls to question your japanese.

kainzero Wrote:i went to a japanese conversation club at ucla and somehow let it slip that i like akb48.
oh boy, everyone laughed at me, both japanese and japanese learners.

If it wasn't for Google I could have sworn that you were talking about firearms

gdaxeman Wrote:oh boy, everyone laughed at me, both japanese and japanese learners.
Ah, the herd mentality, and the fear of being laughed at and secluded — that's why so many people fear making public what they really like when they believe it is not "acceptable" and end up complying with the group. I say there should be more people sharing their real interests, not adopting the group's intererests as being their own.

it's funny because i got that whole thing where they shake their heads at me like i'm crazy and "omg i can't believe you watch them/listen to their music/whatever."

then later they also admit that they like it. and ask me who my favorite member is.
hahahha.

Tzadeck Wrote:Fun fact!

that was not fun at all.
in fact, that was quite mortifying.

vonPeterhof Wrote:Teachers of Russian usually prevent such situations by telling their students from the start that Russian is an extremely illogical and inconsistent language where every single rule has tons of exceptions that y'all don't need to worry about at this point. Dunno how well that would work for Japanese though.

World's most boring book?

Haha that's a great book.

kainzero Wrote:it's funny because i got that whole thing where they shake their heads at me like i'm crazy and "omg i can't believe you watch them/listen to their music/whatever."

then later they also admit that they like it. and ask me who my favorite member is.
hahahha.

This is nice! So you did a good thing by revealing your secret — that's what I'm talking about.

That's okay kainzero.

For a while I was obsessed with that one Korean girls group SNSD even though I rued and hated them for a long time.

It was really funny because friends of mine who were Korean thought I was a total dumbass when I told them I liked it

"For a while I was obsessed with that one Korean girls group SNSD even though I rued and hated them for a long time."

Discovered them last night. XD

AKB48's "Sakura no Ki ni Narou" sells 655,000 copies in one day

Aijin Wrote:Evidently my entire life experience is trivial compared to the erudition gained from a few weeks of Japanese classes. Hum de dum.

LOL. Reminds me of someone on Smart.fm who was arguing with me about the grammatical inconsistencies in sentences taken from one of Barack Obama's speeches. He then assumed that I thought I was self important or royalty when I used "one" instead of "you."

kazelee Wrote:

Aijin Wrote:Evidently my entire life experience is trivial compared to the erudition gained from a few weeks of Japanese classes. Hum de dum.

LOL. Reminds me of someone on Smart.fm who was arguing with me about the grammatical inconsistencies in sentences taken from one of Barack Obama's speeches. He then assumed that I thought I was self important or royalty when I used "one" instead of "you."

LOL

kazelee Wrote:

Aijin Wrote:Evidently my entire life experience is trivial compared to the erudition gained from a few weeks of Japanese classes. Hum de dum.

LOL. Reminds me of someone on Smart.fm who was arguing with me about the grammatical inconsistencies in sentences taken from one of Barack Obama's speeches. He then assumed that I thought I was self important or royalty when I used "one" instead of "you."

Well, don't you think it gives a certain impression when you speak like that?

After all... one does not simply walk into mordor.

Some might say akb48 are in bad taste:

I would find it hard to disagree with those people.

Man I gotta say, as a Japanese fanboy, Korean pop music is vastly superior to Japanese pop music.

thecite Wrote:Some might say akb48 are in bad taste:

I would find it hard to disagree with those people.

i can actually go on and on about how there's a lot about them i like and a lot about them i dislike.

i also feel that j-pop and k-pop are things that people don't want to admit they like, but everyone does it. it's like the biggest closet fan mentality ever.

maybe it'll be cool 8 years later like it is now with n'sync/backstreet boys.

kerosan41 Wrote:After all... one does not simply walk into mordor.

It only gives that impression if used in that manner.

J-Pop is something you adjust to. But after listening to if for a year or two, I still think most of it is pretty trashy.

What am I gonna do when I'm fluent?


Screw with telemarketers even more.

Now I'm almost fluent...not quite there.. but I can read novels, newspaper, manga, whatever without much problem.

Listening has come a long way, speaking also.

But I found out that the more fluent I become. The less interesting Japanese language becomes.

At first, Japanese sounds really cool and really beautiful.

Now, not so much, it's just "there"...it merely is.

At one point I was like" this is it? This is the language...this is all there is to it?"

well...that's how I feel.

Realism Wrote:Now I'm almost fluent...not quite there.. but I can read novels, newspaper, manga, whatever without much problem.

Listening has come a long way, speaking also.

But I found out that the more fluent I become. The less interesting Japanese language becomes.

At first, Japanese sounds really cool and really beautiful.

Now, not so much, it's just "there"...it merely is.

At one point I was like" this is it? This is the language...this is all there is to it?"

well...that's how I feel.

when your fluent, you won't even feel like your fluent

Realism Wrote:Now, not so much, it's just "there"...it merely is.

At one point I was like" this is it? This is the language...this is all there is to it?"

well...that's how I feel.

I guess that's the point when you just sit back and enjoy the things you only have access to in Japanese?

NinjaViking Wrote:

vonPeterhof Wrote:Teachers of Russian usually prevent such situations by telling their students from the start that Russian is an extremely illogical and inconsistent language where every single rule has tons of exceptions that y'all don't need to worry about at this point. Dunno how well that would work for Japanese though.

World's most boring book?

Why do I find this picture to be so interesting/hilarious?

Kanjiiz Wrote:What will you do such that will make all the hard work worth it?

For me it's using all Japanese resources, from people to articles!

Living there for a while would be great too, but if I couldn't live there, it won't disappoint me.

Read, read, and read some more.
I'll watch anime and j-dramas of course.
But I'm really learning the language to read and write it.