I had a native speaker once go "wow, you can read katakana?!" after I read the name of something off a menu. :o
Mind you, this was after we had been having long, full-on conversations in Japanese.
People showing surprise at knowing kanji is one thing, but this was a first.

jcdietz03 Wrote:You can begin sentences with and. Particularly if it's dialogue.

I had the same experience. In 11th grade, suddenly it's OK to use "because" to start a sentence, when it never has been OK before.

I am supposed to put two spaces after the period or one? I learned two in high school (HS) but it may have changed since then.

As for the two spaces thing, I just read a long article about it a few weeks ago. In typewriters, all the characters were exactly the same size, so to make it look nice people would put two spaces after each period. However, with computers the spaces are not exactly the same size, and it is considered correct by all the major style guides to include only one space after a period. Almost 100% of books are published with just one space. (PS, I used two spaces for this paragraph--I always do. It's a habit from school.)

I'm an English teacher in Japan, and now I totally understand why teachers say not to start sentences with 'and' and 'because'. My students often write like this:
I went to the store.
Because I wanted some chicken.
And some orange juice.
I like orange juice.
Because it is delicious.

(Also, most Japanese students aren't taught to write in paragraphs in English, so they put a break after each line. I find this strange to this day, simply because the way paragraphs are done in English is very similar to how they are done in Japanese)

"One thing that surprises a lot of jp is that....you know kanji. Seriously it's not like it's rocket science or something."

Your'e right -- it's MORE difficult than rocket science. You have to spend 12 grueling years to master the kanji!! (JK)


"I had a native speaker once go "wow, you can read katakana?!" after I read the name of something off a menu. "

Wow, it takes us a week to learn. But I guess since learning to read English is such a pain they just assume reading カタカナ would be a pain as well. *shrugs*

Tzadeck Wrote:As for the two spaces thing, I just read a long article about it a few weeks ago. In typewriters, all the characters were exactly the same size, so to make it look nice people would put two spaces after each period. However, with computers the spaces are not exactly the same size, and it is considered correct by all the major style guides to include only one space after a period. Almost 100% of books are published with just one space. (PS, I used two spaces for this paragraph--I always do. It's a habit from school.)

My lawyer cousin was taught to use two spaces for legal stuff. I have no idea why.

Quote:I'm an English teacher in Japan, and now I totally understand why teachers say not to start sentences with 'and' and 'because'.

I understand that there are ways to start sentences with "and" and "because." But generally, especially for someone who is learning English, it's best to avoid it.

Because it's hard to explain how to flip sentences and perform tests to see if it sounds natural, I don't think it's a good idea to tell them why "Because" works in this sentence but not in theirs.

And it's also quite difficult to explain when "And" is used to introduce entire sentences and ideas instead of just one additional point.

Because it's confusing.
And difficult to summarize.

kainzero Wrote:But...

Because...

And ....

Because....

And ...

Gah. My head a'sploded.

英語上手っすね

jcdietz03 Wrote:

Quote:[Learning kanji is] usually pushed back to 'advanced stages' of learning.

I don't think so. Any textbook finishes hiragana+katakana by chapter 2, and then goes right into kanji for 1, 2, 3, sun, moon, etc... (very common and simple ones) in chapter 3. What they don't do is assault you with 2,000 kanji in chapter 3, instead going for 15. It's the other extreme, maybe some other balance is better. Also, starting with chapter 3, textbooks won't hesitate to show kanji you haven't learned yet, always marking these with furigana.

There are books like Colloquial Japanese which is taking a rather uncommon approach when it comes to teaching kana and kanji. After a short introduction which covers such things as pitch accent, explaining what kana means, and romanisation. In the first lesson you learn about the process of exchanging business cards 名詞の交換. Japanese names are introduced in kanji, with romaji next to them. Next comes Hiragana さ、ん、て、す ... with stroke order font and then some kanji like 田、本、中、山. And after that a series of katakana like ス、三、and so on. Following this is a little exercise to see if you are able to read the kanji. 川と山 for instance, which translates to river and rice field.

Some pages further in the book, seeing the dialogues for the first time, you are in for a surprise. 山中: oはyoう　ございます。 山中: どういtashiまshiて。Yes! In the middle of words roman characters are used for those kanji or kana not yet covered. Which is stupid because the whole dialogue is covered in romaji and English as well.

But it does cover around 200 kanji in all throughout the book. The kanji in a later lesson are not introduced with stroke orders anymore. Later on you would only have a poorly copied out page with on / kun, two words, and handwritten form of the kanji. Romaji, on the other hand, is used until the very end of the book. But at least not in the middle of a dialogue.

It would be a good book, because the topics covered could be used in daily situations, if it was just a little more consistent in the way it has been written. It might be acceptable for the first few chapters to use romaji as grudge for vocabulary. But it is silly, when, say in chapter 15 you have a dialogue in Japanese, to find the vocab in romaji + English translation.

There are even some books that don't cover kanji and kana in depth at all. Or teach them. And if they do, they cover only a handful, like in Ultimate Japanese. This is something a learner should look out for - no romaji, only hiragana + katakana + kanji. Saves lots of trouble and wasted time later on.

Ok, this topic has come up a few times on here, and my conclusions, based on experience from native speakers and other comments on here:

1) Japanese believe learning the Kanji is hard, because they remember it being hell for them to learn. They are taught X number of kanji a week from age 6 all the way to 18 by rote memorisation, and are constantly drilled and tested on them. The fact that most advanced foreign speakers of Japanese can't use kanji well confirms this belief.

2) Japanese believe learning a foreign language is hard, due to their bad English education programs in schools. Most study English for 6-8 years and leave school still not being able to hold a conversation - what chance do foreigners have learning their language, especially since....

3) Japanese believe Japanese is very hard to learn, and therefore no can foreigners speak it. This is culturally taught, and is confirmed by that fact that 99% of foreign talent on Japanese TV have little to no language skills (in fact there are some celebs who are just there to be laughed at for their poor speaking and understanding).

Would be good to get a natives' view on this (magamo / Aijin, what art thou?)

Nagareboshi Wrote:川と山 for instance, which translates to river and rice field.

I hope it does not, because that would mean I'm the victim of a native conspiracy of ginormous proportions.

astendra Wrote:

Nagareboshi Wrote:川と山 for instance, which translates to river and rice field.

I hope it does not, because that would mean I'm the victim of a native conspiracy of ginormous proportions.

*LOL* sorry my bad! Should be river and mountain. *shame*

Nagareboshi Wrote:Some pages further in the book, seeing the dialogues for the first time, you are in for a surprise. 山中: oはyoう　ございます。 山中: どういtashiまshiて。Yes! In the middle of words roman characters are used for those kanji or kana not yet covered. Which is stupid because the whole dialogue is covered in romaji and English as well.

Is that for real?! :o That's hideous~ 笑

aphasiac Wrote:3) Japanese believe Japanese is very hard to learn, and therefore no can foreigners speak it. This is culturally taught, and is confirmed by that fact that 99% of foreign talent on Japanese TV have little to no language skills (in fact there are some celebs who are just there to be laughed at for their poor speaking and understanding).

Would be good to get a natives' view on this (magamo / Aijin, what art thou?)

Um do you actually watch Japanese tv?

Who are the celebs brought on J-tv to have their Japanese mocked? Can you name one? Just one.

I can think of a dozen foreigners who appear regularly on tv and their Japanese is native level. I can't say I've ever saw a talento who couldn't speak fluently. Sure every now in then some random foreigners are brought on tv to give interviews about life in Japan but there are no regular celebs/talento here who cannot speak Japanese.

Must of the time they get famous Because they can speak perfect Japanese ...

kitakitsune Wrote:Who are the celebs brought on J-tv to have their Japanese mocked? Can you name one? Just one.

The most obvious one is ボビー

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Ologu...by_gaffing

I've seen alot of his videos on youtube, and though fairly good-natured, the joke is definitely always his bad language abilities and poor use of keigo.

Supposedly Bobby's just faking most of the time though. I saw a video where they 'proved' his fluency.

Here it is:

I wonder how good Mr. James' 日本語 is.

http://www.japanprobe.com/2009/08/14/mr-...jin-clown/

I always thought bobby was just goofing off and playing an act.

Still Japanese TV is loaded with foreigners who speak unquestionably perfect Japanese. There is that VJ on space shower tv, a whole ton of Koreans, and the dozen or so foreign commentators on Asahi news.

I didn't read the whole thread. But since aphasiac asked me what I think of the three point, here's my opinion on this topic.

First off, I think you should take a huge grain of salt when you come across a sentence which starts with "The Japanese are," "The Chinese are," "Americans are," "In Western countries, people are," and the like because 99.9999999999999999999999% it's wrong or oversimplified.

I've met many Japanese people who think Japanese is more difficult than other languages and roughly the same number of Japanese who think it's one of the easier languages. Some know the consensus among linguists that every natural language is equal in complexity. But I'd say the majority doesn't give a shit in the first place. But somehow, for some reasons which remain mysterious to me, it seems to me that when a foreigner who has a negative view towards racism/nationalism in Japan tends to claim that the Japanese believe their language is the world most difficult language which foreigners can never learn or something along those lines. Of course, some don't. And foreigners who have positive opinions on racism etc. in Japan may make a similar claim.

One thing I noticed is that foreigners who makes a claim like that tends to know this mysterious term called nihonjinron, which I believe your average Japanese person has never heard of in their entire life. I hadn't either until I heard it from an English speaker learning Japanese.

Interestingly, if you google about how Chinese people think of their own language and if you google it in the English language, somehow you can find blogs, forums and whatnot where people who are NOT Chinese claim the exact same thing; "They think their language is too difficult for a Westerner to learn!"

I don't know what Chinese think of their language. But something tells me that maybe, just maybe, there are many Chinese who don't think that way or couldn't care less about such a thing. So I'm guessing I should take the claim cum grano salis.

So, why do native speakers have such strange ideas on difficulty, you ask? Hm. Ok. I think there are many native English speakers here. Congratulations! Probably you can make a fortune and become billionaires! There are literally trillions of people who wanted to speak English fluently but failed because no teacher could tell what is difficult for them and what is not. Bilinguals, linguists, ESL teachers, and everyone. They all failed to do it. Well, some have already noticed some grammar points certain types of foreigners tend to get tripped up by. But they're just a teeny-tiny bit when compared with the monstrously large number of inescapable linguistic pitfalls which native speakers don't even notice there is a "point" there. But with a magical method the OP has, you will get a good estimate on difficulty of each point!

Ok. That was too negative of a view and sounded rude to the OP and aphasiac. Sorry about that. But I do think it's quite difficult to see your own language objectively from the viewpoint of foreigners. It's like how it's often said that the naturally gifted aren't good teachers or how a good player isn't always a good coach. Besides, normal people don't think about difficulty seriously anyway. When they do because they have to talk to nonnative speakers or correct learners' language, it's probably only for 10 seconds or less for each sentence. If your friend kindly spent 30 seconds seriously thinking about such a thing, you should be grateful.

aphasiac Wrote:Ok, this topic has come up a few times on here, and my conclusions, based on experience from native speakers and other comments on here:

1) Japanese believe learning the Kanji is hard, because they remember it being hell for them to learn. They are taught X number of kanji a week from age 6 all the way to 18 by rote memorisation, and are constantly drilled and tested on them. The fact that most advanced foreign speakers of Japanese can't use kanji well confirms this belief.

2) Japanese believe learning a foreign language is hard, due to their bad English education programs in schools. Most study English for 6-8 years and leave school still not being able to hold a conversation - what chance do foreigners have learning their language, especially since....

3) Japanese believe Japanese is very hard to learn, and therefore no can foreigners speak it. This is culturally taught, and is confirmed by that fact that 99% of foreign talent on Japanese TV have little to no language skills (in fact there are some celebs who are just there to be laughed at for their poor speaking and understanding).

Would be good to get a natives' view on this (magamo / Aijin, what art thou?)

erm all of these are true imo, except the jump to no one being able to learn it, but I don't think Japanese people think that anyway (they can see fluent foreigners on TV).

and by true I mean learning kanji is hard, learning a foreign lang is hard and learning japanese is hard

doesn't explain the 'you can read katakana' thing tho, but I guess it's like the 'you can use chopsticks' thing, which is pretty much just making conversation..

I think the reality is that the normal Japanese person or English speaking native has absolutely no idea about how hard it is to learn a language or, at times, how simple or hard things are in their own language. It's basically because they haven't "really" learned a language before to near native level (the ones that have know exactly how difficult it is); therefore, you get all this BS praise (that annoys me) or total misunderstanding of the difficulties of some concepts in their native language.

Example:

"I have [something]" (physical or abstract) is pretty dang simple in English, yet I have students who are like "oh my god, that sounds hard." Dude, categories! "I have" goes with diseases, pets, food items, school degrees and so on. Once you know 10 or more your fine as it's really "positive/negative" and "a,an, the" you need to worry about, which is simple as if it's singular (i.e., 1 thing) you use "a" or "an" and "some" if it's plural (i.e., 2 or more things). If it's uncountable (can you count water, information, liquids: such as coke, etc?) you use "the", "some" or nothing.

It sounds slightly complicated, but you can teach your friend that in maybe 30-60 minutes. Then remind them once a week for awhile and you're there. (probably they'll have issues with "the", but "I have" will be no issue what so ever and they'll have leveled up "the", which is reasonably hard.)

On the subject of praise, what pisses me off is people saying "your Japanese is great" when what they mean is "I have no idea what you just said, let's me praise you so things sound good and I don't have to say EH WHAT'YA SAYIN???"

Oh, above, I mean "I have" as in possession not present perfect, and friends.

Cranks Wrote:"I have [something]" (physical or abstract) is pretty dang simple in English, yet I have students who are like "oh my god, that sounds hard." Dude, categories! "I have" goes with diseases, pets, food items, school degrees and so on. Once you know 10 or more your fine as it's really "positive/negative" and "a,an, the" you need to worry about, which is simple as if it's singular (i.e., 1 thing) you use "a" or "an" and "some" if it's plural (i.e., 2 or more things). If it's uncountable (can you count water, information, liquids: such as coke, etc?) you use "the", "some" or nothing.

I can speak English and that has confused the hell out of me.

Magamo, sorry hope I didn't cause offence; you're right , generally it's wrong to generalise (heh, see what I did there!). The points I made were just the impressions I got from 1 year of Japanese lessons taught by a group of native students at my university...maybe I'm wrong though..

It would be good if you addressed the original question though - why do Japanese people seem to get so excited ("すごい、上手です！！") when we speak even a few words of crappy 日本語. I have experienced this, I think most learners have.

Conversely someone who speaks broken English will be helped and encouraged by a native listener, but they won't get showered with patronising "WOW, WELL DONE!" messages just for saying a few words.

I wonder why the difference?

Probably because of different cultural views of immigration and assimilation.

aphasiac Wrote:Magamo, sorry hope I didn't cause offence; you're right , generally generalisations are bad (heh, see what I did there!). The points I made were just the impressions I got from 1 year of Japanese lessons taught by a group of native students at my university...maybe I'm wrong though..

It would be good if you addressed the original question though - why do Japanese people seem to get so excited ("すごい、上手です！！") when we speak even a few words of crappy 日本語. I have experienced this, I think most learners have.

Conversely someone who speaks broken English will be helped and encouraged by a native listener, but they won't get showered with patronising "WOW, WELL DONE!" messages just for saying a few words.

I wonder why the difference?

I'm sorry for the previous post. It was 5 am here when I was reading your post, and it wasn't definitely the most appropriate timing to reply in a hasty manner. I didn't even read the whole thread!

About the 上手 thing, well, they don't mean it. I think I've said this a couple times on this forum. But it's sort of like a protocol like English greetings. "How are you?" isn't actually asking you how you are. You're supposed to respond positively like "Good." "Great." etc. Similarly, "How have you been?" "What's up?" "Hi there" "Good morning." etc. aren't said with their literal meanings.

The same goes for お上手ですね and such. You're supposed to respond with humble words like "いえいえそれほどでも." It's pretty much the same as the fact that お早うございます doesn't literally mean "It sure is early." As you already know, it's simply a Japanese equivalent of "Good morning." Somehow many foreigners just take the 上手です kind of thing literally when they aren't literally mean you're amazing just like "Good morning" doesn't necessary mean you absolutely think it is a morning which is considered good. Taking it literally is as strange as responding to "What's up?" by "I don't understand why you ask if anything is coming up every time we see each other or when you failed to hear what I just said? Oh, and I always wonder why you apologize when you want me to repeat what I just said? You always say, 'Sorry?' or the usual strange question 'tsup?'"

Next time a Japanese person says your Japanese is good or something like that, you can simply say something along the line of "いえいえそんな。まだまだです。" This is like responding to "How have you been?" by "Good. Thanks." Also, just like you might proceed with a little conversation about things that happened when you were away, this 上手ですね protocol might also lead to a little conversation related to the skill your friend just complimented you on. But you don't take the 上手 claim literally. Just make believe she thinks your skill is awesome and act like you're a humble person. It's the same as you're almost always "good" when people ask how you are by "How are you?" You pretend he cares for you (Of course, maybe he does care for you very much. I'm not saying he doesn't.), and your answer is generally positive unless you're really in a bad mood or something.

Saying that Japanese think kanji are difficult for foreigners because they always find it amazing when foreigners know a few kanji is pretty much like claiming that Americans are addicted to gambling because they are like

A: Thanks.
B: You bet.

and they say "I betcha" when Japanese people wouldn't bet anything in a literal sense.

Ah, the level of RtKers' knowledge of kanji is truly awesome though. It sure surprises native Japanese speakers. That's for sure. I was talking about those meaningless compliments thrown at foreigners who can draw several kanji-ish things of which they may or may not know the meanings and readings. Oh, and "Wow! You can use chopsticks!" is the same. It's a conversation starter and doesn't carry much of its literal meaning. You're supposed to say something like "Ha ha, Everyone can use chopsticks, you know" and move on if you don't feel like a topic related to Japanese culture. Of course, you can use it as a good first step to fire up a talk about how some foreigners are into Japan, how some Westerners are ignorant about Japan, how you know much about other kinds of cultural things and so on. But you shouldn't take it that Japanese people are impressed from the bottom of their hearts when they find out you can use chopsticks. Oh, maybe you can try "No. I can't really use this chopstick thing very well like you guys. How do Japanese people learn it so well?" If you do it right, often you get a reply like "You know, Japanese kids these days can't use chopsticks properly either. And I'm one of them. I may look like a master of chopsticks to you. But there is a proper style when it comes to chopsticks, and I can't use them like my grandma." or similar one with humbleness somewhere in there (Of course, it requires great command of English on the Japanese person side to express "Japaneseness" in English without sounding too weird. So don't be discouraged if you only get a pretty normal reply in English without humbleness or politeness).

aphasiac Wrote:It would be good if you addressed the original question though - why do Japanese people seem to get so excited ("すごい、上手です！！") when we speak even a few words of crappy 日本語. I have experienced this, I think most learners have.

Because they want to be polite and offer a compliment that they think you'll appreciate?

aphasiac Wrote:Conversely someone who speaks broken English will be helped and encouraged by a native listener, but they won't get showered with patronising "WOW, WELL DONE!" messages just for saying a few words.

I think that's quite a generalisation. I have certainly seen this happen, and in fact I would do it myself.

thecite Wrote:Supposedly Bobby's just faking most of the time though. I saw a video where they 'proved' his fluency.

Here it is:

I'm highly suspicious of this video. Not saying that Bobby sucks at Japanese - I think he's acting both when he makes "funny" mistakes, and in this clip.