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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Last edited by Ryuujin27 (2008 May 08, 9:27 pm)

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.

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:
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.

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.

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.

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'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.

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?

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