failing to learn Japanese language last minute

[Regenmeneer]

Quote: Originally Posted by mynamy1 It is very difficult for me to explain as I don't know how to import Chinese characters in here to esase the confusion. The key to your understanding is in the below song: " .....lolling! lolling on the liver! lolling ...." If you break the code I will personally send the pictures of my fish to your email addy as a gift! MA Le ps. JR, please don't help him!

I believe you refer to "Rollin, rollin DOWN the river, Rollin"

Now sen me those pics

Regenmeneer

[PapaBear]

Quote: Originally Posted by mynamy1 ... ps. cha is another Chinese word for "tea".

And Chai in Russian is "tea" as well. I suppose the Cyrillic languages are derived from Chinese too? It is fine to be proud of ones culture, but its beginning to sound a bit culturally self absorbed
There are few languages on the face of the earth that have not been influenced by others they have been exposed to, but presuming that "one" is the parent of all it touches is a bit pretentious.
I enjoyed Swordfishes post for one simple reason. IT IS FUNNY . (pretty sure that was the intent ) Smile and enjoy the humor.

[mynamy1]

Very sorry Regenmeneer for the delay. The long vacation did wonder to my mind ...

In some part of asia, the pronounciation of R and L are funny and confusing. Have you ever been in Thailand? If a beautiful Thai girl asks if you have your "fly lice" yet? she meants just that! Nothing kinky for sure.

So, whether RO^NG, LONG, RHU or JU in pronounciation are from the single kanji root word. MA Le

ps. I am working on my pictures for you tonite.

[Regenmeneer]

I like fried rice for sure LOL

I know about the r=l thing, the local Chinese restaurant has the same problem. Also liked former US President Lonald Leagan as pronounced by my high school sweethearts mam, who was a refugee from Laos.

Legenmeneel

[Shiari]

I don't think that Japanese truly developed from Chinese. Yes, they have a lot of similar words, but the grammar structure shows the true difference. Japanese and Korean are extremely similar, enough so that when my friends play korean movies and I'm not paying attention, I automatically start trying to translate it. Same/similar sentence structure, particle use, etc. From what little I've seen of Chinese, it doesn't seem to work that way. Also, pitch plays a heck of lot larger role in Chinese than it does in Japanese. Sure, you could accidently be saying 'tank' instead of 'carwash'... but a chinese guy I know showed me how the same basic sound, using different pitches that I most certainly could only barely tell the difference between, created 4 completely unrelated words. Scary.

As for learning to read, I know a cheesy, boring, but really good way to at least be able to read hiragana, and thusly the furigana next to kanji, in just a couple days. A similar method could probably work for simple kanji too.

Step 1- Gather the materials:
Find yourself a horribly cheesy manga that's meant for like... 6 or 7 year olds.
Have a set of flashcards made out with all the hiragana symbols.
Have a pencil.

Step 2- Go insane from boredom:
Here is the fun part. You take the first flashcard, say it's 'ka', and then you go through at least 30 pages, front and back, of the manga circling 'ka' every time you see it, while also muttering the sound to yourself.
Then you take the next flashcard and repeat this. And you do it until you're ready to rip your eyes out.

[xiaohuang7]

back to koi! i don't know what the japanese characters really mean, but i'll give you some chinese, based on the japanese characters on my koi calendar.

someone who knows japanese please fill in the (_______):

romanized japanese =?= romanized chinese (chinese meaning)
kohaku (_______) =?= hong bai (red white)
taisho sanke (_______) =?= da zhen san se (big upstanding/rightous three color)
showa (_______) =?= zhao he san se (clarity peace three color)
tancho (_______) =?= dan ding (single roof)
goshiki (_______) =?= wu se (five color)

and from signs in koi-land:
nagaoka (_______) =?= chang [non-chinese character but looks like 'gang' (long port)
niigata (_______) =?= xin [non-chinese character] (new ?)
ojiya 'city' (_______) =?= xiao qian gu shi (little thousand valleys city)

[mynamy1]

I've never said that Japannese was developed from Chinese. My main point here was when/if a Chinese learn Japanese, he/she has clear advantage over a non-Chinese based language person.

2,000 Kanji requirement for a college entry Japanese student .... does this fact ring any bell/alarm in your brain? But, then what prevent the Japaneses from being the most innovative people on this earth?

Let's go back to koi. MA Le

[swordfish]

Japanese seen to be always rushing for time.
I was waiting for the bullet train one morning to have a feel of how its like during their morning peak hours. When the space-age train arrived a crowd of at least 2 hundred surged forward carrying me along with it. Suddenly I was aware that I was virtually carrying someone piggy-back. I turned around as best I could and confronted a man who had casually started to climb over me. I do not know if he speak english but I asked him anyway what the hell he was doing and he responded in simple english that he has to get on this train or he'll be late. So am I, I said but I'm not climbing over the other passengers. Take it easy o.k. He replied No, late! late! Well I can't blame him he's just a very responsible man that want to be puncture for works.

Sayonara
SF