Use Twitter To Improve Your Japanese The internet has made many things in our lives so much easier and learning languages is definitely one of those. It doesn’t make the actual learning part easier, of course ^_^, but it does make the learning materials much simpler (and cheaper) to access and as such the excuses for not learning get harder to find. Oddly enough, Twitter, the social behemoth, is one such learning resource. The ubiquity of Twitter, via a strong mobile and desktop presence and a ton of third party apps, means you can connect to the Twitterverse in so many different ways. I access Twitter via Tweetdeck and Tweetie on my iPhone and then through the browser and Tweetie’s desktop client when I’m back at home – simple and always convenient. Having the ability to always connect to Twitter on the run means you essentially have a free Japanese resource available to you at any time and wherever you happen be. So how do I actually learn Japanese from Twitter? Follow Japanese Learning Tweeters Follow Japanese Tweeters
Free Visual Dictionary & Thesaurus | Online Dictionary | Associated Words | Synonyms Dictionary at SnappyWords.com It’s an online interactive English dictionary and thesaurus that helps you find the meanings of words and draw connections to associated words. You can easily see the meaning of each by simply placing the mouse cursor over it. Why use Snappy Words visual dictionary? Easy to use dictionary and thesaurus. Learn how words associate in a visually interactive display. How do I use it? Type words in the search box and click Go or simply hit Enter. Place the mouse cursor over a word to view the meaning. What dictionary does Snappy Words use? The Snappy Words interface queries the WordNet lexical database developed by Princeton University and made available for students and language researchers. Useful Sites Another fun, free and interactive education application is the Madison Falls High School course which covers core high school subjects.
Maggie Sensei AJATT | All Japanese All The Time | You don't know a language, you live it. You don't learn a language, you get used to it. Japanese "adjectives" [Back to the main Japanese page] Why do I write "adjectives" in quotes for this chapter? Because your mind has a preset idea of what an adjective is-- based on how English uses words called adjectives to modify nouns-- and the Japanese adjective is not quite the same. Two Kinds of Adjectives There are two classes of objects that act as what we call adjectives in English. In Japanese, adjectives may act differently when used to modify nouns ("the green table") vs. when used as predicates ("the table is green"), so these cases are separated. In -na adjectives, the -na ending is used when the adjective modifies a noun, but not when it's used as a predicate. Kireina kimono (pretty kimono)Kimono wa kirei desu ([your] kimono is pretty)Kimono wa kirei dewa arimasen orKimono wa kirei ja nai desu ([your] kimono is not pretty)Kimono wa kirei deshita ([your] kimono was pretty)Kimono wa kirei dewa arimasendeshita or Kimono wa kirei ja nakatta desu ([your] kimono was not pretty) watashi ga kaita hon
Japanese grammar Some distinctive aspects of modern Japanese sentence structure[edit] Word order: head final and left branching[edit] The modern theory of constituent order ("word order"), usually attributed to Joseph Greenberg, identifies several kinds of phrase. genitive phrase, i.e., noun modified by another noun ("the cover of the book", "the book's cover");noun governed by an adposition ("on the table", "underneath the table");comparison ("[X is] bigger than Y", i.e., "compared to Y, X is big").noun modified by an adjective ("black cat"). Some languages are inconsistent in constituent order, having a mixture of head initial phrase types and head final phrase types. genitive phrase: neko no iro, cat GEN color = "the cat's (neko no) color (iro)";noun governed by an adposition: nihon ni, Japan in = "in Japan";comparison: Y yori ookii, Y than big = "bigger than Y";noun modified by an adjective: kuroi neko = "black cat". Head finality prevails also when sentences are coordinated instead of subordinated.
Good beginner manga to read? I'm loving "Yotsuba," and I'm pretty newbish. In fact, ems573, we may be around the same general level. I finished RTK1 a few weeks ago, and I've been doing smart.fm (through Step 4) and anki lists (JLPT3 and 4) since. I am pleasantly surprised that I can read Yotsuba pretty well. I still need the help of a dictionary, but there are times when I can read 2-3 pages in a row before I need to look up a word. Interestingly, I found the very first chapter was the hardest of all. I'd also recommend "Japanese the Manga Way," if you haven't tried it yet.
ばか！バカ！ 馬鹿ー月！ • View topic - Japanese Onomatopoeia Guide (Audio Description) Macko Darlack wrote:and if it were to be in kanas... how would it be organized?? yet, i cannot imagine how to look up a word there!! We'll need help with that, [how do japanese look up a word in the dictionary, i wonder ][/color] They have their own 'arrangements of ABC' in their own language. Those voiced sounds (with dakuten/handakuten eg: ga, ji, po...) are after the unvoiced ('original') sounds. And when it comes to youon (rya, kyo, pyu...... combinations with small ya/yo/yu), they come after the ones with the big characters. And katakana comes after the hiragana words, eg: onyomi おにょみ (音読み） comes before onrain (オンライン) [online] Whether or not you use this system or our ABC system is up to you. Shadow, try learning those characters let's say...5 a day? "Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle."
Light Novels vs Manga reading difficulty? I'm going to recommend that you jump into whatever you want to first. Don't worry about the difficulty - if it is something that you really want to read, you will read it. For decided what kind of Japanese to immerse yourself in, don't follow the i+1 idea. This will definitely lead you down... well, an impossible path. 1) Read 2) If you come across a word you don't understand look it up 2a) Is this word really awesome? 3) Alternative to 2): You come across a word you don't know 3a) Look it up 3b) Move on 4) Grammar you don't know: Try to find it in the grammar dictionaries or on JGram 4a) Can't find it: Guess 5) A sentence you COMPLETELY don't understand AT ALL 5a) SKIP IT! This is what I suggest. Here's an personal anecdote from my time as a beginning: I tried doing the sentence thing. Oh wait, let's just read it. Now, I still haven't finished 十二国記 to this day, though I recently restarted reading it (much easier now!) So, go have some fun and good luck!
Extensive Reading Material Online Free Japanese Children’s Stories and Fairytales With over 1,000 free Japanese picture books, EhonNavi is like living next to a library! Sign up here, it’s quick and free. There are books for everyone here! You can only read a book once, and if there’s an error of some sort you should be able to re-access the book, as long as it’s within 15 minutes. It’s a little picky, but I think this is the best resource out there for Japanese picture books, so please give it a shot! 福娘童話集 (Hukumusume’s Fairy Tale Collection) With hundreds of fairy tales, short stories and fables, you’ll never be hurting for reading material as long as this site is around! 心の絵本 (Picture Books For The Heart) Nicely illustrated short stories, mostly little folktale types of stories featuring cute animals. デジタル絵本サイト (Digital Picture Book Site). The Great Chokochoko Library A collection of reading material, sorted by level. Intermediate Reading Resources 青い鳥文庫 ためし読み！ News Sites for Kids
Reviewing the Kanji Japanese Grammar Guide This guide was created as a resource for those who want to learn Japanese grammar in a rational, intuitive way that makes sense in Japanese. The explanations are focused on how to make sense of the grammar not from English but from a Japanese point of view. Before you begin If your computer is not setup to display Japanese, you’ll want to enable Japanese support to read the Japanese text. Other formats Paperback – Available on Amazon.PDF Version – Philipp Kerling wrote an awesome script to convert the site to PDF.iOS app – The guide is now available for iOS devices created by Adam Critchley.Android app – The guide is now available on Google Play created by Ignatius Reza Lesmana. This work is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License. The problem with conventional textbooks The problem with conventional textbooks is that they often have the following goals. A Japanese guide to learning Japanese grammar Suggestions