Dec 30 2006
The Golden Path to True Japanese Mastery
- Want to really master Japanese? By master I don¡Çt mean " get JLPT Level 1¡É. That is only the level necessary to be able to follow along in courses at a Japanese university, and yet the JLPT listening section is far too easy to be of much help at a real uni. Plus there is no writing or speaking! The reading is a fairly good test for a passable level of reading ability, but certainly not the end-all-be-all.
- Case in point: Most JLPT Level 1 graduates could certainly follow the main thrust of story of the Harry Potter books in Japanese, yet even though almost every kanji has furigana over it and it¡Çs a book for children, very few graduates could honestly say they would understand all or even most of the finer details without consulting a dictionary very frequently. Once and for all: mastery means native level. I don¡Çt myself profess to be native level, but I have reached level I will call ¡Èpiecewise-native¡É in that while I may not have the shear breadth of knowledge of a native Japanese speaker, within the range of knowledge that I do have I can very often impersonate a native without being found out (until they see my face, hehe). Provided I can continue to expand my vocabulary as I have up to now, I should one day be able to approach native level. My goal here is to share the secrets of this golden path with all those who are willing to invest the time and energy.
- Look forward to good things to come, And please post your hard questions on Japanese and Japanese study.
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Hey, got a Q for ya if you’re game. I always wondered, when you have to guess someone’s age and you give a guess that is too low, and they say, “but Japanese look younger than they are,” how do you say, “Even taking that into account, you look 25″?
I came across that very same question myself.
It’s most commonly stated as,
¡Ö¤½¤ì¤Ë¤·¤Æ¤â£²£µºÐ¤Ë¸«¤¨¤ë¡£¡×
(Literally, “Even so, you loook 25.”)
Or more accurately,
¡Ö¤½¤ì¤ò¹Íθ¡Ê¤³¤¦¤ê¤ç¡Ë¤·¤Æ¤â£²£µºÐ¤Ë¸«¤¨¤ë¡£¡×
or slightly different
¡Ö¤½¤ì¤ò¹Íθ¡Ê¤³¤¦¤ê¤ç¡Ë¤ËÆþ¤ì¤Æ¤â£²£µºÐ¤Ë¸«¤¨¤ë¡£¡×
¹Íθ¡áconsideration
Hope that helps.
How do you say
‘That’s two sides of the same coin’
?
Edwin:
A difficult Japanese expression for that is the 4-character compound
ɽ΢°ìÂÎ(hyouri ittai)
For example,
Í¥¤·¤µ¤È¶¯¤µ¤È¤Ïɽ΢°ìÂΤÀ¡£
Yasashisa to tsuyosa ha hyouriittai da.
(Kindness and toughness are two sides of the same coin.)
If you want something easier to remember you can always use the Japanese equivalent, which is also in common use:
Ʊ¤¸¥³¥¤¥ó¤Îɽ¤È΢¤À¡£
Onaji koin no omote to ura da.
(¤â¤·ÆüËܿͤ¬¤³¤Î¥Ö¥í¥°¤ò¸«¤Æ¤¤¤ë¤Ê¤é¤´´¶ÁÛ¡¦¤´»ØƳ¤¯¤À¤µ¤¤¤Í¡ª)
Anyone that passed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) interested in taking a higher-level test? There is one - meant for Japanese people - called the Kanji Kentei (´Á»ú¸¡Äê) or Kanken (´Á¸¡) for short.
This test will propel your Japanese reading ability and vocab into the stratosphere, and be of tremendous help to your listening ability. I can cover it in detail if interested.
I have gotten to the level of the average Japanese adult: Jun-2-kyuu (½à£²µé). I also did this starting from not being able to pass 7th kyuu (early elementary school level) in a period of only 6 months. That means I went from the level of a 7-year-old to the level of the average adult in six month of intensive study. Now I regularly have opportunities to teach Japanese people their own language and correct them on their kanji use! (I say “opportunity” because I stopped actually doing this when I found it really doesn’t go over too well…)
I can teach you to do the same! If there is interest, I will share my secrets in detail. Please write comments here!
In the meantime, here is a link to the main page for the test. Practice tests for all levels also available here!
http://www.kanken.or.jp
I enjoy learning Japanese, but I find kanji to be a real problem. How do you go about learning and remembering kanji?
How to remember the kanji? There are all sorts of ideas floating around on this one, distracting everyone from the heart of the issue.
Without going into too much detail, the secret is to know the pieces that make up most kanji. Example:
What’s this character? ¶¯
Yes, it’s the kanji for strong, like ¶¯¤¤ “tsuyoi”. By itself it’s a big pictogram and it would be hard to memorize every line and angle from scratch. However…know these characters?
µÝ = “yumi” (bow - as in bow and arrow)
¥à = katakana character “mu”
Ãî = “mushi” (insect or worm)
If you already know these three pieces, it’s easy to remember ¶¯. The left side is µÝ and the right side is ¥à on top of Ãî. See that?
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¥à
µÝ¡¡¡¡+¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡á¡¡¡¡¡¡¶¯
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡Ãî
It’s really that simple. Memorizing µÝ, Ãî, and ¥à the first time takes effort, but they are far simpler. And after you have those solid in your brain, you can just remember ¶¯¤¤ as “bow, mu, bug” or however you want.
You can then of course make a funny sentence or story to help you. Like,
“Strong bugs say ‘mu’ when you shoot them with an arrow.”
Or even,
“Yumi said ‘moo!’ when a bug landed on her.” (imagine Yumi is a hefty Japanese woman)
In the first example I used “strong bugs” to help tie it back to the character itself.
Get the gist? You’ll have to play with this for a bit yourself before you understand how incredibly fast this method is. I’ll write a full treatise later on.
NicPickle
I just wanted to say that I read this post casually and didn’t think much of it, but now when I’m on the train and see kanji I notice how they are made up of pieces and they don’t seem so complex or impossible like they did before. It’s just this piece plus that piece. For some reason this simple observation eluded me all these years… Any more like this!?