reading untranslated VN

[Nosebleed]

Well I am halfway learning it so i can't read it fluently yet. I have bad memory D:

 

Also I noticed that は = wa / ha  Even though there's a wa particle already.... what iz thiz madness

You should focus on memorizing hiragana by having furigana instead of romanji then, that's how i memorized them, through exposure

 

But what you pointed out is pretty simple to differentiate.

は as a particle (topic maker) is always pronounced as wa - 私は縞パンが好きだ (watashi wa shimapan ga suki da)

は as a syllable (part of a word) is always pronounced as ha - お花(おはな) が好きだ (ohana ga suki da) 

That's why わ exists, so you can have a wa sound in syllables, because わ is never used as a particle, so you can have stuff like 私 (わたし), わかりません, 和式(わしき), わくわく, etc etc etc~

 

As you can see they all serve distinct purposes, so as long as you remember them you should be fine when trying to figure out how to pronounce は

 

PS: If you don't know what a topic maker particle (or particle in general) is: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/particlesintro

 

If anything, English is more confusing

[iamnoob]

You should focus on memorizing hiragana by having furigana instead of romanji then, that's how i memorized them, through exposure

 

But what you pointed out is pretty simple to differentiate.

は as a particle (topic maker) is always pronounced as wa - 私は縞パンが好きだ (watashi wa shimapan ga suki da)

は as a syllable (part of a word) is always pronounced as ha - お花(おはな) が好きだ (ohana ga suki da) 

That's why わ exists, so you can have a wa sound in syllables, because わ is never used as a particle, so you can have stuff like 私 (わたし), わかりません, 和式(わしき), わくわく, etc etc etc~

 

 

Yea I plan to switch to Hiragana once I'm confident in my memory but for now ill stick to romanji.

 

As for the は, yeah I know about its pronunciations and particles ect. The problem is for example - I'll use your example - おはなが好きだ.

If that were the start of a sentence after reading お, は comes next and I have no idea weather to go for ha or wa since the only clue is have is お...

 

Of course I'll realize the mistake when i read further in the sentence but its annoying to keep "guessing" wrongly when は is near the beginning of a sentence.

 

 

Here's a guy with a nice ghoti

 

[Nosebleed]

It'd be written お花 not おはな (that's why i put it in parenthesis) so you'd know the word is flower. That's why kanji exist

 

Think of it this way, the は particle always follows the topic/subject of the sentence

No sentence, ever, will give you は pronounced as "wa" with nothing before it (in those cases, it'd be "ha")

Meaning that you can't have は pronounced as "wa" unless you have a real word before it.

 

So you know おはな (even though the word flower would never appear like this in a proper sentence) is pronounced ohana because お is not a real word but a prefix

 

But yeah you'll eventually pick it up on your own with practice, just trying to give you tips!

[Kelebek1]

English is exactly the same though. How would you say servic, and then how would you say service? How would you say informat, and then information? How would you say corp, and then corpse? How would you say perc, and how would you say percent? How would you say grap, and then graph? We could go on for ages.

 

You just have to learn words, and look at sentences as a collection of words, not of letters or as individual kana. There's only so many combinations of splitting up the kana that make words that form a logical sentence. And of course, when speaking you don't get kanji, so you hear the same おはな either way, and get the わ from words as well. But again, there aren't many ways you could make a valid sentence, and then practically none that would make sense in context. You'll just get used to it.

 

Words are often written in hiragana Nosebleed, you will definitely see はな. Games made for kids are very often all written in kana, so kids can read them, and if not they have furigana for every kanji, but it's common to just use kana. Pokemon games didn't even have a kanji option until Black & White for instance.

[iamnoob]

It'd be written お花 not おはな (that's why i put it in parenthesis) so you'd know the word is flower. That's why kanji exist

 

But yeah you'll eventually pick it up on your own with practice, just trying to give you tips!

 

Yea but when I'm reading the VN I'll be looking at the Hiragana...

 

And thanks for the tips Hope I learn enough to read a VN without looking up a word every 10 seconds by end this year xD

 

@nosebleed

I just realized we are communicating on 3 different threads O_O, you're everywhere lol

 

 

English is exactly the same though. How would you say servic, and then how would you say service? How would you say informat, and then information? How would you say corp, and then corpse? How would you say perc, and how would you say percent? How would you say grap, and then graph? We could go on for ages.

 

Yea but there's a fundamental difference between English and character based languages. The thing with English is there's a space between each word, allowing me to see what is 1 word. Let's say I know 0 English and Japanese. I could tell you each word lies between 2 spaces for English. However, for character based languages like Chinese and Japanese, there is no way to tell this.

[zoom909]

Yea but when I'm reading the VN I'll be looking at the Hiragana...

 

And thanks for the tips Hope I learn enough to read a VN without looking up a word every 10 seconds by end this year xD

 

@nosebleed

I just realized we are communicating on 3 different threads O_O, you're everywhere lol

 

 

 

Yea but there's a fundamental difference between English and character based languages. The thing with English is there's a space between each word, allowing me to see what is 1 word. Let's say I know 0 English and Japanese. I could tell you each word lies between 2 spaces for English. However, for character based languages like Chinese and Japanese, there is no way to tell this.

 

Under ordinary circumstances, nouns, verb stems and adjective stems will be written with kanji instead of kana, so that kanji serve as delimiters.

Young readers/children often read kana without any kanji, but their books often do have spaces between words.

Spaces aren't necessary with English, either.  They make reading easier, but it is not impossible without them.

YOUSHOULDBEABLETOUNDERSTANDEVERYTHINGI'MWRITINGHEREBASEDSONLY

ONYOURWORDKNOWLEDGE,ALTHOUGHITMIGHTBEANNOYINGANDTAKEAWHILE

[iamnoob]

 

Spaces aren't necessary with English, either.  They make reading easier, but it is not impossible without them.

 

 

Exactly my point, I'm not saying its impossible but its much harder since there's no space between words for Japanese which thus makes it difficult to tell if は is part of a word or not which changes its pronunciation.

 

In any case I hope it's just a problem due to my lack of knowledge in Japanese. I hope it goes away once I'm more proficient D:

 

 

By the way, is there any site for a list of common vocab words? I've googled some and found a few but I was wondering if any of you have found a personal favorite. My biggest problem by far is my lack of vocab when reading untranslated VN.

[zoom909]

It's been a long time, but I used the practice lists here.  Lots of words that came up over and over again.

http://www.thbz.org/kanjimots/jlpt.php3

[Chronopolis]

I used the jlpt vocab lists for N5, N4, and N3.

http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/jlpt5/vocab/

 

As a starter, something like a verb list can be nice, since they often the most important words in a sentence.

http://nihongoichiban.com/2012/08/13/list-of-all-verbs-for-the-jlpt-n4/

 

If you want to learn by category, it can be fun to learn words from here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:1000_Japanese_basic_words. The words obviously aren't the most common ones, and there are some rare words, but it's still useful vocab.

 

Keep in mind that the Japanese words, especially abstract nouns, are not used in the same way as the english words that are used as their definition.

 

If you're already gotten a hang of word types and basic grammar, the Core 10k deck for anki (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/702754122) is a pretty good option. The pictures are from google search, and so are sometimes wrong, but the example sentences and audio are from native speakers.

[Cyrillej1]

I heard of those stories of people who learned a decent vocabulary from anime, and it makes me envious. I've learned no more than 20-30 words from all the anime I watched. I heard watching without subtitles increases the amount of words you will learn. So maybe if I refused to use subtitles I would be better off. 

Doesn't TA make it easier to look up words? Well I guess since looking up words in a physical dictionary requires more effort, the words may stick in your head better.

It makes me envious too xD.

 

I find when I watch anime, I usually only pick up on words I've already seen/read and it just helps me remember better.  For learning new vocabulary, it doesn't really help me unless it's a character phrase/quirk they use often.

ex: Mirai from Kyoukai no Kanata often says, "Fuyukai desu!" xD

 

I've watched anime like One Piece... and I definitely cannot forget the vocabulary for "Gomu"

I recently finished Trinity Seven, and because the main character was such a pervert I picked up on "momu" and probably won't ever forget that either since they were funny scenes.

 

So anime for me is more like review most of the time for words I already read/learned before. I think I'd be too frustrated to watch without subtitles, since I want to know every detail that's going on and not just the gist.. so too lazy to do that. xD

[iamnoob]

It makes me envious too xD.

 

I find when I watch anime, I usually only pick up on words I've already seen/read and it just helps me remember better.  For learning new vocabulary, it doesn't really help me unless it's a character phrase/quirk they use often.

ex: Mirai from Kyoukai no Kanata often says, "Fuyukai desu!" xD

 

I've watched anime like One Piece... and I definitely cannot forget the vocabulary for "Gomu"

I recently finished Trinity Seven, and because the main character was such a pervert I picked up on "momu" and probably won't ever forget that either since they were funny scenes.

 

So anime for me is more like review most of the time for words I already read/learned before. I think I'd be too frustrated to watch without subtitles, since I want to know every detail that's going on and not just the gist.. so too lazy to do that. xD

 

It's the common phrase said by characters that are the easiest to learn. I think my first one was Urasai from Shana xD. 

[zoom909]

I never really liked watching anime w/o subs because the words disappear if you don't understand them right away.  In written material they stick around and give you a fighting chance.

 

Until I found a show I really wanted to watch (which for me was Magical Angel Sweet Mint)

I'm on ep. 17 or so right now out of 47.  Every episode I watch takes over twice as long as the run-time because I have to keep skipping back--watching it with the dictionary in one hand and the mouse in the other--needless to say I'm not in the mood to do this every day...it's like once a week I watch it.

[Zalor]

It makes me envious too xD.

 

I find when I watch anime, I usually only pick up on words I've already seen/read and it just helps me remember better.  For learning new vocabulary, it doesn't really help me unless it's a character phrase/quirk they use often.

 

So anime for me is more like review most of the time for words I already read/learned before. I think I'd be too frustrated to watch without subtitles, since I want to know every detail that's going on and not just the gist.. so too lazy to do that. xD

 

Same pretty much. However, I've noticed that sometimes when I rewatch something but without the subtitles, words that I subconsciously recognized but forget, get remembered again. Meaning it's great review since it can be surprising how much you know but don't know you know. When learning a foreign language a lot of words get pushed back to the subconscious. For example my mom used to speak in Ukrainian to me when I was a kid. For various reasons she stopped. But when we visited a few years ago over the summer, a lot of words that I never thought I knew came back to me. Immersing yourself through media like anime probably isn't going to be as effective as actually going to Japan, but it should still help with bringing words to the conscious level. 

 

I also think it's best to watch anime unsubtitled if it's a show you are familiar with. That way 1) you already kind of know whats being said, which makes catching/reviewing words easier. 2) You won't get invested in the details of what's happening since you already know.    

[Chronopolis]

I think subtitles are fine (english or japanese). English subs are fine as long as you consciously attempt to listen for most lines. It can also provide the context to help you identify words.

[Nerathim]

A little question : how hard to read are Bullet Butler and especially Chrono Belt? I don't see a translation for any of these two coming soon and given my love for Kuki I really intend to learn kanjis and all that stuff, even if it's will take a lot of time because I start from absolutely nothing (biggest problem I think), I started learning hiragana on real kana some months ago but I stopped and now I realize that I forgot almost everything. 

I know there are a lot of threads talking about that subject but I see so many differents methods I don't even know which one is the best for a complete beginner. If it's not too much, can I also have a link to a website that cover most of japanese? (kanjis,hiragana,katakana and the basics of japanese grammar)

 

Thanks a bunch !

 

(and I have a really hard time making the distinction between symbols when the font changes, will I become used to it naturally ? For me it's the same as reading hieroglyphs)

[Chronopolis]

A little question : how hard to read are Bullet Butler and especially Chrono Belt? I don't see a translation for any of these two coming soon and given my love for Kuki I really intend to learn kanjis and all that stuff, even if it's will take a lot of time because I start from absolutely nothing (biggest problem I think), I started learning hiragana on real kana some months ago but I stopped and now I realize that I forgot almost everything. 

I know there are a lot of threads talking about that subject but I see so many differents methods I don't even know which one is the best for a complete beginner. If it's not too much, can I also have a link to a website that cover most of japanese? (kanjis,hiragana,katakana and the basics of japanese grammar)

 

Thanks a bunch !

 

(and I have a really hard time making the distinction between symbols when the font changes, will I become used to it naturally ? For me it's the same as reading hieroglyphs)

[Nerathim]

Thanks that helps a lot! And I intend to focus on studying of course, the hardest part will be not to forget hiragana after learning katakana and so on..