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Post by cambertian on Feb 2, 2014 17:14:33 GMT -5
I'm not sure how relevant moral-cultural relativism is in this case. It just seems like some sort of "NO U!" kneejerk reaction. I'm just saying that cultures tend to look down on foreigners, regardless of where you go. Celebrities and Politicians - guess what? They're typically giant asses; most of the time, real people who live in foreign countries are more accepting, especially if you're trying to learn their language. Even the foreign exchange student from Belgium I go to school with loves me using my very little understanding of French around him, and the French tend to be very critical. I suck at foreign language, but I still like to learn. ... Because the more I learn, the better I can insult them.
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geishaboy
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Like that movie Drunken Master, minus the kung-fu
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Post by geishaboy on Feb 2, 2014 21:02:01 GMT -5
Mainly because that culture is full of xenophobic racists that would treat me think of me like absolute shit. Excuse me? What? Yeah, seriously what the fuck? Was that tongue-in-cheek? I think it's pretty big misconception that the Japanese are racist. As a people, I haven't found them to be any more racist than any other country, it's just that they have a strong sense of national identity, and being Japanese requires both Japanese ethnicity and Japanese nationality. This doesn't mean that non-Japanese aren't welcome in Japan. Getting a visa in Japan is very simple, prompt and technically free (you do have to pay a clerical fee though). For a country that gets such a bad rap, there is actually very little barring foreigners from living and working here. They perhaps give a little too much weight to common stereotypes, but in my experience, Japan is actually the least racist country in east Asia. Seriously.
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Post by Allie on Feb 2, 2014 22:41:59 GMT -5
Yeah, seriously what the fuck? Was that tongue-in-cheek? I think it's pretty big misconception that the Japanese are racist. As a people, I haven't found them to be any more racist than any other country, it's just that they have a strong sense of national identity, and being Japanese requires both Japanese ethnicity and Japanese nationality. This doesn't mean that non-Japanese aren't welcome in Japan. Getting a visa in Japan is very simple, prompt and technically free (you do have to pay a clerical fee though). For a country that gets such a bad rap, there is actually very little barring foreigners from living and working here. They perhaps give a little too much weight to common stereotypes, but in my experience, Japan is actually the least racist country in east Asia. Seriously. I've always been under the impression that they absolutely can't stand black people (Bob Sapp aside). If this isn't the case, feel free to say so in a manner that doesn't involve the word "fuck".
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geishaboy
Full Member
Like that movie Drunken Master, minus the kung-fu
Posts: 190
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Post by geishaboy on Feb 2, 2014 23:36:56 GMT -5
Yeah, seriously what the fuck? Was that tongue-in-cheek? I think it's pretty big misconception that the Japanese are racist. As a people, I haven't found them to be any more racist than any other country, it's just that they have a strong sense of national identity, and being Japanese requires both Japanese ethnicity and Japanese nationality. This doesn't mean that non-Japanese aren't welcome in Japan. Getting a visa in Japan is very simple, prompt and technically free (you do have to pay a clerical fee though). For a country that gets such a bad rap, there is actually very little barring foreigners from living and working here. They perhaps give a little too much weight to common stereotypes, but in my experience, Japan is actually the least racist country in east Asia. Seriously. I've always been under the impression that they absolutely can't stand black people (Bob Sapp aside). If this isn't the case, feel free to say so in a manner that doesn't involve the word "fuck". What, like "balls" or "cock burger"? And no, there are black people in Japan and it's no big deal. There are even a few black television personalities, and while a minority within a minority, they aren't discriminated against more than any other foreigner. From the few I have talked to, the only racial tension they feel here is actually from other foreigners, crazy as it sounds. Book yourself a ticket to Japan if you want, no one is really going to care that you're black. If anything you might get a bit of positive attention; I heard about one black guy who drank for free at a local bar because the owner thought it was cool to have a black guy drinking there.
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Post by bakudon on Feb 3, 2014 0:27:45 GMT -5
Well I most certainly never had to explain myself knowing Japanese with ”adult” reasons when living there.
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Post by Joseph Joestar on Feb 3, 2014 0:41:15 GMT -5
EDIT: yeah, I'm with Orbus, let's not get this thread locked.
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Post by Super Orbus on Feb 3, 2014 0:48:49 GMT -5
Well this has spiraled downward quickly.
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iwant
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Posts: 225
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Post by iwant on Feb 10, 2014 16:03:07 GMT -5
I've been working quite a lot on my kanji lately. What I do is find a relatively simple and short manga and try to translate it, searching up the kanji and trying to make sense out of what I get. It helps me memorizing the kanji I already kind of know, and I also get to learn new ones in the process.
I've come across a lot of weird cases though, where a jukugo (a word made up of several kanji) seems to mean the exact same thing as one of the kanji that is a part of it to begin with. For instance, 和 usually means "harmony" or "peace", but so does 平和 apparently. Does anyone know what's the logic behind it?
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Post by Yukito on Feb 10, 2014 16:45:03 GMT -5
Are you not aware of the different categories of 熟語 (jukugo) and how they come together? There's lots of different types. The one you've discovered is called 並列構造 (heiretsu kouzou), which can be translated as parallel construction. To give you a comparison that will probably make more sense to you than if I spouted history at you, if you have a single line, it can become a dirt path to follow, but if you have two lines running parallel to each other, it becomes a road. When it becomes a road, nobody mistakes it for anything but a road, but when it's just a path, it can be overlooked or people might fail to see it.
It's the same thing with kanji made out of a parallel construction. We can be sure of the meaning when speaking it, whereas if we just said "hei" or "wa," it would be harder to understand what you mean.
And here is where I recommend you stop reading if that's a good enough explanation for you, because this might be confusing to someone who isn't used to the way of thinking for these languages. If you want the complex explanation and the history, well here it is: Originally Chinese people used kanji both as phonetic symbols for sounds and as units of meaning, but because of the duplication of sounds, it got confusing, so parallel construction, wherein two kanji with similar meanings get put together to form one word was created to make phonetic meanings that could be more easily distinguished. This is also the case in Japanese, but to a lesser extent. In Japanese, it often takes on an additional nuance, because for ancient Japanese writers, when writing of nature or divine things, they often wanted to show a reverence for "higher meaning," so they created kanji constructions linking two similar words together to make for a word with a deeper, more philosophical meaning. These days, that type of thinking is ridiculed for any writer who knows their stuff, but the cultural impact of our forefathers remains as many of their words lived on and so when you say, for instance 森林 (shinrin), it has a deeper resonance than either 森 (mori) or 林 (hayashi) has, even though it's made up of one word that has a natural meaning and the other with a man-made meaning. Other ones you might know are 永久 (eikyuu, eternal), 道路 (douro, road) and 山岳 (sangaku, mountain range).
On the other hand, the original words are considered often softer, more phonetically beautiful and poetic these days, so you'll likely see these types of parallel constructions more in things like official documents. Parallel constructions that originated in China are more common in everyday speech. If you ever get to the point where you can read 漢文 (kanbun), by that time you'll just know instinctively what a 漢字熟語 (kanjijukugo) word with a Japanese or Chinese origin is.
We are tested in not only the reading, writing and meaning of kanji, but how they are put together, more so in the higher grades than the lower. I know that there has been criticism in this thread about how valid the Japanese approach to education is for foreigners, and I know that you guys have your own way of learning, but I'd seriously recommend knowing all the major categories of 漢字熟語 formation before you go too far in your studies.
Oh and BTW, 平 can mean peace, but I think you'll find most Japanese will think of it as "flat" first, then "peace."
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iwant
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Post by iwant on Feb 10, 2014 17:08:53 GMT -5
Thanks! Thorough explanations like these really are what a learner needs to help clear stuff up.
So, if I got it right, heireitsu kouzou are used to "nail down" a specific meaning to ensure it's understood in a specific way. I suppose that's also the logic behind 世界, which is made up of kanji that both have the potential meaning of "world" already but is used to ensure it's understood as "the world we live in" and not as, say, "society" (世) or "universe" (界).
I'll make sure to check on these 漢字熟語 formations, I wasn't aware of their existence indeed.
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Post by Yukito on Feb 10, 2014 17:55:33 GMT -5
I hate doing this, but I don't see any reason to re-type the entire thing if I already made a post about it. You can see my explanation for 世界 here. Personally I wouldn't interpet 界 as "universe." I'm not sure how I would explain what 界 means, but hopefully from that post I linked to, you'll understand the nuance for 世 (yo). 界 is closer to an idea of a "world as a subset of ideas within another world." So for instance, 学会 (gakkai) is the academic part of the world or thinking, 限界 (genkai) is the physical or cognitive world until it meets its limit, and 境界 (kyoukai) represents the boundaries between worlds, in this case "world" meaning anything from the entertainment world, to the world of Tatooine or the world of biker bars. It may sound pretentious in English, but if you don't think of it in a different way, I can almost guarantee you that speaking Japanese won't come as naturally to you. Speaking English made a great deal more sense and came more easily once I knew who English speakers conceptualize English words and concepts. I had a New Year's Resolution to update my blog with more Japanese Lessons more frequently, but that got shot to hell when Google found out I was misusing their user policy to get around their stupid Youtube/Google+ thing and now my access to my own friggin' blog is restricted until I can get them to get it released. When did Google turn into assholes with their accounts? I don't recall hearing anything of this sort about them before. I've got all these posts waiting on them to get their act together. Maybe I should have gone with tumblr or wordpress?
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iwant
Full Member
erotic enka funk breaks
Posts: 225
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Post by iwant on Feb 10, 2014 18:05:09 GMT -5
Actually that's a good thing you posted a link to your blog, I didn't realize you had posted Japanese lessons on there! I'll be sure to check this out, nuance in the meaning of similar words is often a though part in the learning process of any language.
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Post by Yukito on Feb 10, 2014 18:07:30 GMT -5
Mostly, you've understood it correctly. But remember the original point was to phonetically create a word that it is easier to distinguish when spoken. The differences in nuance or meaning came later. Sometimes, when it comes to new kanji compounds, there isn't any difference in meaning at all and the difference is just because of some issue in style writing or publishing (you would do well to know that there is a list of "accepted" kanji in most publications and kanji outside these lists are not often printed various reasons), like the difference in spelling between colosseum and coliseum. So in the case of 世界 (sekai) the original problem was that 世 (yo) also potentially meant something as a unit of grammar, as "night," as "I," as a counter, and or as a signifier for something that's good, so when speaking it would be confusing knowing which one. I know these days that doesn't happen as much, but that's because Japanese and Japanese speaking evolved into being able to tell which homonym you are talking about most of the time from context as the number of kanji compounds increased and the number of homonyms also increased. Originally, in a world where most people didn't read or write, the spread of words that could be understood as separate in meaning from sound alone was more important.
If Google stops being a bitch and I ever get access back to my blog, I'll let you know by PM.
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Post by Allie on Feb 10, 2014 18:07:31 GMT -5
At this point, I can't even imagine ever making it to kanji. I'm having enough problems trying to learn just hiragana. -.-
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geishaboy
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Like that movie Drunken Master, minus the kung-fu
Posts: 190
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Post by geishaboy on Feb 11, 2014 7:43:26 GMT -5
At this point, I can't even imagine ever making it to kanji. I'm having enough problems trying to learn just hiragana. -.- Don't get discouraged. Everyone who has ever learnt Japanese had to start with kana, and it wasn't easy for anyone. But once you get it down everything else starts to fall into place. Yukito did a fantastic job explaining the ins-and-outs of kanji compounds like that. A good method to help you further grasp the concept would be to look at other compounds that contain the same kanji to give you a better idea of it's meaning. Another good way is to pop two similar kanji into google image search and see what pops up. For example, 平和 is the "peace on earth" kind of peace, where as 和 alone is more the "I'm at peace" kind of peace. It also important to note that 和 often means "Japan", in the more traditional sense. Think cherry blossoms slowly fluttering down and settling on a placid body of water. Seriously, open up google image search in two tabs, in one search 平和 and the other 和, you will see what I mean. Also, if Yukito is still out there, if you could tell me why a Japanese to English dictionary is 和英 and Japanese to English Translation is 日英, I would be very grateful. I'm guessing that 日英 points more to the relation between Japan and other countries, where as 和英 points more to Japanese and other languages, but that's theory I just pulled out of my ass. I've been scratching my head over this lately.
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