Hey all, i have a few questions about the Japanese language. I know the kana (Hirigana and Katakana), but I can't wrap my mind around Kanji.... Is there any secrets to understanding it? And names.... The title for "the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" suggests her first name is Haruhi, but then sometimes they call her "Suzumiya"... what?! help please
Japanese place the surname before the first name. The English translated title of the anime just switched it around to make it less confusing for English audiences. The Japanese title is "Suzumiya Haruhi no Yūutsu", where her name appears in the Japanese order. I took two years of Japanese in high school, then two semesters in college... & I still only know about ~100 kanji. They're challenging for some people. >_< The only advice I can offer is to learn the most basic ones that form other characters first. Basic example of this - the character for tree (ki) written twice is mori (forest). Plus, this also gets you used to stroke direction & order, which is hard to keep track of in the more complicated characters, like... a dozen plus strokes. Really, the best way to learn kanji is just looking at it & repeatedly writing them. Hopefully you're not as forgetful as I am. lol
Uhhh . . . I guess I'll scrap my plans of taking Japanese classes for my electives next year, so naive of me . . .
No no, don't take my miserable memorization skills to heart! I learned a loooot more kanji than I remember. It's just something that if you don't use it & practice, it doesn't stick around - at least for me. One neat thing we did to practice kanji & memorize the strokes was making folding flash cards. Imagine an accordion folded out, each fold adding a stoke to the character. Haaa... not sure if you're in college or high school, but usually language courses in college won't be counted as elective credits, unless you transfer from one college to another that doesn't offer that language. Happened to me when I went from the University of Hawaii to Daytona State College in Florida. -__-;;
Uhh . . . even MORE reason not to take it, I was under the impression that it would be "useful" in school as well . . . subtitles 4EVER!
They're useful if your degree requires language credits. ;3 Or, you want to graduate with honors. If you live in Hawaii (like me), Japanese is the equivalent of Spanish on the mainland, there's so many Japanese here for business/research/pleasure.
