This is amazing, and I’m actually going to pin it, and link it on our sidebar.
As I’ve mentioned before, although this instance is fundamentally different from r/learnjapanese and we won’t necessarily have the same approach as them, that doesn’t mean that we won’t be welcoming and discussing learning resources, so this is an incredible resource for us.
Pronunciation is a majorly difficult thing for most native English speakers. I know people look at Japanese vowels and consonants and think “wow, only 5 vowels and a limited set of consonants and combinations, this is super easy!” And I guess it is easier than… Russian, Hungarian or French. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
But that’s mostly because they’re thinking of the “a” sound in English and the “o” sound, and so on. In reality, Japanese vowels are so radically different from English vowels, the vast majority of learners are going to completely butcher their pronunciation. You have to learn how to simplify all of them to their real sounds, because English vowels are usually rather complex, while Japanese are more similar to Spanish vowels. You also have to get rid of the plosives, which are also a dead giveaway when someone is a native English speaker.
As for what makes Japanese easier than others… hmm… well, not a lot, actually. I guess tenses and verb conjugations are considerably simpler than most Romance languages, for example. There are no gendered nouns but you have Kanji which is far more time consuming to memorise, and grammar structure and logic is usually completely different from English, and you’ll have to learn how to think differently to get your head around many concepts. This happens with most languages but even more so with Japanese.
So uh… the only thing that I think makes Japanese easier is that it’s arguably one of the most studied, documented and resource-rich languages to learn. There are millions of resources focusing on efficient and thorough study methodologies, as well as a lot of very popular media, books, TV shows, you name it. Cultural relevance is, in my opinion, Japanese’s biggest advantage, which is only rivalled by Spanish in the United States, or perhaps (I honestly have no clue but I’m guessing) French in the UK.
Ah, no, this is some Internet slang, and oddly enough it comes from the first meaning. AFAIK, the second one doesn’t exist in Japanese.
Basically, “hahaha” in Katakana is written as ハハハ. If you line up enough ハハ’s, it will look like a series of ｗ’s. In chats, they use ｗ (from 笑い、warai) to denote laughter. If you line up enough ｗｗｗｗ’s, it looks like grass. That’s how 草 ended up meaning LOL.
I started because I was super into Japanese music. This was almost 10 years ago already. But over time I’ve come to appreciate the lenguaje itself. Especially Kanji. Now I love it, and is the main reason why I still go out of my way to learn new vocabulary that I may never use.
That being said, I’m also trying to get into a Japanese university for my masters degree, and I use Japanese every day at my job, so it has financial and professional uses for me as well, and has sort of gone beyond a mere hobby at this point
Just a guess, but was there an extra space after the comma? Unlike in English, the full-width comma takes up an entire square worth of space like all other characters and shouldn’t have an extra space after it. I don’t know if Duolingo even considers spaces when marking answers though so that may not be it.
Although I can’t prove it with just the image, my input method editor (fcitx5) seems to only use full-width characters, even for commas, when I use it to input Japanese text. I had completed several dozen other exercises, many containing commas, which seemed to work fine with Duolingo. Even copy-pasting their “Correct solution” did not work and I believe it contained a full-width comma.
If you’re familar with Python, can you try this script? (please replace the string a and b with your input and the answer)
<span style="color:#323232;">$ python
</span><span style="color:#323232;">>>> import unicodedata
</span><span style="color:#323232;">>>> a = 'はい、 コンビニです。'
</span><span style="color:#323232;">>>> print('n'.join(f'{hex(ord(c))}, {unicodedata.name(c)}' for c in a))
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x306f, HIRAGANA LETTER HA
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x3044, HIRAGANA LETTER I
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x3001, IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x3000, IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x30b3, KATAKANA LETTER KO
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x30f3, KATAKANA LETTER N
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x30d3, KATAKANA LETTER BI
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x30cb, KATAKANA LETTER NI
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x3067, HIRAGANA LETTER DE
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x3059, HIRAGANA LETTER SU
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x3002, IDEOGRAPHIC FULL STOP
</span><span style="color:#323232;">>>> b = 'はい、コンビニです。'
</span><span style="color:#323232;">>>> print('n'.join(f'{hex(ord(c))}, {unicodedata.name(c)}' for c in b))
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x306f, HIRAGANA LETTER HA
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x3044, HIRAGANA LETTER I
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x3001, IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x30b3, KATAKANA LETTER KO
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x30f3, KATAKANA LETTER N
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x30d3, KATAKANA LETTER BI
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x30cb, KATAKANA LETTER NI
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x3067, HIRAGANA LETTER DE
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x3059, HIRAGANA LETTER SU
</span><span style="color:#323232;">0x3002, IDEOGRAPHIC FULL STOP
</span>
I could go completely with Kanji Study but for the fact that it doesn't do deconjugation and minor error correction like Takoboto, which is a lifesaver when trying to look up words that I only heard. For example, if you type in けいしき, it will still show 景色, and if you type in こべ, it will still show 神戸, and if you type in れんこう, it will still show 連合.
The R pops up for the same reason "no smorking" is a thing. That O sound can get a bit confusing depending upon what's near it and usual patterns. It tends to crop up when the O is a long vowel in the furigana. The L/R thing is everpresent.
I think that’s a British influence. Rs in English words tend to get transcribed into katakana as long vowels to resemble British pronunciation, like parking → パーキング or art → アート. For a Japanese person who hasn’t formally learned a romanization system but knows a decent amount of these English → Japanese word pairs, it seems pretty reasonable to try to reverse the process by turning long vowels into Rs when writing Japanese in Romaji.
Basically: Japan has tried to get rid of Kanji for convenience several times since the mid-19th Century. However, the first attempts which were mainly supported by the idea that regular civilians had low kanji literacy, amounted to nothing as kanji literacy among regular Japanese civilians was higher than expected.
For a while in the 20th century the 常用漢字 was actually named 当用漢字 or "provisional kanji list" as there was yet another push for education reforms that would gradually diminish kanji use. This was especially poignant before the arrival of personal computers, as there were no convenient input methods for kanji with typewriters.
But this was halted, once again, as personal computers provided a convenient and easy way for typing Kanji. Which meant that there was no real need to stop using it.
Ultimately, Japan hasn't abandoned Kanji because it hasn't been necessary. Most people already know how to read it, and it provides easier access and understanding of their historical texts.
Personally, I also think Kanji provides several advantages, such as an immediate understanding of vocabulary based solely on its kanji, or the ability to transmit more information in fewer characters.
I also read on my iPhone and iPad using Immersion Reader with Yomichan-formatted dictionaries installed (I use a ton of dictionaries for better word coverage, both J-E and J-J monolingual dictionaries).
The advantage of using Immersion Reader is that you just simply touch the word, instead of selecting and highlighting it, so look-ups are quicker. Also in addition to installing multiple dictionaries, you can install frequency lists, pitch accent info, grammar guides, etc. When you look up a word, it’ll search through everything you’ve installed, so if you have pitch accent info and frequency lists installed, you can see the pitch accent of the word you touched, including the frequency number to help determine if it’s a word you want to learn.
Then you can save the word to your word list (it’ll also automatically save the definition and the sentence containing the word) so you can later export to Anki.
There also also third party tools that let you export your words from Kindle devices to Anki as well.
Note: some words with furigana may still be difficult to look up correctly on the Kindle and also Immersion Reader, if the formatting of the furigana is weird (a combination of the HTML code and the CSS styling). Sometimes the furigana isn’t clearly separated from the word, but instead jumbled together, so the dictionary may not be able to find the word.
Usually kanji-compound words are fine, but some words with kunyomi reading with a single furigana over it may cause some issues, but it depends on the book, and also it may depend on the particular word you are trying to look up.
To get around this, Immersion Reader has a search function that let you paste in the word (provided you copied it first), so you can fix the spelling (usually it means removing the furigana from the word) and it’ll search through all the dictionaries so you can add it to your word list. You can also edit each entry in your word list in order to manually add the example sentence, or to remove any unwanted dictionary entries.
Japanese Language
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