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Community InformationBelow is information about the "The Pottymouth's Guide to the Japanese Language" community on LiveJournal. To join this community, click here. You may leave the community at any time.
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| User: | pottymouthguide (6491099) The Pottymouth's Guide to Learning Japanese
Japanese as it will never be taught |
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| Name: | The Pottymouth's Guide to the Japanese Language | |
| Location: | Japan | |
| About: | Welcome to Japanese. It hates you, BTW, you evil, foreign devil. Hello! If you are reading this, you have decided for various reasons (you are a sadist/you are an otaku fangirl who wants to laden their fic with l33tkewl J4p4n3z so I hate you die die die/you are an otaku fanboy dreaming of going to Japan and breaking into the manga business OMG I have to point and laugh at you) that you want to study Japanese. I am so, so sorry. Now, before you start wondering where we're going and why we’re going there in this handbasket, I’m going to explain a few things about Japanese that you ought to know and should keep in mind: 1. JAPANESE IS ASSBACKWARDS FROM ENGLISH. I can not say this enough times. It is completely and utterly assbackwards. Japanese is classified as a “Class five language”—this means that Japanese, along with Korean, Chinese, and Arabic, is considered one of the hardest languages for a native English speaker to learn. There is a REASON for this. That is that its grammar is completely, completely, completely reverse from English the vast majority of the time. You have been warned. And remember: it does run both ways. As hellish a time as English speakers have learning Japanese, Japanese speakers have it just as bad, if not worse. 2. JAPANESE HAS THE MOST COMPLEX WRITING SYSTEM IN THE WORLD. Yes. It does. Even more complex than Chinese, which only uses characters. Japanese uses three writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are fairly straightforward—both of them are syllabaries. Japanese has two of them because waybackwhen, people figured, hey, there’s a difference in how men and women speak, let’s have one in how they write, too! …No, I am not making that up. Exaggerating slightly, perhaps, but not making it up. Welcome to Japanese, sucker. Both kana systems developed from characters known as kanji. Kanji originally came from China, and the average Japanese person knows at least 2,000. But wait, you say (or I say). Chinese uses nothing but kanji, right? I heard you have to know 5,000 just to be able to read a newspaper. And that would be correct. However, there is one major difference that makes Japanese kanji more of an OH MY GOD MY HEAD than Chinese: in short, most Chinese hanzi (kanji) only have one way to pronounce them within any given dialect. Two if it functions as a different part of speech. One. Two in exceptions. Japanese? Only one reading IS an exception, and most of them have at least three, plus nonstandard readings. 大 in Mandarin Chinese is “da.” In Japanese, it can be “oo,” “tai,” or “dai,” and that’s just the kanji for “big.” “Small,” 小, can be “chii,” “shou,” “ko,” or “o.” It all depends on context and the surrounded kanji or kana. 3. And finally. THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE HATES YOU. PERSONALLY. It wants to kick your ass. This community exists so you can kick its scrawny ass instead. There are going to be two different level posts for things I deign to go into--there's the Begninner level, and the Intermediate level. Things will be clearly marked what level it's for, even though there will be an obvious enough difference that you shoudl eb able to tell at a glance. If not, well, there's just no hope for you, is there. -- There will be no rhyme nor reason to when updates happen. You have been warned. There is NO WAY I can commit to a once-a-week, in-depth lesson. Just not possible, since I *do* have a life. I work full time. I am busy. Half the time I am running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Such is life. Also, my lovely co-mod, the native-Japanese-speaker half of this outfit, is ALSO a busy person. Nothing will be posted until she's read over it for dumb mistakes I might have made. Between two busy people? You get shit when you get it. Look, a FAQ! Read me! Meet Your Mods! ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} joudama99 - The native-English speaker doing the writing. よろしくね！ ^_^vzerl - The native-Japanese speaker doublechecking to make sure nothing has been overly FUBAR'd. よろしくお願いします♪以上です。 | |
| Interests: | 5: japan, japanese, languages, 日本, 日本語 | |
| Maintainers: | 2: homasse, joudama99 | |
| Moderators: | 3: homasse, joudama99, zerl | |
| Members: | 47: _midoriko_sama_, akina_tsukana, allegoryredstar, ambrosiadrgn, ba_ra_ri, eard_stapa, elanivalae, gaudior, gooddaycitizen, homasse, hypnosfnord, inuyashameow, isachi, jmchocolategirl, joudama99, kamikyrie, keeni84, kenshinomegami, kuron3kosama, levolath, lucidean, mayara13, moonlit_curse, mr_disgust, nightangelca, nikiko, niten, predestinedsoul, quaskx, rainpixel, rhymeasaurus, sea_nymphette, shiganegideo, shizuku_san, sunset_glow, syonakeleste, theempathogen, tracings, tropigalia, ttrin, vodou_chile, weirdquark, yamimagic, yunaresuka, zerl | |
| Watched by: | 47: _midoriko_sama_, akina_tsukana, allegoryredstar, ambrosiadrgn, ba_ra_ri, clauclauclaudia, djuliet200585, elanivalae, gaminette, gaudior, homasse, hypnosfnord, isachi, jmchocolategirl, joudama99, kamikyrie, keeni84, kenshinomegami, kuron3kosama, lignota, lucidean, mayara13, moonlit_curse, mr_disgust, nightangelca, nihongojourney, nikiko, niten, predestinedsoul, quaskx, rainpixel, shiganegideo, sunset_glow, syonakeleste, thatdamnninja, theempathogen, thespooniest, tiger_style14, toujin1, tracings, ttrin, vodou_chile, weirdquark, whitez, yamimagic, yunaresuka, zerl | |
| Account type: | Basic Account | |
