#autodidactadventures

[stinekskogen-blog]

20171108 自己紹介 (じこしょうかい)

私の初めての日本語話しです。 間違えあるかどうかチェックしてください。

[stinekskogen-blog]

How to Fangirl While Studying 101

K-pop Idols tour all over Asia, and especially Japan; therefore a lot of them speak Japanese. Because they are non-native speakers they typically speak slower, and with clearer diction and pronunciation than a native speaker would. Hack: Watch your favorite K-pop Idols do interviews and fan events in Japanese, and pick up new words and phrases while getting your bias-fix & fangirling quota in for the day. (Fan events that span several hours typically also include a native speaker MC for the interview / talking parts of the event.)

Many K-pop artists also have versions of their albums in other languages, most notably Japanese and Chinese. Bonus hack: Obtain said albums in your target language and listen to it while studying - language acquisition by osmosis. Warning: You run the risk of being bias-wrecked multiple times, as these damned Idols just cannot seem to stay put in their assigned lanes...

[stinekskogen-blog]

How I use Google Translate

OK - so... I wanted to explain how I did this: はじめまして。 スティーネ と もうします。三十三歳 共ノルウェー人 です。日本語を勉強しています。それはすこしむずかしいでもすごいです。

I've been attempting to teach myself Japanese for about three months now, and it's a slow process, but I am seeing progress.

One of my (several) resources is Google Translate, and I know what you're thinking: "...but that's cheating!" And I'm saying - no - it is not - not necessarily, anyway...

In Google Translate you can choose to input Japanese, and that is basically what I do. I know how to type out the words I need in romaji (Latin alphabet), and Google changes them to the Japanese characters.

For example - the first word in the text above is written as 'hajimemashite' in the input-box, and it automagically transforms it to the hiragana はじめまして.

So, for each part / sentence / word of the text above, I type out the romaji for the syllables, and choose the appropriate characters accordingly. In the text above, I have used all three sets of characters: Hiragana for most of it; Katakana for the English loan-words (and my name's closest approximation), and a select few Kanji characters.

I included the Kanji where they would be appropriate and/or give the most accurate and correct meaning.

Since I don't know much Kanji yet, this is a pain-stakingly long process where I use several tabs with Google Translate, and translate a given word or phrase from English to Japanese: I look at the output (Japanese characters) and the accompanying romanji.

I then switch to Japanese input and type out the word in romaji to get the Hiragana (or Katakana) and see if the translation matches up to what I intended. If the Hiragana gives me what I want, I use that - if not - I go about the task of checking each individual Kanji for meanings and variations. Or other Kanji for the same meaning. (This also involves a bit of extra Google-fu and being able to decipher Hiragana when reading explanations for Kanji.)

This means I am switching back and forth between Japanese to English and English to Japanese to check and double check what I'm attempting to accomplish. Certain words or 'concepts' have a specific Kanji I'm more or less comfortable using, such as numbers.

Since I know a bit about syntax and grammar (from studying) I am fairly confident the text above is *mostly* correct. I did - however - include conjunctions in this, and those I am less familiar with at present, so if I inadvertently offended yo mama: ごめんなさい.

Here is the above text, typed out in romaji: Hajimemashite. Suteiine to moushimasu. San juu san sai tomo Noruueejin desu. Nihongo wo benkyou shiteimasu. Sore ha sukoshi muzukashii demo sugoi desu.

NOTE: The Katakana-characters I had to select manually, syllable by syllable. Google Translate defaults to Hiragana as input, so if you copy the romaji text and translate it directly, the output in English is wrong.