Good literature in Japanese online?

[danparvus_502651]

I'd love to get to that stage. I've had maybe four or five occasions where I've completely understood something said in Japanese without any effort and without any translation going on. The first time it happened I was watching a movie, and I actually rewound it just to make sure they hadn't been speaking English at that point.

My progress is pretty slow because I insist on getting to that point in every lesson. I can now go through all the Absolute Beginner Season 1 and 2 and most of Newbie Season 1 and 2 lesson audios and understand what is being said with minimal translating. Still, that is mainly because of memory work. At times, I can catch words that I've learned in Japanese movies and tv programs. Usually just the small phrases and common word combinations. But it is rare for me to understand a full sentence without pausing and replaying the program multiple times.

The Japanese IME lets you type Japanese on an English keyboard, and it's built into Windows: you just need to turn it on. I use Windows 7 and I haven't used Windows 8.1, so I can't give fully detailed instructions, but the general idea is:-

It worked! Thank you! Although up to now, I have been focusing my memory work on the full on Kanji! I now realize I will have to pay closer attention to proper Romaji spelling! Arrg!

On Windows 8.1 I think you type Windows-key plus space-bar to switch languages; on other systems you type Control-Shift.

And thank you for this tip. I work in Canada so I have English US, English Canada, and French installed, and often Word and some other programs auto detect languages I don't want it to switch to. It is always a pain to have to switch it back. Now I know how to do it quickly.

I have the same problem: some speakers seem to be much more difficult to follow than others. For me, male speakers are usually more difficult than female speakers. I find that reading the Lesson Notes helps--the trick is to read it out loud: if you read aloud, you have to deal with pronunciation, and if you can get the pronunciation right (or close enough), then you know what to expect in the audio track. And then you can use the audio track to help improve your pronunciation, and back around we go...

Agreed.

Thanks again for your help!
ダニエル

[mmmason8967]

It worked! Thank you! Although up to now, I have been focusing my memory work on the full on Kanji! I now realize I will have to pay closer attention to proper Romaji spelling! Arrg!

You might be interested in knowing that there's another style of roumaji that is based around the characters you're trying to type rather than being a pronunciation guide for English speakers. The basic rules are:-

• Vowels take one keystroke.
• Standard kana take two keystrokes,. This includes ん, which is typed as nn; although the IME will convert a single n correctly, things start to go horribly wrong when ん character is followed by な, に, ぬ, ね, の, や, ゆ or よ. It's easier to get used to typing nn when you want ん.
• Combined characters (youon) take three keystrokes. These are the characters where a kana is followed by a liitle や, ゆ orよ.

So the basic kana chart looks like this, with the 'unexpected' spellings highlighted:-

ka, ki, ku, ke, ko　⇒　ga, gi, gu, ge, go
sa, si, su, se, so　⇒　za, zi, zu, ze, zo
ta, ti, tu, te, to　⇒　da, di, du, de, do
na, ni, nu, ne, no
ha, hi, hu, he, ho　⇒　ba, bi, bu, be, bo　⇒　pa, pi, pu, pe, po
ma, mi, mu, me, mo
ya, yu, yo
ra, ri, ru, re, ro
wa, wo
nn

And the combined three-letter characters are:-

kya, kyu, kyo　⇒　gya, gyu, gyo
sya, syu, syo　⇒　zya, zyu, zyo　(sha, shu, sho　⇒　ja, ju, jo)
tya, tyu, tyo　⇒　dya, dyu, dyo　(cha, chu, cho　⇒　ja, ju, jo)
nya, nyu, nyo
hya, hyu, hyo　⇒　bya, byu, byo　⇒　pya, pyu, pyo
mya, myu, myo
rya, ryu, ryo

For me, this system seems more closely related to the characters I'm trying to type than the standard system. But it does feel odd at first to type huzitu instead of fujitsu. On the other hand you can easily enter ぢ, ぢゃ, ぢゅ, ぢ and づ, which are difficult to type if you're used to standard roumaji: they're romanised as ji, ja, ju, jo and zu but if you try typing them as ji, ja, ju, jo and zu, you'll get the much more widely used じ, じゃ, じゅ, じょ and ず instead.

マイケル

[danparvus_502651]

It worked! Thank you! Although up to now, I have been focusing my memory work on the full on Kanji! I now realize I will have to pay closer attention to proper Romaji spelling! Arrg!

You might be interested in knowing that there's another style of roumaji that is based around the characters you're trying to type rather than being a pronunciation guide for English speakers. The basic rules are:-

• Vowels take one keystroke.
• Standard kana take two keystrokes,. This includes ん, which is typed as nn; although the IME will convert a single n correctly, things start to go horribly wrong when ん character is followed by な, に, ぬ, ね, の, や, ゆ or よ. It's easier to get used to typing nn when you want ん.
• Combined characters (youon) take three keystrokes. These are the characters where a kana is followed by a liitle や, ゆ orよ.

So the basic kana chart looks like this, with the 'unexpected' spellings highlighted:-

ka, ki, ku, ke, ko　⇒　ga, gi, gu, ge, go
sa, si, su, se, so　⇒　za, zi, zu, ze, zo
ta, ti, tu, te, to　⇒　da, di, du, de, do
na, ni, nu, ne, no
ha, hi, hu, he, ho　⇒　ba, bi, bu, be, bo　⇒　pa, pi, pu, pe, po
ma, mi, mu, me, mo
ya, yu, yo
ra, ri, ru, re, ro
wa, wo
nn

And the combined three-letter characters are:-

kya, kyu, kyo　⇒　gya, gyu, gyo
sya, syu, syo　⇒　zya, zyu, zyo　(sha, shu, sho　⇒　ja, ju, jo)
tya, tyu, tyo　⇒　dya, dyu, dyo　(cha, chu, cho　⇒　ja, ju, jo)
nya, nyu, nyo
hya, hyu, hyo　⇒　bya, byu, byo　⇒　pya, pyu, pyo
mya, myu, myo
rya, ryu, ryo

For me, this system seems more closely related to the characters I'm trying to type than the standard system. But it does feel odd at first to type huzitu instead of fujitsu. On the other hand you can easily enter ぢ, ぢゃ, ぢゅ, ぢ and づ, which are difficult to type if you're used to standard roumaji: they're romanised as ji, ja, ju, jo and zu but if you try typing them as ji, ja, ju, jo and zu, you'll get the much more widely used じ, じゃ, じゅ, じょ and ず instead.

マイケル

Thank you again for the tips. I see several options when I right click the imme icons for Japanese. I will definitely be playing around with this as I go. Just trying to replicate text from the line by line will be challenging enough to start with, but it should be good practice. Perhaps even more useful than that Kanji practice for handwriting.

マイケル

[community.japanese]

ダニエルさん、
今日は。
色々役に立つ情報がもらえてよかったですね。
That’s good you got a lot of useful information.

マイケルさん、
どうもありがとうございます。

Yuki 由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com