Okay. I should have told you all this back in July

[Fiye]

Six months ago I went to my first convention. The Anaheim Anime Expo. Well, when I went there on a sunday, I was lost, with three strangers I had never met before, and while I was when them, we stopped by to look at a bit of imported manga, if you so will.

What was this manga? Just small booklets of Kanji characters and images, detailing certain things. From sex to... I dunno... FFXI stories. Anywho, guess what I found.



I found a booklet of FFXI related stories. Problem is, I can't read it (Due to the lack of pro-japanese language classes in my patriotic school), and the only person who can possibly translate it, doesn't, because of reasons I cannot understand.

So, if you know how to read Japanese Kanji symbols, I'd like to to translate many sentences/phrases. Just PM me, and we can get to work.

Edit: Do mind the bends to the right. I've kept it in its plastic for most of the time, but you can't expect it to be 100% perfect.

[Sugami]

kanji or kana?

Kanji is basically Chinese; each kanji represents what it is describing and multiple kanji can be stacked together. E.g. the kanji for "tree" can mean "woods" if you put two next to each other.

Kana is the name for Hiragana and Katakana scripts, both are like an alphabet except symbols represent phonetic sounds as opposed to letters.

Hiragana is what you'd mostly see in your every day Japanese writing, Katakana is used for foreign words and advertising (you'll see my name written in Katakana in my siggy). Kanji is used for "common" words, such as "I" (watashi/atashi/boku) and others that I don't know (I don't know any kanji ).

In general you'll find all 3 scripts in Japanese, there is a Kana lookup table but translating Kanji is a bit tough (considering how many commonly used kanji there is in the Japanese language).

I've rambled a bit Lookup tables can be found here, here and here.

[Bitneko]

Wow Sugami, I know the most japanese stuff out of all my classmates and yet you bested me in just 1 post.

/praise

[Fiye]

O,o.

I'm familiar with Romanji (Japanese in Roman letters), Hirigana (Japanese method of translating various roman names and places) and Kanji (Japanese symbolized text).

That's as far as my knowledge goes. Besides basic grammar sentence structure.

Ahem, anyways, Sugami, could I ask you to translate the various pages of the manga booklet?

[Sugami]

Thanks Bitneko, I'm trying to learn but my vocabulary is very limited

Hiragana (as I said) is their basic "alphabet", Katakana is the script used for foreign words and advertising (I also said that).

Example;

私はスガミ。　私は日本語がすこしわかります。

Red = Kanji
Black = Hiragana
Blue = Katakana

If my Japanese is correct that should read;
I am Sugami. I understand a little Japanese.

The first kanji is "I" (used twice), the next is Japanese (language). Note how I used Katakana to write my name because it is a foreign word. The rest "regular" Japanese is in Hiragana.

It takes me about 5 minutes to translate a sentence, would take a year to do a book (plus it'd have many kanji I wouldn't know) so no I can't translate it for you.

[Fiye]

(Understood)

Thank you for the lesson at least =D

[Kessa]

I spent 3 years on Honshu and learned to hold a middle school level conversation in japanese, but reading it lost me completely

[Sugami]

Yeah reading is fun on a bun 'cause the words are all bunched up together with no spacing it means I don't know where one word ends and another begins

Ontop of which I only know a few hiragana and even less katakana, obviously I know absolutely no kanji

Problem when learning Japanese (and any other eastern language) is not only you need to learn how to speak it but you also need to learn how to read it don't need to tell you that
Guess that makes learning another western language more "desirable" for most but where's the challenge in that?

I also know that the partical "wa" when written is represented by the "ha" hiragana (as you can see from my example)

I don't know enough Japanese to hold a conversaion I need to take a course 'cause I'm just not motivated enough to learn on my own

[Alya Mizar (Tsybil)]

Problem when learning Japanese (and any other eastern language) is not only you need to learn how to speak it but you also need to learn how to read it don't need to tell you that

Its different for Chinese. You can learn to read it without needing to speak it at all.

Had a friend who was a technical translator from Russian & Chinese to English. He spoke some Russian, but hardly a word of Chinese.

[Sugami]

That's interesting, so he knew the English translation for the script but not how to pronounce it in Chinese? Heck if I knew how to read it then I'd learn how to speak it aswell

[Kessa]

I don't know enough Japanese to hold a conversaion I need to take a course 'cause I'm just not motivated enough to learn on my own

I learned from an overwhelming need to find the bathroom

[Kessa]

I also have about 200 japanese music videos. Its easier to remember the words to music. That and I am addicted to Ayumi Hamasaki and Koda Kumi >.>

[Alya Mizar (Tsybil)]

That's interesting, so he knew the English translation for the script but not how to pronounce it in Chinese? Heck if I knew how to read it then I'd learn how to speak it as well

Not necessary with a photographic written language. And as the written form gives no clue to the spoken forms it would be little help.

Remember, there are 4 or 5 major Chinese "dialects", or languages no closer than French, Italian, and German, all written with the same pictographs. Its one of the things that keeps China unified. Or maybe keeps it reunifying.

[Sugami]

Actually I'd say there's only 2 "major" dialects; Cantonese (Hong Kong mainly) and Mandarin.

Old HK films were done in Cantonese but as of last 10 years or so they're all filmed in Manadarin, so some actors were forced to learn Mandarin

I would have still tried to learn Cantonese and/or Mandarin though

[Kessa]

Chinese is sooooooo confusing. I've tried to study it, but it makes my brain hurt then I start to cry

[Sugami]

Gotta love that the same word can mean different things the way it's pronounced, and there's 4 different ways to pronounce vowel sounds