Lets learn Japanese and Chinese

General Discussion
1

Hey guys,

Probably most of you’ve been to my page before over on Youtube. I promissed a few people that I would start helping out with some Japanese and Chinese videos. I hope I can get more people in the gaming community to learn these two languages. I think you guys would benefit a lot from it if you put the time in. Anyway, let’s start learning!

Japanese series (Part 1)

[media=youtube]wdq1dDV8flE[/media]

???

The script:

???
Doushite

???
Doushite nihongo ni kyoumi ga aru no?
Why are you interested in Japanese?

???
Datte, omoshirokute, kodomo no koro itsumo nihon ni ikitakatta mono da
Because it?s interesting and at the time when I was a child, I always wanted to go to Japan.
???
Datte, nihon no ge-mu ni kyoumi ga ate, itsuka nihonjin pure-ya- ni chousen shitai mono da
Because I?m interested in games and one day I want to challenge the Japanese players
???
Nihonjin pure-ya- ni chousen shitemireba kitto makeru to omoundayo.
But, I think that if you challenge the Japanese players, you?re gonna for sure lose.

??-??? Kyoumi Interest
??? Chousen Challenge
??? Makeru To lose

Here’s the link for the Chinese video. Let me know if you guys have any questions about anything.

(Chinese)
[media=youtube]R_u67UdhvbU[/media]

???
Wei4 shen2 me

-???
Ni3 wei4 shen2 me dui4 ri4 wen2 gan3 xing1 qu4 ne?

???
Yin1 wei4 ri4 wen2 hen3 you3 yi2 si, er2 qie2 wo3 xiao3 de shi2 hou4 wo3 lao3 shi4 xiang3 qu4 ri4 ben3

???
Wo3 dui4 ri4 ben3 de you2 xi4 gan3 xing1 qu4, er2 qie2 you3 yi1 tian1, wo3 xiang3 gen1 ri4 ben3 de da3 dian4 dong4 de ren2 tiao3 zhan4
???
Dan4 shi4 Wo3 jue3 de ne…ru2 guo2 ni3 chang2 shi4 gen1 ri4 ben3 de da3 dian4 dong4 de ren2 tiao3 zhan4 de hua4, ni3 yi2 ding hui4 shu1 le

Let me know if any of you have any questions about anything. Talk to you soon.

Best,

Moses (Laoshu)

Just a quick update to add to this thread. The second series will be done by tomorrow. Here’s the latest Japanese video made for you guys:

[media=youtube]abmEtSqMCK8[/media] (Japanese)

[media=youtube]63WCZQKGoUU[/media] (Japanese)

[media=youtube]oD-O0fVl83M[/media] (Chinese)

The content provided here will be included in the next series for Japanese and Chinese.

Best,

Moses McCormick (Laoshu)

2

thanks! starting to learn japanese

3

Perfect. I just wanted to start up again now that I have free time. I bookmarked the links from your video too - good stuff. Thank you for this =D

4

nice. been teaching myself for several months now. I think I actually posted something on one of your vids before (username looks familiar)

that board is really small to read though! lol. I’ll see if you have some more advanced stuff on your channel maybe later.

5

The script:
???
Doushite

???
Doushite nihongo ni kyoumi ga aru no?
Why are you interested in Japanese?

???
Datte, omoshirokute, kodomo no koro itsumo nihon ni ikitakatta mono da
Because it?s interesting and at the time when I was a child, I always wanted to go to Japan.
???
Datte, nihon no ge-mu ni kyoumi ga ate, itsuka nihonjin pure-ya- ni chousen shitai mono da
Because I?m interested in games and one day I want to challenge the Japanese players
???
Nihonjin pure-ya- ni chousen shitemireba kitto makeru to omoundayo.
But, I think that if you challenge the Japanese players, you?re gonna for sure lose.

??-??? Kyoumi Interest
??? Chousen Challenge
??? Makeru To lose

6

Hey Laoshu, I’ve watched about 100 of your videos on YouTube, interesting stuff. (I even made a comment on your channel awhile back referring to your Daigo translations and you got back to me on my channel, sound familiar?)

Though I’m comfortable with my own methods of study, I have a few questions for you. Firstly, how do you handle the characters? For Japanese I’ve tried countless times to get through the book ‘Remembering the Kanji’ though I can barely get past 1000, and every time I go back to it I’ve forgotten half of them. Are you at all familiar with that book? It seems like learning characters without the readings makes it much less likely that it’s going to stick into your memory, despite everything I’ve read that states otherwise. Mind you it seems like all of these characters that I know I never seem to come across anyways. Just wondering what your take is.

Edit: Just watched your video. Learning from context is sort of what I’ve been doing lately, except I have a bunch of sentences stored on flashcards. Do you find it important to learn the meaning of individual characters? Say for a word like ??. Let’s say you’re just coming across those characters and that word for the first time. Do you take note of the meanings of the characters, even though it has no actually relevance to the word?

Another question I have is about rare languages. For something like say, Mongolian, how would you go about finding resources? (sorry to get off topic, but I know you’ve studied a bunch of different dialects of Chinese that aren’t really officially used anywhere) There’s hardly any media floating around online for languages like this and to my knowledge, you want to get as much exposure as possible be it through listening, reading, speaking etc. Don’t think I’ve seen this discussed in any of your videos, yet you seem to be quite proficient in a bunch of ‘exotic’ languages.

7

duck: have you used ANKI or some other online/electronic flashcards that time when the cards come up again? that should help you with most of your problems.

8

What I’ve been doing, for Japanese anyway

Go to Youtube’s Asahi News Network’s channel
Use Rikai.com’s translator on ANN’s update page

99% of the time the text on the update site matches up word-for-word with what the anchor is saying. The web translator tells you the words (there are multiple ways to say a word/kanji but you follow the way the anchor says it)

You can build vocabulary, pronouciation etc. crazy quick and learn how fucked up Japan is in no time

9

i use this

[media=youtube]uhc06Gqy5ss[/media]

yes, totally for the language

10

I’m gonna check this out, as I want to learn both Japanese (for gaming and possible employment) and Chinese (for talking to the locals).

EDIT: It might be just me because I’m at work, but I find that the volume is pretty low.

11

[media=youtube]dRJFHpQR9sc[/media]

12

Nama-sensei is the only person to learn Japanese from. Ever.

13

[So true.

So true.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZEA54VJEdE)

14

Hey, thanks a lot. I really do appreciate it. Let me know if you have any questions about anything.

Moses

15

Hey,

I think I remember you. As far as characters, I like to learn from context and absorb them that way. I believe that’s probably the most natural way to learn them. If you do that on a normal basis, it starts to become second nature.

You’re right, it is indeed tough to find resources for those languages. I put in a lot of time trying to find resources for those rare languages. Despite them being rare, the resources are out there.It just all depends on how bad you want to learn the language. If you ever get interested in learning a rare language, please let me know and I’ll help you the best I can.

Best,

Moses (Laoshu)

16

Gamers only care about Japanese. I mean come on the Chinese don’t be making games that we’re desperate to find information on.

17

That may be true, but there are some people here interested in learning Chinese. If you don’t want to learn, don’t participate in the Chinese one. No offense btw. Thanks.

18

I’ll watch this thread and see where it goes.

What do you all think about this?

19

That looks cool. Thanks for posting it here for us.

20

Chinese is a god damn bitch to learn. Hats off to anyone that sticks with it.