So much is squeezed in this podcast: a Japanese Lesson suggested by one of our listeners, Onomatopoeia, a Fairy Tale, Cool but not so useful Japanese, and new summer Japanese custom called “Cool Biz”.
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Japanese Lesson:
これは英語でなんですか。Kore wa eigo de nan desuka? What’s this in English? (How do you say this in English?)
これは日本語でなんですか。Kore wa nihongo de nan desuka? What’s this in Japanese (How do you say this in Japanese?)
Not Very Useful Japanese:
大根足 Daikon Ashi
Onomanopoia:
ブンブン Bun Bun
Fairy Tale:
鶴の恩返し (The Grateful Crane)
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How should read “eigo”? “eego” or “eigo”? I thought that it is ええご, but as the rules says it is written えいご.
The same with for example せんせい, but should read as “sensee”?
Well in many English books that teach Japanese, they will romanize the “えい” sound to spell “ee”. It’s really not good to do this in my opinion, but they do it because some people consider the “えい” sound as just an extended “え”. I really don’t like this though because in a word like せんせい, if an English speaker were to read a word in a romanized form from a source that spells えい as ええ, then you may learn words like せんせい wrong, and when you go to spell it, you’ll incorrectly write
せんせえ
It’s much better in my opinion, to go with the hiragana pronunciation rather then romaji. But for the most part, romaji is pretty accurate.
Also, I’m no speaker of Japanese, so take what a say with a pinch of salt, I could be wrong
I agree with Austin! Another thing to consider to avoid mispronunciations or misspellings…learn hiragana and katakana right away. My first Japanese teacher made us learn hiragana and katakana before we could really even move forward…she always discouraged us from taking notes in romanji or reading textbooks that teach Japanese using romanji.
Yes I personally think romanji discourages the advancement of memorizing hiragana, katakana, and kanji. If you refuse to use romanji, then you’ll force yourself to naturally memorize hiragana, katakana, and kanji. I really just don’t think it’s a good idea to build your comfort zone around romanji.
If you have some time, I recommend taking a look at this page from a Japanese grammar guide by Tae Kim.
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/introduction
He explains why it may be counter-productive to “think English” when trying to learn Japanese. He recommends starting from scratch, as if you never knew English. This includes strictly sticking to the Japanese scripts.
I’m not an expert in any of this though of course
Thank you, Austin!
We appreciate your helpful comments!
argh! I missed one month of shibatabread’s podcasts because I kept checking on your other website! ;_;
great episode!