Spent a year learning conversational Japanese from CDs until I got to the point (I thought) I could tell my Japanese neighbour, who made us a lovely meal one day, that it was delicious "oishii desu". After a minute of trying every permutation of those four syllables (oh ee shee des) and getting nothing but blank looks from her, I knew the time had come to give up.
I took almost enough Japanese to get a minor in college, which is hilarious considering at that point I couldn’t read even kid-level texts and since the courses all focused on polite forms, I couldn't understand casual spoken Japanese AT ALL. Of the few phrases I remember, one of them is "Nihongo o ni-nen benkyou shimashita": "I studied Japanese for two years." LMAO. Kyou wa, ii tenki desu ne.
Having put in lots of time with the Japanese Kanji and Grammar books, I’d say…it’s fun to try and you will learn stuff and improve…but outright mastery/fluency in spoken and written Japanese is extremely rare for non-Japanese people… (*Side Note: the book “KANJI-PICTO-GRAPHICS” by Michael Rowley saved my life and is the reason I know any Japanese at all….)
Well, if you live in Japan, you will see a bunch of non-Japanese people who are very fluent in the language. Mostly Chinese, Koreans, Indians, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, and West Africans such as Nigerians. It is indeed rare for Western Europeans/North Americans to be fluent in Japanese because they always try to get by by using English (but people from relatively small European countries tend to be the exception such as Finnish and Dutch people. Maybe they just know how to acquire a new language). The only way to get really fluent in the language is to talk with a lot of Japanese people without using ANY English and make a lot of embarrassing mistakes. There is no way around.
@ Good, but notice I said WRITTEN also. The level of abstraction and sheer number of characters (potentially 50,000 borrowed from classical and medieval Chinese) create an obstacle to true mastery for most folks. If you look at Zen calligraphy, much of it is written in cursive “grass” style writing that even experts have trouble deciphering. I’m not an expert, but I’m told even Dogen had to be translated from medieval Japanese into modern Japanese for contemporary readers to understand…! (PS-- why DO Americans (especially) have such a hard time mastering foreign languages??)
"Our True Abodes The years of our lives pass by in a blur Yet as time fades, our promises go unfulfilled Too many are the regrets Too poignant the feelings Our human lives are but a short sojourn We forget our true purpose in coming to earth: That we were entrusted to save Kingdoms above, fulfilling their hopes And that to seek the Creator’s aid We descended from on high without looking back But in a world of illusion one becomes lost Worldly success counts for naught in the end Obtain the Way to return to Heaven, your true abode July 8, 2012" Master Li Hongzhi (Hong Yin IV, from Falun Dafa teachings)
I've been desultorily trying to learn Japanese for the last several years, in between work and life. I came to the conclusion that you really needed a three-sided flash card (and no, those can't physically exist) to really understand what your mind is trying to go through learning Japanese. Because two sides just don't work. You need one side for the kanji character, another side for the hiragana reading, and then a third side for the English meaning of the kanji. And, as you pointed out, some kanji characters have multiple pronunciations and those pronunciations change depending on whether the kanji are separate or together. And yeah, at the beginning, I wondered why Japanese only used hiragana, but then I learned that spoken Japanese only has about 100 syllables, compared to ~15,000 possible in English. So yeah, the kanji became utterly necessary to be able to distinguish words. I find Japanese fascinating, it has kicked my butt in ways that neither Spanish nor French did/do. But I compare the difficulty of learning Japanese to that non-existent three-sided flash cards--hard, but not impossible.
…not to mention the “inversion” of the Japanese syntax compared to English…such as the verb usually coming at the END of a sentence, and the many “post-positional” phrases in Japanese (“store-to…”) compared to the use of prepositional phrases (“to-the-store”) in English… All in all, to many native English speakers Japanese feels like having to think, listen, and speak “in reverse”…(and note: Japanese is traditionally written top-to-bottom (vertical columns) moving right-to-left. Moreover, what we think of as the back cover of a book is actually the front cover of a Japanese book….you get the picture…
I just make two flashcards, one from Kanji to English as that's how you'd encounter it when written (including any hiragana paraphernalia) so like 構う - To mind something and then a second flash card from Kanji to Hiragana as that's how you'd read it out loud if you saw it and also how you'd say it
I began learning 15 years ago when I started going home with my native Japanese wife every summer. I got pretty good at conversation, and decided it was time to learn kanji. I quickly said "nope, I'll remain illiterate". I only know the couple dozen of absolutely essential kanji you need to function as a tourist.
omg " he is tree"... when I started to study ZEN. Ive had the suspision, that some Statements are wrong translations.. now I study zen with my english speaking yt teacher Brad as a native german language speaker.. this mixture of languages became my ZEN... and I love it❤
"Secret of Heaven No matter your ethnicity My song will tell you the truth Do you know from whence you came? Through countless reincarnations, why this human form? Most people of the world were kings in the heavens Who descended from above to save their Kingdom’s lives The Holy King has come to spread Dafa [Great Law] Fulfill your vow and let your wisdom shine forth Winter of 2012" Master Li Hongzhi (Hong Yin IV, from Falun Dafa teachings)
Used to read the HIragana Times, good for finding jobs if you live over there. If you go over there best to learn at least enough to get by. I used Japanese Simplified using Hiragana. Yes Brad as Yoda say 'do or do not there is no try',
I gave up Japanese after like 3 years because I got sick of anime. I had only really watched almost all of Naruto, some of One Piece, and a bit of Jojo. that was about it. now the only Japan adjacent thing I really participate in is like watching Nomad Push on youtube. Man if you study Japanese correctly you actually retain a lot of it. I was repping mad Anki cards, mining my own cards, and doing a lot of immersion. I was studying Japanese like a runescape player grinds runescape
It's just like the word "challengier" in medieval Norman dialect remained such in modern English, whereas it evolved to "calomnie" (slander) in modern French.
Since you are a former English teacher (and I am a current English teacher) you probably know that if you don't start learning a language at a young age, you can pretty much never really master it.
Pop quiz: Who is Ta Mo, or Da Mo? What is a Dojo, literally? Sorry about this: In French, what are fried apples versus fried potatoes? Potatoes are apples that grow where? How in hell does that make sense? Thanks. Mike.
Brad...All you need to do is dye your har jet black and put some gel in it to get the rockabilly pompadour ,put on a leather Jacket and maybe get some red lenses for your frames...Then youll be ready for a legends trubute show in Reno...Just work on your male tiger growl for your rendition of Pretty Woman 😅
The problem i have trying to learn Japanese is finding media to watch that isn't atrocious. I can't stand anime, Japanese tv isn't very good. I do like sumo which is why i know はっけよい!
C’mon Brad. ‘Don’t try to learn Japanese’? I get you want to be provocative. But pick and choose when to do that and think of why. People want to learn Japanese for lots of reasons, like the reasons you had in joining JETS and learning about Buddhism. Some people have a spouse who is Japanese or is moving there for any of many reasons and have an interest in the culture, as you obviously have. And not EVERY SINGLE TOPIC has to be autobiographical. Maybe try not being so ego-centered in your videos. Just pick a topic and discuss the topic. This was like t-ball, and you whiffed. There are nuggets of good video ideas in here, like, “how to learn Japanese from comic books”. Or “top 5 key Japanese words you should know for Zen”. Your video title and general attitude is sometimes so negative as to be totally off putting. Lots of things are ‘complicated’ anyway, and some people enjoy the challenge of learning something complicated and the joy of whatever benefits arise from that learning. Maybe your goal is to just have a steady stream of people who hate-watch your videos. If so, keep up the good work.
@ why? B/c you need to hear honest feedback if you want to actually grow the channel instead of begging people for donations. It’s pathetic and annoying. Just make better content and you won’t need the donations. In every area in life, people can improve by getting feedback. You’re filled with negativity. “Don’t try to learn Japanese”. Amazing. Keep on begging for donations then if you don’t want feedback.
Well, I'm 3 years into it, so no going back.
俺も❤
youre not a real zen master until you have big thick rimmed glasses...
Honto des, ne! 🤓
Spent a year learning conversational Japanese from CDs until I got to the point (I thought) I could tell my Japanese neighbour, who made us a lovely meal one day, that it was delicious "oishii desu". After a minute of trying every permutation of those four syllables (oh ee shee des) and getting nothing but blank looks from her, I knew the time had come to give up.
I took almost enough Japanese to get a minor in college, which is hilarious considering at that point I couldn’t read even kid-level texts and since the courses all focused on polite forms, I couldn't understand casual spoken Japanese AT ALL. Of the few phrases I remember, one of them is "Nihongo o ni-nen benkyou shimashita": "I studied Japanese for two years." LMAO. Kyou wa, ii tenki desu ne.
日本語が上手です！
Having put in lots of time with the Japanese Kanji and Grammar books, I’d say…it’s fun to try and you will learn stuff and improve…but outright mastery/fluency in spoken and written Japanese is extremely rare for non-Japanese people…
(*Side Note: the book “KANJI-PICTO-GRAPHICS” by Michael Rowley saved my life and is the reason I know any Japanese at all….)
just because a skill is rare doesn't make it not worth pursuing
Well, if you live in Japan, you will see a bunch of non-Japanese people who are very fluent in the language. Mostly Chinese, Koreans, Indians, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, and West Africans such as Nigerians. It is indeed rare for Western Europeans/North Americans to be fluent in Japanese because they always try to get by by using English (but people from relatively small European countries tend to be the exception such as Finnish and Dutch people. Maybe they just know how to acquire a new language). The only way to get really fluent in the language is to talk with a lot of Japanese people without using ANY English and make a lot of embarrassing mistakes. There is no way around.
@ Good, but notice I said WRITTEN also. The level of abstraction and sheer number of characters (potentially 50,000 borrowed from classical and medieval Chinese) create an obstacle to true mastery for most folks. If you look at Zen calligraphy, much of it is written in cursive “grass” style writing that even experts have trouble deciphering. I’m not an expert, but I’m told even Dogen had to be translated from medieval Japanese into modern Japanese for contemporary readers to understand…!
(PS-- why DO Americans (especially) have such a hard time mastering foreign languages??)
"Our True Abodes
The years of our lives pass by in a blur
Yet as time fades, our promises go unfulfilled
Too many are the regrets
Too poignant the feelings
Our human lives are but a short sojourn
We forget our true purpose in coming to earth:
That we were entrusted to save Kingdoms above,
fulfilling their hopes
And that to seek the Creator’s aid
We descended from on high without looking back
But in a world of illusion one becomes lost
Worldly success counts for naught in the end
Obtain the Way to return to Heaven, your true abode
July 8, 2012"
Master Li Hongzhi (Hong Yin IV, from Falun Dafa teachings)
I've been desultorily trying to learn Japanese for the last several years, in between work and life. I came to the conclusion that you really needed a three-sided flash card (and no, those can't physically exist) to really understand what your mind is trying to go through learning Japanese. Because two sides just don't work. You need one side for the kanji character, another side for the hiragana reading, and then a third side for the English meaning of the kanji. And, as you pointed out, some kanji characters have multiple pronunciations and those pronunciations change depending on whether the kanji are separate or together. And yeah, at the beginning, I wondered why Japanese only used hiragana, but then I learned that spoken Japanese only has about 100 syllables, compared to ~15,000 possible in English. So yeah, the kanji became utterly necessary to be able to distinguish words. I find Japanese fascinating, it has kicked my butt in ways that neither Spanish nor French did/do. But I compare the difficulty of learning Japanese to that non-existent three-sided flash cards--hard, but not impossible.
…not to mention the “inversion” of the Japanese syntax compared to English…such as the verb usually coming at the END of a sentence, and the many “post-positional” phrases in Japanese (“store-to…”) compared to the use of prepositional phrases (“to-the-store”) in English…
All in all, to many native English speakers Japanese feels like having to think, listen, and speak “in reverse”…(and note: Japanese is traditionally written top-to-bottom (vertical columns) moving right-to-left. Moreover, what we think of as the back cover of a book is actually the front cover of a Japanese book….you get the picture…
I just make two flashcards, one from Kanji to English as that's how you'd encounter it when written (including any hiragana paraphernalia) so like 構う - To mind something and then a second flash card from Kanji to Hiragana as that's how you'd read it out loud if you saw it and also how you'd say it
I began learning 15 years ago when I started going home with my native Japanese wife every summer. I got pretty good at conversation, and decided it was time to learn kanji. I quickly said "nope, I'll remain illiterate". I only know the couple dozen of absolutely essential kanji you need to function as a tourist.
omg " he is tree"... when I started to study ZEN. Ive had the suspision, that some Statements are wrong translations.. now I study zen with my english speaking yt teacher Brad as a native german language speaker.. this mixture of languages became my ZEN... and I love it❤
「『やる』か『やらない』かだ。『試し』などない」- ヨーダ
OH! It took me a while to get that. Yoda speaks English with Japanese grammar.
@@HardcoreZen ただ試みずして、有なり。
Fascinating! Thanks Brad. I will say though that I still wanna try to learn some Japanese … it’s good for the brain. 😊
Kinda interesting, I also started off with French but ended up learning Japanese over the last couple years. A similar trajectory.
Hontoooo…
Great insights and thorough explanation. Thanks so much!
"Secret of Heaven
No matter your ethnicity
My song will tell you the truth
Do you know from whence you came?
Through countless reincarnations, why this human form?
Most people of the world were kings in the heavens
Who descended from above to save their Kingdom’s lives
The Holy King has come to spread Dafa [Great Law]
Fulfill your vow and let your wisdom shine forth
Winter of 2012"
Master Li Hongzhi (Hong Yin IV, from Falun Dafa teachings)
Used to read the HIragana Times, good for finding jobs if you live over there. If you go over there best to learn at least enough to get by. I used Japanese Simplified using Hiragana. Yes Brad as Yoda say 'do or do not there is no try',
I gave up Japanese after like 3 years because I got sick of anime. I had only really watched almost all of Naruto, some of One Piece, and a bit of Jojo. that was about it. now the only Japan adjacent thing I really participate in is like watching Nomad Push on youtube. Man if you study Japanese correctly you actually retain a lot of it. I was repping mad Anki cards, mining my own cards, and doing a lot of immersion. I was studying Japanese like a runescape player grinds runescape
Stop watching shit anime that was written for kids
@@bobhill9845Gundam Zeta ❤
I definitely didn't do Japanese on Duolingo for three months and then immediately give up when they introduced kanji.
It's just like the word "challengier" in medieval Norman dialect remained such in modern English, whereas it evolved to "calomnie" (slander) in modern French.
Those glasses don't fool me Clark!...you are actually "SUPER ZEN !"🦸
Sounds like life.
Learning language from TV is the best..
Since you are a former English teacher (and I am a current English teacher) you probably know that if you don't start learning a language at a young age, you can pretty much never really master it.
Pop quiz: Who is Ta Mo, or Da Mo? What is a Dojo, literally?
Sorry about this: In French, what are fried apples versus fried potatoes? Potatoes are apples that grow where? How in hell does that make sense?
Thanks. Mike.
REMEMBER: “NOTHING VENTURED, NOTHING GAINED…”🈵🈳🈚️🈲
those glasses are cool....
I wonder if I can get by in Japan only knowing how to recite Gongyo from Nichiren Buddhism. Nam myoho renge kyo.
木 in chinese is MU fourth tone
@@jedertageingutertag Byzantine 4th tone? 😁
i prefer nowmind instead of mindfulness❤
So let me be clear, that guy Kenya, he's another Zen master right?
@@jamesboswell9324 yes.
And his Japanese name is Nairobi.
Digging Ziggy's cumberbund / harakimi. Just wondering is he named after Ziggy Stardust?
Brad...All you need to do is dye your har jet black and put some gel in it to get the rockabilly pompadour ,put on a leather Jacket and maybe get some red lenses for your frames...Then youll be ready for a legends trubute show in Reno...Just work on your male tiger growl for your rendition of Pretty Woman 😅
ブラドさんは眠いみたいです。寝てお願いします。❤
Words with same sounds are "homophonic"
@@alpiffero I would get in huge trouble if I ever used that word on TH-cam!
The problem i have trying to learn Japanese is finding media to watch that isn't atrocious. I can't stand anime, Japanese tv isn't very good. I do like sumo which is why i know はっけよい!
C’mon Brad. ‘Don’t try to learn Japanese’? I get you want to be provocative. But pick and choose when to do that and think of why. People want to learn Japanese for lots of reasons, like the reasons you had in joining JETS and learning about Buddhism. Some people have a spouse who is Japanese or is moving there for any of many reasons and have an interest in the culture, as you obviously have. And not EVERY SINGLE TOPIC has to be autobiographical. Maybe try not being so ego-centered in your videos. Just pick a topic and discuss the topic. This was like t-ball, and you whiffed. There are nuggets of good video ideas in here, like, “how to learn Japanese from comic books”. Or “top 5 key Japanese words you should know for Zen”. Your video title and general attitude is sometimes so negative as to be totally off putting. Lots of things are ‘complicated’ anyway, and some people enjoy the challenge of learning something complicated and the joy of whatever benefits arise from that learning. Maybe your goal is to just have a steady stream of people who hate-watch your videos. If so, keep up the good work.
@@RC-qf3mp Why? Just… why? You wasted a lot of time on this totally useless comment. Just stop watching.
So … go listen to someone else! Geez. Your diatribe is far from Buddhist in tone. 💩
@ why? B/c you need to hear honest feedback if you want to actually grow the channel instead of begging people for donations. It’s pathetic and annoying. Just make better content and you won’t need the donations. In every area in life, people can improve by getting feedback. You’re filled with negativity. “Don’t try to learn Japanese”. Amazing. Keep on begging for donations then if you don’t want feedback.
@@adamdacevedo anything with Joseph Goldstein.
th-cam.com/video/HWTO9yxcecs/w-d-xo.htmlsi=yadaVDR4tfkNBBGi