The fact that you spent so much time reading Japanese clearly helped you acquire the language. That's the part of the Japanese that many people avoid, and it severely limits vocabulary acquisition later on.
Just found your videos steve and i have to say the sheer number of languages you've managed to get yourself fluent in is amazing? im here trying to learn spanish as best i can, whilst there are heroes out there like you who do such a good job in many more! subbed and cant wait for more of youre insights on learning new languages.
Hey Steve. Love your videos. One question for you. You said knowing the Kanji from Chinese helped you, but how exactly did you pick up the readings for the Japanese words? Using furigana and/or the dictionary? I went through Hesig's first book and loved it, but am finding picking up the readings a bit of a slow process. When I read a book or something should I not worry about checking every single word I don't know?
Most of what you say I always agree with, but what's this about not bothering with katakana? What's the problem? I don't understand. Katakana is an essential part of the language. I think it's irresponsible to suggest that it's ok to not bother with katakana. If you consider yourself a learner or reader of Japanese you must practice your katakana! The fact that you always avoided it is why you're still "kind of making it out and avoiding it."
@Steven676, I'm sorry, but I don't know what you are seeing to say that English has just as many strokes as Japanese or Chinese. On average the Roman alphabet is 2 strokes. Most of the alphabet is a continuous 1 stroke, perhaps others go up to 3 strokes. And what I mean by strokes is that you have to pick up your pen or pencil from the paper in order to make another mark. You don't have to do that with English too much especially when writing in cursive where the number of strokes is far less.
@TheSeductiveArts I mean that in English, to write a complete word it usually takes several strokes. I wasn't referring to the letters themselves. My point is that in English you have to know how to spell a word, while with Chinese characters you need to know the radicals that make up the character. Usually these radicals hint at the meaning of the word, so it is not as difficult as many would like to suggest. Generally it's just 3 or 4 radicals for a kanji. It's not bad and kanji are beautiful.
@Steven676, In Japanese with hiragana and katakana, sans Kanji, you are making 3 to 4 strokes on average. Now add in Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc), and Japanese Kanji the strokes gets to be more in excess with 5 to 10, even 15 strokes per WORD. It takes me longer to write a sentence in Japanese than in English. And if I was probably could write in Chinese, a bit longer than that. Languages that uses Roman cursive alphabet, or Arabic script of the benefit of less strokes = speed writing.
@paisleyyama, I hate Katakana too. For a long time, I thought saying the word "ice" was a loan word from English with one having to write "aisu" in Katakana. Coming to find out that the Japanese of their own word for "ice" written in Hiragana. Katakana is only about the Japanese youth being trendy using loan words from other languages and using Katakana to write them out when they already of those words in Japanese language that could be written in Hiragana. This seems annoying as hell.
@TheSeductive I agree. Katakana isn`t consistent. It may appear to represent 1 Eng. word but actually stands for another or it may stand for that Eng. word but have it`s own Japanese meaning or after many katakana English words another language word is randomly thrown in. Even the elderly Japanese find it confusing! So I agree that only hiragana is needed, but I didn`t make the rules so to some extent one foreigners need to know katakana at least enough to write one`s own name!
Hi Steve, you can easily learn Katakana in a few hours using the Heisig method.It's invaluable for reading japanese loan and the titles of manga, videogames, and what have you. Considering how much you've accomplished, it'd be a walk in the park for you.:)
@mowgli123456789, I got the impression that he mean that he couldn't read Katakana, but he didn't try to learn what words in Japanese should be written in Katakana versus Hiragana. He probably wrote everything in Hiragana, because it would be like the Japanese wouldn't know what the hell we was saying when writing it in hiragana. He probably can read in Katakana, just kind of "lazy" in wanting to be grammatically correct with the Kana usage.
I can read and write all of the hiragana and katakana, but only about 80 kanji. The things I have the most trouble with is understanding what people are saying when I try to speak to them. A lot of times everything sounds slurred together...
@SailorRocket, that is because I hear that many people learning a Sino-Asian language (Chinese, Korean and Japanese) learn the standard language forms, which is totally different than how people actually speak the language. Asian languages is almost like Arabic, they learn standard Arabic in school, but no one speaks it in real life, they speak dialect. We don't do this all that much with the European languages. The only people who speaks standard in Asian languages are the newscasters.
@SailorRocket, I was told that one shouldn't learn the Sino-Asian languages by watching soap operas unless you know how to hear the language very well by listening for a few years to news television or radio first. Because movies, and television shows don't use standard language.
Just curious: what made you decide on Tokyo at that time? Just happened to be an opening? Or were you eager to learn Japanese and be a part of the culture?
I think people could learn Japanese a whole lot faster if they didn't have to learn the 2,000 Kanji words to make them Japanese literate. But as Steve was saying, I am seeing lots of younger people on Youtube from Japan (20 to 30 something) write video clip tittles more in Katakana mixed with Kanji and using less Hiragana. I wonder what that means in cultural context of Japanese society.
@TheSeductiveArts It all depends what we want to do with the language. I enjoy the Kanji because I enjoy reading, newspapers, magazines, books etc. One day, now that I have LingQ, I will get back to Japanese and really work on increasing my vocabulary.
I think knowing when to use Hiragana and Katakana would be annoying, but I find it really unnecessary to have to learn Kanji. I really dont' see the point in it. You know how to say the word in Hiragana, but that isn't good enough to where we have to write the word in Chinese. And Kanji takes more strokes than Kana. It is the reason why I avoided learning Chinese, because you have to make 10 to 15 strokes for one word? Let alone having to write a sentence. I'm not in the mood for that.
@TheSeductiveArts If it was written all in hiragana it'd be a huge unreadable mess. Kanji not only help give you context (because in Japanese there are a lot of words that are spelled/pronounced the same) but it also shortens the sentence quite a bit. Hiragana are mainly used in sentences for grammatical particles. Or words where kanji are not normally used.
@shearoberts, Japanese would only be an unreadable mess without Kanji, because Japanese don't space out their words as in Roman-germanic influenced languages. They don't use commas like we do, therefore every sentence in Japanese looks like one big run-on sentence where if you are a new learner without much vocabulary knowledge you can't tell when you are reading a new word, or if the particles are connected with the noun, verb, or adjective, adverb and prepositions. It all looks like one word!
@TheSeductiveArts Writing words in English takes as many strokes as in Chinese or Japanese. Learning each kanji when you learn a word isn't that difficult if you learn the radicals. Languages aren't about what's necessary, they just are a certain way and aren't necessarily designed to be easy.
Hey Steve I have been following your videos lately and they are really inspirational. I'm right now learning Japanese myself and so far it's going quite well. I'm trying to use the same method I used for learning english: playing games. So far it's going quite well. I learnt english years ago without even noticing it while I was playing some old game and translating it at the same time. I agree with what you say in most of your videos, one of the most important things is to enjoy the language.
@Natreg44 I don't know if playing games is going to work to learn Japanese. How long have you been learning? Is it working and what games or types of games have you been playing? I've been playing Skyrim in Spanish to work on my Spanish.
@Steven676 Well, it didn't took me too much time to learn english playing games, but it's true that I did know a bit of english before I started learning that way. I usually play RPGs because they have a lot of text. I have been learning japanese since this summer, but sadly I don't have much free time and my playing sessions are very rare sometimes. For japanese I started with NES RPGs because they use only hiragana and it's a nice way to learn it (I don't have any trouble reading it
@Steven676 About Skyrim I suppose it's a good way to learn spanish. I'm spanish, and in my opinion, it's far more difficult to learn Spanish than English, but if you enjoy learning while playing, you'll probably will learn it without even noticing it.
@Natreg44 I don't see why English would be easier than Spanish. What about Spanish is difficult? You can always tell how to pronounce a word from how it is spelled, unlike English. Also, there are not many vowel sounds whereas in English there are more than 20 vowel sounds, I forget how many.
@Steven676 well for one there is the punctuation on the vowels which sometimes appears, and sometimes doesn't appear depending if the sentence is a question or not. Also the verb forms are quite difficult (too many). I'm a native and for me it's more difficult to write correctly in spanish than in english. Of course, all that is not strictly necessary to speak, read or write spanish.
Nice strategy, I'm planning on doing something similar after I've finished learning a good chunk of the kanji. I'm surprised you didn't learn the katakana considering the minimal effort required - I've found that I'm able to navigate most software, for example, just by knowing kanji meanings (no pronunciation) and sounding out the katakana.
Thanks for sharing this story! I'm not learning Japanese, but it was so inspirational! I think it reminded me what I sometimes tend to forget: the most important thing is to keep going!
Tells us about the 14 languages you know and what age you started each. May even suggest some jobs related to language learning or talk more about your job.
@Ven0mB0Y It is 11 and it is a long story. Jobs, I cannot say that there is any job attached to any language. You can read my story. Just go to a site called The Linguist and look for my book.
@lingosteve "I cannot say that there is any job attached to any language."
Not sure what you mean here, because there are certainly jobs which do related to language learning. Translation and interpreting are the two which stand out most obviously. If you meant that there is no language which lead to a specific job, then it doesn't make sense either. There are many jobs which require x language.
@lingosteve And, just curious, I'm Canadian too, just wondering how many other languages did you know when you went overseas to China? Being Canadian, now in Ottawa and guilty I don't know french, having been from Newfoundland, I'm curious about the Canadian student's work methods. When did you learn french? And do you have any portion of Canada from which one should learn french. Thanks so much.
To continue, katakana is used everywhere now it seems. Of course kanji still prevail (thankfully, as I love kanji) but most advertisements and signs use some katakana it seems. So while I am in your camp in not liking it too well, the Japanese are using it more and more, much to the dismay of many Japanese as well.
About Katakana, I still have issues sometimes reading the difference between "shi" and "tsu" in katakana after many years. I usually look at the other characters around it to figure out the word. What I also don't like is that since most katakana loan words are English (not all) I still pronounce it in English anyway. Just makes it awkward to force the "Japanisation" of English for me sometimes. But katakana is too important now in Japan. There are more and more loan words being used than ever.
@Jate0000 They have different keyboards in Japan (and most computers now have a built in function) but the keyboards have both roman characters and hiragana on them. Every computer I use here has a button that shifts between romaji/hiragana/katakana input. You just type like "bennkyou" and it'll type in hiragana, hit the space bar and it converts to kanji.
@Jate0000 Yes. As they type each syllable in romanji the software converts it to a hiragana syllable. Then when a word is recognised with a matching kanji it swaps the hiragana for a kanji. If the kanji is incorrect the typist can choose from a list the preferred one.
It sounds slow but watching my wife type it's no slower than typing in English. It's actually interesting to watch as the cursor is constantly moving forwards then dropping back as more kanji are introduced.
@LearningFrenchNow He is not there. He played pro hockey there for 3 years in the 90's. In those days I was visiting regularly anyway for my lumber business.
I think its just as silly to dismiss an entire aspect of a language just because you don't like it. Katakana is way too simple to pose any real challenge for the "post-kanji" Japanese student. oh well 十人十色ね。
@DopeSpace9 I lived in Japan for nine years, communicate just fine in the language, read what I want to read and do what I want in the language and do not bother with katakana. Who are you to call that silly? You are free to take a different approach, and I would not consider someone silly who likes katakana.
Nobody will accuse now of being unsufficiently enthusiastic in your videos made in English I hope -- that was a fantastic story, apart from being a great motivation booster too, of course! :)
Hey Steve, excellent video yet again. I know it's a little off topic, but I'm having difficulty in learning a lot of new vocabulary. I've watched your other videos on it, but would you say reading a lot more would help the most out of all the skills,(e.g. read, write, listen) ? Thank you so much.
@YangJettYung You just have to keep reading and listening, forgetting and relearning. Try to notice the words and phrases, how they are connected, but mostly just read and listen. It takes time and you have to believe that the exposure to the language is gradually working.
The fact that you spent so much time reading Japanese clearly helped you acquire the language. That's the part of the Japanese that many people avoid, and it severely limits vocabulary acquisition later on.
JapaneseRuleof7 1 day ago
@JapaneseRuleof7 Agreed, reading is tremendously helpful in gaining the vocabulary we need and getting used to the language.
lingosteve 1 day ago
Also, your experience is very interesting.
I too learned chinese (in beijing) before moving to Japan,
and the texts with kanji are certainly much easier to read!
aethelwulf19 2 weeks ago in playlist Uploaded videos
Katakana is the first thing you should learn as an english speaker! Its basically all english!
aethelwulf19 2 weeks ago in playlist Uploaded videos
Just found your videos steve and i have to say the sheer number of languages you've managed to get yourself fluent in is amazing? im here trying to learn spanish as best i can, whilst there are heroes out there like you who do such a good job in many more! subbed and cant wait for more of youre insights on learning new languages.
PSNnightmare 3 weeks ago in playlist Uploaded videos
Ahaha, this old man seems nice.
Kinda wish you were my uncle or grandpa or something..
Feitan3DS 3 weeks ago in playlist Uploaded videos
Hey Steve. Love your videos. One question for you. You said knowing the Kanji from Chinese helped you, but how exactly did you pick up the readings for the Japanese words? Using furigana and/or the dictionary? I went through Hesig's first book and loved it, but am finding picking up the readings a bit of a slow process. When I read a book or something should I not worry about checking every single word I don't know?
Earl3d 4 weeks ago
This has been flagged as spam show
What do you think about "Learning With Texts (LWT)" FREE LingQ-like language learning program?
TheCzechExperiment 4 weeks ago in playlist Uploaded videos
Most of what you say I always agree with, but what's this about not bothering with katakana? What's the problem? I don't understand. Katakana is an essential part of the language. I think it's irresponsible to suggest that it's ok to not bother with katakana. If you consider yourself a learner or reader of Japanese you must practice your katakana! The fact that you always avoided it is why you're still "kind of making it out and avoiding it."
Steven676 1 month ago
@Steven676, I'm sorry, but I don't know what you are seeing to say that English has just as many strokes as Japanese or Chinese. On average the Roman alphabet is 2 strokes. Most of the alphabet is a continuous 1 stroke, perhaps others go up to 3 strokes. And what I mean by strokes is that you have to pick up your pen or pencil from the paper in order to make another mark. You don't have to do that with English too much especially when writing in cursive where the number of strokes is far less.
TheSeductiveArts 1 month ago
@TheSeductiveArts I mean that in English, to write a complete word it usually takes several strokes. I wasn't referring to the letters themselves. My point is that in English you have to know how to spell a word, while with Chinese characters you need to know the radicals that make up the character. Usually these radicals hint at the meaning of the word, so it is not as difficult as many would like to suggest. Generally it's just 3 or 4 radicals for a kanji. It's not bad and kanji are beautiful.
Steven676 1 month ago
@Steven676, In Japanese with hiragana and katakana, sans Kanji, you are making 3 to 4 strokes on average. Now add in Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc), and Japanese Kanji the strokes gets to be more in excess with 5 to 10, even 15 strokes per WORD. It takes me longer to write a sentence in Japanese than in English. And if I was probably could write in Chinese, a bit longer than that. Languages that uses Roman cursive alphabet, or Arabic script of the benefit of less strokes = speed writing.
TheSeductiveArts 1 month ago
What are your thoughts on Heisig's Remembering the Kanji?
perrin4869 1 month ago
@perrin4869 I did not use it but my son Mark did and found it very effective. If it had been around when I studied Chinese I might have used it.
lingosteve 1 month ago
I hate katakana too for many reasons!!!
paisleyyama 1 month ago
@paisleyyama, I hate Katakana too. For a long time, I thought saying the word "ice" was a loan word from English with one having to write "aisu" in Katakana. Coming to find out that the Japanese of their own word for "ice" written in Hiragana. Katakana is only about the Japanese youth being trendy using loan words from other languages and using Katakana to write them out when they already of those words in Japanese language that could be written in Hiragana. This seems annoying as hell.
TheSeductiveArts 1 month ago
@TheSeductive I agree. Katakana isn`t consistent. It may appear to represent 1 Eng. word but actually stands for another or it may stand for that Eng. word but have it`s own Japanese meaning or after many katakana English words another language word is randomly thrown in. Even the elderly Japanese find it confusing! So I agree that only hiragana is needed, but I didn`t make the rules so to some extent one foreigners need to know katakana at least enough to write one`s own name!
paisleyyama 1 month ago
Hi Steve, you can easily learn Katakana in a few hours using the Heisig method.It's invaluable for reading japanese loan and the titles of manga, videogames, and what have you. Considering how much you've accomplished, it'd be a walk in the park for you.:)
Hiltongroupie 1 month ago
@Hiltongroupie The issue is not learning it. It is easy to learn. The issue is using it. I don't write in it, and I avoid reading it.
lingosteve 1 month ago
@Hiltongroupie, I never heard of the Heisig method, I am Googling it up right now.
TheSeductiveArts 1 month ago
its strange that you didnt take the time to learn katakana haha it probably takes about an hour to learn it
mowgli123456789 1 month ago
@mowgli123456789 Of course I looked at it and can kind of make it out but mostly I avoid it.
lingosteve 1 month ago
@mowgli123456789, I got the impression that he mean that he couldn't read Katakana, but he didn't try to learn what words in Japanese should be written in Katakana versus Hiragana. He probably wrote everything in Hiragana, because it would be like the Japanese wouldn't know what the hell we was saying when writing it in hiragana. He probably can read in Katakana, just kind of "lazy" in wanting to be grammatically correct with the Kana usage.
TheSeductiveArts 1 month ago
Very interesting and inspiring story!!
RachidLanguage 1 month ago
I wouldn't totally give up on katakana! Just because they're loan words doesn't mean they're not part of the Japanese language.
GazettEfan77 1 month ago
I can read and write all of the hiragana and katakana, but only about 80 kanji. The things I have the most trouble with is understanding what people are saying when I try to speak to them. A lot of times everything sounds slurred together...
SailorRocket 1 month ago
@SailorRocket, that is because I hear that many people learning a Sino-Asian language (Chinese, Korean and Japanese) learn the standard language forms, which is totally different than how people actually speak the language. Asian languages is almost like Arabic, they learn standard Arabic in school, but no one speaks it in real life, they speak dialect. We don't do this all that much with the European languages. The only people who speaks standard in Asian languages are the newscasters.
TheSeductiveArts 1 month ago
@SailorRocket, I was told that one shouldn't learn the Sino-Asian languages by watching soap operas unless you know how to hear the language very well by listening for a few years to news television or radio first. Because movies, and television shows don't use standard language.
TheSeductiveArts 1 month ago
@TheSeductiveArts That makes sense. I never thought to listen to Japanese news and such. I mostly used to watch anime lol.
SailorRocket 1 month ago
Just curious: what made you decide on Tokyo at that time? Just happened to be an opening? Or were you eager to learn Japanese and be a part of the culture?
uu9u0 1 month ago in playlist Uploaded videos
@uu9u0 I was interested in Japan and I had to offer the government something for the money they had spent on my Chinese training.
lingosteve 1 month ago
Steve rules!
enle2002 1 month ago
Too enthusiastic now, dial it down a little : )
maths82 1 month ago
Just wondering if you could or can subvocalise the readings of the kanji when looking at a newspaper?
uu9u0 1 month ago
@uu9u0 I tend not to do this and then just skip the ones where I know the meaning but do not know how to pronounce them.
lingosteve 1 month ago
@uu9u0 I meant to say that I do tend to do this and skip this ones I cannot pronounce.
lingosteve 1 month ago
I think people could learn Japanese a whole lot faster if they didn't have to learn the 2,000 Kanji words to make them Japanese literate. But as Steve was saying, I am seeing lots of younger people on Youtube from Japan (20 to 30 something) write video clip tittles more in Katakana mixed with Kanji and using less Hiragana. I wonder what that means in cultural context of Japanese society.
TheSeductiveArts 1 month ago
@TheSeductiveArts It all depends what we want to do with the language. I enjoy the Kanji because I enjoy reading, newspapers, magazines, books etc. One day, now that I have LingQ, I will get back to Japanese and really work on increasing my vocabulary.
lingosteve 1 month ago
I think knowing when to use Hiragana and Katakana would be annoying, but I find it really unnecessary to have to learn Kanji. I really dont' see the point in it. You know how to say the word in Hiragana, but that isn't good enough to where we have to write the word in Chinese. And Kanji takes more strokes than Kana. It is the reason why I avoided learning Chinese, because you have to make 10 to 15 strokes for one word? Let alone having to write a sentence. I'm not in the mood for that.
TheSeductiveArts 1 month ago
@TheSeductiveArts If it was written all in hiragana it'd be a huge unreadable mess. Kanji not only help give you context (because in Japanese there are a lot of words that are spelled/pronounced the same) but it also shortens the sentence quite a bit. Hiragana are mainly used in sentences for grammatical particles. Or words where kanji are not normally used.
shearoberts 1 month ago
@shearoberts, Japanese would only be an unreadable mess without Kanji, because Japanese don't space out their words as in Roman-germanic influenced languages. They don't use commas like we do, therefore every sentence in Japanese looks like one big run-on sentence where if you are a new learner without much vocabulary knowledge you can't tell when you are reading a new word, or if the particles are connected with the noun, verb, or adjective, adverb and prepositions. It all looks like one word!
TheSeductiveArts 1 month ago
@TheSeductiveArts Writing words in English takes as many strokes as in Chinese or Japanese. Learning each kanji when you learn a word isn't that difficult if you learn the radicals. Languages aren't about what's necessary, they just are a certain way and aren't necessarily designed to be easy.
Steven676 1 month ago
Hey Steve I have been following your videos lately and they are really inspirational. I'm right now learning Japanese myself and so far it's going quite well. I'm trying to use the same method I used for learning english: playing games. So far it's going quite well. I learnt english years ago without even noticing it while I was playing some old game and translating it at the same time. I agree with what you say in most of your videos, one of the most important things is to enjoy the language.
Natreg44 1 month ago
@Natreg44 I don't know if playing games is going to work to learn Japanese. How long have you been learning? Is it working and what games or types of games have you been playing? I've been playing Skyrim in Spanish to work on my Spanish.
Steven676 1 month ago
@Steven676 Well, it didn't took me too much time to learn english playing games, but it's true that I did know a bit of english before I started learning that way. I usually play RPGs because they have a lot of text. I have been learning japanese since this summer, but sadly I don't have much free time and my playing sessions are very rare sometimes. For japanese I started with NES RPGs because they use only hiragana and it's a nice way to learn it (I don't have any trouble reading it
Natreg44 4 weeks ago
@Steven676 About Skyrim I suppose it's a good way to learn spanish. I'm spanish, and in my opinion, it's far more difficult to learn Spanish than English, but if you enjoy learning while playing, you'll probably will learn it without even noticing it.
Natreg44 4 weeks ago
@Natreg44 I don't see why English would be easier than Spanish. What about Spanish is difficult? You can always tell how to pronounce a word from how it is spelled, unlike English. Also, there are not many vowel sounds whereas in English there are more than 20 vowel sounds, I forget how many.
Steven676 4 weeks ago
@Steven676 well for one there is the punctuation on the vowels which sometimes appears, and sometimes doesn't appear depending if the sentence is a question or not. Also the verb forms are quite difficult (too many). I'm a native and for me it's more difficult to write correctly in spanish than in english. Of course, all that is not strictly necessary to speak, read or write spanish.
Natreg44 3 weeks ago
Nice strategy, I'm planning on doing something similar after I've finished learning a good chunk of the kanji. I'm surprised you didn't learn the katakana considering the minimal effort required - I've found that I'm able to navigate most software, for example, just by knowing kanji meanings (no pronunciation) and sounding out the katakana.
amillerchip 1 month ago
very insightful
Rob8036 1 month ago
Very interesting and inspiring story!
It's makes me really curious about your other languages stories.
What is your Cantonese story, how did you learn it?
Dacud 1 month ago
@Dacud Maybe one day.
lingosteve 1 month ago
@Dacud I did a video on this just now.
lingosteve 1 month ago
Thanks for sharing this story! I'm not learning Japanese, but it was so inspirational! I think it reminded me what I sometimes tend to forget: the most important thing is to keep going!
pesahson 1 month ago
Your job was to learn Chinese?! I want that job!
1004cheonsa 1 month ago
@1004cheonsa I was a Canadian government trade commissioner and my employer paid me a salary and paid for my tuition. A great deal for sure!
lingosteve 1 month ago
Tells us about the 14 languages you know and what age you started each. May even suggest some jobs related to language learning or talk more about your job.
Ven0mB0Y 1 month ago
@Ven0mB0Y It is 11 and it is a long story. Jobs, I cannot say that there is any job attached to any language. You can read my story. Just go to a site called The Linguist and look for my book.
lingosteve 1 month ago
@lingosteve "I cannot say that there is any job attached to any language."
Not sure what you mean here, because there are certainly jobs which do related to language learning. Translation and interpreting are the two which stand out most obviously. If you meant that there is no language which lead to a specific job, then it doesn't make sense either. There are many jobs which require x language.
Imyirtshashem 1 month ago
Hey Steve about how old were you when you learned Chinese?
MrDiplomatSwag 1 month ago
@MrDiplomatSwag 23
lingosteve 1 month ago
@lingosteve And, just curious, I'm Canadian too, just wondering how many other languages did you know when you went overseas to China? Being Canadian, now in Ottawa and guilty I don't know french, having been from Newfoundland, I'm curious about the Canadian student's work methods. When did you learn french? And do you have any portion of Canada from which one should learn french. Thanks so much.
sebastianquilt 1 month ago
@sebastianquilt I believe he knew French and Spanish before taking on Chinese. You should read his book, it's very interesting!
qzchris 1 month ago
To continue, katakana is used everywhere now it seems. Of course kanji still prevail (thankfully, as I love kanji) but most advertisements and signs use some katakana it seems. So while I am in your camp in not liking it too well, the Japanese are using it more and more, much to the dismay of many Japanese as well.
shearoberts 1 month ago
About Katakana, I still have issues sometimes reading the difference between "shi" and "tsu" in katakana after many years. I usually look at the other characters around it to figure out the word. What I also don't like is that since most katakana loan words are English (not all) I still pronounce it in English anyway. Just makes it awkward to force the "Japanisation" of English for me sometimes. But katakana is too important now in Japan. There are more and more loan words being used than ever.
shearoberts 1 month ago
I have a question: How do japanese people type on a computer? with romanji?
Jate0000 1 month ago
@Jate0000 They have different keyboards in Japan (and most computers now have a built in function) but the keyboards have both roman characters and hiragana on them. Every computer I use here has a button that shifts between romaji/hiragana/katakana input. You just type like "bennkyou" and it'll type in hiragana, hit the space bar and it converts to kanji.
shearoberts 1 month ago
@Jate0000 Yes. As they type each syllable in romanji the software converts it to a hiragana syllable. Then when a word is recognised with a matching kanji it swaps the hiragana for a kanji. If the kanji is incorrect the typist can choose from a list the preferred one.
It sounds slow but watching my wife type it's no slower than typing in English. It's actually interesting to watch as the cursor is constantly moving forwards then dropping back as more kanji are introduced.
MrScotchpie 1 month ago
Do you visit Japan more frequently with your son there?
LearningFrenchNow 1 month ago
@LearningFrenchNow He is not there. He played pro hockey there for 3 years in the 90's. In those days I was visiting regularly anyway for my lumber business.
lingosteve 1 month ago
I think you're plenty enthusiastic in each language including English.
LearningFrenchNow 1 month ago
I think its just as silly to dismiss an entire aspect of a language just because you don't like it. Katakana is way too simple to pose any real challenge for the "post-kanji" Japanese student. oh well 十人十色ね。
DopeSpace9 1 month ago
@DopeSpace9 I lived in Japan for nine years, communicate just fine in the language, read what I want to read and do what I want in the language and do not bother with katakana. Who are you to call that silly? You are free to take a different approach, and I would not consider someone silly who likes katakana.
lingosteve 1 month ago
Very, interesting. Thank you, Steve. :)
utubesqueeze 1 month ago
Hi
I would like to know how did you came to work for foreign relationships of canada.
Thank you.
aler55555 1 month ago
Nobody will accuse now of being unsufficiently enthusiastic in your videos made in English I hope -- that was a fantastic story, apart from being a great motivation booster too, of course! :)
barsorrro 1 month ago
Language cockblocking? wow didnt know that happened.
thepostfk 1 month ago
Hey Steve, excellent video yet again. I know it's a little off topic, but I'm having difficulty in learning a lot of new vocabulary. I've watched your other videos on it, but would you say reading a lot more would help the most out of all the skills,(e.g. read, write, listen) ? Thank you so much.
YangJettYung 1 month ago
@YangJettYung You just have to keep reading and listening, forgetting and relearning. Try to notice the words and phrases, how they are connected, but mostly just read and listen. It takes time and you have to believe that the exposure to the language is gradually working.
lingosteve 1 month ago
Fascinating... Nine years in Japan? Wow. Thanks for the video!
clarinini 1 month ago
I have trouble reading katakana too, I just can´t stand it.
wheelieshinobi84 1 month ago