2 ?'s learning for mutes? and specific use of written japanese

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Altbringer
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2 ?'s learning for mutes? and specific use of written japanese

Postby Altbringer » Sun Oct 08, 2017 4:07 am

firstly id like to re-ask an old question i had, with revised wording

what are some methods for a mute (not deaf) (mute by choice) to learn to understand foreign languages

to be transparent, i DO speak, but its only short comments, and half sentences, with awkward pauses and sudden stops
cause i "lose my train of thought" or cant remember the exact word i wanted to use

with my speaking being pretty bad as is, I feel confident that whatever residual words i end up able to speak
would suffice in my life

secondly, im hoping someone might be able to clear something for me reguarding japanese written language
i am wanting to use "uncle" as an honourific title.
its a perfect descriptive my persona (er, using my personal feelings of what an uncle is supposed to be)
and a title i hold dear, given by my niece and nephew, no names, just "uncle", spoken in the same manner as mom or dad.

looking the word up on jisho.org, there is a few ways to write "uncle".
from what i infer some words (er characters) dont directly mean something,
as much as they are affected by or show, context.
"uncle" is written 伯父 ,
伯 can mean a few things, 父 means father, but looking up "father" you get 父親 which 親 has other meanings.
伯父 which if im understanding things, dosnt translate to, but means something like, older man associated with father (also theres a variant for younger)

then i find this one 伯父御, which im thinking is more, refering to someone as "uncle" out of respect or familiarity which is more like what im looking for.

other than correcting my thought process on how the language is working im wandering if, in the way i want to use it, can/should i remove the 父 , since (in my thinking) its there to show association with the father so to use "uncle" as an honourific title perhaps i should write it as 伯御 (which gives no results, on jisho)

thank you much, for tolerating me
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DangerDave2010
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Re: 2 ?'s learning for mutes? and specific use of written japanese

Postby DangerDave2010 » Sun Oct 08, 2017 10:32 am

My basic plan for Japanese is this: First learn the phonetics, then memorize some basic vocabulary till you can read both kana, then learn some grammar and dialogues from perhaps three different language courses (but skip all the production exercises for their a waste of time) ... then start reading stories for children... then progress to more difficult texts... all from day one you should be getting a lot of exposition, you should watch anime with and without subtitles, for starters you can get something aimed at younger ages such as プリプリちぃちゃん, or リルリルファリル, which are on youtube, you can also watch Kan & Aki youtube channel. As for your mutism, it should not interfere with your language learning at all... Your can learn languages through input only. I only start trying to speak after my "passive fluency" has been consolidating for about one or two years.

I will recommend that you read things aloud, your voice needs practice, if you are not inclined to talk to people, your vocal chords will suffer from lack of exercise, making speaking feel extra hard when there is occasion to it.

As for the familiar way of saying uncle, as to an older man entrusted to child care, I guess it'd be 伯父さん ojisan.


Altbringer wrote:thank you much, for tolerating me
You're welcome.
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vonPeterhof
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Re: 2 ?'s learning for mutes? and specific use of written japanese

Postby vonPeterhof » Sun Oct 08, 2017 3:40 pm

Altbringer wrote:looking the word up on jisho.org, there is a few ways to write "uncle".
from what i infer some words (er characters) dont directly mean something,
as much as they are affected by or show, context.
"uncle" is written 伯父 ,
伯 can mean a few things, 父 means father, but looking up "father" you get 父親 which 親 has other meanings.
伯父 which if im understanding things, dosnt translate to, but means something like, older man associated with father (also theres a variant for younger)

then i find this one 伯父御, which im thinking is more, refering to someone as "uncle" out of respect or familiarity which is more like what im looking for.

other than correcting my thought process on how the language is working im wandering if, in the way i want to use it, can/should i remove the 父 , since (in my thinking) its there to show association with the father so to use "uncle" as an honourific title perhaps i should write it as 伯御 (which gives no results, on jisho)

You've inferred correctly that the meaning of a word isn't necessarily the sum of the meanings of the characters it's written with, but even context doesn't always have anything to do with it either. Indeed some words are only written using certain characters because of how those characters are pronounced, with no regard to their meaning, or vice versa. The 父 doesn't really show a connection to the father, because it's used in the writing of this word regardless of whether it's referring to an uncle from the father's side or one from the mother's. The only explanation I can give you why that character is used in that word in Japanese is "Because that's how the word is written in Chinese", but that sounds like a cop out. Unfortunately I'm not knowledgeable enough about Chinese etymology to say the exact reason; it could be that 父 in this case simply means "a male relative from one generation above", with 伯 specifying what kind of relative, or it could just be a meaningless addition to make the word longer (the Mandarin dialects of Chinese apparently lost a lot of sounds in the process of their evolution, and compensated for it by coining disyllabic words). Either way there's no deep meaning in that character's use in Japanese, as the actual Japanese word for "uncle" is etymologically unrelated to the Chinese one and only written that way due to convention.

The three ways of writing "uncle" in Chinese characters in Japanese are: 伯父, 叔父 and 小父 (伯父御 is used so rarely you don't need to worry about it; in fact your post may well be the first time I've ever seen it, even though I've seen and heard similar words like 姉御 for "older sister" or 親御 for "parent"). Strictly speaking, 伯父 refers to an uncle who is older than the parent whose sibling he is, 叔父 refers to one who is the younger sibling, while 小父 is used as a term of endearment for an older male who isn't actually one's relative. If the exact kind of uncle is irrelevant it's perfectly normal to just write it in hiragana as おじ (in fact this is probably a lot more common than writing this word in Chinese characters outside of formal contexts). In the vast majority of cases it will be used with the honorific さん, to make おじさん. You would only really use it without an honorific if you're talking about your own uncle to someone who isn't part of your family. While さん is generally not used when talking about oneself, family terms like おじさん are an exception. So I guess if you don't feel like specifying your exact relationship to your niece and nephew's parents you may as well go with おじさん.
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Altbringer
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Re: 2 ?'s learning for mutes? and specific use of written japanese

Postby Altbringer » Sun Oct 08, 2017 9:36 pm

not in a disrespectfull way, but it seems like japanese written language, dosent have much of a ?consistancy
as it can have meaning, show context, be used just for sound, it all seems very...complicated
its a good thing i dont write, nor intend to.

to further explain the second part of my question, the idea is that i want to ?express
my persona as an "uncle", in a similar way as one might refer to priests or nuns as "father" or "sister" or "reverend mother"

so far im thinking to go with 小父 or my mutilation of 伯御, just for simpler appearance

as for learning a language though

is something like an audio flashcard type thing effective, or will that really only instill the ability to regognise
ones environment, or would it give enough word regognition to accurately "get the gist" of what a person is saying?

again, your tollerance is appreciated
and thanks for the previous help
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vonPeterhof
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Re: 2 ?'s learning for mutes? and specific use of written japanese

Postby vonPeterhof » Mon Oct 09, 2017 5:45 pm

Altbringer wrote:so far im thinking to go with 小父 or my mutilation of 伯御, just for simpler appearance
Fun fact: 伯御 (Bóyù) is actually the name of one of the rulers of the ancient Chinese state of Lu. I very much doubt that most Japanese people would see the connection between that word and "uncle" if they saw it in a text. Unlike 叔, 伯 has equally common meanings other than "uncle", most notably its use in various noble and high-ranking titles (such as "count/earl") as well as its use as an abbreviation for the country name of Brazil.

Altbringer wrote:is something like an audio flashcard type thing effective, or will that really only instill the ability to regognise
ones environment, or would it give enough word regognition to accurately "get the gist" of what a person is saying?
It would work well for strengthening the association between sound and meaning. I'm especially fond of the approach of the Core 2000/6000 Anki decks, where each card is dedicated to a single word, but the word is used in a sentence, meaning that you can learn it in context as well as reinforce other vocabulary. Although if this is the only listening practice you get you run the risk of learning to recognize those words only in the contexts you hear them in the flashcards, or only in the voice and manner of delivery they're recorded in. So it does help to also listen to courses containing longer conversations, and eventually listening to some actual native material.
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Altbringer
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Re: 2 ?'s learning for mutes? and specific use of written japanese

Postby Altbringer » Mon Oct 09, 2017 9:06 pm

hey, that is fun to know

so perhaps going with 小父, would be the way to go?

for anki, do you know, or can recomend which or where to find "decks" with audio if available?

i thought id start with spanish, since generally "its spelled as it sounds" but the sounds are differant than english
so just reading may not be the best to start

eventually my plan is if i get into it, and start learning things decently, is to just learn which ever i can pick up

figured to start with spanish, and which ever hmong is called, since those are the languages ill encounter first
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vonPeterhof
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Re: 2 ?'s learning for mutes? and specific use of written japanese

Postby vonPeterhof » Tue Oct 10, 2017 5:59 pm

Altbringer wrote:so perhaps going with 小父, would be the way to go?
If you really insist on using Chinese characters, probably. Like I said, writing it in hiragana is a lot more common, and to be honest, I've never even seen 小父 outside of a dictionary (the other two I do see from time to time). The most common form you'll see that word in is おじさん.

Altbringer wrote:for anki, do you know, or can recomend which or where to find "decks" with audio if available?

If you already have Anki installed, you can click on the "Get Shared" button on the bottom left and it will take you to the website where you can search for and download shared decks. There's a whole series of audio decks with titles like "Japanese Core 2000 Step XX Listening Sentence Vocab + Images", with XX being the number of the step, from 01 to 10. The Core 6000 cards are all in one deck, " Japanese Core 6000 Step 01 (Listening Sentence & Vocab)".
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Altbringer
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Re: 2 ?'s learning for mutes? and specific use of written japanese

Postby Altbringer » Tue Oct 10, 2017 8:44 pm

thank you very much,
its been really helpfull.
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Re: 2 ?'s learning for mutes? and specific use of written japanese

Postby Axon » Wed Oct 11, 2017 1:08 pm

I'm not sure I fully understand your reasons for staying mute, but I think it would be much easier for you to learn to understand the sounds of a foreign language if you're able to make them. I recall that the US Government tried teaching soldiers to only understand a language, and they didn't learn any faster than the people that were learning how to speak as well. Maybe you could learn to make the sounds in isolation, like learning how to say each kana in Japanese separately. You could also read about linguistics and phonetics and the International Phonetic Alphabet - it's kind of daunting at first but there are lots of videos and articles that can help. And once you know how to do this, you can practice in situations where there aren't any other people around.

As for learning to listen, you'll need to learn a lot of vocabulary as well as listen to the same thing many times. You could start with simple podcasts like Japanesepod101 that have transcripts. Transcribing listening material and checking it against a real transcript can really be amazing for listening comprehension.

Hmong is a language with a few distinct varieties and not very much learning material. You should really ask yourself what you want to accomplish with learning Hmong (I'm curious too!) and how you imagine yourself using your knowledge in the future. There are some courses out there online and on Youtube, but I get the impression that they can't take you beyond a basic or lower intermediate level. It may be best in your case to hire a tutor who can make resources or record lessons specifically for you.
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