Tag: japanese
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Is “language isolate” a misnomer?
If you really think about it languages cannot be an isolate, that is, unless at the creation of the language it developed out of a population that had no language. It is now accepted that about 70,000 years ago our species spread from Africa into Europe and Asia. As these populations migrated they some settled.…
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A quick introduction to Japanese syntax and particles
The Japanese language is considered syntactically a Subject-Object-Verb or SOV language in contrast to English which is considered a subject-Verb-Object or SVO language, as these two example sentences will show. (1) Ken wa (S) tama wo (O) uchimashita (V). (2) Ken (S) hit (V) the ball (O). While it is not possible to move the syntactical elements around in English without a changing…
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(Not) using the Apple Wireless Keyboard (Japanese layout) with iPad Air
I keep coming back to this issue of pairing and setting up an external foreign language external keyboard with the iPad Air. The problem is not that it outright rejects such a keyboard but that it depends on a particular app’s ability to recognise it or not. Strangely enough Apple’s very own wireless keyboard for…
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Motivation is one ingredient to learning any language
Just finished participating in a four-person panel talk about learning Japanese. Here are some points of commonality among panelists: regularity of study motviation through some interest in the target language’s culture enjoying the learning (relates to #2) authentic material or authentic situations For me learning is like being the anthropologist Levi-Strauss: you emmerse yourself in…
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How many hours do Japanese students have to study in order to master English?
I was told by one of my teachers back in my undergraduate days about twenty years ago that for me to master Japanese it would take me 700 hours of class time. The number now seems to be 2,200 hours. Japanese is a language notoriously difficult to learn for native English speakers because of their…
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Literature, second language, authenticity, passion
I have fond memories of my undergraduate days as a Japanese major. To me they were exciting times. The world was seemingly spinning at a furious pace. The people I met were doing things, going places. My future was ahead of me. My future now, of course, is still ahead of me (metaphorically, can it…
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