Son Goku
No lover of dogma
- Joined
- 14 Jun 2004
- Messages
- 1,980
OK, here's the thing. I'm currently learning Japanese (enrolled in Japanese 102 now), and am, well in need of practice in order to learn the language. One can only get so far by studying, memorizing the vocabulary (of which I still have many semesters to do), and learning to translate between the languages. Thing is, when something's written down to translate, it's in front of one, so they can take the time to translate each part of the sentence and figure out what is being said.
In a conversation of course, things are different, where translation isn't enough...one has to understand it as it's being spoken...and keeping entire long sentences in the short term memory long enough to translate it as one goes, is well... One sorta needs to be able to understand/think in the other language, and this takes practice in addition to studieing/memorizing.
I'm also at a point where I'm beginning to be able to compose new sentences (not just follow something that was presented to us) though some of them don't work. Such as where the conversational partner wanted to meet after class, and well I'm typically hungry then so asked him if he wanted to go to a resturant to eat. Thing is, my question ended up comming out
resturan wa tabemaska
which (didn't think about it until afterwards) but litterally would translate as "Eat a resturant?" Umm, lol...yeah that's strange. Eating a building :rofl
Should have been
resturan de tabemaska
which would be "Eat at a resturant?" Oh and BTW, if anyone is wondering, unlike in English, that wouldn't be considered a fragmented sentence. That I'm asking him, it's considered gramatically correct in Japanese to assume that I'm asking him if he wants to...
So, I signed up for a Japanese conversational to get the needed practice. In his case, he's come to the States from Japan (turns out the company he works for, sent him as part of his employment to improve his English some), so needs as much English help, as we need Japanese help.
Thing is, in sending emails to arrange things...I'm looking to set things up so I can alternatively type a message in Japanese (using an English keyboard of course) and read messages as such.
The teacher was mentioning (as she assumes that we all have US keyboards) that there is a means to do this, or a program that will allow one to type the Romanjii and it will convert it to the Hiraghana on the screen. (Well we've learned Hiraghana and Katakana so far, but no Kanjii, so Kanjii would throw me off at this point.) She was mentioning this in reference to another option, where people could sign up for a Japanese pen pal, to get some more language practice...
Anyhow, looking online, it's suggested that one is looking for Microsoft IME or input management editor, and that in Windows 2000 and Windows XP this is built in. I can follow the steps in help to get it to input Japanese, set that as the keyboard option, set a message in Outlook Express to encode in Japanese, but typing, it doesn't convert the characters to Japanese.
I guess I'm missing something, or am I on the wrong track altogether? What would I need to do, to be able to do this? Of course I wouldn't want all the messages to come out in Japanese writting, just those intended for a Japanese speaking person, as I'm learning the language myself...
In a conversation of course, things are different, where translation isn't enough...one has to understand it as it's being spoken...and keeping entire long sentences in the short term memory long enough to translate it as one goes, is well... One sorta needs to be able to understand/think in the other language, and this takes practice in addition to studieing/memorizing.
I'm also at a point where I'm beginning to be able to compose new sentences (not just follow something that was presented to us) though some of them don't work. Such as where the conversational partner wanted to meet after class, and well I'm typically hungry then so asked him if he wanted to go to a resturant to eat. Thing is, my question ended up comming out
resturan wa tabemaska
which (didn't think about it until afterwards) but litterally would translate as "Eat a resturant?" Umm, lol...yeah that's strange. Eating a building :rofl
Should have been
resturan de tabemaska
which would be "Eat at a resturant?" Oh and BTW, if anyone is wondering, unlike in English, that wouldn't be considered a fragmented sentence. That I'm asking him, it's considered gramatically correct in Japanese to assume that I'm asking him if he wants to...
So, I signed up for a Japanese conversational to get the needed practice. In his case, he's come to the States from Japan (turns out the company he works for, sent him as part of his employment to improve his English some), so needs as much English help, as we need Japanese help.
Thing is, in sending emails to arrange things...I'm looking to set things up so I can alternatively type a message in Japanese (using an English keyboard of course) and read messages as such.
The teacher was mentioning (as she assumes that we all have US keyboards) that there is a means to do this, or a program that will allow one to type the Romanjii and it will convert it to the Hiraghana on the screen. (Well we've learned Hiraghana and Katakana so far, but no Kanjii, so Kanjii would throw me off at this point.) She was mentioning this in reference to another option, where people could sign up for a Japanese pen pal, to get some more language practice...
Anyhow, looking online, it's suggested that one is looking for Microsoft IME or input management editor, and that in Windows 2000 and Windows XP this is built in. I can follow the steps in help to get it to input Japanese, set that as the keyboard option, set a message in Outlook Express to encode in Japanese, but typing, it doesn't convert the characters to Japanese.
I guess I'm missing something, or am I on the wrong track altogether? What would I need to do, to be able to do this? Of course I wouldn't want all the messages to come out in Japanese writting, just those intended for a Japanese speaking person, as I'm learning the language myself...