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Originally Posted by terminator101
Good for you! All I know are Romaji which of course, Japanese citizens do not bother with (LOL)!
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Hee, they totally do though. Romaji is actually one of their four main "alphabets". (Technically only Romaji is really an alphabet) Also, there is English in tons of places in Japan, and your average Japanese speaker will likely know some English.
However, they never use Romaji for Japanese proper.
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Originally Posted by terminator101
Good luck in your studies with the ni hon go.
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Hey, thanks..! (Also I see you know what Japanese is in Japanese, nice!)
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Originally Posted by terminator101
BTW - Did you know that kanji are actually Chinese characters? Of course, the Japanese have since evolved the character set with a few additional characters of their own.
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Aye, and in fact Japanese Kanji usually have a pronunciation called an "On'yomi" reading which is derived from the original Chinese. However, Japanese has
the fewest number of sounds between any common language. (With about a quarter of what Chinese dialects have, and not even 5% of what English has) so these readings are often quite different.
Also, the additions to the language by Japanese, AFAIK aren't in Kanji. I think all Japanese Kanji have a Chinese counterpart. I think the extra characters you are referring to are the other two "alphabets", known as Hiragana and Katakana, which are what make up the primary language.
These have no Chinese counterparts, and are used for most of the structure and grammar in Japanese, while Kanji make up things like nouns and verbs. This means that a Japanese speaker will have no clue what a Chinese speaker is saying if they hear them, though if written down, they can get a sense about what it's about. (Though many Kanji have different meanings between the two as well)
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Originally Posted by terminator101
There is an interesting scientific article about the possible origins of the Japanese people (Originally called "Wa" [Descended from the Chinese kingdom of "Wu"] before being called "Nippon" or "Nihon") -> http://www.wa-pedia.com/history/orig...e_people.shtml. When I first read it, I thought that Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, probably read something similar and was, as a result, "inspired" to create the origin of the Romulans as "An offshoot race of the Vulcan race" (Quoted from Commander Spock in Star trek TOS in the " Balance of Terror" episode and Ambassador Spock from Start Trek:TNG in the " Unification" episode).
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Interesting... I'm not super-familiar with Star Trek, though quickly skimming I can see some similarities. Heh, I wonder how much Sci-Fi in general has been influenced by Japan to some extent. I hear that George Lucas had
some Japanese influence as well with Star Wars.
Also back to history, if you haven't seen it already, this is basically
the best thing ever. (It's also quite accurate)
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Originally Posted by terminator101
I wonder what your Japanese language teacher would think about that article if he or she read it (Maybe you can print it out and show him or her).
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I don't actually have a Japanese language teacher... So that might be a tad difficult. ^^'
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Originally Posted by terminator101
There is also a folktale (Not officially accepted, written history) about how an ancient Chinese royal court minister and alchemist, XuFu, traveled in a fleet of ships with three thousand boys and girls over the China Sea to a remote island in order to find a secret elixir for immortality (The First Emperor desired immortality) but instead settled and founded what is now known as Japan -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Fu. I also wonder what your Japanese language teacher would think about that article if he or she read it (Maybe you can also print it out and show him or her).
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Interesting. Admittedly a lot of the Japanese folklore I know about is because of the references to it in things like Pokemon. (Or anime in general) However, I am not familiar with folklore
about Japan from other places.
You seem pretty interested in folklore. How did you originally hear of this stuff..?