Nihon go do you speak it

Nihon-go, mother******, do you speak it? Andrew Grimm University of New South Wales ニューサウスウェールズ大学 (UNSW)

Why learn Japanese?
To go to Japan!
RubyKaigi 2011 was awesome
Future meetups will happen
Sapporo regional Kaigi
There will be others

Is it worthwhile?
16 lessons enough to get by fine

Is it hard? Vocab
Bug – bagu
Hashrocket – hasshuroketto
Blog – bulogu
Party – paatii

Is it hard? Vocab
Sake – Nihonshu – OMGWTFBBQ!
Alcoholic beverages - Sake

Is it hard? Grammar
Linguistic prolog
Q:
Nan-ji desu ka?
A:
Biru-ji desu.

Best approach
Learn the grammar, not just the vocabulary!

Do metaprogramming
Means you don't have to know everything
Kore o kudasai served in every restaurant I went to – even McDonalds!

How Japanese works

Sentence structure
Nouns first, then verb

Verbs
Only past and present tense, no future
Positive and negative forms of verbs
Ruby rokku shite imasu ka?
Hai, Ruby rokku shite imasu.
Rails wa sukēru shimasu ka?
Iie, Rails wa sukēru shimasen.

Nouns
No singular or plural
Different objects have different counters

Particles
Those pesky small words go after the noun

Hints for handling Japan

Train stations
Station names, exit names, ticketing is in both Japanese and English

Loanwords
The more modern the word, the more likely it is an English loanword (gairai-go)
Tend to have vowels added in to sound more Japanese-like

American English
Bad news: you have to learn two languages
Good news: one of them is similar to English

English heading, Japanese body

Toilets
Blue for boys, pink for girls, green for disabled

Communication – common sense

Pronunciation
50% of language variations are the same words pronounced in a different way
Writing things down can help

Likelihood to speak English
Tourist information desk? Pretty likely
Love hotel receptionist? Maybe not

Ganbette !
Let's organize RORO group Japanese lessons and build an even more awesome Australian contingent to the next kaigi!

Nihon go do you speak it

by Andrew Grimm on Aug 08, 2011

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