English / Japanese language group? 英語/日本語のグループか。

I'm interested sign me up something i've always weanted to learn!

I am interested in learning Japanese too. Send me an invite please

interested!

please send an im XD

-ayame

Feel easy Chie, Now I become one of them.
But My English ability is supposed to be not reliance,hehe

Thanks

yes two sims are highly themed with Japanese content and have been the most integrated japanese styled sims in the grid for some time. I joined in 2003 and found little evidence of Japanese projects in Sl. The two things I saw at that time were the Linden owned Dore japanese ' Yamato Town' which was made with veteran players like Harold Nomad and others, ( it still exists - see My Picks) and the abortive tokyo-sage project long since gone.

Since then I have created a wealth of japanese content in SL including themed sims, houses, goods and a wealth of japanese and chinese textures, furnishings and artifacts along with pioneering Sl's first eastern/asian street markets now crammed with many fine talents.

My work is dotted around many sims now and I have helped judge Japanese/eastern build contests and sponsored and assisted a host of smaller japanese projects, and living areas.

Interestingly enough as one of the most prolific producers of japanese content I have never even been approached to get involved in the new japanese grid which I do find odd, but...thats SL for you..

My main sim works:

Orelle ( Silk Waters Mountain) is a mist clad snow driven japanese village with a street market (free stalls for asian items makers) exclusive rental houses, streets, alleys, pagoda, a recently extended less than respectable ' Lowtown' and extensively landscaped winter peaks, rivers, and lands. There is also the unique Votive Temple where you can leave lamps of various dedications

Tehama is a 4 seasons sim with extensive Japanese gardens content with Neo Japan Store, Sl's original and largest oriental bazaar, and Red Dragon Street Market ( free stalls for asian items makers), free starter housing for landless residents, Clan House, parks and gardens and a Giant Tree of LIfe. there are also lakes and the extensive Tehama Forests and much more including one of the largest tree collections in SL. Tehama also harbours many secrets, few of which have ever been found by avid explorers to date... come find clues !!

I am also available to advise both free and paid projects in Japanese/ chinese style builds and landscaping and can undertake paid projects in building and landscaping. My work all over Sl has many references. I am also supporting a number of Japanese and Chinese style projects and generally will help with any eastern style work or project. I speak Japanese, French and English.

Thanks see you in game.

こんいちは

Has anyone started these language chat meets yet?

I'm american and recently started living in Japan, but I haven't had much opportunity to practice Japanese. Pretty much every restaurant in my area has english-speaking staff. As far as reading, I can read some of the important things like ビール My american friends get lost when I use liquor stores as landmarks - they can't recognize such everyday kanji like 酒

こんいちは, Lita!

I don't think anyone's started things up yet.

I have a similar problem--I can read many Kanji and kanji compounds, but because my Japanese coworkers speak English most of the time, I don't get a lot of speaking practice. As a result, I read Japanese much better than I speak or write it (opposite of the usual, I realize). My biggest problem is that when I have to look up vocabulary, I forget that "normal" form as listed in the dictionary is not the same as "polite" form, so I end up sounding too informal if I don't pay close attention. I don't think I've completely offended anyone this way yet, but I'm sure I sound very American as a result.

みんないろいろあるのよね。

こんにちは！　(I kinda know why you two ended up with こんいちは )

Lita, if you knew how to read and write ビール and 酒, what else do you possibly need? Maybe ワイン & 焼酎？

Yes, Arashiko, I feel your pain. We have way too complicated 敬語(honorific language) system that the younger peeps can not handle it properly We can guess how it's even harder for foreigners, so it's very unlikely you'd offend anyone, provided you have the innocent ガイジン look

The possible problem in conducting such language chat meets or lessons would be that people's level of Japanese/English differ. Some can read and write 漢字 while some wants to start from learning how to say hi and thanks.

I consider myself a lot better at Japanese than most of the americans I work with here, but I'm a total noob in trying to talk to a native speaker.

Just from experience: I usually try to speak japanese as much as I can when I'm at Lawson Station, resorting to pointing at things if needed. I've seen other foreigners in there pointing at the fried foods and speaking loud, slow english "give me two of these". I should go around yelling random things in French at the americans.

I just hope that if I accidentally say something wrong, they realize it's because I'm trying to speak Japanese, instead of hoping they'll understand English.

Just about every day, I argue with a fellow american over correct pronunciation. I don't know how they can see "Aomori" and say "amori".. I guess I'm just a snob; I say Tokyo as "To-kyo-", not "Tokiyo". Sometimes, I have no clue what they're talking about. Someone at the office said "Has anyone been to Kai-yoto before?" I eventually figured out he meant Kyoto.

As far as my own education, I took a Japanese language class in college about 10 years ago, but that stupid college dropped all foreign languages except spanish the following semester. Since then, I've been educating myself through subtitled Japanese TV shows and the Internet, which is probably not the best instructor.. hence, also my slow progression.

I've been taking classes lately, trying to finish my degree and plan on taking Japanese again next semester.

If anyone wonders, I'm in the military.. that's why I work with so many americans. One of the big reasons I joined was to get stationed in Japan.

It is our cute American accent

焼酎? I think you are a bad influence. How about にごり酒？

More seriously, though, food and drink are very useful, and not very difficult.



In RL, I have so much of a ガイジン look that people are amazed I speak any Japanese at all. In SL, though, I usually wear an Asian-looking avatar. Either way, I try to be careful. Better to make an effort and sometimes fall short than to not try.　習うより慣れよですね？



Maybe one approach would be to trade useful phrases. This might be useful for both Japanese and English speakers. Here are some ideas for an "SL phrase book":

うわー！　おまえのうち、でっかいな！ Wow! Your house is huge!
誰があんなの買うんだよなあ。 I wonder who buys things like that.
どこから聞こえてくるの？！　うるさいっつーの！ Where does that come from?!　It's too loud!
何か前と違う！ You look different!
こういうのが欲しかったのよ！　他にも色ある？　This is great!　Do you have any more colors?

Nah, just tell them the sushi bar has great tacos .

Then run when their order arrives...

(Language tip for readers who do not get this joke: "tako" means "octopus"

My Japanese is far from perfect, but after four years here, I think I've picked up enough to teach a basic class. Is anyone organising some kind of class? I need to learn intermediate-advanced Japanese, and would be ok with teachng basic Japanese.

私は日本語を完璧に話せませんが、四年ここに住んでいた、簡単な日本語を教えることができます。誰かが日本語教室を作りますか？私は中級日本語を勉強し、簡単な日本語を教え利します。

よろしく

I'd love to take part in this also, as would my friend - we are both beginners in learning Japanese though!

Everyone's enthusiasm is great. However, there are a few obstacles to an in-world class that make me wonder how well it would work for students without at least a basic knowledge of Japanese already. The biggest one is that SL is primarily a written medium. Most of the time, language teaching (and learning) goes most smoothly when spoken and written language are combined.

For example, even something basic like learning to read hiragana is much easier if you can hear the words as you read them. Just as with English, reading Japanese is much faster when you can directly read an entire word or phrase at a time, instead of having to puzzle it out character by character, and typing Japanese at any reasonable speed requires knowing both how the individual words are pronounced and the pronunciation rules.

This was the source of the typo that Lita and I made earlier in this thread, for example. The phrase こんにちは ("good day", often transliterated as "konichiwa," is actually typed as "konnitiha" when you are typing it in hiragana. I knew it looked wrong when I typed it, but I trusted Lita's spelling--unfortunately. Lita made the same mistake I did (forgetting that there are two 'n's there--sort of like in the English word "unnecessary".

I don't mean to be discouraging, but language lessons conducted only via text chat would be very challenging.

On the other hand, if someone set up QuickTime Broadcaster or something and could give real time streaming audio to supplement text chat, that could be extremely cool. Hmm... I wonder if anyone has done that before...

Oh, and for people who were wondering how to type and read Japanese on a computer with a US OS loaded, here are some instructions:

Windows XP: http://greggman.com/japan/xp-ime/xp-ime.htm

Mac OS: http://redcocoon.org/cab/mysoft.html
(also useful, though older, is http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Manuals/software/JapaneseInputGuide.PDF -- it was written for MacOS 9, but using the input method has not changed under MacOS X)

Linux: http://www.suse.de/~mfabian/suse-cjk/suse-cjk.html

One thing to note: when SL is in full screen mode, it puts intermediate text in the upper left corner of the display, not down in the chat window. Also, not all features of the IME are available via menus in this mode.

I hope this is helpful.

Doh! I didn't even realize I had typo'd こんにちは ... I was just typing and not really thinking.. I typed "konnichiha" and ended up with こんいちは, but to get こんにちは in windows, I need to type "konnnichiha". (Note the 3 N's in a row)

I guess modern Japanese classes need to incorporate some keyboarding lessons.

As far as adding voice to an inworld class, there are a few ways that people have been voice chatting in SL. Team Speak works quite well.. and I think there's also a couple services that provide voice chat specifically designed to work with SL.

Actually, even in windowed mode, SL puts the japanese text in teh upper left corner before outputting it. SL does not currently support an inline IME

True, which is really weird. I could have sworn it actually did show the characters appearing in the chat box when SL first got Unicode support in 1.6. Not long after that, it went to the behavior it has now. Maybe I'm just crazy.

I can't remember how the Mac version handles it. My mac was out of date and it's taking FOREVAH to download for some reason.

Hmm. I'll have to try it on my PC when I get home--I was pretty sure it was inline or in a floating window when in windowed mode, too...

On a Mac, if you're running in a window, it's not inline, but the floating input window pops up on top of the chat box, which is not great but OK. I sympathize with the Linden team, since writing the code to support real inline input is tricky, but the result is soooo much better.

はじめまして。
私わデイズイです。
だいがくのにねんせいです。
どうぞよろしく。

Hi!! ^^ I just finished my first semester of a Japanese language course at my college and I would love to make some Japanese friends to practice language with. IM me in game- Dizzy Musashi.
Thanks!
Diz.

If anyone is still interested in starting a Japanese-English group, I would be very interested in it, I was enrolled in a college first semister japanese course, and had to leave unexpectedly halfway through the semister. I've been trying (somewhat unsucessfully) to teach myself the language. I would welcome any help from japanese speakers, and/or teachers

Drop me a forum IM, or an in-world offline IM, I shan't be online for the next week or so, my Second Life computer is away for service.

CCC

Hello, I am sorta resurrecting this thread.

Anyway, me and a bunch of friends would like to type Japanese in SL. All of us have Windows setup to type and read all the characters in normal applications. However, whenever any of us type it in SL, it just turns into "****" for us. However other people have been able to read the characters, they just donw know why.

So Im wondering if theres a trick to get it to work in teh Normal SL client running on windows XP...?

I'm also interested, though oddly, living in Tokyo makes it difficult to meet up with people in other timezones. I have Pimsleur Japanese I can stream also for this, if that would help.

Side note: Withnail Academy is/was doing Japanese lessons every Saturday evening, but the past two weeks, the teacher hasn't showed. It may still be going on, for those of you who were interested. I'm not sure if the actual group that this thread proposed ever got off the ground...

in the Regional and Language Options control panel, make sure you have the boxes checked under "Supplemental Language Support".. that might install more fonts. I have both boxes checked, just to be sure.

Thanks for the suggestion, I did only have the first box checked. But still no-go

Talking around, it seems that everyone that can read it is running SL on a mac, I'd like to confirm that it is possible to setup WinXP to do this?


update: Just found out. When someone types in ひらがな then If I copy the "*******" and paste it into notepad, it turns into the correct chars. This leads me to believe that the font SL uses on my machine just dousnt have symbols for the chars. anyone know hwo I can Ichange this, is it maybe done in windows and not SL?

thank you again.

Hi guys,

All my friends from Japan on Windows needed to install Arial Unicode MS font. Take a look at the first page of THIS thread for the how-to and stuff. If the unicode font can't be found via the link I provided, try googling "arialuni.ttf" (or it could be self-extracting .exe but please be cautious of malware). There would still be one or two valid links.

Oh, and here's a reply from Torley Linden on displaying double byte characters on Windows client;
/invalid_link.html