/eal&llg/ East Asian Literature & Language Learning General

[Anonymous No.22444264]

今日は, 안녕하세요, 你好, what's up guys...
Hope everyone's been making progress on their east asian language learning journey and/or reading up on some great literature from the Far East.

So let's get started, I think a good place to begin would be to think of what should go in the general? I'm thinking textbook recommendations for beginners/intermediate/advanced, some links that could be useful, etc. Also, any good charts for Korean and Chinese lit? I know there's some good ones for Japanese.

What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments below.

[Anonymous No.22444389]

Is the Three Kingdoms any good?

[Anonymous No.22444495]

Please don't turn this into /mu/.

[Anonymous No.22444579]

IMO good contemporary lit from East Asia is completely unknown to the west

[Anonymous No.22444583]

>>22444264
I support this as a recurring general, as a Chinese learner.

[Anonymous No.22444653]

>>22444389
Wish I knew, maybe some chinese afficiandos can help. It’s definitely on my tbr.

>>22444495
Don’t worry

>>22444579
Great chart

>>22444583
Great. I’ve only studied Japanese and Korean so maybe you can recommend some good sources.

[Anonymous No.22445162]

>>22444264
Do they translate better to germanic or romance languages?

[Anonymous No.22445176]

>>22444264
こんにちは
元気ですか

[Anonymous No.22445373]

I haven't made progress with my japanese in ages... I've probably forgotten so many words again

[Anonymous No.22445555]

"This time I'll actually learn Japanese", He said while remembering the other 6 times he tried to learn it.

[Anonymous No.22445588]

>>22445176
元気です!

>>22445373
Best time to restart? Right now!

>>22445555
I believe in you, anon!

[Anonymous No.22445613]

>>22444264
/int/ has a general and a wiki of free resources. If you want to start a general you can just steal their links.

[Anonymous No.22445951]

>>22445373
>>22445555
同じ, 同じ。。。
負けない。。。無理です。。。終わりだ。。。

[Anonymous No.22446283]

>>22445951
先輩…頑張って!화이팅!

[Anonymous No.22446379]

>>22444264
我也支持建这个帖子
>>22444389
It's an epic in the most literal sense of the word, with over a thousand characters who are also complex, interesting and heroic. It's the equivalent of Shakespeare's works in terms of the immense influence it had on culture, literature, and arts. Possibly the most beloved East Asian novel. If you like history even a little I recommend it. It's long as fuck though.

[Anonymous No.22446430]

>>22445162
Mandarin translates eerily well into German. Don't know about the others.

[Anonymous No.22446480]

Japanese-American anon here who also knows Mandarin and with it Classical Chinese pretty well. By no means am I an expert, but I can go over a quick survey of poetry from both countries sometime if anyone's interested. It's important to note that the novel was not the principle medium of esteem in China the way it was in the West: poetry was. This applied as well in Japan, though in that case the novel developed and flourished much more and much earlier. Therefore trying to grasp Asian civilizations like reading only novels might even be akin to watching only cartoons, though I know a few would do that too.

[Anonymous No.22446501]

>>22445162
I can't speak for Korean, but I would say that Japanese and Classical Chinese translate equally poorly into all Western languages. Very recent Mandarin translates smoothly into the same turgid babble that everyone babbles these days. 半文半白 stuff should theoretically not be hard to translate, but in fact almost everyone doing so is incompetent. Maybe one day Brendan O'Kane will commit himself to the task.
Moreover, one of the greatest of the handful of truly great Chinese novels, 金瓶梅, has only a smattering of translations into Western languages, none of them remotely passable.

[Anonymous No.22446593]

>>22444264
Anyone else here studying Classical Chinese?

[Anonymous No.22446596]

Ching chong ping pong bang wang pow wow

[Anonymous No.22446600]

>>22446596
>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.22446627]

>>22444495
zoomies always need generals for everything. just like my heckin discord channels!
if mods weren't fags any general would get nuked on sight.

[Anonymous No.22446693]

>>22446480
>I can go over a quick survey of poetry from both countries sometime if anyone's interested
yes please

[Anonymous No.22447024]

>>22444264
no one use kanji when writing こんにちは。「今日は」っていうのは「この日は」って意味があるんだ。勉強に戻れ。

[Anonymous No.22447032]

I want to study korean and came across this site: https://www.howtostudykorean.com/

But i’ve read mixed reviews about it, some say it’s really good, but some say it’s too detailed. Any used it?9

[Anonymous No.22447101]

>>22447032
Why are asian women so feminine and servile while western women just want to ride the cock carousel until they’re too old and ugly for chad so then they marry mr. beta while getting fucked on the side?

I swear I’m moving to asia one day.

[Anonymous No.22447107]

>>22447101
Things are never as simple as they seem.
I think you'll be disappointed in your naivety

[Anonymous No.22447114]

>>22447101
>asian women so feminine and servile
That’s japanese. Try dating a chinese or especiallly a korean girl and that image willbe shattered very quickly.

[Anonymous No.22447122]

>>22447101
That's a stereotype.

[Anonymous No.22447357]

watashi wa good chart o foundmashita

[Anonymous No.22447581]

>>22446480
There are barely any surviving examples of western novels from antiquity. The novel boom of the East might have began earlier than the West's

[Anonymous No.22449251]

>>22447581
Even assuming that's true, novels were not held in high esteem in China. Thus, though they generated a few masterpieces, the best and the brightest would go into poetry, which had a much greater significance for the literati and a much stronger sense of tradition building on itself. The situation in Japan was somewhat more complicated.

[Anonymous No.22449626]

Great general, I support it.

I know Italian and my Russian is at a b2 level so I thought I'd finally take the plunge into an eastern language. But holy shit Japanese is hard.

Question:

I heard an anon up top say that Kanji aren't used as much anymore. The problem is that I want to read novels and poetry, so, for that, will I need to really dig into the kanji?

Eventually I'd like to read Classical poetry + Soseke + Mishima + Kawabata and maybe the tales of Ice in am modern translation.

I heard Mishima used a shit ton of kanji, but what about the others? Am I just totally fucked?

[Anonymous No.22449753]

>>22449626
JapAm anon here.
"Kanji aren't used as much anymore" is equivalent to "the subjunctive isn't used as much anymore" in French or Spanish or "people tend to write shorter sentences nowadays" in English. Where there's an option, most people will tend to pick Kana nowadays. That said, if you cannot recognize all the joyo Kanji on sight you are absolutely illiterate. Barring some major language reform, this is almost certain to remain the case for our whole lifetimes and beyond.
>will I need to really dig into the kanji?
You will reach a point at which you no longer have to do so intentionally. It isn't a matter of effort: a greater percentage of Japanese are literate than of Americans, and most Japanese are hardly industrious or intellectual. It's only a matter of time, of which a substantial investment is of course necessary.
>tl;dr
Do you really have to learn all those Kanji? The answer is the same as when Japanese ask if they really have to learn all those English words: yes.

[Anonymous No.22449823]

>>22447114
It's not even true there. I'm pretty sure a good deal of domestic abuse in Japan is the wife beating the husband for coming home late or not getting the promotion.

[Anonymous No.22449907]

>>22449753

Thanks anon

[Anonymous No.22449932]

And a ching chong ling long to you to ma'am

[Anonymous No.22450038]

>>22449251
And unfortunately, it seems to me poetry loses a lot more in translation than novels.

[Anonymous No.22450054]

>>22449626
>I heard an anon up top say that Kanji aren't used as much anymore. The problem is that I want to read novels and poetry, so, for that, will I need to really dig into the kanji?
You definitely need to learn kanji. The good news is, the first relatively few kanji will go a long way; the frequency drops off after that. Once you know a few hundred, I think it should work to just look up unfamiliar kanji as you go. Or just read a bunch of stuff with furigana.
>and maybe the tales of Ice in am modern translation.
Assuming you mean Tales of Ise? But even then, if you're happy with reading a translation why not just read an English translation? Either way, it's someone else's interpretation; an English translation could even be a better approximation to the original, if it's a good translation and the modern Japanese translation isn't.
>>22449753
>equivalent to "the subjunctive isn't used as much anymore" in French
Fun fact, I once talked online with a francophone Belgian who said he didn't really use the subjunctive and then used it a few sentences later. He just didn't have conscious access to the part of his brain that generates his native language, as is the default unless people are expressly instructed in grammar.
>Barring some major language reform, this is almost certain to remain the case for our whole lifetimes and beyond.
Although fun fact, Japanese Braille doesn't use kanji.

[Anonymous No.22450057]

I'm still stuck on mango still but honestly if this is where I peak, I'm content with it

[Anonymous No.22450224]

>>22450057

based

[Anonymous No.22450278]

>>22444579
That's because 99% of it is untranslated. My best reading experiences are things that the majority on /lit/ will never even experience in their entire lives.

[Anonymous No.22450314]

>>22444264
>plastic Asian
>hot Asian
>Aryan princess whose ancestors got a little lost
yup. that's the 3 east Asian ethnicities

[Anonymous No.22450471]

>>22449626
>I heard an anon up top say that Kanji aren't used as much anymore.
He was referring to that word specifically where using the kanji implies a different word. But no, you can’t get by without kanji. Or rather you may be able to speak with others but not be able to read anything.

[Anonymous No.22450645]

When people say Chinese has a lot of homophones they're likely thinking about modern Mandarin, which has me thinking if at least the essential nature of the consonants in earlier stages of Chinese could be reliably affirmed, then maybe some alternate form of transcription could be developed for it that better differentiates Chinese words using older Mandarin or Middle Chinese phonemes since the vowel reflexes should probably of secondary importance to that end.

[Anonymous No.22450829]

>>22450645
Oh, there are several Romanizations of Middle Chinese. There's also Chao's General Chinese, which is a diasystem of the modern Chinese languages and doesn't have many homophones (Apparently 80% of General Chinese syllables uniquely identify a particular morpheme). Though even some of the more conservative living languages, like Hokkien or Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation, don't have very homophones.

[Anonymous No.22451026]

>>22444264
>>22450314

[sage No.22451061]

>>22451026
arr rook same and arr will marry me. Shit thread not lit

[Anonymous No.22451087]

How different is Cantonese from Mandarin? Is it at least somewhat mutually intelligible?

[Anonymous No.22451224]

>>22444264
My waifu

[Anonymous No.22451558]

>>22451087
No. They are different languages when spoken.
They are the same language when written; this however relies on Cantonese being heavily mandarinized.

[Anonymous No.22451579]

Any good Korean literature recs?
Bumping for some good recs. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.22451585]

>>22447101
not sure about japs but Chinese and Korean women are absolutely dominateering in the inside
don't get married to one

[Anonymous No.22451586]

>>22451579

[Anonymous No.22451589]

>Read the guide linked below before asking how to learn Japanese:
>https://djtguide.github.io/learn/learnmain.html

[Anonymous No.22451668]

>>22450038
Yes. Japanese poetry is a decently developed national tradition of some importance, probably more significant than the Polish or Czech traditions but nowhere near the level of the great French, German, or Italian traditions. Chinese poetry is however the longest unbroken and most internally esteemed tradition in the world. To love poetry without Chinese is needless self-deprivation; it absolutely warrants learning the language alone.

[Anonymous No.22451678]

>>22451224
Surprisingly somber book. The cutesy cover is a bait.

[Anonymous No.22451941]

>>22450829
I keep starting and stopping learning Chinese bc I can't remember things well that sound too similar. For example, ma, mā, má, mǎ, mà. All sound different in classes when the teacher is slowly dragging each word out her mouth. But in conversations or when trying to use flashcards to just remember the differences, it becomes hard to distinguish. I get it when it's very obvious in context or very often repeated words or phrases, but rote memorization just isn't happening for me. I'm not sure how to proceed in memorizing the meanings of words anymore.

[Anonymous No.22452275]

>>22451224
it surprisingly made me reflect on what a "good" or successful life means to different peoeple. I don't think the author intended it to be thought-provoking beyond the goyslop normalfags write in the goodreads/r*ddit.The book feels like it gained an identity of its own.

[Anonymous No.22452362]

>>22447101 (You)
https://youtu.be/4nmYj1Wwi-Y

[Anonymous No.22452373]

>>22451026
Bro these are stereotypical highschool uniforms

[Anonymous No.22452517]

>>22451224
>>22451678
>>22452275

Really enjoyed this book. It made me excited for Earthlings but the sheer overwhelming negativity of the reviews have put me off though I may still check it out if I can knock off enough books on my tbr list (probably won't). I hope she can come out with another good book.

[Anonymous No.22453038]

>>22451087
About as different as French and Spanish.
>>22451558
Or to be more precise, Cantonese-speakers use Mandarin as a written language but read it with the Cantonese reading of each character. It hath the outthrutch one bitkin how when man Theetch cognate-for-cognate in't "English" oversetten wurth.

[Anonymous No.22453057]

>>22451941
A lot of characters stand for morphemes that can't really stand on their own as words. Learn them in the context of whole words; spoken Mandarin isn't much more homophonic than other natural languages if you analyze it in terms of how it's actually spoken and don't let yourself be misled by the writing system.

[Anonymous No.22453111]

>>22444264

[Anonymous No.22453137]

>>22447101

[Anonymous No.22453161]

>>22453137
go back

[Anonymous No.22453201]

>>22453038
>It hath the outthrutch one bitkin how when man Theetch cognate-for-cognate in't "English" oversetten wurth.
Might this be a mixing of Dutch and Anglish?

[Anonymous No.22453218]

>>22453201
No, it's German 'translated' cognate-for-cognate into English, to illustrate the effect of Mandarin read in Cantonese readings. In the original German:
Es hat den Ausdruck ein bisschen wie wenn man Deutsch Kognat-für-Kognat in's Englisch übersetzen würde
That's probably bad German, I'm not entirely fluent in it.

[Anonymous No.22453321]

>>22453137
you and that reddit cuckoid are fags beyond any form of help

[Anonymous No.22453381]

Japanese is too hard because of kanji. I want to learn Latin first. I started learning it recently and it's been exposing quite a bit of gaps in my English as well. I'll have to do some English learning at the side as well. Then I can maybe get back on to learning Japanese. Kanji absolutely sucks the soul.

[Anonymous No.22453399]

>>22453381
Honestly, it really sucks at first, still
sucks but slightly less once you’ve got around 5000 words (pure kanji and not counting words with same base but different endings) remembered, only slightly sucks around 10,000 words, and becomes helpful once you’ve got 20,000 words under your belt.

I went the vocab route though where you study the words and never studied kanji in isolation. Some people swear by studing them in isolation with RTK and mnemonics like they teach. Probably would’ve been more efficient if I had done that because I confused similar looking kanji for awhile, but still ended up in the same place.
Just grind anki and read A LOT.

[Anonymous No.22453933]

Learning kanji is about recognizing patterns. The most important patterns are phonetic components and parts that categorize the kanji semantically (usually the main radical). You can read about these patterns in a textbook, but your brain will also naturally infer them just by seeing enough Japanese. The problem new learners have is that they don't yet have enough datapoints in their brains to discover these patterns. The solution is to keep struggling and keep showing your brain more and more new kanji until these patterns emerge. Tragically, many people do the exact opposite. When they start struggling, they think that they're doing something wrong. They slow down when they're supposed to be accelerating. Eventually, they just give up.

[Anonymous No.22453961]

>thread has already devolved into kanji tips and PUA shit
>only book mentioned by name is the equivalent of any quirky white woman's memoir
East Asian women are dependent, vindictive pillow princesses and you deserve what you get if you chase them (look up 撒嬌.) Kanji is easy but time-consuming. Contemporary East Asian lit is as busted as contemporary lit elsewhere and you may be wasting your life. None of you will find enlightenment unless you change your ways fast. Maybe start by discarding the wanton xenophilia and trying to understand your own culture.

[Anonymous No.22454019]

>>22453961
filtered

[Anonymous No.22454044]

>>22454019
>>>/jp/

[Anonymous No.22454109]

>>22454044
>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.22454132]

>>22454109
I'm literally Asian

[Anonymous No.22454135]

>>22454132
>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.22454180]

>>22447032
I worked through TTMIK up to level 8 and I'm still struggling to understand basic conversation. Now I'm planning on working through KGIU alongside the TTMIK vocabulary books while reading as much as I can.

[Anonymous No.22454236]

>>22454044
>>22454109
>>22454132
>>22454135
k e k
e
k

[Anonymous No.22454351]

>>22454132
t. pagpag eater

[Anonymous No.22454374]

>>22453137
t. 4'11" virgin Yamada Taro, age 32, recently laid off from Showa Kabushikigaisha, enjoys cup men, quiet evenings of Monster Hunter, and sending anonymous death threats to his old classmate Yamaguchi Jun

[Anonymous No.22454471]

>>22454180
kig is great. but if you want to be good at speaking you need to read and listen a lot. check out ajatt.

[Anonymous No.22454803]

>>22451668
Any recommended resources on Chinese pronunciation in the various eras? Seems like that could potentially be a big obstacle.

[Anonymous No.22455782]

>>22454803
No modern topolect has perfect reflexes of Middle Chinese tones, on which the rules of 律詩 were based. Conversely, practically all modern topolects preserve practically all rhymes. Shakespeare's Sonnets probably lose more rhymes read in modern English than Li Bai read in modern Mandarin. So take that as you will.
There are vanishingly few people who know Middle Chinese reconstructions well enough to read poetry in them, and all of them are fluent in some modern topolect. I would frankly suggest you just learn Mandarin.

[Anonymous No.22455803]

>>22446596
Based

[Anonymous No.22456026]

>>22444264
Just downloaded Red Chamber and Genji, gonna dive deep into relationship drama.
>>22444579
Honestly, contemporary lit from the West is completely unknown on this board.
>>22450278
Extremely true. I did a whole Chinese degree and I can only speak mediocre Chinese and fucking forget about reading Chinese literature. Best I can manage is romcom manhua.

[Anonymous No.22456028]

>>22447101
The Asian women who like white men only like white men because they associate us with feminism, freedom, and open-mindedness. That's great news for me (I am an open-minded feminist) and awful news for you.

[Anonymous No.22456041]

>>22456026
>Just downloaded Red Chamber and Genji, gonna dive deep into relationship drama.
Nice, this thread is giving me some inspiration to finally read those chinese and japanese classics I've been putting off.

[Anonymous No.22456045]

>>22456028
>The Asian women who like white men only like white men because they associate us with feminism, freedom, and open-mindedness. That's great news for me (I am an open-minded feminist) and awful news for you.

[Anonymous No.22456050]

>>22456041
They've been on my backburner for a long time. I've been on a massive high medieval binge for the past year but I reckon I'm ready to find another focus lol. Although I suppose Genji is high medieval, fuck me.
>>22456045
Cry about it I guess

[Anonymous No.22456065]

>>22451026
This is anti Japanese propaganda

[Anonymous No.22456106]

>>22456050
>Cry about it I guess

[Anonymous No.22456114]

>>22456050
I was interested in discussing asian lit, especially genji. But are you the anon who posted about being a white male feminist? If you are, then just fuck off and go back.

[Anonymous No.22456197]

>>22453381
Don't brute-force memorize individual kanji and their readings, learn to recognize how words are written in context. Read a bunch of texts with furigana. Also learn to understand phono-semantic compounds because they're the vast majority of kanji.

[Anonymous No.22456203]

>>22453933
>The most important patterns are phonetic components and parts that categorize the kanji semantically (usually the main radical).
Yes, for example the characters in this picture have, going clockwise from 持, onyomi of じ, じ, たい, じ, じ, し, とく.

[Anonymous No.22456252]

>>22455782
>No modern topolect has perfect reflexes of Middle Chinese tones, on which the rules of 律詩 were based.
Though there are lects from which you can at least pretty reliably derive the 平仄. (Also I believe there are a few in which you can tell whether a character was 平, 上, 去 or 入.)
>Conversely, practically all modern topolects preserve practically all rhymes.
Er... not really? A lot yeah, but plenty are lost.
>There are vanishingly few people who know Middle Chinese reconstructions well enough to read poetry in them, and all of them are fluent in some modern topolect. I would frankly suggest you just learn Mandarin.
If what he's interested in is Classical Chinese, he should learn Classical Chinese. In Mandarin pronunciation, perhaps, but that doesn't require learning Mandarin necessarily.

[Anonymous No.22456269]

>>22451678
Indeed. I prefer the JP cover.

[Anonymous No.22456287]

>>22456269
I really like that. Who's the cover artist?

[Anonymous No.22456345]

>>22456287
金氏徹平 (Kaneuji Teppei)
While searching I found these other very pretty covers for other 村田沙耶香 novels. The nice covers and petite form factor make having physical editions that much more appealing.

[Anonymous No.22456394]

>>22456345
Cheers, want to look more into his art. And yeah, those covers are class.

[Anonymous No.22457090]

If one wants to learn all three languages in the OP, what's the best order to learn them?

My initial thought is: JPN->KOR->CHI because by learning Japanese I would have a large understanding of Korean grammar (I read they're very similar) and an advantage with reading Chinese.

However, I also know that the reading system in Japanese is the most difficult, so maybe I should go KOR->CHI->JPN so I can learn the similar grammar from Korean, have an advantage with the characters as well as an easier time reading with Chinese, and then this would make Japanese easier to learn.

Thoughts? I have no preference for any of the 3, but do want to start soon with one.

[Anonymous No.22457111]

>>22457090
Lmao I went on a date with a woman who looked extremely similar to the right one. She was ugly IRL and turned out to be insane. Like, deeply horrible as a human being with the most fucked up fearful-avoidant attachment style I'd seen in my life.

Anyway, to actually answer your question: I would say that it doesn't matter. It's going to be brutal no matter which order you pick, and whatever you pick first will help you a bit with whatever you pick next. So don't think about this factor when choosing. Instead, think about which language you will enjoy reading and listening to at a basic level -- in other words, which language has media which you'll enjoy even though it's aimed at, like, 13 year olds. That will be what helps you the most with your first of the languages.

[Anonymous No.22457119]

>>22457111
also, as soon as I sent this I realised they're probably all the same woman. In my defence, I do have face blindness

[Anonymous No.22457127]

I keep forgettinf my Chinese characters on Anki. It's so hard, bros.

[Anonymous No.22457481]

>>22457090
Chinese first. It will be easiest to memorize a couple thousand sinographs within the language family for which they were designed, which will give you a considerable leg-up in vocabulary for the other two: think Romance vocabulary in English. Plus, as one of the five really significant languages ever to have existed, it will leave you with the greatest literature when you give up on this ten-year plan.

>>22457127
Memorize at least a dozen poems you enjoy. 李白 is good for this but you should do some of your own exploration. First learn to understand their meaning fluently, then learn to recite them by heart, and then learn to write them from memory. When you've done this, do it with another dozen, and then another dozen. Don't complain more about sinographs until you've done this.

[Anonymous No.22457721]

i like games like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFgT1Yl8s4U