Nihon-go, mother******, do you speak it?

Andrew GrimmUniversity of New South Wales (UNSW)

Why learn Japanese?

To go to Japan!

RubyKaigi 2011 was awesome

Future meetups will happenSapporo 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 sukru shimasu ka?

Iie, Rails wa sukru 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!