/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>13858414
>How difficult is it compared to other languages?
Piss fucking easy if you consume lots of kawaii anime shit, one of the hardest if you don't.
>How long have you been learning it/how fluent are you?
Actively for a year, passively (watching kawaii anime shit, playing kawaii anime games and the like) for 7 years. Completely fluent.
>Where is the best place to start?
Learn hiragana and katakana (google what they are), then learn basic grammar. From there, just like with any other language, memorize vocabulary as you learn more complex grammars and remember to read frequently to help comprehension.
> I've heard that white guy living in japan that swears a lot on youtube is a good tutor, but I can't remember his name.
You're probably talking about Namasensei. He's utter shit at teaching, but if you find him funny, watch his first videos for a drunken introduction to the language.

I like cats. Have a good day.

>>13858436
I watch a lot but I haven't really retained anything since it all sounds like one very long bit of nonsense to me.
How much did you understand before you started actively learning it? How many hours a day did you work at it during that year?
Sounds good, I'll do my best, and ya that's the guy. I guess I'll watch the first few since they seem entertaining and I might learn at least a little something. What did you use to study?

Thanks anon, you too.

>>13858436
>Actively for a year
>Completely fluent

>>13858468
To be honest, japanese isn't that hard to learn. I've heard, though, that native english speakers find it difficult, but that's probably just the pronounciation. I learned the whole grammar in a week. After that it's all about the kanji and vocabulary in general.

>>13858460
>How much did you understand before you started actively learning it?
Set phrases, individual words and the like. But my brain got familiar with the language, which helped later.
>How many hours a day did you work at it during that year?
Varies a lot. I'd say about an hour on average, daily, and two or three on weekends. It takes significant willpower though.
>What did you use to study?
Tae Kim's grammar guide is pretty good, read that at your own pace, try to build simple sentences with the grammar you learned each chapter, it helps a lot. For vocab, I did two different things. First, I downloaded and installed Anki, a flashcard program, and downloaded the 2k japanese core vocabulary deck. With this, you set how many new words you want each day, and the program sets the repetition for the words you learned on previous days, so you'll be seeing it two days after learning it, then 4 days after that, and so on. That way you will memorize them over time. Once I finished this, I started getting the ones I don't recognize from manga/porn games and adding to my own deck for reviewing.
For kanji, I tried to learn 10 kanji a day every day, using the list of kanji as the japanese kids learn them up until high school. I wrote them down, copied them 5 times, then 2 times the following day, then once for two more days, and after that I just reviewed all of them once in a while.

With this, you're pretty much ready to play/watch whatever you want. I'll warn you in advance that it won't really teach you production unless you go out of their way to learn it (by writing sentences with the grammar you learned and the words you memorized), which will require more effort.

Sorry for the wall of text.

>>13858414
fuck off to /a/ and /int/

>>13858506
Sounds like you had a pretty big head start, but nothing a bit of focused studying wouldn't catch up to. An hour or so a day isn't too bad at all.
Thanks for all the information, it's really helpful. I'll write it all down for later.

I've never learnt another language, so one question in regards to how I should think about the whole thing: Should I learn things as x is equivalent to this is English, or should I learn them more conceptually? If I'm learning what a chair is I can't imagine that would be a problem, but if I'm learning something a bit more complex, like if they had a word for an entire phrase or more complex concept in English.

>>13858505
>I learned the whole grammar in a week
>the whole grammar
>a week
>the whole grammar

>>13858526
Ok, this might be a bit tricky, I had already learned four languages before I learned japanese so that might be why it was "easy" for me. Don't feel frustrated if you can't do much progress in an hour a day at first, if you do have the drive and motivation to extend it, that's great, but if not, you're still making progress.

It's fine to think of it as equivalents in english, but at some point you want to be able to think of the word immediately in the target language without having to translate mentally. As you get a "feel" for the language, you'll be able to do this, don't worry about it. The complex concepts usually aren't all that complex, but expect words that aren't absolutely translatable to english because they have different translations depending on the context or the tone of the sentence. Again, it's fine to think of them in terms of the equivalent english word/phrase, as you use them you'll start to be able to think of the japanese word directly. The key word here is use, I can't stress it enough. If you do produce sentences and paragraphs, you will remember things better, if you don't it will take much longer.

>>13858544
>Four
Impressive
So you've been saying to learn the grammer then the vocabulary. I might be misunderstanding but are you saying to learn the alphabet, punctuation, and how to combine nouns/verbs/etc before learning what words actually mean? That seems a bit difficult, I don't really know how to go around learning a new alphabet. Do I just look at a letter and learn it makes a puh sound?

That's good, I figure that would make it easier. I pick up new words quickly but even back in highschool I had trouble getting through the entry barrier of a new language, I think once I learn a very basic vocabulary I'll be able to pick up the rest quickly.
I'll make sure to write some things down using the language once I am able to do so, thanks.

>>13858568
No, sorry. I meant vocab and grammar at the same time. It's just that you will learn grammar much faster than you will learn the vocabulary, because japanese vocabulary is really grindy thanks to kanji.

>>13858575
Okay makes sense.
>Grindy thanks to kanji
Can you explain? The only things I know about kanji are from anime. They sound like they are essentially hieroglyphics.

>>13858582
Kanji are chinese characters the japanese borrowed because they didn't have a written language of their own nor enough imagination to just invent one from scratch, and they also loved to copy everything chinese at the time. As you might guess, borrowing the writing system from a language that has fuck all to do with yours doesn't yield the best results, so they adapted it for japanese use over the centuries which gave birth to the hiragana and katakana characters (these are similar to our own alphabet, except each character represents a syllable, 46 different ones in each set. Don't worry, they are easy to learn, this is the first thing you should learn).

So now we have a mesh of mostly hiragana (the simple ones) and kanji (the hieroglyphs) for the writing system. The issue with kanji is that they can be very hard to learn because each of them is different, made up of a bunch of smaller components that will seem arbitrary at first. It's not as simple as memorizing words in western languages, assuming your mother tongue is english. Once you do know the kanji, reading japanese becomes very easy and fast, though.

>>13858608
So hiragana and katakana can be learned by just memorizing which letters make what sound then? That's simple enough.
How important is kanji at first? It sounds like something I would really want at least a moderate grasp of the language to learn, like a halfway point thing.

>>13858624
No, don't make the mistake of leaving kanji "for later". They really do pile up. Do not start learning kanji before you have fully learned hiragana and katakana, but start as soon as you're done with them. Make it a habit to not romanize writings as well, become familiar with hiragana. The key to learning a language fast is immersing yourself in it.

>>13858632
Will do, I'll make sure to devote some time to kanji right after the other two then. What do you mean not romanize?

>>13858642
>What do you mean not romanize?
Write japanese using japanese characters instead of our alphabet once you've learned hiragana. Writing it with our alphabet will create a bad habit.

>>13858648
Oh ok, that makes sense. You've been extremely helpful anon, thank you so much. I really didn't know if I could do it but you've given me a lot of confidence.

Any last tips you can give me?

>>13858658
You are welcome.

As a last tip, I suggest you check out the daily japanese thread on /a/, the thread itself is shit but the OP has links to useful guides, resources and the like, in case you find yourself stuck with one particular aspect of learning the language. There are many ways to learn, and what works for me might not always work for you, so don't hesitate to switch to another grammar guide/vocabulary deck and so on if you don't like the one you're using.

The thread is not always up, just ctrl+f DJT on the catalog to see if it's up.

Good luck with your studies.

>>13858414
This is not the language board. Delete this.

/a/, /lang/

>>13858685
>Daily japanese thread on /a/
Oh, I thought that was on this board. Well I guess >>13858508
was right. Woops.

I'll check them out, and thanks again.

>>13858414