/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Everyone on /jp/ knows Japanese

What's that you say OP? Mahjong thread?

I'm trying to learn.

Busy with Russian. I don't think I'd try Japanese, it's considered one of the hardest in the world to learn. I don't really have the effort for that.

I fully intend to start the AJATT method as soon as I stop being a hikki living in a motel.

>>5208067
It was the first language that I actually found to be rather easy. At least easier than French, German, and Icelandic.

>>5208067

Are you sure you're not confusing Japanese with Mandarin Chinese? Because, really, Japanese not that difficult compared to English. It's CHINESE that's the total bitch, mostly because of their whole tone thing

Speaking Japanese = Quite easy, easier than most western languages

Writing Japanese = OH GOD NO NOT MORE KANJI ;_;

>>5208166
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_difficult_language_to_learn#For_native_English_speakers

>>5208169
Well, written Japanese completely subsumes Chinese, so.

I heard Icelandic was meant to be the hardest to learn for non-native speakers.

I think Chinese is hardest though.

>>5208169

reading is the only thing /jp/ cares about.

JLPT1.

>>5208191
>native_English_speakers

I concidr myself an upper beginner. I can read and write roughly 100-150 kanji and am pretty silid on grammar.

I'm native, and there are a handful of people on /jp/ that can pass as one in text.

Hiragana is all, I gave up/lost the motivation after that

>>5208232
Pretty much the same.

I'm in the process of learning it.

I've pretty much nailed the talking, but kanji is a bitch

;_;

Currently learning it with Rosetta Stone, I don't have much of an accent since my native language is french.

>>5208220
I doubt that other European languages are much closer to Japanese, thus making it easier to learn.

>>5208272

The pronounciation is similar to Spanish and the other south european languages.

I understand it decently.......that's about it so can't really say I know it

>>5208282
Exactly. I guess it's not much, but still...

>>5208232
Is it that hard to learn?

Well I can understand common phrases and everyday speak to some extent, but I don't have the motivation to learn all the characters.

>>5208306
See >>5208169

>>5208306
It's pretty easy if you have the patience.

>>5208191

I consider that more of an issue with how Japanese is taught more than the difficulty of the language itself. Japanese is actually fairly simple when it comes to grammar structure. Even Kanji is quite doable provided you don't have a retarded teacher who's all like "私　MEANS WATASHI, WHICH MEANS ME. NOW WRITE IT FIVE MILLION TIMES UNTIL YOU SEE IT ON THE INSIDE OF YOUR EYELIDS. REPEAT THIS PROCEDURE FOR ANOTHER TWO THOUSAND KANJI AND YOU'LL BE CONSIDERED SEMI-LITERATE"

>>5208232

Are you serious, bro? Cmon, the kana is by far the easiest aspect of Japanese. Just habitually writing in it or reading untranslated manga is enough to remember your kana

>>5208354
Honestly, if you don't need to write a kanji several times to remember it, your memory is considerably better than most. I don't do that, either, but think of your typical student of Japanese. Anyone can learn kanji by writing it enough, not everyone can come up with clever mnemonics and recognize radicals to memorize kanji quickly. That's why they use the former method in classrooms.

>>5208354
Grammar is really more important than vocabulary. You'll need vocabulary if you want to be literate, of course, but the most important thing is to be able to construct sentences, IMO.

>>5208354
That's my old teacher right there.

I'm glad I quit.
I learned so much more kanji just by reading VNs and looking up unknown kanji in the dictionary.

Any tips for somebody that wants to attempt a self-teach? I have the discipline, I just don't know how I'd go about it

>>5208399
Same, I'm not sure where to start. I have a friend who knows japanese, so that can help, but still, I'm not sure how to begin.

>>5208399
Download Japanese textbooks and shit. You can use jisho.org for looking up words, and guidetojapanese.org for grammar. Once you get the kana and basic grammar down, find a list of the jouyou kanji and start grinding. When you can struggle through real works with a dictionary, even if it's torturously slow, do that, since actually reading stuff in the language will help a lot more than simply studying sterilized example sentences in your textbook.

私は日本語の二年生です。 It's been pretty easy so far (granted, I had a ton of exposure thanks to animu), but you've gotta be diligent and active, like with anything. For god's sake, if you're just starting out, definitely make sure you practice your pronunciation and have it corrected if need be. The Katakana/Hiragana pronunciations are literally the entire language's phonetic breadth.

smart.fm

Use it.

>>5208483
This might help as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zxuy6eojZY

>>5208416
Just be happy that I have this copypasta

Well, start by going to http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar and read through everything there and take notes. It will also tell you about the kana, which you should be able to learn within a few hours. The grammar part isn't the most exciting thing you can do, but it will be extremely helpful, and going through that guide while taking notes is probably the fastest way to get it down and stop feeling like a complete retard whenever you try reading something in Japanese.

Secondly, go to http://kanji.gotdns.com/ and download Anki. Make it your goal to get through all the kanji there, and memorize them with the help of Anki. Time-consuming, but you can do it at your own pace, and when you have mastered the important ones, the language will suddenly be easy. You won't need much more vocabulary after this, other than the stuff you'll just absorb automatically since you have kanji to associate them with, so you mainly just need to get used to the language at this point. So..

Thirdly, read. I think the ideal thing is to find an untranslated VN and use AGTH, which allows you to copy and paste anything you don't understand into a dictionary (I use JWPce as my dictionary, not really sure if it's the best one, but it works). Another option if you're not completely comfortable with the kanji are manga targeted at younger demographics, as they will usually have furigana. If you are completely comfortable with the kanji, you can just read whatever you want, you don't need suggestions from me anymore at that point.

Those steps don't have to be followed strictly, but prioritizing them in that order will probably be most effective.

>>5208416
>>5208399

Well, here's how my course consumption has gone up until now

I first started with Berlitz' Basic Japanese course. It has 3 cassette tapes (it's like I'm really in the early 90s) of pure spoken Japanese that is designed to be read along with a full-length transcription of the conversations that take place, all written in Romanji. I found it an excellent tool to polish your listening and speaking skills, but it won't help you at all when it comes to kana or kanji. Still though, as far as beginners tools go, it's pretty good

I learned my kana from Yasuko Kosaka Mitamura's Let's Learn Hiragana/Katakana, but honestly, these materials seem very out of date and don't offer anything that you can't find online for free

After those, I began making use of online resources for learning Japanese, although to be honest I'm more of a book learner. Here are the websites I've begun making use of:

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar
By the time I found this website, I had already learned much of Japanese grammar from the previously mentioned Berlitz course and the Let's Learn books, so this didn't help me for much other than being able to quickly consult kana charts in case my memory was fuzzy on some of them. All the same, if I had known of this website before buying my Let's Learn books, I would never have bought them because just the kana charts alone replace said books

>>5208691

http://www.livemocha.com/
This website offers a fairly basic Japanese course that teaches you some kanji, kana, and pronunciation. The main meat of the learning process comes from your ability to have native Japanese speakers review your submissions to the website and correct your grammar. However, I would try to get a solid grasp of Japanese from other resources before using this website, because it is not very comprehensive, and other people correcting your Japanese does not help if you can't understand the corrections they make since they're speaking, y'know, JAPANESE

http://kanjidamage.com/
A resource that helps for learning kanji. It offers mnemonics for remembering kanji, help with radicals, and all sorts of other stuff. Very handy

Also, I've recently begun reading the Learning and Kanji books mentioned in this picture. I'm still on the first one, but it has been VERY helpful so far in learning how to read and remember kanji, mostly because it makes heavy usage of imaginative memory, using mnemonics, word association, and radicals to help remember whole kanji. In only a week's worth of off and on reading time, I've learned how to read, and most importantly REMEMBER, a good dozen or so kanji

>>5208719

>Also, I've recently begun reading the Remembering The Kanji books mentioned in this picture

Hurp, fixed