/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Written Japanese is a lot harder than spoken.

>>5209067
Really? I personally find writing and reading Japanese a lot easier. My listening comprehension is shit.

>how hard and how long would it take

>The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State has compiled approximate learning expectations for a number of languages. Of the 63 languages analyzed, the five most difficult languages to reach proficiency in speaking and proficiency in reading (for native English speakers who already know other languages), requiring 88 weeks, are: "Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean". The Foreign Service Institute considers Japanese to be the most difficult of this group.

I suggest you learn something easier.

It's not hard, it just takes prolonged effort and people like to make excuses when they wimp out.

How long did any non native speakers here take to learn the language?

I'm hoping 2 years of intense study will get me there.

I'm almost done with one and I am not yet.

>>5209112
I'm three months in and I have half of the kanji down.

How do you learn a part of a language? Japanese is syllables. If you can read it, you can write it, if you can write it, you can speak it.

Damnit, was planning to learn Arabic and Japanese. :|
>>5209112
2 years.

>>5209082

Oh come on, just because someone uses the words "hard" and "long" it doesn't have to imply anything else than that something is hard and takes a long time, does it?

>>5209067
Spoken Japanese is a lot harder than written.

As for tips, kanjidicks or rtk. I used rtk before finding out about kanjidicks, and I thought it was overall done pretty poorly; kanjidicks seems better. What's really important, though (and because it's possible to get this from rtk, rtk really is good enough), is that you understand the whole building off of primitives with really memorable stories thing. You can learn 50-100 kanji a day if you do it right.

>>5209120
Too bad it's vocabulary that makes the language, not kanji.

Speaking of
>I just want to be able to read my stupid visual novels
That shouldn't take long if you just want to read VNs and Doujins. Learn the grammar and Kana and make an effort to remember words you translate and Kanji you see. All that shit is the same shit over and over, especially simple conversation. You'll learn the vocab eventually if you study it, but you'll only know weird Japanese.

>>5209133
That's Remembering the Kanji, btw, just realized that that was probably pretty unhelpful if you weren't already familiar with it.

>>5209133
>Spoken Japanese is a lot harder than written.

( ﾟ∀ﾟ)ｱﾊﾊ八八ﾉヽﾉヽﾉヽﾉ ＼ / ＼/ ＼

>>5209154
How long did it take you to get fluent after getting through the kanji, then?

>>5209129
>>5209082
Popsicles are not hard.

>>5209129
I can always count on you for good Yuugi/Parsee, HelenXonpool.

Polite sage because I already made one unrelated post.

>>5209166
>polite sage

I started reading VNs with a dictionary after about 6 months but it could probably be done in less if you have more time to study. My vocab wasn't very good and my kanji was even worse, but playing untranslated stuff actually helped a hell of a lot with both (also some with grammar but I always found that pretty easy).

>although I feel I will have to write something in order to memorize stuff
Pretty much, or at least it makes kanji infinitely easier to remember.

>>5209163
They are before you put them in your mouth.

>>5209159
Nigger, I'm not fluent. Knowing a kanji means "apple" and another means "boat" doesn't mean shit when they mean "horserace" combined and are pronounced with chinese readings as japan loves to do. (completely made up example, of course, but there are things like that)
Seriously though, knowing the meaning of individual kanji isn't the same as knowing how to read them as words. Kanji count is not really a good judgment of fluency, though in general it can help you guess at the meaning of a word. You still need to know the word though and not the 40 ways of reading the kanji.

What IS the first thing one should learn?

>>5209210
>nigger
Sure is /b/ in here.

>>5209120
No you don't.

>>5209156
It is.
Japanese is a very silabic language.
No hard sounds, accents, etc.

It is hard to americans tough.

>>5209216
1. hiragana/katakana
2. grammar
3. all the kanji ever

>>5209210
You're making assumptions I never did. What did you do to learn after finishing the kanji? It sounds like it isn't working well.

>>5209216
Hiragana and Katakana so you don't rely on Romaji.

Next should be sentence construction, particles, and verb endings. You can start learning words after that.

from what I've heard, the grammar isn't very difficult
it's just particles denoting what each preceding group of kana/kanji mean.
right...right?

>>5209222
>conversational Japanese
>say eeto/sono every five seconds
>never have to end a sentence
>mess up pronunciation
>call it "dialect"

>written Japanese
>multiple readings for a single kanji
>multiple kanji for a single reading
>mess up one line, kanji changes meaning
>lol gaijin retard

Took me a year till i started my first VN (which started off as pretty slow reading)
Add about 6 months if you aren't super smart.
subtract about 6 months if you are a NEET and dont have to waste time on classes and such
then multiply by 3 or more if you are known to lose motivation before finishing things, or don't have a good motivation to begin with.

>>5209261
Particles are not difficult. Verb endings are many and probably difficult. Grammar also changes the way certain words are pronounced which is weird and still don't understand.

>>5209261
I've always found the grammar really easy, though it's so different from English that it might take a little while to get used to in the very beginning.

>then multiply by 3 or more if you are known to lose motivation before finishing things, or don't have a good motivation to begin with.
;_;

>>5209267
That's right.

Just sharing my own experience: I started roughly a year and a half ago. Now, I can read eroge slowly, using a dictionary all the time.

Would probably have gone much faster if I had established steady routines for studying earlier, mostly with kanji. Problem was, like most people, I wanted to get through the 2000. So I calculated various daily rates to see how fast I could do them. If I, for example, took 5 a day, it would take longer than a year, which isn't particularly motivating (but if I had done that right away, I would be done now). But if I tried to do a lot of them to get done with it fast, like 20 a day, I would just fall out of routine. I suggest you try to find a way to overcome that so you can progress better than me.

Learning the "kanji" is easy
Its learning the pronunciations and kanji compounds that are the problem. God damnit. Theres only like, 40,000 common ones.

Counting things is about the stupidest thing you can do in a language. Everything looks worse than it is if you think of it in those terms.

I think learning how to read Japanese is a lot easier than knowing how to write it. Even trying to type sentences up on the PC makes my mind go blank. I suck.

It might take several years of studying and exposure before you can actually look at Japanese text, easily recognize it, and read it at a normal pace.

>>5209057

To have a good enough level to be able to read any eroge without having to use a dictionnary ? About five years.

>>5209471
...If you rode the short bus to school.

>>5209497
Yeah right, continue to pretend you mastered one of the most difficult languages in a few months.

One month.

>>5209513
can read VNs =/= mastered japanese

>>5209530
Pretty much, and with Atlas+AGTH you don't even need to know any kanji.

Step one: Download Anki

Step two: Look for words you don't know and insert them into Anki.

Step three: Look for sentences that display grammar/vocab or thing you desire to say/learn.

Step four: Now recite words and sentences until you are familiar with them as in you "know" them for a while.