/vt/ - Virtual Youtubers

>>5221971
I’m ESL

I duolingo but man it feels like my progress is slow. Any reccomendations?

漢字はダメだね。。。

kanzi muzukasii

>>5222035
dame da ne.....

>>5221989
Stop Duolingo right away, you won't learn anything with that. If you've convinced yourself that you want an app like interface to learn from, then try Wanikani and Bunpro and give their free trials a go. Use a textbook to steer you in the right direction to start off with (If you don't want to spend money on a textbook, download Human Japanese, it's free and a fantastic starting point). Once you're comfortable with some very basic grammar and vocab start listening to material that's suited to your level and you'll find that you'll improve quite a bit.

>>5222070
dame yo...

>>5221971
>pronunciation is perfect because my mother tongue also has the same thing where words are pronounced exactly how they're written and similar accentuation rules
>can't be arsed to learn past hiragana/katakana and a few basic sentences
>garbage at listening

I'll forever remain at piecing together the general idea of what my oshi talks about from loose words I happen to understand

>>5221989
Learn some vocabulary through Anki, watch Cure Dolly's grammar videos.

酷い。。。改善欲しい

Do Yuros forget how we got fluent in English or something? I remember it took me like 2-3 years of just using the internet and playing games and I was suddenly comfortable with English. Learning it was all very unconcious - We didn't even need to sit down and do flash cards any of that shit. So it begs the quesiton, why are we so lazy when it comes to Japanese?

>>5222241
Japanese is way harder than English and i'm not 10 year old anymore so i can't learn languages that easily.

>>5222241
I play h-games and try to read the text.
the difference to english is that you only need to learn 26 letters (that you already knew) and not 2k letters that you didnt know.

>>5221989
Started with memorize and writing hiragana while doing some basic JP coversation and words. If you are not retarded you'll fully mastered hiragana in a month and can hold some basic elementary convo along with some basic everyday words like colors, utensils, animals, weathers, and shit alike that.

pray for cure dolly

>>5222241
im learning through eroge, but the more I learn, the more disappointed I become. Having to piece together a huge sentence which can be summed up with "ARMPITS! EROTIC!" just doesnt pack the same punch it did when I was finally able to read scanlated manga in english when I was 12. Japanese is a primitive language locked behind a military grade code system. Im still gonna learn as much as possible, but damn, the information that becomes accessible is disappointingly mundane.

>>5222241
I studied english since I was 7. Took a big chunk of family funds, since there were almost broke at times. Russia, yeah!

>>5222325
I think what I find most interesting about japanese is how they can say one word and it can function like a sentence can in English.

They can just say むずい but in English you'd have to say something like "This is tough"

>>5221989
Assuming you know a bit of grammar, you don't, read song lyrics, play games, watch shows with moon runes. Write down words you don't know in wordpad or something.

>>5222325
>Japanese is a primitive language locked behind a military grade code system
I'm glad someone finally sees it this way too. Japanese is basically caveman speak written in pictures. I rejoice for those who will be born in 200 years, when Kanji will be abolished and they have an easier time learning it (assuming there would even be a need to physically learn language by then).

>>5222278
>>5222325
I tried to play eroges in Japanese but it just takes too long to read. When i could read it ten times faster in English than in Japanese then it gets really boring and i'd rather just go study decks on Anki.

>>5222436
japanese manga with furigana are a great learning tool too if you already know your kanas.

>>5221971
Got to N2 and stopped studying for years now. Fuck grinding that much kanji

>>5222436
No emotion behind the words and concepts you learn. Your long term memory, meaning as soon as you stop your flash cards, will be shit.

Read a book.

>>5221971
How dare you post Dolly when she's sick right now

>>5222371
恥ずかしい is another example of this. It bothers me, because it isnt precise. It could mean I am embarassed/shy, this situation is embarassing, this act is embarassing. Not even surprising how misunderstandings are such a common plot hook, considering their language is basically a guessing game.

>>5222145
dame nanoraaaa

>>5222626
When it comes to Japanese context is very important. I suppose it's similar to 'their' 'there' and 'they're' in English but with more words.

>>5222241
it's the age anon

>>5222084
Thanks for the reccomendation Anon, I dont have the motivation to study from a textbook so I'll give the apps you reccomended a go.

>>5222626
To be fair, it isn’t precise specifically from your perspective as non-native speaker. To a native Japanese speaker the meaning is nearly always obvious instinctually. Everyone has this relationship to their native language versus second languages. To Japanese speakers there are many things in English and other languages they would feel are imprecise. It isn’t just because Japanese is uniquely vague.

>>5222371
I'd build on this to say that day to day sentances feel so awkward and long in Japanese too.

>>5222724
Age hurts language learning but doesn't completely prevent it. If you want it then it will come.

>>5222852
My first language was croatian, my second was german and my third was english and to me japanese seems to be the worst offender. I get that context is important (even more so when speaking informally or in slang), but to me japanese feels like it gives more leeway for misunderstandings. I wonder how novel authors deal with this.

>>5222959
NTA, but that's probably a big part of it for me.
I hardly watch anime or read manga anymore, and learning a new language just for chuubas and eroge just seems like way too much work.

I live in a small country, so learning English as a kid was absolutely necessary if I wanted to consoom any kind of media apart from the very small amount of domestically-produced stuff.
Japanese is only relevant for niche media that's already translated for the most part.

>>5223032
That difference in perception probably has to do with the different length/earliness of exposure to those other languages and also that Japanese is much further removed from your native language than any other european language could be both culturally and linguistically.
There are definitely things which are more vague or generalized in English than in Japanese. For example, that both こと and もの boil down to just “thing” in english, whereas Japanese distinguishes between immateriality/materiality in that concept. Or that Japanese specifies the nature of objects when counting them via counter words but in English it’s just numbers. Etc.

>>5223183
good catch, I didnt think about that

>>5221971
Duolingo has only been effective at keeping me motivated. That is good enough.

I'm doen the core 6k and have read some VNs but streaqms still filter me most of the time. JP subs help
what do

>>5224050
with streams wont knowing JP slang help a bit?

I know kusogaki gets brought up a lot. Plus someone learning japanese not keeping up with current events would have no idea what 'kusa' means.

>become japanese
ywnbj

>>5222724
critical period theory is a meme, anon

>>5224050
sounds like you've mostly practiced your reading skills, I'd suggest watching some easy anime to attune your ears to the weirdness of spoken nihongo. also as >>5226264 points out there's a lot of slang and contractions that might pop up in streams that won't appear in core6k
as for streams Sora and Pikamee are a couple who I've heard are recommended to jp learners, there might be others tho

I'm so glad I'm born in Taiwan so I don't actually have to learn much kanji. Being able to understand more than 30% of Pekora's streams is bliss.

>>5224050
I'm the opposite. VNs filter me because I don't know enough of the words yet, so the time it takes for me to read ends up becoming too much of a chore and as a result I get bored and can't learn. I'd much rather watch and listen to content, even if it's above my level because at least it's engaging. For reading I have to stick to stuff which keeps my attention, like shorter stories or sentence flashcards.

>>5226663
I wish I was born in Hong Kong. That way I would know both English and thousands of characters, so with the latter it would make learning Japanese that much easier while still understanding the lingua franca. Being born in Europe makes Japanese a difficult language, while being born in Japan itself means English will be tough. Hong Kong really seems like the greatest middle ground.

>>5226733
You should get something like yomichan (a hover over jp to eng dictionary) and start watching anime with JP subs.

please tell me a moderately expensive resource so that when I've paid for it im just compelled to finish it

My oshi doesn't speak japanese. And before you ask, yes a non-JP chuuba can be based

Reminder that cure dolly does not speak japanese, plagiarizes her lessons from people who do, and is a schizophrenic ex-cultist

>>5227977
>yes a non-JP chuuba can be based
Of course, Anon. This isn't /jp/. You aren't scrutinized for enjoy a chuuba that isn't from le glorious nippon.

>>5228034
Sounds based

>>5228034
Reminder that Cure Dolly has a fat ass

>>5228034
source or meds

>>5226876
At least you're white

>>5228960
https://vimeo.com/103027216

>>5222241
learning a european language as a native speaker of a european language is far easier than learning a language that shares no culture or history with your own.

arabic, chinese, japanese are languages that are the hardest to learn from a germanic or romance language starting point.

>>5228134
You'd sure think that's the case, but there are plenty of people here who think that no one outside of japan should be allowed to use a virtual avatar and they can't be entertaining. Thanks for being one of the level headed ones anon.

>>5221971
>how are your jap reps doing anon?
Pretty good. I drilled vocabulary for like 2 months straight. Got a decent amount of words down and went to read again after getting filtered 1 word in on a children's book 2 months ago. I went to read easy Manga this time and I can understand a bit. This venture made me realize my Grammer is shit so I'm hitting Tae Kim's pretty hard.
>you are doing them for your oshi right?
These days I just don't know.

>>5222241
English probably takes at most 1/3 the time to learn as nip

>>5222325
I know enough to know exactly what you mean, but it's still a code red erection killer when I'm reading something saucy and the translator uses "bum".

>>5221971
No i will never be a jap.

>>5221971
bros
I just realized
even if I DO become Japanese...
I'll go from an average gaijin male
to an average japanese male
there was never a chance for me
I'll never be a cute Japanese girl

>>5222325
>Japanese is a primitive language locked behind a military grade code system
this is cope. Japanese is plenty more expressive than you think, and kanji isn't actually that hard.

>>5231027
you're going to be japanese linguistically and you're going to like it

>>5222364
>Took a big chunk of family funds since *we / they were almost broke at times.
Shouldn't put some more rubles into it.

>>5224050
Find some audio or video source that also has a script. Listen to it in small bites at first, 30 seconds or so, and try to figure out what it says. Then look at the script. Then listen to it again. The chunks of time that you listen to should get longer and longer and the audio more complex as time goes on.

Recently passed my uni's N5 exam and now I wanna focus on my reading and writing.

>>5222325
>Deliberately read shitty eroge
>Complain when you read shitty eroge text
How could Japanese do this to me

>>5222241
The difficulty in learning a language comes from how different it is to your own. A Spaniard learning Portuguese has a really easy time, but from western to East Asian or vice versa is very difficult because the only similarity they share is the same vocal organs and species.

>>5221971
桐生ココは日本語の勉強すること私のインスピレーションです。

I quit because of what happened to Coco. You see, she was my inspiration for learning nihongo. Before Coco I contented myself with translations and bad Japanese. Exposure to her changed that. One of my goals was that I would no longer make myself dependent on clippers and shitty Japanese memes, and when I can master the language she would actually be proud of me.

>>5234285
blame my fetishes, not me

its been a while after I graduated from N5 and forgot most of what I learned. Im having trouble thinking of what steps i need to take to brush up and then move to n4

I'm not stopping reps until I get at least to N3 level, even if my oshi could be long gone by then

>>5234678
get better fetishes then

>>5222428
I thank my ancestors for abandoning the ancient scriptic and use latin alphabet instead. Nowday we only learn it as a form of art for poetry and shit like that. But welp, i still find it easier to learn japan than a frickin madarin.

Are there any pdfs of graded readers?

>>5222241
The 10,000+ kanji scares me

>>5237760
There's only like 2000 and that seems like a bunch, it kind of is but remember you memorized 600 Pokemon. You can do it. I believe it

>>5237760
If you memorize about 3000 kanji, then you will know more kanji than the average university educated nip. Nobody will ever need to learn 10,000 kanji unless you're trying to be some sort of archeologist. Maybe you have it confused for 10,000 words, which is a different thing. But that's no different than learning any language.

>>5221971
もちろんです。
けどやっぱ、漢字はムズイっすけどね。

Honestly lowering myself to speak English instead of proper Christian to you troglodytes is already off-putting enough as-is. Some Asian scribbles?Couldn’t be me.

>>5221971
I'm reading yotsuba& in nippon, does that count

Its really cringe to see someone
is send SC to JP girls with broken Japanese.

Fuck japanese and fuck anyone who speaks it. I don't need moon runes in my life.

>>5222325
>Japanese is a primitive language locked behind a military grade code system
This is the worst part about learning Japanese. You realize the reason that dubs sound so cringe is because Japanese is just an inherently cringy language. It's unbearable.

>>5222035
お前がダメだけなんだ

>>5221989
On top of everything that has been said to you, here's something for you to practice
https://bilingualmanga.com/manga/yotsubato/chapter-1/

>>5239605
This. Why can't nips just learn english? I thought they were smart

>>5222241
I think it's because you have to learn a whole new alphabelt and actually associate sounds with that new alphabelt.

>>5234548
So make kson your inspiration for learning japanese.

I think I could probably pass N5 but I haven't done my reps in awhile. I got a long road trip tomorrow though, I think ill pick it back up.

>>5222371
you could do the same thing in English
the difference it's not "proper" english to drop subjects and other parts of speech, but people still do it all the time anyway

learning Kanji is painful but I'm trying

I wish there were some listening "hacks" that worked like reading hacks do for me. I'm satisfied with how things like Anki/Heisig/Core2K/6K have bootstrapped up my reading but my listening is still pitiful and it feels like such a slow climb

>>5247109
just make audio cards retard

>>5221971
I have a very important test in 2 weeks. If I pass, I'll dedicate myself to Japanese, I promise.

I stopped doing them after I hit 1k kanji because I was forgetting the older ones. Now I'm back to zero except I can at least recognize the characters that I don't know the meaning of.
For listening it's about the same. Sometimes I can understand entire sentences though. I find repeatedly listening to the same clip really helps.

thread theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLQeb5NGt3E

日本語は難しいでも毎日勉強して
VN Core 1250はそろそろ完成

>>5247109
It was that slow a climb in english but you didnt notice as you were a kid listening to people for 8 hours by force

Post your reps

>>5221971
CureDolly is so fucking based, literally the best teacher of japanese I have ever seen in all my time on the internet

>>5248977
I think I messed something up

>>5237760
Kanji makes japanese easier, not harder.

>>5248977
>>5249477
>>5249306
Good to see other anons are doing work

>>5249306
On it mate

>>5249306
Taking my time with it. You don't learn anything if you just race it.

>>5249751
Forgot my reps.

>>5249512
As a beginner I want to ask about this, from my perspective I get kanji makes japanese more compact (you write less), but how is actually easier having to remember a bunch of kanjis instead of using hiragana?

I learned basic Hiragana and Katakana, and now I feel stuck. I also have abysmal work discipline.

>>5249801
Proud of you anon. Sometimes it's easy to forget that learning a language is a long term commitment. Cramming thousands of terms in a few weeks will do you little good compared to learning one word a day and practicing what you know

duolingo is handicapping yourself!
this is all you need
https://itazuraneko.neocities.org/learn/guide.html

>>5249854
Not that anon, but in my experience just hiragana is a pain in the ass. A bunch of kanji are read the same, differentiated by the kanji itself and whatever okurigana they might have.
Try thinking of them as emojis, or images such as pic related which transmit an entire idea or phrase by themselves.

>>5246854
Not really. The anon who said it's like caveman speak is right.

>>5249854
a wall of hiragana is almost impossible to read, there are too many homophones

>using duolingo

>>5250018
For me it's https://www.imabi.net/tableofcontents.htm

>>5249541
How do you have 13K cards?

>>5250232
It's probably something to do with the Ankidrone Starter Pack having a bunch of decks taped together, one of which being Core10k

>>5222241
Indo-European is all the same. But Japanese and Hungarian are not Indo-European. Japanese is even a schizo language----because you confront it as wholly alien it lacks a lack in its Otherness, you cannot comfortably relate to it, you cannot form identity within it and wriggle in and fester. The most these losers can do is call it caveman-speak and pretend to be a retarded loli.

>>5221989
https://jlptsensei.com
I recommended this to anyone in any thread and I won't stop recommending it.
It it's separated by grammar,kanji,vocab in N1-N5. It's short, simplified and very easy to understand

>>5249306
WK / KS / BP

>>5251125
Is it normal for Bunpro to crash between answers? It's either that or the answer field straight up not working half of the time. Otherwise it's a pretty good resource.

>>5251238
>Is it normal for Bunpro to crash between answers
The site seems to always work for me. I know some people are the forums say they have problems with it though. Luckily those problems don't seem to effect me.

>>5251295
*affect

>>5222371
amazing

>>5251583
That is a good example of an English word having the same function. I think my point was more along the lines of that the Japanese seem to be able to do it with a large number of words due to the ambiguity and range of meaning a word can have.

>>5226419
This.

>>5249854
1. Kanji makes things infinitely more readable. Take 昨日は彼が駅で電車に乗りました. Just ignoring the actual kanji meanings for a moment, you can pretty quickly tell which parts of the sentence are nouns/vocab and which are pure grammar things. As opposed to かれがえきででんしゃにのりました which is gibberish. Also Japanese has many homophones which can only be differentiated by their kanji
2. Once you know a few kanji you can very easily guess the meaning of compound kanji. Take the kanji 学. You may not know exactly what 学校、学生、留学する、and 学ぶ mean, but if you know that 学 roughly means "learning" then you can guess that all those things have something to do with learning (they mean "school," "student," "to study overseas," and "to learn," respectively)
Think of it like how we use Latin/Greek roots in English. Except if we wrote them upside down in the runic alphabet

>>5253462
It isn't much but I remember an occasion I was trying to parse some unfamiliar kana, first identifying the particles, then trying to figure out what else I don't know or what might be slang, then realizing that こ is just 小 and wondering why the hell they didn't make that easier by using... the kanji? The unexpected process of warming up to them has been the highlight of the journey so far for me

>>5222371
>but in English you'd have to say something like "This is tough"
English also has one word sentences. You could, for example, just say, "Shit!".

>>5249306

>>5254962
Aren't such things classified as interjections?

>>5222371
Or the one that always gets used in Holo streams, やばい.

>>5222371
yep, pretty neat

>>5249854
reading japanese without kanji is similar to reading english without spaces
doablebutabitofapainintheass.

I started with Hiragana skipped Katakana and went straight to Kanji. Never regretted anything more than this

>>5256532
Does it mean I'm autistic if I can read this?

The first few kanji I remembered is meds because it looks like fun with a hat on top (薬/楽し)

>>5221971
I'm 32, it's too late for me.

>>5257481
It's never too late to learn something anon

>>5257481
Time passes regardless. In ten years you’ll be 42; it’s up to you whether you want to be 42 and know JP or 42 and monolingual.

Which one would you recommend learning first for those who had have the basics down? Vocabular, Kanji or Grammar and why?

>>5257481
With enough dedication, anything can be mastered with 0 prior knowledge in 7 years.

>>5257619
Study vocab and kanji simultaneously if you can. Learn a bit of basic vocab just so you can make example sentences, then learn all the grammar, then go back and POUND as much vocab as you can into your brain, then start reading raw light novels as soon as you are able.

>>5255251
Both.

>>5257619
I learned Kanji first with Heisig.
Then doing a textbook will have you learn grammar and vocabulary at the same time.
You will finish grammar before you finish vocabulary, so that will be at the end.
You need to read native materials to keep your motivation up. You can start manga after your first grammar book.

>>5258805
What is your recommended textbook. I heard genki is not really useful when self studying

>>5257481
>>5226419

>unironically using duolingo

Bros, where do I even start? I used Duolingo for a while and more or less learned hiragana and super basic phrases from that but from what I'm hearing Duolingo is trash. Should I just start with straight vocab and work from there?

>>5261501
keep duo for practice but definiately pick up something else like Anki, Tae kim or Lingodeer for grammar which Duo sucks at

>>5261501
>>5250018

>>5261501
Well for bottom up learning you will need to find resources to help you learn vocabulary and grammar. Learning kanji is just a part of vocabulary and you don't necessarily need to learn them isolation.
For top down learning you want to find Japanese content like anime, manga, music, tweets, etc that are slightly above your current skill level.
You will want to be doing both bottom up and top down learning at the same time.

>>5261722
Have definitely noticed Duolingo is lacking in grammar aye, I'll check those out. Thanks
>>5261807
Reading time, thank you anon

>learning the language of a people from a crowded island that shun foreigners no matter their fluency or ability to conform
>to understand their vtubers or consume their porn
rumao, no

>>5258961
My university used Genki. You can always go through another textbook later on to review.

>>5261977
>that shun foreigners no matter their fluency or ability to conform
that's not true though

>>5261501
Just do Tae Kim's grammar guide, bro. There was a flashcard deck for it too.

>>5262103
>responding to bait

>>5261977
>that shun foreigners no matter their fluency or ability to conform
>he doesn't know

I'm trilingual already as native Russian. Maybe it's because I'm older now and can apply learning logic tricks, but it seems like a much easier language than English.

We gonna make it bros

>>5221971
Too lazy to learn kanji desu. I can already understand 80% of what my Oshi said from years watching anime. And she called my google translated chat cute.

>>5221971
I could play all my rance games in jp so I dropped it already.

日本語は不可能だよ

>>5249306

I did 80 days in duolingo but I wasn't getting anywhere. It's a pity hololive always uses it as there are better alternatives. Currently I'm using busuu.

How about SEA? What do you think about it?
From personal experience being an SEA born Chinese and having an English based education later on in my life, (had 6 years of Chinese based education, and continued to do Chinese myself after that) I'd say I'm pretty happy being born here. Although the biggest drawback is that here in SEA we teach in Simplified Chinese, whereas in Hong Kong or Taiwan you'd be learning in Traditional Chinese, which kanji is mostly based off from.
However I'd say that my English level is higher than the average SEA person.

>>5257436
fun grass

>>5232137
This anon gets it.

>>5254863
I'm guessing it comes down to personal preference in the end. I may be wrong.
If you wanted a language that used different characters for different meanings, you'd do Chinese, instead of Japanese. The beauty of Japanese is that you can just write out how the kanji sounds like (in Hiragana or Katakana) and be acceptable. If you'd write the Pinyin for a Chinese character that you forgot how to write, you'd be questioned.

>>5264305
Made this my wallpaper thanks.

>>5221971
In the process of realizing that my grammar is a way bigger issue than my vocab.

Even Japanese can't write Kanji nowadays

>>5270480
EOP cope. Japanese people can write kanji. Do you think they are all illiterate?

Any other chuubas that speaks clear nips for listening reps other than Okayu?

>>5270480
They don't remember how to write every kanji on paper by heart, but they sure as hell know how to fucking use them.

>>5253462
Homophones are pretty much the number one reason why Kanji is retained and considered necessary. It is entirely possible for Japanese to be written in kana with spaces (like in children's books) but in literature homophones make a mess of everything.