Learning Japanese, Your thoughts, opinions?

Hey guys,

I'm looking into learning Japanese, i understand its a hard language to learn however are there any fellow Romulation members who have learnt the language? If so, what tips could you give and how easy/hard is it to master? Or is there anyone else trying to learn that could share their advice etc.

I ask this as i plan to travel to Japan alot in the future and also spend a gap year there once i've left college, so having an understanding of the language would be a great help obviously Thanks in advance for anything you guys may contribute

 

i wanted to do the same. i heard it is easy to learn the spoken language just reading and writting it is hard.
i suggest some language tapes/cds/mp3s. i have some they seem good but not had the time to learn it.

 

Yeah i heard the same on the spoken and written thing, i'm getting some help packs e.g. audio, video stuff so hopefully that will help although i do want to learn the written side very much so

 

Well I've been learning for a year at school classes, I hope by the time I finish school, I'll be really good at it, since you can take classes for all 5 years. Learning to write Japanese like Hiragana and Katakana and Romaji (english spelling) is easy, speaking and placing words in the right order is a bit hard. Some sentences you have to find the right order for words like o, wa etc. It'll take a few years before you can fully "master" it and be fluent in it. My teacher is very good, even though she's Canadian Also, watching Anime with english subs helps a lot too, you get the feel for the language.

 

Glad i'm an anime nut then lol, and i hope you do become really good at it Anandjones, i'll start actually "learning" tomorrow and start with the basics i know certain words and phrases but like you say thats only from watching anime heh

 

That's a very good method to learn phrases by watching anime with english subs, I know that soyo means that's right, or similar.

 

Remember that in most Anime, the characters speak in informal japaese, unless they're speaking with their elders or superiors. The spoken language as anand said is quite easy to grasp, their basic sentence structure is in the familiar subject-verb form. What's difficult is the written language which uses both Chinese characters or kanji & the 46 kana or basic script. And it is often said that, to be able to read Japanese newspapers, you have to atleast know a few thousand kanji.

 

thats the worst way. you may be able to pick up the odd this here and there but most things don't have direct translations. also alot of the script is changed to fit the culture so there may be complete sentances that are diferent

 

Well, if you know Japanese yourself better than me, you can shut me up It's good for most people, you wouldn't be able to learn a really long phrase, but if you learn words between them, eventually, you will be able to add them together. Everyone learns differently. Fact.

 

no i know what you mean the odd word here and there can be picked up but its not a good idea spending alot of time trying to learn that way - also it takes your attention away from the anime your watching and thats no good

 

True, it's not too smart to do if you've never learned the language before either or even heard a Japanese word.

 

I get what equity is saying, let me give an example:

I've always encountered the "rough translation" of the English word "job - to have a job or work". In some Anime, the word used for "work" is "Baito", I've been to grips with this as the correct translation of "work" is "Shigoto or "Shokugyou", then it hit me, maybe "Baito" is colloquial or is a new term used by the younger generation. Also anand, your "soyo" item, that to is colloquial, as it is the informal contracted form of " sou desu you" which is "yes, it is so" or " is that so".

 

わかりました。



I'm actually trying to learn some Japanese as well, as my grandfather is Japanese and some of my cousins can speak it. The grammar is a bit similar to the grammar of Chinese, so that helps. I only started learning several days ago. I've only got hiragana down; I haven't started memorizing katakana yet. I learn from my grandfather and http://japanese.about.com/, which is a very useful site.

 

Hi there!
I studied Japanese in high school for a few years. I'm going to start studying Japanese at university next year (I'm in my 2nd year of uni now). To be honest, we didn't learn much in high school so the best advice I can give is just practice, get some materials (e.g. flash cards to help you memorise hiragana, katakana and kanji... Memorising the correct kanji strokes was a bit hard but practice... There's also a Japanese dictionary available on DS [but you have to know how to write the kanji with the right strokes]) and if possible practice your speech. Don't know how you can learn from anime, although several people claim to have learnt Japanese by simply watching anime :-\

Hope you'll do well!

 

Heh, i got my hands on a Rosetta Stone language packs, i dunno if it will help at all but hopefully it will also that site Born2killx posted seems to be really useful been getting to grips with the basics for a couple of days now and it will be most difficult but can be done with time

 

Make sure to do Hiragana first.

 

Ahh cool. Yeah i was gunna suggest the rosetta stone software.. havent used it yet myself.. studied japanese in highschool as well so ive got old textbooks and stuff lying around ... learn your basic hiragana, then the katakana are a lil easyer coz they resemble the hiragana slightly sometimes.. then theres kanji's... those are the tricky ones.. good luck, i hope to do the same soon too.. its on my to do list

 

Learn hiragana and katakana....
(NEVER use romaji...it just slows you down in the end)

Learn some of the basic grammar
Particles, Verb Conjugation, Adjectives etc.
( http://www.timwerx.net )

Start building your vocab....
(verb and adjective lists)

Do some listening practice...
There's loads of free podcast's available on the net
(try http://japanesepod101.com )

All the while you should be building your kanji base...
Get yourself a set of flashcards for the basic kanji...
Only move on from a kanji when you know the meanings,
all the readings of it, how to write it,
and a few common compunds it's used in...

Everytime you learn a new word,
if it has a kanji...find it and learn it...
Jim Breen's japanese dictionary is useful for this
( http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi )

Another useful thing to do,
is get yourself a Japanese penpal...
I have 5 ( all female of course )

 

You will end up using Romaji though, as it is quite helpful for learning tests such as writing a hiragana word in Romaji and viceversa, and then with Katakana.

 

No...
Using romaji is the wrong way to go about learning Japanese...

Just accept that the Japanese language uses a different phonetic system
that can't with any great degree of accuracy be mapped to the roman alphabet...

For the purpose of learning Japanese,
you're better off forgetting that the roman alphabet exists..