Learning Japanese

[Glöwworm]

I haven't seen a thread like this but this thread serves purpose for those who are sincerely interested in learning the Japanese language.

got any useful books that helped you learn? websites? hiragana/katakana charts? tips on starting? This is the place to talk about it!

 

[Laurel]

Took Japanese a little less than a year ago. It's difficult for someone who is barely learning another language, especially when you're doing it alone.

I wish I would have learned the hiragana and katakana charts before going into it. That's the best advice I can give!

 

[BBQTV]

this should be titled webbo thread.

 

[Laurel]

whatever a webbo is, lawl.

 

[Jim Morrison]

It's cool to see people learning another language. What attracts you in Japanese to learn it?

I just started to teach myself Spanish a few days ago to try and make this vacation into something useful. It's pretty good, because Spanish isn't a hard language and if you really like doing it, and do it everyday everything comes so much easier.

I don't know about Japanese, but what could help you is really just Japanese for beginners and sites on the internet that teach you the very beginnings. Start out with the easier stuff, learn to use verbs "to be" and other important verbs, learn about (in)definite articles and a few pronouns. I can imagine Japanese to be a pretty hard language to learn, but just keep trying, you can only get better at it.

 

[Sephiroths Masamune]

It's hard to learn, the sentence structure is completely different than English.

All I can say is learn Hiragana first than Katagana. After you've got those down (and that's going to take some time) you can move on to learning the words themselves. Try to take it easy and keep it simple at first, like how to say "hello" and "thank you."

It's one of the hardest languages in the world to learn, so don't get discouraged if you feel like your going nowhere.

 

[BBQTV]

why does japan have to have a hard to learn language? theirs no benefit to have a difficult to learn language. you would think that you would make an easy to learn language to make communication with others easy

 

[Sephiroths Masamune]

why does japan have to have a hard to learn language? theirs no benefit to have a difficult to learn language. you would think that you would make an easy to learn language to make communication with others easy

English is the up there with the hardest languages to lean. We have so many dumb rules that Make it harder than it needs to be.

 

[BBQTV]

English is the up there with the hardest languages to lean. We have so many dumb rules that Make it harder than it needs to be.

but many people dont give a ****/care/follow the rules. but yes their a lot of stupid rules

 

[Sephiroths Masamune]

but many people dont give a ****/care/follow the rules. but yes their a lot of stupid rules

Like the "I" before "E" rule or the silent "E" rule? You use these rules all the time and you are so accustomed to them that you don't even realize you use them.

 

[Jim Morrison]

It's still a hard language. I've been on the internet for 4-5 years for real, skyrocketing my English but it's still a really stupid language. Too bad English is the language that most of the internet is composed of

 

[BBQTV]

Like the "I" before "E" rule or the silent "E" rule? You use these rules all the time and you so accustomed to them that you don't even realize you use them.

i never understood (i) before (e) except after (c) rule

 

[Sephiroths Masamune]

I'm just saying that saying another language is hard to learn and should be easier isn't a great argument when the language your using is harder to learn.

 

[Fuelbi]

I just started to teach myself Spanish a few days ago to try and make this vacation into something useful. It's pretty good, because Spanish isn't a hard language and if you really like doing it, and do it everyday everything comes so much easier.

Bleh, Spanish gets boring when you have to speak it all the time at home to your parents >_>

It'd be cool to learn japanese, but I'm going French first

 

[BBQTV]

I'm just saying that saying another language is hard to learn and should be easier isn't a great argument when the language your using is harder to learn.

im pretty sure japanese and chinese is harder

 

[Jim Morrison]

Bleh, Spanish gets boring when you have to speak it all the time at home to your parents >_>

It'd be cool to learn japanese, but I'm going French first

Any language would, Roach.

 

[Sephiroths Masamune]

im pretty sure japanese and chinese is harder

Chinese is a different story, there is no letter base system in Chinese, all the words they write are symbols for words instead of writing the word out with letters. I'm not sure about the way they speak, but I do know that Chinese is hard.

Japanese is only hard to Americans because the symbols look alien compared to the way we write and they speak in an almost backwards pattern. If you were starting out fresh with no language experiences at all, Japanese would be easier than English. Not saying that its not hard, there are other languages that are alot easier than Japanese, but compared to English it's not so bad.

 

[Crimson King]

English is the up there with the hardest languages to lean. We have so many dumb rules that Make it harder than it needs to be.

English isn't that hard at all. I have had several people from various countries state this without question.

I was learning German again, but I ran out of sources online, so I am probably going to use my Japanese books and learn that. I like Japanese literature and horror, so it makes the most sense for me.

 

[Sephiroths Masamune]

English isn't that hard at all. I have had several people from various countries state this without question.

I was learning German again, but I ran out of sources online, so I am probably going to use my Japanese books and learn that. I like Japanese literature and horror, so it makes the most sense for me.

I've had friends from other countries say the opposite though.

 

[Jim Morrison]

English isn't that hard at all. I have had several people from various countries state this without question.

They say that because they got English from going on the internet (where I assume you know them from) where you learn it naturally and don't really care about rules of the language, but once I got the classes in school in 3rd grade, I was really like wtf the rule works like that, even though I did it naturally.
It's easy if you learn it as a child, but once you learn a language after 13-14 or so, it's a LOT harder.

 

[Glöwworm]

this should be titled webbo thread.

why does japan have to have a hard to learn language? theirs no benefit to have a difficult to learn language. you would think that you would make an easy to learn language to make communication with others easy

The ignorance in these 2 posts are mind boggling.

Thanks for all the posts, guys. Anyone else got tips on how to start?

I think we all know the most important and realistic tip is to actually BE in Japan and learn all the informal Japanese (street talk etc). I'd imagine, that if you learned all your stuff from educational videos and books, you'd end up sounding like some traditional Japanese speaking old timer

 

[ぱみゅ]

English is stupidly hard. Spanish is even harder....

Japanese is easier since they just use particles to separate terms. Applying verbs is actually fun, but not complicated.
Only hard thing about japanese is learning all those ****ing kanjis!!

 

[BBQTV]

The ignorance in these 2 posts are mind boggling.

Thanks for all the posts, guys. Anyone else got tips on how to start?

I think we all know the most important and realistic tip is to actually BE in Japan and learn all the informal Japanese (street talk etc). I'd imagine, that if you learned all your stuff from educational videos and books, you'd end up sounding like some traditional Japanese speaking old timer

the old, i dont agree with this so ima gonna call this ignorance?

 

[Glöwworm]

Yeah, it's ignorance. Your first post is more ignorant than the second one, though.

You come in a thread where its main purpose is to learn Japanese and you say "this thread should be titled webbo thread" (it's weeaboo, btw). I don't know about you but that's really ignorant of you to say.

That's like me going on a hypothetical thread here that discusses how to make mexican food dishes and saying "this thread should be titled the beaner thread" and then being all surprised somebody calls me ignorant.

but whatever

 

[global-wolf]

Spanish is a pretty easy language for native English speakers. Japanese and Chinese are much more difficult. Japanese because of its grammar structure, Chinese because of the tones (though people can usually understand you without them,) and both require you to memorize thousands of characters. Chinese sentence structure is actually somewhat similar to English though.

I want to learn Japanese, but can never find the patience to memorize hiragana and katakana. ;_;

 

[Jonkku]

Hiragana and katakana were easy to learn.. Took a few months for me.

Phonetics and grammar work almost the exact same as in Finnish so I didn't really have to learn anything new for those.
Heck, grammatical cases of Japanese are easier than they're in Finnish, for a native speaker even.
(On a quick math, there are atleast 420 forms for every Finnish noun..

Spoiler

That's 15 cases * 7 persons * 4 times.

I've heard somewhere that there are 2000+ forms for every word (every! word! Not just nouns.) but I don't really see how)



Been studying Japanese for one and a half years now, and so far I'd agree with Pamuyo.

Only hard thing about japanese is learning all those ****ing kanjis!!

 

[Jim Morrison]

English is stupidly hard. Spanish is even harder....

Not if you speak Dutch (which is ridiculously ******** and loose with grammar rules when you speak it), English (which is equally ridiculously hard to learn as Dutch, but you actually stick to rules) and parts of French. If you're smart about learning the language and recognizing the words, it's a lot easier.

 

[Lythium]

I found learning French and German pretty easy, though my skills are pretty rusty now. The only thing that gave me trouble were masculine/feminine articles and dative.

I would really like to learn Dutch or Japanese or something.

 

[ぱみゅ]

This somehow became a "hardest languages to learn" thread lol

Hiragana chart

Katakana chart

My two cents. =)

 

[Glöwworm]

Awesome Kyoporo. I'll add those images to the OP

 

[Terywj [태리]]

Chinese is a different story, there is no letter base system in Chinese, all the words they write are symbols for words instead of writing the word out with letters. I'm not sure about the way they speak, but I do know that Chinese is hard.

Japanese is only hard to Americans because the symbols look alien compared to the way we write and they speak in an almost backwards pattern. If you were starting out fresh with no language experiences at all, Japanese would be easier than English. Not saying that its not hard, there are other languages that are alot easier than Japanese, but compared to English it's not so bad.

Actually, Chinese Mandarin have pinyin, which are almost like letters to the character. For example the character for person, if accompanied by pinyin would have the pinyin which spell "ren," how it is pronounced.

Regardless, I believe Cantonese, Korean, Mandarin, Japanese, and Arabic are the most difficult languages to learn through consistent study and to someone who only knows a single language. Of course I already speak Chinese but my poiny stands. English was tough to learn for me, too.

 

[evileric]

both chinese and japanese are a little hard to lear

 

[Terywj [태리]]

both chinese and japanese are a little hard to lear

Yeah. I remmeber some sort of official study claiming Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), Japanese, and Korean to be some of the most difficult languages to learn.

 

[Solaris1110]

Started off a few years ago with memorizing each kana symbol and their proper stroke order (write each kana 30-40 times in a notebook, no more than 5 kana a day.) finishing off with this online kana practice. In addition, this can guide you along:

Also, pronunciation and stroke order

Memorization games:
Hiragana
Katakana


Very useful, extensive site for grammar


extensive kanji and kana facebook app and it's iphone app

JLPT4 kanji list
useful "dictionary"

make sure you keep yourself well organized, like a notebook page for every 5 kana and a page for each individual kanji. Obviously taking a class is the way to go. you could also and download a bunch of kanji memorizing games, such as Kanken DS or this, if you know how.

 

[ZMan]

Only hard thing about japanese is learning all those ****ing kanjis!!

**** kanji.

on the subject of learning japanese it's just a matter of being devoted. for me japanese was really easy to get the basics of. and i can almost read hiragana, katakana, and some kanji as easily as i can english.

also another good thing to do when trying to learn a new language is to try to translate whatever your writing or saying into the language you are trying to learn.

 

[Big-Cat]

Bleh, Spanish gets boring when you have to speak it all the time at home to your parents >_>

I wish I could do that. It's one thing when my dad speaks it, but it's so awkward when my Mom tries to say anything Spanish despite never learning it. I'm still adjusting to my 16 year old sister, who can't roll her Rs, speaking it as well. I'm curious to see how it'd going to be with my 8 year old sister when she learns it in high school.

I'm still trying to learn what I can. Thankfully, I finally have some friends who will commonly speak Spanish which helps my Spanish ear, and I've listened to music on Internet radio as well. I'd watch stuff in Spanish, but all the stuff on the Spanish channel is boring.

I don't feel confident with my Spanish (despite testing out of 14 hours worth of it), but I'm going to try speak it with my friends in the fall (With there being only one other Mexican that I know besides me, this could end up with me having an ambiguous dialect).

Anyway, onwards to the Japanese language. I would like to learn the language as well since I find it neat thanks to exposure to it via pop culture over the years. Thanks to NND videos, I can actually read a good chunk of katakana, some hiragana, and some Kanji with no problems. However, I can only recognize it, not write it from memory. I can also pronounce the words well (enough to sing a song for a project), partially due to Spanish having nigh identical pronunciations save for accent marks.

As for trying to translate things, I think that only works to a certain extent, especially when you take idioms into account. For example, you can translate to consider in Spanish as tomar en cuento or to take in account. I think it's just best to listen to native speakers, be it on a TV show or whatever, or reading an article in the language you're learning as you can get a good grasp on the vernacular and grammatical tendencies.

 

[Dax]

English is stupidly hard. Spanish is even harder....

Japanese is easier since they just use particles to separate terms. Applying verbs is actually fun, but not complicated.
Only hard thing about japanese is learning all those ****ing kanjis!!

Wow, wtf O_O?
I started English at school at 11 and have never ever opened a book. It's just easy as hell. I think videogames helped me more than school, rotfl.
I don't know anything about english rules, never read them, and still got out from high school with a 9/10.
Also, when I was 17, I got CAE

I really don't know what's so difficult about english . Oh and I also did Spanish for 2 years, also easy as hell But that's because i'm Italian.


Speaking about Japanese, which I study now, no offense but I wonder what's the level of the people who posted in this thread. The insane amount of meanings of every god**** kanji is just crazy!.
Let's do some real example.
There's a famous book by Japanese writer Natsume Soseki called 'Kokoro' .
Well, that simple title is impossible to translate . This is because kokoro means a lot of things and it's, in general, more an idea, a concept , than a single word. Mind-heart-spirit-soul etc etc. So good luck to who translated the book.

So yeah, the difficult stuff about japanese is Kanji. Hiragana and Katakana does not help you at all at high levels, -_- maybe just in easy texts. Unlike occidental languages, where you can 'read inside' a word to try to find its meaning, in japanese this is really hard because even if Yes, inside Kanjis There Are 'parts' which bring meaning, they are never that clear.

Also, there's the fact that every single kanji has a double way to be read. Chinese or Japanese. The difference is if the kanji is alone or near another kanji.
This means that the total meanings of a kanji are often like... 6? And you have to know them all :\.

To complete the party, add the fact that in japanese things like genre (male \ female) or singular and plural DO NOT EXIST. So you have to get it from the context. Which often doesn't help.

Oh and I don't even want to speak about Writing kanji myself, because I get depressed. Computer >>>>>> handwriting in japanese but that's not allowed in university XD

 

[CRASHiC]

Personally I like that it lacks genre. Its what I hate about the romantic languages so much. Der die den das ahhhh **** off Romantic languages with all of that bull ****.

 

[Crimson King]

They say that because they got English from going on the internet (where I assume you know them from) where you learn it naturally and don't really care about rules of the language, but once I got the classes in school in 3rd grade, I was really like wtf the rule works like that, even though I did it naturally.
It's easy if you learn it as a child, but once you learn a language after 13-14 or so, it's a LOT harder.

I know them from school. My degree's in English. At a ground level, it's nothing complicated since it's spoken widely, people can practice anywhere. My two friends from India and Nepal have two completely different accents when speaking English (one is British sounding and the other is more broken English). The Nepali friend learned before coming to the US, but he claimed no problems learning it. The Indian friend was one of the wealthy families, so he ahd a private tutor.

Interesting thing is the Nepali friend can't say the letter G. He pronounces it as Z, and his apartment was 3G, so we had some hilarious and confusing conversations. I helped him understand G and it's pronunciation, so he can say it now.

For Hiragana and Katakana practices, try this: http://www.realkana.com/

 

[Jim Morrison]

Personally I like that it lacks genre. Its what I hate about the romantic languages so much. Der die den das ahhhh **** off Romantic languages with all of that bull ****.

Since when is German a Romanic (not romantic PS) language? It derives from it like a 1000 years ago but hardly is the same nowadays.