Learning Japanese

[GunmasterLombardi]

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!!

Spanish is VERY EASY. Less rules than English and you're mostly learning vocabulary.

 

[Crimson King]

German is a Germanic language... How did I miss that gaff?

Adding:
Spanish was actually really easy once you get vocabulary. Some rule exceptions here and there, but nothing like French, where pronunciation changes with word placement. German was the worst with rules though, just because you had to follow a set order, verb is always second in most situations (I hated that rule), so past tense would have a long string of words after the action in the sentence was executed.

French wasn't terrible, but a lot of people had issues with pronunciation, since the following word could change how something was pronounced. The rules weren't terrible, and I enjoyed speaking it.

I loved speaking German. The language had a great quality to it, but like I said the rules made it hard, and I can't find any practical practice, like reading beyond reading Kafka.

I am enjoying Japanese now, since I love J-Horror and Japanese novels, so I'll be able to read and listen as practice. With that site I learned the first 10 characters of Hiragana in about 5 to 10 minutes. I'll keep drilling those.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Spanish rules aren't hard.
Vocabulary is, because of TONS of ways to conjugate verbs and a countless amount of synonyms. It's a good thing you can comunicate in spanish even if you don't use it propperly.


btw, I think we lost the whole thread when someone already posted the full course lol.

 

[BBQTV]

gatoloco in Spanish means crazy cat. loco in Spanish means crazy and gato means cat. if an English person would read this they would say, why does it say cat crazy?

 

[Jim Morrison]

gatoloco in Spanish means crazy cat. loco in Spanish means crazy and gato means cat. if an English person would read this they would say, why does it say cat crazy?

If that's how you're learning a language you shouldn't even bother trying. It's not what an English person would think, they'd think "oh so it's like this".

 

[BBQTV]

If that's how you're learning a language you shouldn't even bother trying. It's not what an English person would think, they'd think "oh so it's like this".

well thats what a dumb one would think. my friend is just that dumb i guess

 

[Crimson King]

You also don't merge nouns and adjectives.

 

[outofdashdwz]

Japanese is one probably one of the easier East Asian languages to learn. With an established alphabet and the mere presence of katakana, learning Japanese is much simpler for most Western audiences than say, Mandarin.

Also, to the people who mentioned that they can't see why English is so hard to learn, it's highly likely due to the fact that it was the first language you learned lol. Primary versus secondary language acquisition is extremely different, and while you may not notice/realize it, the semantics and syntax of the English language is highly structured and at times seem frustratingly random.

As someone who learned Japanese and English as second/third languages (with Mandarin Chinese being my first language), I would say English is a harder language.

Although, that wasn't true for me, since I learned English at 8 and Japanese at 14, and being in an purely English speaking environment really accelerated learning, while I didn't have that for Japanese haha. Prior Chinese knowledge REALLY REALLY helps with Japanese though lol. It's not only the kanji, it applies to things like kana, grammar, and cultural comprehension too.

As for learning it... this sounds stupid or obvious, but watch a lot of subbed anime LOL. Learning the technicalities of the language is hardly applicable without experience with listening comprehension, and anime is really good for that. Though you start picking up weird habits when you first start learning <_< (I had a period of -tebayo's when I first started learning Japanese + watching Naruto HAHA. That, and my Japanese teacher always scolded me for not using polite forms D

 

[Chronodiver Lokii]

Spanish rules aren't hard.
Vocabulary is, because of TONS of ways to conjugate verbs and a countless amount of synonyms. It's a good thing you can comunicate in spanish even if you don't use it propperly.

This.
I dropped Spanish this year (would have been in Spanish 4) because it was just getting in the way for art classes/it was gonna kill my GPA if i wasn't careful.
It wasn't that hard...but so much vocabulary and conjugations.
Present, present progressive, imperfect, etc. Plus, along with that, we got 30-50 different vocab terms to add to the fun on our tests (about 50% of them being verbs) that we had to have memorized in about 3 days. It's not that hard to learn, but at the same time, there's a lot you have to learn with Spanish that differs from English.

 

[Glöwworm]

Is it just me or does my ability to speak spanish somewhat help with pronouncing some japanese words? I don't know.

Also, this post is one of the best posts so far:

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.