I'm wanting to learn japanese?

This is something I've worked on off and on over the years. I'll start by at least saying, don't expect it to be remotely easy. I'm not assuming you do, but just stated that because it's very true.

Now I guess have to say it depends on what you really want to learn. Just speaking and hearing the language? Just reading/writing? Or both?

I've been trying to learn both. I'd imagine just speaking/hearing would be a ton easier. Mainly because you run into a huge slow point with Kanji. Japanese uses 3 different alphabets, Katakana, Hirigana, and Kanji. There Romanji too but that isn't really used outside of learning. You can learn Hirgana and Katakana fairly easily. Rough guess off of the top of my head is there being like 30-40 characters for each. But Kanji? Over 4,000! I've hit huge road block in learn stifling my motivation due to not being able to apply what I've learn often enough with material I would care about. To me a huge part of that is there just so much Kanji, and it's used in everything.

That all said, if you want to feel like you're learning and making progress, Rosseta Stone is fine. Although I found myself subconsciously cheating as the multiple choice lessons went on, by picking the right choice purely based off whats physically seen (if the sentence is something like "the horse is running fast", and there's only 1 picture with a horse, you can pick that pick without reading everything just based off the one word "horse" even though your supposed to be learning to use "running". This may not be the best example of what I mean though, sorry.)

For learning Kanji, I recommend Anki and downloading the Kanji package. Its a flash card type learning utility. Flash card really do amazing, even as i get older! I wrote myself a flash card script when learning Katakana/Hiragana too, and it speed things up a ton!

For more complete all around learning material, you should check out http://www.nihongoresources.com/.

I've tried other things too, but its less easy to recommend them. Like "My Japanese Coach". It's a NDS game. It's a game, so its obviously going to be more fun. You're going to feel like your progressing, but in reality it won't be as much as you think.

Pimsleur Japanese, well. It doesn't do anything for me. You may be different though. It's one of those audio learning methods.

Whatever route you go, I can say, you got to use it or you will lose it. Same for a lot of skills. But as I said before, I found it hard to "use" what I've learned. I may know a 500 hundred words, a couple hundred Kanji, basic sentence structure, etc. But I'm lucky if I can even get the gist of an entire sentence in any sort of game I play or anime I watch. You'll can pull words out here and there. It's like "blah blah blah. Hai", "blah blah blah. Honto", "blah blah blah Oppai blah blah blah", "Anata wa blah blah blah".

Also. Don't be like me. Learn with a partner. I'm certain it would go a TON easier with one.

Here's a guide I put together back in January 2010: Nukemarine's Suggested Guide for Beginners in Japanese

The idea was there were different resources that were great for learning different aspects of Japanese but no one complete resource. Instead of creating one resource, the guide tells you when to use each one. It works upon the i+1 learning method and the spaced repetition review system to learn and retain the language in a systematic fashion.

Learn Kana in 6 hours, learn 555 kanji in 35 hours, learn beginner grammar concepts and 1000 beginner words in 80 hours. After that you take another 120 hours to add another 555 kanji, basic grammar and another 1000 words. By that time, you could advance through the intermediate stages using native Japanese sources such as Mangas, Movies, Dramas and Anime or keep with the systematic steps of Kanji, Grammar and Vocabulary. During all of this, you want to create a habit of having fun watching and listening to Japanese entertainment.

This is geared toward self study and review. I based it on methods picked up trying to learn Japanese on my own. Not saying its the best system but dozens if not hundreds of others on the Koohii forums have followed it. I personally scored a 2.0 on the Defense Language Proficiency Test for Reading and Listening which granted me a Japanese Linguist classification in the US Navy.

If it helps, think of the above as a mix of Rosetta Stone and DuoLingo. I cannot stress enough the importance of learning Kanji in this process. Without it, you're essentially leaving yourself illiterate.

For learning a language, I find Michel Thomas audio lessons to be a very good first step.

I can't give any advice, but I'd asked "what for?" Japanese is only known by a little group of people, it's safe to say that even russian language is known by more people than japanese.

But I guess "to browse japanese websites and watch japanese youtube" is a perfectly valid good reason.

just watch anime like me and it will come eventualy :p

"Kirito" wrote:
just watch anime like me and it will come eventualy :p

I can see you're a die hard Sword art online fan coming from your avatar signature and name :P
Just because you "watch an anime" and can usually understand a conversation every here and there doesn't really mean you can fully learn another language by just watching anime. (Trust me, I watch anime. I've seen stuff like Sword art online, toradora, and seto no hanayome.) and just watching helps you understand conversation a little.

"raidho36" wrote:
I can't give any advice, but I'd asked "what for?" Japanese is only known by a little group of people, it's safe to say that even russian language is known by more people than japanese.

But I guess "to browse japanese websites and watch japanese youtube" is a perfectly valid good reason.

Actually japanese is probably one of the most popular languages in the world. One reason its extremely popular in America is because of (anime, Video games, and companies like Nintendo/Kojima/Square Enix)

Reason why I'm wanting to learn it is because I find Japanese a very interesting language plus Japan has a very interesting culture much different from ours.

It's nowhere near "popular", not to mention "extreme". If you'd quit hang around solely to anime community, you'd see that. Also, japanese past culture is poor, whereas the modern one is seriously screwed. What do you think are grounds for all that notorious "japanese porn"?

So it's a weaboo thing. Too bad. If I was going to learn japanese, it's for browsing japanese web. There's shit you don't see every day. Well, good luck anyways.

"DarkAkuma" wrote:
This is something I've worked on off and on over the years. I'll start by at least saying, don't expect it to be remotely easy. I'm not assuming you do, but just stated that because it's very true.

Now I guess have to say it depends on what you really want to learn. Just speaking and hearing the language? Just reading/writing? Or both?

I've been trying to learn both. I'd imagine just speaking/hearing would be a ton easier. Mainly because you run into a huge slow point with Kanji. Japanese uses 3 different alphabets, Katakana, Hirigana, and Kanji. There Romanji too but that isn't really used outside of learning. You can learn Hirgana and Katakana fairly easily. Rough guess off of the top of my head is there being like 30-40 characters for each. But Kanji? Over 4,000! I've hit huge road block in learn stifling my motivation due to not being able to apply what I've learn often enough with material I would care about. To me a huge part of that is there just so much Kanji, and it's used in everything.

That all said, if you want to feel like you're learning and making progress, Rosseta Stone is fine. Although I found myself subconsciously cheating as the multiple choice lessons went on, by picking the right choice purely based off whats physically seen (if the sentence is something like "the horse is running fast", and there's only 1 picture with a horse, you can pick that pick without reading everything just based off the one word "horse" even though your supposed to be learning to use "running". This may not be the best example of what I mean though, sorry.)

For learning Kanji, I recommend Anki and downloading the Kanji package. Its a flash card type learning utility. Flash card really do amazing, even as i get older! I wrote myself a flash card script when learning Katakana/Hiragana too, and it speed things up a ton!

For more complete all around learning material, you should check out http://www.nihongoresources.com/.

I've tried other things too, but its less easy to recommend them. Like "My Japanese Coach". It's a NDS game. It's a game, so its obviously going to be more fun. You're going to feel like your progressing, but in reality it won't be as much as you think.

Pimsleur Japanese, well. It doesn't do anything for me. You may be different though. It's one of those audio learning methods.

Whatever route you go, I can say, you got to use it or you will lose it. Same for a lot of skills. But as I said before, I found it hard to "use" what I've learned. I may know a 500 hundred words, a couple hundred Kanji, basic sentence structure, etc. But I'm lucky if I can even get the gist of an entire sentence in any sort of game I play or anime I watch. You'll can pull words out here and there. It's like "blah blah blah. Hai", "blah blah blah. Honto", "blah blah blah Oppai blah blah blah", "Anata wa blah blah blah".

Also. Don't be like me. Learn with a partner. I'm certain it would go a TON easier with one.

very informative! Thank you very much for this. Yes I do plan on learning the entire language (reading, writing, speaking. ect.) how ever I'm going to be learning reading and writing first before I learn conversations (it'd be easier) but I know Japanese isn't a easy language "Due to it having 3 alphabets" which doesn't bother me at all, and no language is easy to learn. Every language is hard to learn (because of the grammar) which is the trickiest part in a language, and again, thanks for this information. Will help a lot in the future! And about Pimsleur I've heard they sort of don't work and do work. I heard that Rosetta stone is better (which could just be a load.)

~Kindest regards.
Johnny.

"raidho36" wrote:
It's nowhere near "popular", not to mention "extreme". If you'd quit hang around solely to anime community, you'd see that. Also, japanese past culture is poor, whereas the modern one is seriously screwed. What do you think are grounds for all that notorious "japanese porn"?

So it's a weaboo thing. Too bad. If I was going to learn japanese, it's for browsing japanese web. There's shit you don't see every day. Well, good luck anyways.

The important thing is you now feel superior to someone else that made the mistake of wanting to learn another language for his own reasons while at the same time insulting the entire culture of a 130 million people.

I never cared for a person's reasons. The reality is it takes time and effort to learn any language. Those that want to learn it for watching Anime for the most part quit when it turns out there's more to learn that 100 words they were already able to gleem from poorly translated shows. Once they figure out they can enjoy Anime with less effort when it comes dubbed or subbed in English, they just give up on real Japanese. However, there are those that continue to learn and get quite good at it. Ultimately the reasons were irrelevant, the results were all that mattered. I'll offer the same advice regardless.