Trying to learn the Japanese language

Every once there's requests like these; some genuine, some from stupidity, and most out of curiosity. In other words, it's a fairly common question. Still don't get what I'm saying? Google it. Specifically, "learning Japanese".

Sigh, should the Western world ever find a need to create their own visual novels I would gladly quit my day job and become a script writer.

1. I help translate Stories of Japanese Games and I solo-translate doujins when I feel like it. I learn a lot of stuff while translating.
For learning more about Kanji's I use this site.

2. I never studied using textbooks or online courses etc. I just studied stuff on my own, you need to have devotion in order to properly learn Japanese. Though the most effective way to memorize stuff for me is to right them down again and again.

3. Play Pokemon or Legend of Zelda Games on the GBA in Japanese, it will teach you Grammar and Kanji that's normally used in the Japanese Language. While learning stuff it will definitely add to your vocabulary.

4. Never fully trust online translators.

Don't be intimidated when you see bunches of Kanji like this 滅竜奥義 紅蓮爆炎刃 once you get used to Kanji's you'll find it easy to deconstruct them.
æ»…=destroy
竜=dragon
奥義=secret or sometiems used as secret technique/art

ç´…è“®=gurren=Crimson
爆＝Bomb/Explode
炎＝Flaming
刃=Blade/Edge

Fused together you get a translated: Dragon Slayer Secret Art Crimson Exploding Flame Edge also the translation varies from person to person.

I typically enjoy translating techniques though sometimes the techniques are already in English.
Like: RIDER KICK!

One thing is for sure though: You'll see this Hiragana everywhere in doujins.


PS: I'm not yet Veteran on the language though, I sometimes find things hard. If someone could suggest some more studying tips, would be gladly appreciated.

I do flash cards for kanji, hiragana, katakana, and vocabulary daily. I've been trying to learn at least 10 kanji per week. Also, check out this thread.

Watching anime show, and chatting to some Japanese people

Hey this is a good thread, though sadly it's dead.

Fuck I rhymed.

How's your Nihonggo coming Ammy?

I can give you some suggestions of materials and methods that may aid you in your learning. They are simply what work for me so you'll have to see what works for you from all the suggestions in this thread. There's no right way to learn a language, but it's good to try out a variety of methods and do everything possible whenever and wherever you can to keep on top of it. Learning a language takes serious commitment, especially Japanese. If you stop writing or reading for a while you'll slowly start to forget those Kanji. You need to be consistent.

I think the first thing that would be helpful is to know how you are with the characters. Do you know Hiragana and Katakana yet? And do you know any Kanji? What methods have you already been using to learn those if you have?

It's coming along slowly. I know a grand total of about 65 kanji. I can also read hirigana and katakana without any trouble.

Slow it may be, at least your improving bit by bit and that is good.

Off-Topic:

Watch anime. It's the best way to learn Japanese. Voice actors sound exactly like casual Japanese do.

Sorry that it's taken a while for me to get back to you. This is going to be long but bear with me.

I won't recommend anything for learning Kana then if you know Hiragana and Katakana, unless you want me to.

It's good you have a diverse choice of materials, but you don't want to build up too big of a barrack that you will overwhelm yourself with. It's good to read around in various books and utilise from different texts, but the key is that utilisation. You need to be able to use them. How you use them depends on whether you're a passive or active learner. If you're passive then simply reading the books and making notes will work for you, but if you're an active learner like me you need to be able to take what you have learned and put it to use in order to retain. I'm guessing you have all of those in .pdf files if you've downloaded them. That's good but I'd recommend investing in some actual physical copies. I know you said you're on a tight budget but I'll recommend some books that are really worth putting the money in for. I'll get onto those later.

So your focus is on kanji and vocabulary. In my opinion, the best way to do this is a lot of reading and a lot of writing. And when I say reading, I mean authentic Japanese written for Japanese people. For me, that's the best way to really understand how the language works. At the same time, you can be utilising your grammar and exercise books. But don't rely solely on those, just use them as an overview because in the end, it's real Japanese you want to be able to understand. Most textbooks for learning the language give you clunky and awkward sentences. But they're often good for language rules and explanations, as well as vocabulary lists if that's you're thing. Just think of them as reference books. That's just me talking about grammar and exercise books though - of course it's different for Kanji books, you'll need those for the characters and their readings, as well as how they are used when paired with other characters.

There's 2 ways I've been learning Kanji.

1. When I was taking my Japanese exams there were set lists of Kanji I had to know. When I first started out during my GCSE Japanese I had to learn all the basic ones from the Genki series which are all of these. Then for my A-Level Japanese I had to know all of these (scroll down to Section F, pages 59 and 60). Since I own the Genki books, and you seem to have the first one downloaded which is great, what worked for me was learning 3-5 Kanji a day from the book (it depended on what lessons I had on certain days) as well as a few words they could become when paired up with other Kanji. I won't go into the process I used unless you're interested but I liked to use flashcards coupled with writing. A lot of people like to use a free online program called Anki which is flashcards online. I used it a few times but I prefer making my own.

I don't use this set list method as much any more since I've finished those exams, but I still use flashcards.

2. What I mainly do now for my Kanji and vocabulary is reading actual Japanese. There's various resources I use. My recommendations of books you should seriously look into buying are the following:

Other useful ways of learning Kanji and new words is reading stuff online. I'm not a big fan of Twitter but I do use it for Japanese. I follow a lot of Japanese people I like such as voice actors/actresses and artists since they post in Japanese. I want to know what they're saying so when I don't recognise a Kanji or word they post I'll look it up and then put it on a flashcard and review it later to see if I remember. The most useful online dictionary for Japanese I think is Denshi Jisho, it's helped me out a lot. You can enter a word in Romaji, Kana or Kanji and it will give you the translation. Or you can type in English and it'll give you the Japanese word(s). You can also go to the 'Kanji' tab at the top and enter a Kanji. When you do that a big picture of the Kanji will appear and give you the stroke order, On and Kun readings, definitions, as well as where they appear in certain dictionaries - including The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary, so both can be used together. There's some other stuff you can do on the site too but you can see for yourself.

I do the same with articles in Japanese. You should have a look for stuff you find interesting to read about.

Everything I've talked about has been regards to reading and writing, but you should also make sure to listen. That's really going to help out with understanding how sentences flow together and how you should read. It doesn't matter at all if you only understand a little or even nothing of what's being said, just listen to the sounds until you can pick apart words so it no longer sounds like white noise. You can watch films, videos, stuff on YouTube, listen to music, anime etc. For me the best thing is podcasts, and there's plenty of those on the iTunes store. Whether or not you have an apple device, download iTunes and go to the store. Then at the bottom change the flag to the Japanaese flag and you'll get all the things being released in Japan. Then at the top just click podcasts.

I don't know if this has been helpful for you or not, if you even survived to the end, but hopefully there will be something in there you can take from it.

p.s. Rosetta Stone is utter garbage shite

I don't know Japanese myself, but I did learn vowels down from this video.
It did actually get stuck in my head quite well - I didn't entirely learn Japanese from that video, but I nailed vowels and and how pronounce them properly.

Nama-sensei is a great teacher.

Quality post, yuri. This will help me out as well. I'm definitely going to buy some of the books you listed.

Amazon links
Read Real Japanese: Short Stories by Contemporary Writers
Read Real Japanese: Contemporary Writings by Popular Authors
Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text
The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary
All About Particles: A Handbook of Japanese Function Words
501 Japanese Verbs
Japanese From Zero! (series of books)

Get twitter, follow a couple japanese guys, pick up all the kanjis you can find. I haven't used this for japanese, but I'd imagine that's a good way to pick things up there as well. Free, easy and mostly important it's real.

Awesome, glad I could help someone else out as well.

Another book worth noting is Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You, it's a really informative and interesting read and seriously lives up to its title. It's more of an intermediate/advanced book.

Pretty much anything published by Kodansha is worth getting.

My one key factor for learning is: More exposure of Japanese material

In my initial 3 years of self-learning All I did was watch anime, play untranslated VNs and Japanese Video games.

But you need to learn Grammar properly.