The Japanese Study Thread

[jakelong00]

the site u gave here looks nice.
thnx for dat bt can u tell me from wer to start considerin i just know hiragana n katana, i mean wer to start for d basics of japanese language itself?

[Syphilias]

just read every single day and it'll just click. There's no quick way to success in learning any language, you just have to integrate it into your life and keep at it every day. I haven't missed a day in the past 6 months out of my 8 years total of studying and I still have some confusion while reading some kanji pairings.

The key is that each kanji has a general meaning, and when you "stack" the kanji together with others, you can change the different "shades" of its meaning.

Just keep reading, you'll get it naturally.

And it looks like your English could use some polishing... hopefully Japanese can be a fresh start for you in the world of language!

[takayuki]

Hi everybody, I think minna no nihongo is good enough for the beginners. Its easy to understand, has various useful newwords. Anyway, if anyone has facebook, just tell me. I'll give u my japanese friend fb. He is maybe a bit old but a very enthusiastic teacher. His name is Takano, means Great eager^^

[takayuki]

uh.. I haven't looked through all the pages of this thread so I don't know if a Japanese person came up, but if anyone needs help I can help since I'm Japanese. and wow last post August 14.
Thank god you came ninkun ( :eyerollcan I?). I'm looking for some japanese newspaper online to improve my reading skill. I learned jp for 4 years and stopped when I nearly got level 1 so I want to maintain and if possible upgrade my level ( 4 skills). I really need your help. Thanks in advance:p

[Kazekeshi]

I'm starting to learn Japanese but it's getting frustrating.

I want to speak, read, write the language because I'm tired of waiting years for like oh say, a novel to be translated, relying on others to translate something for you and my fandom I'm mostly active in tends to get all crazy and all with translations and the people usually start fighting which translation is more accurate. I also want to learn the language at an early age, my own pace, and interpret Japanese in my own way.

Any help is appreciated since I'm really, really desperate to understand the language.

[cmertb]

I don't think there's anything more complicated than learning a foreign language, and Japanese is one of the most complicated languages out there. I think you'd need about a year of studying 2 or 3 hours every single day to be able to even begin to read manga, and even more than that for novels. So are you sure you're up for it?

If you can't study on your own, enroll in a class. That's usually slower than doing it on your own though. If you can, there are plenty of free beginner resources out there, although eventually you will have to buy some books. Start by learning hiragana before you do anything. If you find it too difficult, then give up on the idea of learning Japanese, as all of hiragana amounts to probably around 0.1% of what you will need to memorize eventually.

[Kazekeshi]

I don't think there's anything more complicated than learning a foreign language, and Japanese is one of the most complicated languages out there. I think you'd need about a year of studying 2 or 3 hours every single day to be able to even begin to read manga, and even more than that for novels. So are you sure you're up for it?

If you can't study on your own, enroll in a class. That's usually slower than doing it on your own though. If you can, there are plenty of free beginner resources out there, although eventually you will have to buy some books. Start by learning hiragana before you do anything. If you find it too difficult, then give up on the idea of learning Japanese, as all of hiragana amounts to probably around 0.1% of what you will need to memorize eventually.

I'm up for it. I definitely, surely want to learn the language even if it kills me. :D

There aren't any class I can enroll in right now since I'm barely in middle school and Japanese is a rare language to learn in my area and learning a foreign language at a young age is better than learning it when I'm an adult.

I'm learning hiragana right now and it's quite easy but of course there will be some mistakes here and there. :)

[Tran Linh]

my sincerest advice:

_ Take up your pen and start writing. 2 or three hours a day, constantly over a year, then you can do it.
_ Drill as hard as you can, please, I myself am a slow learner so I made up for it by increasing the time I learn to 6-7 hours a day (I even purchased an e-dic and a simple manga to read on the train / bus...), constantly in a year and 3 months (up to now). I gave up my favorite Call of duty, and even deleted my Paladin in Wow. Some people called me weird, since it's not normal. Screw that, a year later, i'm way better than those who laughed at me.

So, it's all about your efforts.
Cheers.

P/s: Just reading manga and watching anime simply never mean to be good at learning Japanese. They are good for memorizing the language though. Anyways, good luck :)

[Kazekeshi]

my sincerest advice:

_ Take up your pen and start writing. 2 or three hours a day, constantly over a year, then you can do it.
_ Drill as hard as you can, please, I myself am a slow learner so I made up for it by increasing the time I learn to 6-7 hours a day (I even purchased an e-dic and a simple manga to read on the train / bus...), constantly in a year and 3 months (up to now). I gave up my favorite Call of duty, and even deleted my Paladin in Wow. Some people called me weird, since it's not normal. Screw that, a year later, i'm way better than those who laughed at me.

So, it's all about your efforts.
Cheers.

P/s: Just reading manga and watching anime simply never mean to be good at learning Japanese. They are good for memorizing the language though. Anyways, good luck :)

Ah yes. I've read that you can learn the language faster by how much effort I you put in. :)

How can I learn by writing when I can't really understand sometimes what I'm writing? XD; And there are some really confusing ones that just seems like they are the same?

For some reason, I'm really freakin' excited to learn the language because I will be able to read what's in manga but it's taking too much time it's wearing out the excitement. XD

[cmertb]

Yeah, before you write, learn to read a little. So once you're comfortable with hiragana (forget about romaji, never ever use them or think about them until you know how to read at least at a basic level), learn katakana, and then try this: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar It's a very decent intro to give you a taste of the language and some basic vocab. The examples there use romaji, kana, and kanji. Ignore the romaji and the kanji lines, just look at the kana.

In any case, this should keep you busy for a while. After that, you can try reading some texts for children here: http://life.ou.edu/stories/

If that goes smoothly, you can start on memorizing vocab and kanji. Ask again when you get to that part. Kanji in particular will determine if you learn Japanese to some usable extent, or quit. Since you don't live in Japan, reading will probably be the most important aspect of the language for you to master. To master speaking, you'd probably need to actually go to Japan. Or just find lots of native speakers to victimize... I mean talk to wherever you live.

[Kazekeshi]

Yeah, before you write, learn to read a little. So once you're comfortable with hiragana (forget about romaji, never ever use them or think about them until you know how to read at least at a basic level), learn katakana, and then try this: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar It's a very decent intro to give you a taste of the language and some basic vocab. The examples there use romaji, kana, and kanji. Ignore the romaji and the kanji lines, just look at the kana.

In any case, this should keep you busy for a while. After that, you can try reading some texts for children here: http://life.ou.edu/stories/

If that goes smoothly, you can start on memorizing vocab and kanji. Ask again when you get to that part. Kanji in particular will determine if you learn Japanese to some usable extent, or quit. Since you don't live in Japan, reading will probably be the most important aspect of the language for you to master. To master speaking, you'd probably need to actually go to Japan. Or just find lots of native speakers to victimize... I mean talk to wherever you live.

So, I have to memorize hiragana first before I start writing? But after I took the other's advice to keep writing hiragana and drill it in my head, it actually worked and as I was writing it, I was thinking the romaji in my head. I don't know if that's good or not though. XD;

I actually read that already since I was looking at other posts. I was reading the intro and hiragana. There were ways at the end on how to memorize hiragana and I followed them which lead to smart.fm which I'm doing for about 2 hours each day. I'm doing 5 items at a time which last about 5-15 minutes depending if I'm reviewing or starting a new lesson or I'm becoming tired and lazy. XD

The only ones that are actually drilled in my head are only あ、い、う、え、お、か、ぉ、く、け、こ ん and some random others. I barely started actually memorizing hiragana when I started the thread. XD

[dawnsan]

I'm also learning Japanese right now. I'm still working on my katakana and am reading Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar (as recommended by cmertb by many of his posts).

The way I memorized hiragana was by learning to write it using Tae Kim's trace sheet. Also, before I went to bed and when I wake up I use flashcards to review all 47 hiragana. I was able to memorize all 47 hiragana in 2 days this way. But also, we all have different ways of learning things. Right now, I'm reading some Japanese short stories in hiragana from life.ou.edu (again, a recommendation by cmertb) so all the hiragana I learned will eventually be embedded into my long term memory.

I'm using the same method to learn katakana right now.

Best of luck to you!

P.S.
Other resources I use are Anki and Taigani Jisho.

[mote]

I think the best way to learn hiragana/katakana outside of actual classes is to read manga. You can memorize them and write them down, but if you don't have the practical application of the knowledge you're gonna forget them all in a week.

[Kazekeshi]

I'm also learning Japanese right now. I'm still working on my katakana and am reading Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar (as recommended by cmertb by many of his posts).

The way I memorized hiragana was by learning to write it using Tae Kim's trace sheet. Also, before I went to bed and when I wake up I use flashcards to review all 47 hiragana. I was able to memorize all 47 hiragana in 2 days this way. But also, we all have different ways of learning things. Right now, I'm reading some Japanese short stories in hiragana from life.ou.edu (again, a recommendation by cmertb) so all the hiragana I learned will eventually be embedded into my long term memory.

I'm using the same method to learn katakana right now.

Best of luck to you!

P.S.
Other resources I use are Anki and Taigani Jisho.

I don't think I'm trying hard enough. ;A;
I'm already reviewing a few flashcards I made and I'm also writing down 5 hiragana a couple times before I go to bed. I'll keep doing this then, so it can be drilled into my head. :)
[hr]

I think the best way to learn hiragana/katakana outside of actual classes is to read manga. You can memorize them and write them down, but if you don't have the practical application of the knowledge you're gonna forget them all in a week.

I've been reviewing the hiragana each day, so I don't forget. :)
I actually have a few japanese manga with furigana that I'm dying to find out what it's saying. XD;

[souvarine]

Do you have a textbook?

Trying to learn Japanese simply by studying hiragana is not sufficient; keep in mind, Japanese is 根本的に fundamentally different from phonetic (Western) languages. Hiragana/katakana is the phonetic component of Japanese, but, as a previous poster mentioned, is a tiny fraction of the language. Japanese is a symbolic language, as it is derived from Chinese roots... in other words, you need to learn to read and write kanji. If you do not learn kanji, you will not learn where the words break off in a sentence.

にほんじんにとってはこのようなぶんしょうがもっともよみづらいことはごぞんじでしょうか。
日本人にとってはこのような文章が最も読みづらい事はご存知でしょうか。

Same sentence, but now you see where the words end.

Yeah, watching anime etc is nowhere near enough to learn a language; formal study is required, especially if you are trying to get to a level to read material that was written for a native speaker. These activities are great for supplementing your education, but cannot ever replace it--if you believe they're good enough, you are only fooling yourself.

[Kazekeshi]

Do you have a textbook?

Trying to learn Japanese simply by studying hiragana is not sufficient; keep in mind, Japanese is 根本的に fundamentally different from phonetic (Western) languages. Hiragana/katakana is the phonetic component of Japanese, but, as a previous poster mentioned, is a tiny fraction of the language. Japanese is a symbolic language, as it is derived from Chinese roots... in other words, you need to learn to read and write kanji. If you do not learn kanji, you will not learn where the words break off in a sentence.

にほんじんにとってはこのようなぶんしょうがもっともよみづらいことはごぞんじでしょうか。
日本人にとってはこのような文章が最も読みづらい事はご存知でしょうか。

Same sentence, but now you see where the words end.

Yeah, watching anime etc is nowhere near enough to learn a language; formal study is required, especially if you are trying to get to a level to read material that was written for a native speaker. These activities are great for supplementing your education, but cannot ever replace it--if you believe they're good enough, you are only fooling yourself.

Nope. I don't have one.

I barely finished fully memorizing hiragana and I'm currently learning katakana which is actually quite easy to memorize, but Kanji will take a bit of an effort it seems.

How about reading manga? Does that help?

[BleachOD]

Hello. I am like Kazekeshi--I would like to learn but I also want to help translate

I an American but I don't know where to go to learn. Can someone put me on the path To learning? I am a mother of three so I can't really go to college right now (don't trust daycare with my youngest) how and where do I start?

[benelori]

You start with hiragana and katakana that's the first step...memorize them well...I'm learning from Minna no Nihongo...you can search for that, there are lessons in it and all...but I'm certain the web is full of japanese lessons

So when you memorized hiragana and katakana start the grammar, and as grammar progresses develop UR kanji vocabulary...

Just remember back when you taught UR children how to speak english...U had them read and write and while learning the alphabet and basic grammar they become accostumed to it, so they were better...
Same here...don't forget to write everything down...the best practice with all the kana and kanji is to write them down, individually or just write down words that come to mind...write a lot and read a lot...

[pleochroic]

So, I have to memorize hiragana first before I start writing?

no. i memorized hiragana and katakana while writing -- reading and writing reinforce each other. i strongly suggest at least a good text book or even better, an entire study course for beginning japanese. since this is your first foreign language there are a lot of acquisition skills you do not have yet, and working them out at the same time as studying the language is not efficient; it'll handicap you. a textbook or course gives you a framework within which to learn the new language. now, if the first book/course doesn't work well for you, dump it and try another one; don't stick with something that goes against the grain. also, distrust anyone who tries to sell you on their method by claiming that this is the only way, or the best. not all methods will work well for you, and an important skill is to figure out which ones WILL work for you (that'll come in handy for other education as well).

it also depends on what you primarily want to learn the language for -- a person who must travel to japan for business has less need for reading and writing and much more need for listening and speaking skills. if you want to fansub anime, you need listening skills very early on. you want to read manga, so reading is the largest component for you. look at a lot of different study materials at the start -- there is so much on the web now that this need not cost you a lot of money. me, i do best when i learn to read, write, and listen at the same time, and delay speaking until later -- it slows me down in the beginning, but in the long run this really gets a language into my head in a way that no longer relies on crutches. i got away from romaji as soon as possible because it started to hinder me, made me lazy, and from what i can judge of other learners, this seems to be common. so my recommendation would be to pick a book/course that gets you off the romaji crutch as soon as you have memorized the kana well enough so you no longer need a second to think "umm, is this chi or sa or ki".

i agree with those who said to practice writing the kana a lot -- for me this worked well, though i didn't write each x times a day; numeric goals like that stifle me. but i wrote kana every day twice for about 20 min each time (i do kanji more often). keeping practice short but frequent works best for me. i started by learning to write a few at a time, first each alone on paper made for the purpose, then in short words which i got from children's books. that kept it from being boring because i learned real words pretty much right away, and because i followed instructions meant for japanese children, i learned proper writing right away as well. i believe this has helped me in reading kana in vastly different fonts quickly (which really helps with reading the covers of manga magazines).

something else that works for me is to immerse myself as much as possible in not only the language but also the culture. listen to japanese music, to japanese drama CDs, watch anime and jdrama in japanese. let it drone on in the background while you study other things. you won't understand anything at first, but it will slowly sink into your brain, and after a while you'll catch more and more expressions. when that started to happen for me, i looked those expressions up, practiced writing them in kana, and also tried to look for them in manga (i got the raw manga which the drama CD is based on). japanese is relatively easy to do that in compared to english, because it is mostly pronounced like it is written, and has few exceptions, and it also has a huge number of "set phrases", expressions that are used because they are expected in certain situations. and again there was the reinforcement between listening and writing and reading. i could scanlate some parts very quickly that way. pick manga that has a simple vocabulary; kids manga, and much shounen does -- but stay away from the samurai stuff at first, because that often uses archaic terms, and yakuza dramas aren't that good either because gangsters usually speak in dialect.

you don't need kanji right away because that type of manga has furigana. i put off learning kanji until i was as fluent in kana as i am in the english alphabet, except for some really common ones which i learned as i encountered them in manga (pronouns, greetings).

[Kazekeshi]

So, I have to memorize hiragana first before I start writing?

no. i memorized hiragana and katakana while writing -- reading and writing reinforce each other. i strongly suggest at least a good text book or even better, an entire study course for beginning japanese. since this is your first foreign language there are a lot of acquisition skills you do not have yet, and working them out at the same time as studying the language is not efficient; it'll handicap you. a textbook or course gives you a framework within which to learn the new language. now, if the first book/course doesn't work well for you, dump it and try another one; don't stick with something that goes against the grain. also, distrust anyone who tries to sell you on their method by claiming that this is the only way, or the best. not all methods will work well for you, and an important skill is to figure out which ones WILL work for you (that'll come in handy for other education as well).

it also depends on what you primarily want to learn the language for -- a person who must travel to japan for business has less need for reading and writing and much more need for listening and speaking skills. if you want to fansub anime, you need listening skills very early on. you want to read manga, so reading is the largest component for you. look at a lot of different study materials at the start -- there is so much on the web now that this need not cost you a lot of money. me, i do best when i learn to read, write, and listen at the same time, and delay speaking until later -- it slows me down in the beginning, but in the long run this really gets a language into my head in a way that no longer relies on crutches. i got away from romaji as soon as possible because it started to hinder me, made me lazy, and from what i can judge of other learners, this seems to be common. so my recommendation would be to pick a book/course that gets you off the romaji crutch as soon as you have memorized the kana well enough so you no longer need a second to think "umm, is this chi or sa or ki".

i agree with those who said to practice writing the kana a lot -- for me this worked well, though i didn't write each x times a day; numeric goals like that stifle me. but i wrote kana every day twice for about 20 min each time (i do kanji more often). keeping practice short but frequent works best for me. i started by learning to write a few at a time, first each alone on paper made for the purpose, then in short words which i got from children's books. that kept it from being boring because i learned real words pretty much right away, and because i followed instructions meant for japanese children, i learned proper writing right away as well. i believe this has helped me in reading kana in vastly different fonts quickly (which really helps with reading the covers of manga magazines).

something else that works for me is to immerse myself as much as possible in not only the language but also the culture. listen to japanese music, to japanese drama CDs, watch anime and jdrama in japanese. let it drone on in the background while you study other things. you won't understand anything at first, but it will slowly sink into your brain, and after a while you'll catch more and more expressions. when that started to happen for me, i looked those expressions up, practiced writing them in kana, and also tried to look for them in manga (i got the raw manga which the drama CD is based on). japanese is relatively easy to do that in compared to english, because it is mostly pronounced like it is written, and has few exceptions, and it also has a huge number of "set phrases", expressions that are used because they are expected in certain situations. and again there was the reinforcement between listening and writing and reading. i could scanlate some parts very quickly that way. pick manga that has a simple vocabulary; kids manga, and much shounen does -- but stay away from the samurai stuff at first, because that often uses archaic terms, and yakuza dramas aren't that good either because gangsters usually speak in dialect.

you don't need kanji right away because that type of manga has furigana. i put off learning kanji until i was as fluent in kana as i am in the english alphabet, except for some really common ones which i learned as i encountered them in manga (pronouns, greetings).

Well, I borrowed some textbooks from the library near me and it didn't work for me. It was one of the actual reasons why I thought Japanese was hard. :)

At first, before I go to bed and wake up, I used to study Kana. I stopped doing it since I got bored and lazy. >_<; I think I'll start to do that again since it really helped me in memorizing hiragana. I'm taking a much longer time on katakana right now because I'm not really studying them (like I used to).

Btw, I use smart.fm to memorize kana. I read this site [ http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar ] first which was recommended in other threads. I read in the site that it's better to learn kanji already than later. Right after kana is fully drilled in my head that I don't have to stop and think which character it is, I think I will start learning kanji already or just skip kanji for later and start learning how to form sentences and expand my vocabulary using kana (I will only retort to this though if I think kanji is too hard for me). (This is my profile [ http://smart.fm/users/Kazekeshi ]. ) :)

English is not my first language and it took me 6 months to learn the language and with the help of special classes to teach kids English, I became almost fluent in the language in year or so. After I moved to the next grade, (I think halfway the grade), I stopped going to those classes since I was deemed enough to know the language. :)

Hmmm, well, I'm learning the language because of manga and anime. Once in a while, I read Japanese novels. Oh and also... to learn a language the people around me don't know... for personal reasons.... :kukuku LOL. XD

[cmertb]

I can't imagine that learning to read kana would be hard. Yes, writing the characters helps, but it's not strictly necessary. The fact that you're finding it hard tells me that you should not practice writing yet. I used two applets here http://www.chipchat.com/NihonGo/ to learn the kana. It took me about 3 hours total for each with numerous breaks, including for dinner. I woke up the next morning and I could read Japanese text written in hiragana, even if I didn't understand it. It's just a matter of learning to differentiate 46 simple characters graphically, plus a few simple rules to produce additional syllables with those 46 characters.

As for kanji, despite of what that site tells you, don't go memorizing any on purpose right now. It's the silliest thing to do to try to memorize kanji as random abstract pictures. You'll need to find a book that explains the structure of kanji (that they're composed of a finite number of radicals), and then memorize the kanji as a set of radicals, rather than stroke by stroke. Remember, you can always go back to a concerted effort to study kanji later. But if you try to memorize any now, it will be a lot of wasted effort that will never be compensated. You will really need kanji only when you start learning complicated words (kanji compounds). At the point you are now, there is no need. First, get to where you can read children's stories that have practically no kanji (I gave you the link before).

[benelori]

I'm learning kanji by categories...like verbs, adjectives, nouns...one category at a time...I also divide those stuff into let's say...family, nature, sport etc...

[cmertb]

Learn kanji by radicals instead, it'll go a lot smoother. Sort of like in "Remembering the Kanji" -- learn a new radical, then learn all Jouyou kanji that contain that radical, but only those whose other radicals you know already. It's the most efficient memorization sequence in my opinion. Oh, and don't learn the on-yomi while doing that. It's much easier to learn on-yomi by memorizing vocab.

[Kazekeshi]

@cmertb: Oh no. I learned kanji first but I didn't know that I wasn't suppose to learn that first is what I meant. The textbooks I borrowed taught it practically all in romaji. Also, it may have been easy for you but sometimes it's not for others.

Btw, kana is easy but I've been lazy with it since I'm busy right now with school and sports.

[mikkih]

I've gotten Rosetta Stone to learn japanese, so hopefully I'll start that this weekend and go from there

goldb, how's it going with the Rosetta Stone?

[goldb]

Yeah I'm gonna start on it today when I get back home from London. I'll let you know exactly how it's going tomorrow or something. Thanks for moving threads btw. :)

[mikkih]

Sounds good, goldb! Let me know how it goes. :D Have a safe trip! edit (4/26) I'm glad you had a fun trip! Welcome back.:)

About moving threads, I hope to see your Japanese writing there (http://mangahelpers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18504) as well :D.

Are you bored with the CD yet? (I guess I would...) If you are, just pick a random phrase from your favorite manga and practice writing. What manga do you like btw?

(5/1) Glad you discovered the google translate tool!

(5/5) Ah, I see, goldb. You didn't use the google translate. (We talked outside this thread.) Which one do you like to use?

[Roark]

Hmm.. people haven't posted here in awhile but I just thought I should mention that I know some Japanese, I took it for two years.

[mikkih]

Hmm.. people haven't posted here in awhile but I just thought I should mention that I know some Japanese, I took it for two years.　いくつぐらい漢字を知っていますか？:amuse How many Kanji characters do you know?

[goldb]

Sounds good, goldb! Let me know how it goes. :D Have a safe trip! edit (4/26) I'm glad you had a fun trip! Welcome back.:)

About moving threads, I hope to see your Japanese writing there (http://mangahelpers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18504) as well :D.

Are you bored with the CD yet? (I guess I would...) If you are, just pick a random phrase from your favorite manga and practice writing. What manga do you like btw?

(5/1) Glad you discovered the google translate tool!

(5/5) Ah, I see, goldb. You didn't use the google translate. (We talked outside this thread.) Which one do you like to use?

I like this new site (http://translation2.paralink.com/) better, but I'm having to re-check the japanese to english to see if it makes sense before I post it. Damn it, sometimes I wish I just had an intersect like Chuck :bored

[mikkih]

goldb,　がんばってね～。:amuse

[goldb]

arigato~ :hug

[mikkih]

みなさん、日本語の勉強は進んでいますか？

[saladesu]

ちっとも進んでない（笑）

勉強はしてないけど、せめて”練習”はしてる。このままじゃ今まで勉強してきた事は全て頭から飛んじゃいそうのでちょっと心配です〜:sweat

I'm not progressing at all (lol)

I haven't been studying, but at least I've been "practicing". At this rate, I'm kinda worried that I'll forget everything I ever learnt~ :sweat

[Aarowaim]

For the past 3 or four months, I have been studying japanese. I am quite familiar with basic grammar and some vocabulary, so I've started on kanji and more vocabulary, especially through raws and a few books that are on the topic. I've noticed that if I just glance at something, I sometimes see a kanji that I remember learning earlier and I occasionally mistake an english word for romaji of a japanese word at first glance. Is this normal? O.o

I don't see it being a problem, because it's only subconscious recognition, which is easily over-ridden by my conscious mind. I was just curious if it has happened to anyone else. I guess I could say that it's a good sign that I am indeed learning, but it is kind of disconcerting that I am seeing japanese in normal, everyday canadian-english life. Maybe I'm just expecting japanese to be secretly hiding within my culture xD.

Anyways, if it is normal, and a good sign that I am learning, could anyone point me to a website or book that helped you to learn kanji and perhaps even made you see kanji at the corner of your eyes (not literally)?

But I'll probably get concerned with my sanity if I start dreaming in fluent japanese. (It's a hilarious thought, but if it were happening...)

[eni]

That's perfectly normal for bilinguals and shows that you're actually 'in it'. I mix up languages a lot too and sometimes - when I'm emotional - even scold my kids in English or use single words from other languages, which they don't understand. When I still was watching anime a lot, I would even use common Japanese phrases out of reflex x_x

It can happen that I read a article online and think that the grammar is totally off or something else tips me off, till the second or third sentence when I actually realize that I read it in the wrong language. But after a while you get used to it and it also calms down when you switch from actively learning by books to passive learning by using. You will develop a switch for different situations but still fall into traps often enough, especially when getting emotional.

As for a tool to learn Kanji. Our website founder, njt, always used to recommend Kanji Gold (http://mangahelpers.com/forum/showthread.php/69653-Learn-kanji-with-Kanji-gold.-A-small-Tutorial-by-NJT)which is a freeware. I personally use Anki (http://ankisrs.net/) to learn Kanji. There are also many websites with online tools, Kanji Drill freeware, several Kanji a Day (http://www.yookoso.com/phpList/?p=subscribe) lists you can subscribe too, and of course soooo many books. Just google a bit and try things out since people learn differently.

Something njt also recommends a lot and that I use for learning as well are the materials on this website:
http://www.mlcjapanese.co.jp/Download.htm

[Aarowaim]

Thanks, It's nice to know that it is a sign of me learnrning and that it isn't permanent. I have a bit of second-hand understanding of this idea, as I have a dutch immigrant great-grandmother who we visit occasionally. However, because I'm learning on my own at the moment, I didn't really have anyone to ask IRL. Thank you for the help with finding kanji learning tools.

Anki was a good program, so I'll probably re-download it. I didn't enjoy the timed repetition due to the lack of a manual over-ride, but it will do fine for me otherwise. So far, I'm finding that other than memorizing EXACTLY how a kanji looks, kun'yomi readings are pretty easy to understand so far. According to the readings that Wakan is showing me, it seems that they are simply pre-fix, normal and suffix readings, as well as the occasional odd one out.

Thanks for everyone's support in learning japanese ^,^. Anyways, as I often seem to do, it would appear that I drifted off topic, so I'll just end this post here.

[eni]

You're welcome :amuse

If you study on your own, you should look into audio or video material to catch the right pronunciation. There are some video courses, you may want to try watching parallel to your text studies. You can just go on your own pace and look a couple of episodes after each other, if you already know the basic stuff. But I think the listening and speaking exercises really do help.

There is, e.g. Erin, which is a free online video course for students:
https://www.erin.ne.jp/en/

And there are Shin Nihongo de Kurasou and the old but funny Let's Learn Japanese (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let's_Learn_Japanese). Both are TV courses with additional workbooks for an older audience. You can buy them or *cough* google them *cough*. There is also a couple of audio courses that teach without traditional lessons, I have e.g. Drive Time Japanese (learn while driving, which is a bit stupid but I drive a lot :XD) and Learning Japanese from Songs which comes with a workbook. I find those very useful since I'm abroad with my mp3 player a lot.

Aside from that, Japanese music (I highly recommend children songs for the start), audio books (I have a nice tape with short folklore tales and a text book) and of course anime/dorama, help a lot too. Japanese people speak luckily very clearly in anime and movies. I find it much easier to listen to as a beginner than in other languages.

---------- Post added at 03:14 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:56 AM ----------

Oh, I forgot. I have a book called "Kanji Pict-o-graphix".

It doesn't really teach you Kanji, but gives you mnemonics for all Kana and a thousand Kanji, sorted by themes. This doesn't work well for me with many Kanji, but sometimes I catch one (like kawa, which really looks like a river, or mori) and then it sticks.

http://i52.tinypic.com/15d6l4y.jpg

[Aarowaim]

Yeah, I'd have to say, other than the english pronunciation sneaking in, the only time I have trouble with pronouncing japanese (when compared to recordings) is the speed and those pesky Rs. I just finished reading through my copy of Japanese in Mangaland, and the author made a suggestion to learn to associate kanji with their meaning before you start learning the readings. In just a day or two of doing this with anki, I've found myself getting a lot more of them "right".

As for the kanji pictographics, I've found that those kinds of mneumonics only work with simpler, more obvious images. For more complex kanji, I generally look at what makes it and make up a story to go with it, or something it looks like that reminds me of the meaning e.g 見(see) is a robots head with one of those bar shaped eyes.

What I'm most proud of is the fact that after seeing my anki flashcard for 見 only twice, I used its non-verb format reading, けん, to enter it just a moment ago with my IME ^,^. I'm even more proud because I didn't know any of the readings prior to looking at reformatted flashcard.

If you're curious, here is 1 of my reformatted flashcards that are working better. Please note that I reformatted them according to both the advice of Mark Bernabe (Author, Japanese in Mangaland), and Anki's tips for making better flashcards.

http://i56.tinypic.com/1z52eiu.png
I put the readings that don't *seem* important in gray so that they aren't emphasized in my memory.

Thanks again.

EDIT: Just looking at this link you gave me (http://www.erin.ne.jp/en) and I think it's great! Their skits are a lot easier to absorb than the plain lessons I've found elsewhere on the web. Not only that but they have that great "subtitles" feature and their manga lesson format is just as interactive. どうもありがとうございました！

EDIT2: Wow, the more I look, the more useful the site becomes ^,^ I just noticed the script function and how it has highlighted, hover-to-translate vocabulary. I lol'd at Let's Try #2 and all the cute foods. I wish my lunch was like that... I might actually try it to see what my family thinks xD

[cmertb]

I can't imagine memorizing kanji readings on purpose. It's one thing if each kanji had only one reading. But many of them don't. And the ones that don't are usually the most common ones. The thing is, human memory works great when you need to memorize a 1 to 1 association. If A, then B. If 大 then dai. But this then there's 大きい, then there's 大切. These are very common words. However, memorizing a list of things for a single prompt is extremely inefficient. Your memory will rebel and results won't be satisfying at all.

There are even worse examples. One of the most common kanji, 日. What's the reading? Well, when it's by itself, it's "hi". So far so good. Then you see 日本. OK, maybe it can be "ni". Let's swap these two kanji and get 本日. What's the reading now? Umm, it's "jitsu". Three readings, wow. But wait, there's more. Take 一日. The reading is "nichi". And then there's 日曜日, two occurrences of this kanji in one word. The first is read "nichi" again, but the second time it occurs it's "bi". Five readings, all from extremely common words. Are we done? Not quite. 十日 (reading "ka"), 日課 (reading "nitsu"). What about 今日 (kyou)? What about 明日 (asu, ashita), 明後日 (asatte), 昨日 (kinou)? What's the reading now? Oops, there's none, these are a type of ateji (当て字) where kanji were assigned to a word to fit the meaning, with no regard for their pronunciation. Well, you can also read 明日 as myounichi, and 昨日 as sakujitsu, and then you get the old "nichi" and "jitsu" readings. But are you sure you want to memorize all these readings, and then miss out on the ateji exceptions? This just a single kanji. There are over 2000 you NEED to memorize (but better 3000).

You don't even know in advance which readings of a kanji are common and which are not. And memorizing a list of readings is very error prone and frustrating. So what's the solution? To me, it was pretty simple: don't memorize kanji readings, period. Memorize vocab. Instead of memorizing 日 -> hi, ni, nichi, jitsu, ka, memorize 日->hi (day), 日本->nihon, nippon (Japan), 本日->honjitsu (today), 一日->ichinichi (one day), 日曜日->nichiyoubi (Sunday), 今日->kyou (today), 明日->ashita, asu (tomorrow), 十日->tooka (10th of the month) etc. This way you learn a) a whole bunch of useful words, and not just readings that are useless by themselves; b) all common readings of the kanji you're studying; c) all common exceptions such as ateji; d) some readings for a bunch of other kanji that occur with the one you're studying. Overall, it's a lot more fun and efficient if you goal is to master all of them.

Now, where to get vocab for your list is a separate discussion, but the short answer is, use Anki and download Core 2000 and Core 6000 lists that were ripped from smart.fm. Not the best order of words, but these lists are free and in the end they work just fine. Memorize the words, and kanji readings will come to you without you even noticing.

[Aarowaim]

Yeah, that's more or less what I'm trying to do. At the moment, I'm emphasizing the main reading so that I can type that kanji with the IME in order to reinforce my knowledge when translating. I'm trying to learn enough that I can identify a kanji and then use the kanji in wakan to get it's reading in that situation. I will however try to learn the exceptions in which the reading changes e.g, あめ＝雨　雨風＝あま-かぜ　村雨＝むら-さめ. In essence, I completely agree with you

And as for the flash card, I tried greying out the excess readings that a plugin for anki generated for me, because I was a little too lazy to waste an extra hour or so on getting all the main readings on my own, sifting through them for the ones used when the kanji is not in a compound, and then making seperate flash cards for all the compounds. I'm more worried about getting enough knowledge to reinforce/improve while reading raws and japanese sites than to learn all the extra readings OR spend time on getting all the exceptions.

In short, I'm just doing my best to get to a functional knowledge of kanji without adding too much extra information.

After an umpteenth read through it, I finally see your idea for what it really was. At first, I thought you were saying not to memorize the way I was memorizing. Now I understand that you were just saying to memorize the non-compound reading, and then memorizing the compounds, rather than the reading of each kanji in the compound. That's exactly how I was hoping to learn japanese, but to do that, I needed to start somewhere. I had a preliminary understanding of the idea you generously shipped into my brain's recieving bays, I was just being lazy and letting a plugin do the work for me and then "highlighting" the only important readings.

Thank you for your constructive criticism, and I will make sure I get around to deleting all those excess readings that the annoying plugin gave me. :)

EDIT: I have been going through the flashcards and deleting suffix and prefix readings that the plugin supplied me. I facepalmed when I realized めい isn't the non-compound version of 名, and then lol'd when I realized that all the online lessons teach that namae means name, when in fact, it means first-name (because that's a pretty good way of making sure we do it right).

[ehlboy]

So there's always a bunch of learning/help with languages stuff but I think another important (and often overlooked) aspect to all this is just staying motivated! Something that's kept me motivated to keep on learning new languages is the articles at

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/all-japanese-all-the-time-ajatt-how-to-learn-japanese-on-your-own-having-fun-and-to-fluency

Don't feel that you need to read all the articles or feel like you have to read them in any particular order but I often find khatzumoto's writings inspiring, especially because he writes out of self experience/success.

Thought this might help all you guys learning/intending to learn any language. And keep in mind that even though khatzmoto talks about learning Japanese, his articles really apply to pretty much any language you want to learn.

[Darjaille]

Um, so, can anyone recommend any textbooks for learning japanese? I know Genki, anyone knows anything better? Aim is both speaking and writing, and I need it for preparation and during my year in Japan starting in August xD

[Pinkgloom]

Um, so, can anyone recommend any textbooks for learning japanese? I know Genki, anyone knows anything better? Aim is both speaking and writing, and I need it for preparation and during my year in Japan starting in August xD You might want to try An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese (revised edition)

[benelori]

Oh nice...darj is going to Japan:confetti...have fun there!

I learned alone for a while, and I used English material only then...which meant grabbing any information from the net...so that's one possibility...another one could be checking local book stores for beginner's guides to Japanese...that's a good way to start too...to sort of get you in the mood for actually starting to study:p

What I used when I started formally studying is the Minna no Nihongo book pack...there are two books and lots of misc material, and they are good enough to prepare someone for level 4 JLPT(Japanese Language Proficiency Test), plus a little more...

That's kinda it...I'll search for a good link on the net for Minna no Nihongo and PM to you so you can check it out, and I'll guide you along a bit if you want...it's entirely in Japanese, but you don't have to know everything to get started...just do the exercises and that's it...

PS: if you are searching for any good material on the net, then I suggest searching for stuff that has JLPT in it, or has some connection with JLPT...good luck:p...and start learning hiragana and katakana...textbooks are worthless without them...write them down too, not just memorize them

Also shoot any questions here...if I see them then I can help, but I'm sure okaachan will help out before me:p...and see the questions before me as well:D

[phio_chan]

Dallie... is going to Japan?! When will it be my turn :scry Congratulations, anyway! <333

Unfortunately I can't mention any good English books to you as I ended up studying using books in Indonesian. I think it'll be best to study foreign language in your own language first to make it easier to analogue structures and such. yuki gave me a kanji book in English, though. Looks pretty good with the images and such to study kanji. Let me know if you want to take a look at it.