I wish to study Japanese (considering the JET Programme in a few years), and I'd like to know what has helped you study. Is there a special approach or technique, or is it similar to studying a European language like Spanish or French?
Thanks!
Best approach?
It's vest way you have friendship with me!
Please teach me English....
>>26-
Learning English for writing is a lot easier than Japanese once you have the basics down, I say as a native speaker of neither. For speaking, it is much harder, since pronunciation is crazy, but for writing, the only obstacles after you have basic grammar are spellings. It is also very easy to look up words you do not know.
I would suggest posting on English discussion boards like this one. It is major practice for your skills on the language, as well as fun, a lot of the time.
>>24, thank you very much for your post. I feel that would be a great way to go about learning any language, really. =P
>>26, boards like 4-ch are great places to practice English. Try searching Google, too. You can find many places to practice and learn. Try your best to get a dictionary or find one online.
>>1
Japanese is the world easiest language, especially if you want to learn to speak it ; its grammar is easy and its pronunciation is quite simple. You can learn it by watching your favorite Japanese stuff - dramas, animes, variety shows, news, or whatever. Anything else to ask me about?
I read and write a lot better than I speak. When I read my lessons I say them out loud, looking at each word/kanji as I say it. I practice conversations/phrases out loud, this way the correct phrases come easier during oral quiz time. Sometimes I will randomly pick an object, point at it and try to come up with the correct word as fast as I can. I used to have Japanese labels all over my house even.
I never fool with anything written in romaji. It only ends up confusing and irritating me.
I try to watch as much movie and television in Japanese as I can, just to get used to hearing it and try to pick out enough words to get the idea of what they're talking about
Flash cards. A metric fuck ton of them. Every day, every night.I see the word and say it out loud.I have a lot of them, and it takes a while...
Do not take up learning Japanese. Hit your genitals with a hammer instead, it's much less emotionally traumatizing.
I hope that helps.
Multi Faceted. All i've learned so far is from:
3 years of HIgh School Class (1st Year Failed, don't ask)
Learn Japanese the Manga Way - book title
Kana/ Kanji practice book
Japanese for Dummies
Joke/ Buisness Japanese books
Fansubs.
Mike Wright, after acquiring Spanish and German in high school and college, and after learning Mandarin in 1963, Japanese in 1967, and Arabic in 1973 in the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, states that "Mandarin is the easiest by far." It is "pretty easy for native English speakers, while Japanese is one of the most difficult". For example, he could "pretty much discuss any topic" when he arrived in Taiwan. On the contrary, after learning Japanese and spending a total of 7.5 years in Japan associating with "people who spoke little or no English", he never felt confident in the language. Same thing holds true for his fellow Defense Language Institute graduates, he says, including one who graduated from Japanese course with an average of 98, the highest on record. "He was quite angry when he arrived in Japan and found that he couldn't get around in the language as he had been able to do with Mandarin in Taiwan."
>>32
Are you serious? That looks like a paste, do you have a link?
The slightly surprising thing is that Japanese is the only starred language in Category III: that is, according to the experience of the US State Department, Japanese is somewhat harder to learn than Chinese, Arabic, or Korean.
Or, in other words, Japanese is the most difficult major language in the world for English speakers.
>Japanese is the only starred language in Category III
Link please.
A quick recap for those unfamiliar with the system: Japanese actually uses three different sets of signs for writing. The syllabaries hiragana ひらがな and katakana カタカナ are the easy part, there are around 50 of each and, with a very few easily learned exceptions, they never change their readings: ひ is always "hi" and カ is always "ka". It is entirely possible to read and write Japanese with these alone; that's the way Genji Monogatari was written 1000 years ago and that's how children's books are written to this day.
The clincher is the third set, the Chinese characters known as kanji 漢字。Basic literacy requires knowing about 2000 of these, and estimates of the number actually in use (including specialized fields) go as high as 5000.
So far, this is no worse than Chinese, which by most reckonings uses more distinct characters. However, while characters have one (or rarely two) readings in Chinese (esp. if we discount tone changes), in Japanese characters tend to have at least two completely separate readings. The worst offenders like 生 (sheng in Mandarin) have, depending on how you count, as many as 80 different ways to read them: JDIC lists
SEI SHÔ ikiru ikasu ikeru umareru umare umu ou haeru hayasu ki nama naru nasu musu u asa iki iku ike ubu umai e oi gyû kurumi gose sa jô sû so sô chiru naba niu nyû fu mi mô yoi ryû (phew!)
>>1 You'll be able to somewhat understand Japanese quickly.
But you'll never be able to speak Japanese with proper intonations because most Japanese are too polite to correct your Japanese.
The basic grammatical rules are supposed to be easy.
But they have teineigo hanashikotoba hougen kenjougo sonkeigo and the verbs are different from each others.
You don't have to remember hougen but you have to know the differences between teineigo, hanashikotoba, kenjougo, sonkeigo.
Most non-Japanese speakers who think he/she can speak Japanese or think he/she is perfect know only hanashikotoba or teineigo or most likely the mixture of both which is pretty odd.
My advice is this.
Decide whether you wanna study hanashikotoba or teineigo, first.
Always pay attention so that you won't mix those two.
If you master teineigo, then try understanding sonkeigo/kenjougo.
Some Japanese cannot speak/write sonkeigo/kenjougo correctly and they are considered uneducated low class people.
I suggest you read and listen to Japanese in your spare time. The more you read, the more you understand how sentences are supposed to be written and you get a feel for it :3 The more you listen, the easier it is to pick out words you know and eventually even say them correctly without having to look at them.
> hanashikotoba or teineigo or most likely the mixture of both which is pretty odd.
Since that has been brought up I would like to ask for clarification on something since you seem to know the subject well.
I have guessed by myself from reading Japanese that these two forms are commonly mixed within sentences, but it depends whether the expression is... facing towards the other party, or internal.
For example, 「彼は来ると思います。」
And I think, 「彼が来るのはずっと待っていました。」
Is this correct?
Then, what did you mean by a mixture? Ending a sentence with ~masu one minute, and then plainly the next?
That would be weird in a conversation I guess, but I seem to remember seeing it in internet posts and such, perhaps to make a single sentence a bit more polite, often at the end of a post... I don't know.
u guys are amazing!! i know this topic was aimed straight to poster number 1 but i just seemed to learn soo much and its true when this person said that if you aren't dedicated then dont even try starting and that you'll need to try going to classes rather than thinking u can do this on your own cause i started out that way and after buying so many books, im back to stage1:( and i feel so sad about this. but after reading the post i have decided to take on a course for japanese lessons and will try again.. i guess i really love japanese but just dont have the will power to continue!! thanks so much guys!!
Maybe it's something like あなたはご存知と思うが, when it should be ＿＿＿様はご存知と思っております？
I can only write sentences in hanashikotoba, I'm hopeless at teineigo! I have to force myself to memorize set phrases like ご多忙中とは存じますが、お手数ですが真剣にご検討しておりますので、ご返答のほど宜しくお願いいたします。
And I don't even know if it's correct!
I just decided to try to learn some, just for fun and understanding a little of what was being said in anime, and ended up taking exams in it and I am going to study Japanese at university this autumn. I never had a teacher or any plan or anything, just bought some books(let's learn kanji is good) and watched a lot of anime and played games and tried to read some manga. I have spent two years doing so in my spare time and I can now understand most of a normal conversation and read simple texts like manga etc.
Short version, just go for it, spend time on it(don't believe you'll accomplish anything by studying 5 minutes every other week) and don't give up. You will pick it up eventually.
Watching anime and dramas in Japanese with English (or other) subtitles works really well... your brain subconsciously links what it's hearing with what it's reading.
>>45
It doesn't work well at all. You'll pick up some adjectives and such but it won't get you anywhere.
It helps in getting used to hearing the language but that's about it.