Japanese Learning Thread - Exchanging things they have learned with the tranime weeb language.

[Grub]

I should've specified group in a more biological sense rather than an organizational. It implies some kind of blood/gene/taxonomical grouping, like a family, tribe, ethnicity, race, or species (though it's also used in math and chemistry for families of numbers and groups in the periodic table).

Hmmm then I could see how 'Crimson Mages' might be a little bit too ambiguous then. 'The Crimson Magic Clan/Tribe' is kind of wordy and awkward but it does convey the meaning of the words better. But as far as the context of that particular story goes, would calling them 'The Crimson Mages' convey the meaning of what the group actually is just as well as 'Crimson magic clan' or would something be lost if you used the less awkward, easier to say in English version?

Anyway, don't use Google Translate as a learning tool. It will lead you astray so often and you have to already have a good idea of what the correct answer is in order to know when it's feeding you bullshit

I know. I put it into Google translate specifically because I knew it would be wrong. I wanted to see just how different it was going to be from what you told me.

If you must use some kind of automated stuff, the best is probably DeepSeek. ChatGPT if you're desperate. Though honestly, for names, especially fictional ones you should refer to a Japanese wiki, like the Pixiv Encyclopedia.

I tried using an automated, on screen one so I could emulate the 3ds version of Dragon Quest XI on my phone and it didn't really work very well. Well actually. It worked reasonably ok for dialog. I played through the intro section then compared it to the script from the official localization and it was a little off but it actually managed to keep most of the meaning intact. Nothing was completely wrong or anything like that. I did notice it would usually take one or two passes to get it right though. I had it set to update every few seconds and always the first translation was pretty much gibberish. The menus were kind of a disaster though. It just couldn't handle the formatting of the stuff on screen and the small individual words. It gave me some really weird shit for all the different menu options and kept trying to form sentences out of them. Still it was kind of impressive it worked as well as it did.

It kind of sucks though. I don't think that version of the game will ever be translated and learning Japanese just to play some videogames seems like probably not the best idea. I have always been kind of fascinated by Japanese and the Chinese languages though just because of how completely different they are to Latin based languages and how that makes some ideas that are easy describe in those languages difficult or impossible to describe in Latin languages and vice versa.

 

[Desu Mountain]

learning Japanese just to play some videogames seems like probably not the best idea.

Worked for me. Only regret is I didn't start when I was younger.

 

[HexFag]

I'm managing to learn kanji and vocab just fine but I feel as if Tae Kim isn't really doing the job for me when it comes to grammar. Did anybody use any alternative grammar guide other than Tae Kim?

 

[Bruce LaLiLuLeLo]

Does anybody have any tips for memorizing the letters. Some of the hiragana katakana have similar symbols but different pronunciations, it's fucking with me. I started learning two days ago so it's probably beginner problems but still.

 

[Desu Mountain]

I'm managing to learn kanji and vocab just fine but I feel as if Tae Kim isn't really doing the job for me when it comes to grammar. Did anybody use any alternative grammar guide other than Tae Kim?

Just do the JLPT Tango/Bunpro sentence decks with Anki.

Does anybody have any tips for memorizing the letters. Some of the hiragana katakana have similar symbols but different pronunciations, it's fucking with me. I started learning two days ago so it's probably beginner problems but still.

Fucking god these are funny. I'll just post them all.

 

[Safir]

Does anybody have any tips for memorizing the letters. Some of the hiragana katakana have similar symbols but different pronunciations, it's fucking with me. I started learning two days ago so it's probably beginner problems but still.

Download the android app com.solnus.android.Hiragana and use it for two days, 2 hours per day should be enough. (You already started, but for everyone else, it's ok to go in absolutely blind.) It's a quiz with four options. Don't bother deliberately memorizing anything, just go through the quiz and if you haven't seen or don't remember a character, pick whatever. Eventually you'll learn enough to make educated guesses, and by the end of the second day, you'll remember everything.

Then download and print out some tracing sheets and practice handwriting.

 

[HexFag]

Found a neat site to help with Japanese conjugation since I was having a hard time with it.

 

[GratsTheat783]

What's your opinion on the James Heisig method of learning Kanji? Basically, you create your own story for each radicals and come up with a story for what they mean when put together with other radicals. The pronounciation is to be learned seperately from the meaning.

 

[Desu Mountain]

What's your opinion on the James Heisig method of learning Kanji? Basically, you create your own story for each radicals and come up with a story for what they mean when put together with other radicals. The pronounciation is to be learned seperately from the meaning.

I won't say it doesn't work, but it is outdated. In the modern day with learning apps there are numerous methods of learning kanji that are far more painless, many of them being based on RTK.

I would recommend learning how to read first and only learn how to write later when you have a decent grasp of the language.

 

[HexFag]

@Desu Mountain do you have any beginner recommendations/tips for immersion? I was thinking of going through Yotsuba and playing some basic NES games that I've already played through just so I have some vague idea of what I'm doing. My only gripe with the NES games is that since they're all kana it's kind of a pain in the ass to read.

Also any tips on getting better at reading katakana faster or does it just kind of come with time?

 

[Desu Mountain]

@Desu Mountain do you have any beginner recommendations/tips for immersion? I was thinking of going through Yotsuba and playing some basic NES games that I've already played through just so I have some vague idea of what I'm doing. My only gripe with the NES games is that since they're all kana it's kind of a pain in the ass to read.

Also any tips on getting better at reading katakana faster or does it just kind of come with time?

Tanoshii Muumin Ikka is a decently beginner-friendly anime. Otherwise I'd recommend focusing on material you're interested in. One thing to keep in mind is that certain genres have a set of words in common, and individual authors have their own set of words they like to use. So if you stick to one genre for a long time (eg. Fantasy) you are going to have an easier time since after you get by the initial bombardment of genre-specific words (swords, armor, monarchy, etc) you can mostly just enjoy the material, whereas if you switch to another genre too quickly (like science-fiction), you will suddenly be bombarded by a whole new set of words you have never seen before (rocketry, orbital mechanics, quantum, etc) and hardly encounter the old words at all and make your effort in learning the old words somewhat useless.

And if you stick to just one author it gets even easier, since if that author uses some kind of unusual words or kanji he is likely to use it repeatedly and you don't have to worry about learning a word you will rarely see.

Of course, once your fundamentals are good it will be time to start genre-hopping so that you can broaden your vocabulary, but in the beginning it will save you a lot of pain if you stick to one genre and, if possible, one author. Be warned that when you first hop to a new genre the transition is going to be painful, since because of all the new words you are going to go from mostly understanding what you're reading to hardly understanding anything at all, and you're pretty much just going to have to suck it up and grind the new words.

Katakana is a pain in the ass and basically the final boss of speed-reading. The only real solution is to find works written largely in katakana (ancient computer games or old government documents) or play games with lots of talking computers or talking animals (computer/animal speech is often written in katakana). I think there might be a chrome extension somewhere that replaces hiragana with katakana. Still, I'd suggest waiting with this until you have a decent reading-speed with kanji and hiragana, since those are by far the text you will read the most.

 

[HexFag]

@Desu Mountain You happen to know where I can find high quality manga raws? I've started reading Takagi-san in Japanese and while some of the kanji is pretty readable, some times you end up in situations where the kanji is pretty damn hard to read, even when zoomed in (Even nyaa doesn't have super high quality raws, which I guess would make sense as it's an English focused website). Is this simply a skill issue with early Japanese learning where I'll just kind of figure out by context clues what kanji I should be reading or is it just a case of poor quality raws?

Spoiler: An Example of my scans

I don't think I would've figured out that said 驚 unless I had a vocab guide I yoinked from the Takagi-san read together page off WaniKani.

Also I'm not 100% certain if my skill at reading as improved that much, but honestly Chapters 5 and 6 have become way way easier to read compared to the first 4. I don't think I can finish a full chapter without stopping to parse out a sentence yet, especially Nishikata's monologues or the longer sentences, but it's going waay smoother than beforehand.

Katakana is a pain in the ass and basically the final boss of speed-reading. The only real solution is to find works written largely in katakana (ancient computer games or old government documents) or play games with lots of talking computers or talking animals (computer/animal speech is often written in katakana). I think there might be a chrome extension somewhere that replaces hiragana with katakana. Still, I'd suggest waiting with this until you have a decent reading-speed with kanji and hiragana, since those are by far the text you will read the most.

Also I found a core 10k anki deck for katakana reading which has notably helped my katakana reading. It's ridiculously tedious but it does work.

 

[Desu Mountain]

You happen to know where I can find high quality manga raws?

Afraid not. Those are being hoarded, possibly to avoid getting into legal trouble. Japan's copyright laws have become extremely draconian over the past decade and people caught uploading pirated manga can be imprisoned for up to 10 years and even have to do hard labor. The thing that pisses me off the most is that a lot of high-quality raws have been deleted from nyaa. I have raws on my computer that I got from there that can no longer be found. If you do find a high quality rip of something make sure to download it quick even if you have no intention of reading it right now, because if you don't you might just find that you can no longer find it in the future.

You will eventually get good enough that you can work with shitty raws, but that doesn't change the fact that the raws are in fact shitty. A lot of the time your only option will be unsorted watermarked trash from dlraws.

 

[Retarded Weeb]

I've started reading Takagi-san in Japanese and while some of the kanji is pretty readable, some times you end up in situations where the kanji is pretty damn hard to read, even when zoomed in (Even nyaa doesn't have super high quality raws, which I guess would make sense as it's an English focused website). Is this simply a skill issue with early Japanese learning where I'll just kind of figure out by context clues what kanji I should be reading or is it just a case of poor quality raws?

Honestly, that doesn't seem particularly bad. The text is a little fuzzy, but I don't see how you could misrecognize 驚かせる for anything else. Even if you don't know the word, you can still read the おどろ next to it to look it up. At worst you think it's おとろく at first before trying おどろく.

You haven't experienced truly poor quality scans until you've read through the only raw scans that exist for the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's manga. Any furigana is practically illegible.

 

[HexFag]

Afraid not. Those are being hoarded, possibly to avoid getting into legal trouble. Japan's copyright laws have become extremely draconian over the past decade and people caught uploading pirated manga can be imprisoned for up to 10 years and even have to do hard labor. The thing that pisses me off the most is that a lot of high-quality raws have been deleted from nyaa. I have raws on my computer that I got from there that can no longer be found. If you do find a high quality rip of something make sure to download it quick even if you have no intention of reading it right now, because if you don't you might just find that you can no longer find it in the future.

You will eventually get good enough that you can work with shitty raws, but that doesn't change the fact that the raws are in fact shitty. A lot of the time your only option will be unsorted watermarked trash from dlraws.

Yeah even most private trackers for Anime/Manga are sorely lacking raws unfortunately. I'll just have to make do. The only high quality raw release I've ever seen was for Dragon Ball but that's because the guys at [SoM] are so hyperautistic that they went out of their way to color correct the full manga and release the full thing at 600dpi. It's like 50 gigs in total. We really need more dedicated raw manga autists like those guys.

It also doesn't help that raw uploaders in general put the raws into zip files with separate images as opposed to the superior CBZ file format, which I can just load into a comic reader.

Honestly, that doesn't seem particularly bad. The text is a little fuzzy, but I don't see how you could misrecognize 驚かせる for anything else. Even if you don't know the word, you can still read the おどろ next to it to look it up. At worst you think it's おとろく at first before trying おどろく.

You haven't experienced truly poor quality scans until you've read through the only raw scans that exist for the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's manga. Any furigana is practically illegible.
View attachment 7653783

Yeah my eyesight isn't the best and I already have to zoom in like a maniac when reading on a first pass. The furigana was a bit hard to read and so I decided to come here to ask if there's anything better. I guess it's one of those things where I just have to nut up and get used to reading the actual bigger kanji instead of relying on the furigana for kanji I don't particularly know well yet. Kudos on reading those scans though if you did, my eyes would be killing me.