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

[ToroidalBoat]

Just learn mandarin and purposely pronounce kanji incorrectly

wǒ bù shuō huà rì yǔ.
我不说话日语。



(One of the biggest flaws of Japanese is the kanji with the multiple readings. The Japanese can understand spoken Japanese, so why didn't the Japanese have 日本語 written in kana with spaces to differentiate the words? Vietnam and the Koreas managed to ditch 漢字.)

 

[TenMilesWide]

wǒ bù shuō huà rì yǔ.
我不说话日语。



(One of the biggest flaws of Japanese is the kanji with the multiple readings. The Japanese can understand spoken Japanese, so why didn't the Japanese have 日本語 written in kana with spaces to differentiate the words? Vietnam and the Koreas managed to ditch 漢字.)

I've heard it said that the Nip's inherent love for poetic language and cutesy homophony is to blame. They actually enjoy having several words that sound the same and can only be differentiated by context or kanji choice.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

nihongo wa totemo muzukashi yo

There's the hiragana, katakana, the aforementioned kanji, 3 levels of formality (casual, normal, and keigo), and of course all the honorifics. And it seems there's only one right way to speak in a given situation. Muzukashi may be somewhat of an understatement.

anime

small-minded: learning Japanese just to watch animu

normal brain: just going with English subtitles and dubs

galaxy brain: learning español to watch Spanish subs and dubs (anime is big in Latin America)

They actually enjoy having several words that sound the same and can only be differentiated by context or kanji choice.

IIRC, a Japanese person claimed that only foreigners don't like kanji.

 

[Geddy Lee's Fee and See]

Spoiler: Good tips on getting started on your path to understand Japanese

You can (Not) Learn Japanese

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

ironically enough I took jp in high school before "learn japanese because weeb" was a thing, I was directionless and figured "tech and or business I guess?"
I tuned out by the end of the first year, but it was enough for me to learn hirigana and katakana.
a year and a half later I started weebing hard so it was a nice leg-up, over the decades since then I've osmosed enough moonspeak from cartoons that I've been pretty successful with communicating with Japanese and can mostly keep up with kids' shows
was able to read the old Comic Bon Bon comics of Rockman since they have the idiot notes next to the kanji, I can read like, a dozen or two kanji

one time SNK complimented my language skills
I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or not when the VICTOLY guys think I am good word guy

big thing I've learned about normal conversational Japanese is that it's fucking retardedly vague because you should yamato damashii up the meaning

 

[Alex Hogendorp]

Million?

Nope. 500 Trillion.

Is this a thread for people who want to get bullied and laughed at? I've never seen a well adjusted person want to learn Japanese. It's always the weirdest losers obsessed with anime.


It's very unlikely you got fluent in English from 1 book and a dictionary. Half the words in MTG books aren't even real words.

Yes. It is a thread for people to get bullied and laughed at. That is if they speak like a weeb of course. Which is all of Asia and California.

 

[Justtocheck]

Also, Kanji looks like what they're meant to represent. That's easy. Once you apply that, it shouldn't be that hard to keep them in mind.

人 is person, 川 is river,　田　is rice field. Not too hard, right? Now, without looking it up, tell me what this word means. It's a common word.

観光客

It means tourist

The shapes are all there, it clearly looks like what it means by the shapes.

 

[Alex Hogendorp]

人 is person, 川 is river,　田　is rice field. Not too hard, right? Now, without looking it up, tell me what this word means. It's a common word.

観光客

It means tourist

The shapes are all there, it clearly looks like what it means by the shapes.

Well. Tourist looks like this.

When I think of a tourist. I think of a sun setting in the city.

 

[Justtocheck]

When I think of a tourist. I think of a sun setting in the city.

I'm not going to spoil your language journey, because you seem to be having fun with it and that's all that matters. I would just advise against following that advice that I think you got when you read "remembering the Kanji" about associations. You do you, man.

 

[Hassou Tobi]

I'm consigned to the fact I will never read anything without furigana. Not because I'm hung up on the pronunciation (like with English, most of the words I read I don't know how to pronounce), but because looking up kanji is TORTURE. Literal fucking torture.

I learned English from a Magic: the Gathering novel, started looking up every second word ("crevice"? what's that?) IN A PAPER DICTIONARY and finished fluent.

I'm sorry, Meteru, I'm going to space hell, someone else will have to shoot the red screw and destroy globohomo.

Just download wanikani. Sounds gay but I went from struggling with kanji to knowing 1000+ because of that stupid app.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

In animu, foreign characters usually fluently speak Japanese (played IRL by Japanese VAs) and casually remark that "oh I learned Japanese from so-and-so or such-and-such".

 

[Kari Kamiya]

My grasp on the language is barely even preschool level let's be fair here, so I just want some confirmation/advice on if the name-reading here is correct (because the name-meaning is crucial) and the kanji is not actually supposed to be read as a Chinese character. I have a fictional Japanese character with a given name "Naomi" (a normal Japanese name), and she has an affinity to water. I happened to come across "nao" during one of my searches on Jisho.org and saw one of its readings means "healing" and went "Oh, that's neat", so I figured her name could stand for "healing water". So that's why I want to make sure this is actually okay and not a weird butchery of just putting kanji together.

治水

Meanwhile this isn't exactly language-related, but I would like a really good explanation on Japanese music and their increasing adoption of Western-styled music even when they still sing typical Japanese notes. I honestly believe this is a thing, I just can't pinpoint exactly what it is since I'm not a music major and the like. Closest I got to better understanding this was this video on this chord progression that is common in Japanese music.

 

[Gan Ying]

So that's why I want to make sure this is actually okay and not a weird butchery of just putting kanji together.

治水

It's a bit of a weird butchery I think. I will say though that I've met a fair amount of people, particularly of the younger generation, that have weird, unique combinations not unlike that. Kanshudo isn't perfect but the only reading I get for 治水 is "chisui"

 

[Kari Kamiya]

It's a bit of a weird butchery I think. I will say though that I've met a fair amount of people, particularly of the younger generation, that have weird, unique combinations not unlike that. Kanshudo isn't perfect but the only reading I get for 治水 is "chisui"

Given the character's a second-gen Japanese-American, I figured it wouldn't have been out-of-place if it was written as such. Darn. I'm too attached to "Naomi", so perhaps I should just replace it with the typical "美" for a "healing beauty" read since she's portrayed as being pretty anyway. Now I haven't given her a family name yet, so I'll make sure "water" is still included for her name.

Although that is interesting to hear that even in Japan they're now giving "special snowflake" names to kids. Light Yagami ruined an entire generation, I swear.

 

[gayops]

Elder gaijin teaching budding gaijin Japanese will always be the funniest shit, it's self-generating cringe content for me.

 

[sadrefrigerator]

I've said this before, but if you want to learn Japanese (or any language for that matter), do it the right way and find an inperson class near you if you have one, Italki if you don't. Duolingo, and most language learning apps are garbage, especially for Japanese since it is a very grammatically complex language. More useful apps are catered towards those studying for jlp tests, and are useless without a solid foundation. Most people complain about learning kanji, but theres countless grammar patterns you learn nonstop after the basic hiragana. Kanji and vocab are just memorization, but grammar can get complicated and requires critical thinking unless you are fluent.

Ah, Japanese, the language that requires you to know two phonetic alphabets and Chinese letters with different and inconsistent readings and also to know English because the NIHONJIN can't get enough of their gairaigo.

It's truly a language.

Just learn mandarin and purposely pronounce kanji incorrectly

Most kanji have atleast 2 readings. One of the readings is derived from the chinese reading, so you would be pronouncing it correctly if you used the chinese reading.

I've never seen a well adjusted person want to learn Japanese. It's always the weirdest losers obsessed with anime.

On the contrary, I've never seen anyone who didn't have their shit together actually reach a level of proficiency in learning any language. No matter what people say, you'll never learn a language by playing phone games. You'll memorize a few phrases and words at most, but it is at the core a game, and the user is directionless. Learning a language requires you to have a level of self discipline. It requires you to undergo a gradeschool style of studying most people have left in the past or never learned in the first place. It is the opposite of the instant gratification tiktok culture that is popular amongst children and adults. In college, Japanese was the only class I took that had a session 5 days a week and required active participation throughout the entire hour. Looking back, I probably would have had a much unhealthier schedule if I wasn't forced to go to class everyday.

 

[水族館]

If anyone is serious about pursuing it, there are some great, and free, online resources. To start I recommend getting both kana firmly memorized. I like Real Kana because you can practice in a variety of fonts which genuinely helps your ability to read some of the characters. After that, I worked a bit with Tae Kim's guide and downloaded Anki and a deck that covers vocabulary and kanji for each level of the JLPT.

If you're willing to buy books, obviously there are even more options. I've personally made it a goal to go for the passing the test so I would also recommend the Nihongo Sou-Matome series and the Shinkanzen series. Ask Publishing has a lot of great extra resources if you get through some of the books and want to still do review or try a different approach should the first one not be working. I've tried to include links to everything so people can check it out. 頑張ってね



https://www.realkana.com/

https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/

https://apps.ankiweb.net/

https://github.com/coolmule0/JLPT-N5-N1-Japanese-Vocabulary-Anki

https://www.amazon.com/SO-MATOME-VOCABULARY-LISTENING-Japanese-Vietnamese/dp/486639076X

 

[HyperboreanRightsActivist]

so you would be pronouncing it correctly if you used the chinese reading

Lolno. Maybe if you were speaking Early Middle Chinese.

 

[Safir]

if you have an iOS device then Shirabe Jisho makes it easy(er) to look up kanji because you can draw symbols to look them up, or enter in what radicals it has and then choose from a list. i recommend

I have Android 9. Kanji Study is a very good app but kanji identification is still a pain, I have to either pick radicals from a massive list or switch to Google Japanese Handwriting Input (which is very good at character recognition) then switch back when I'm done.

IBus on Linux has a terrible setup, too (it defaults to "direct input", which is just Latin, and needs to be switched to Hiragana through the mouse menu in the tray) and conflicts with the Cyrillic keyboard layout option.

I've been enjoying dicking around with various online dictionaries that let you write in kanji to look up, just get good at copying the moonrunes you're reading onto another screen by hand, ezpz.

This means either dicking around on a phone, or drawing with the mouse, or getting a mini-tablet for specifically kanji input.

Plus what I want to read is usually a paper book. So a paper book, a phone or tablet for input, and a paper notebook or computer for output. If I find a character on the phone, I have no good way to transfer it to the PC. All this creates what techbros call "friction": I have to make a setup and do and song and dance to enter Japanese Learning Mode.

I know these are lame excuses, but I'm old, I have neither the time nor the motivation to master a language. I can still smuggle a $2000 pen and struggle through a chapter of 銀河鉄道９９９on a good day.

It's very unlikely you got fluent in English from 1 book and a dictionary. Half the words in MTG books aren't even real words.

I just have a high IQ (81) and it was a good book. I even teared up a little when Vuel returned home*. As for not real words -- "evincar", "flowstone", pretty much it. Fantasy frequenly has "sigil" and "grimoire" which are real words but weren't in any dictionary I had at the time.

* a recurring villain, mutant ex-governor of Limbo, got disassembled into atoms by the new governor, a cannibal vampire nigger, just as Limbo was merging with the primary world of the setting, all according to keikaku of Mecha-Satan, an over-9000-year-old coofer incel still salty about getting dumped by his thot ex. I miss this kind of epic insanity, even anime is low on it these days.

Edit: was looking for my taxes and found my Cambridge FCE results from 2003. Cambridge FCE alleges to reflect a 16-year-old native Briton's level of language mastery. Above-Excellent in everything except Speaking, which is barely above Borderline, total grade A (me gud). Nemesis was released in February 2000. Not quite proof of chud ownership but an almond activator at least.
It's been 21 years and I still can't speak English aloud worth shit. Hilariously I can whisper in English, but whenever I try to speak aloud, my brain goes into 100% CPU load and I forget what I was going to say next. Lel funneh speach inpaddimant tard brain.

 

[herefortheactualthreads]

Even their own TV programs come with subtitles, how is it possible that there aren't any?

i am talking about english subtitles when they touch grass lol