日本語を勉強しよう! Let's Learn Japanese! - Everything and anything that can help with learning Japanese language

not william stenchever said:
Silly gaijin, the most effective way to get the nipponese to understand what you are saying is through nuclear punctuation.
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Indeed. I was only able to communicate with Americans after I dropped the English textbooks and attacked their navy fleet.

Anyway, it's been a while since I started to study Japanese but my grammar comprehension and vocabulary is shoddy. Maybe because I keep relying on English translation of vocabulary but how TF am I going to check the proper context if I ain't fluent enough to check the Japanese definition of the word or expression?
 
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SentinentCloud said:
how do i speak anime
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If you're a weeb, chances are you already can.

Celestial Peace said:
How long have you been studying?
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I haven't really been studying officially. As a long time weeb (think from ~2008 to this day), I naturally acquired some vocabulary. Around 2019 I discovered Japanese webnovels, tried translating a chapter I wanted to read and realized that I could understand more than I thought I would. I started translating regularly, cross checking words I didn't know, looking up idioms/grammar that came up, looking up word descriptions and I accumulated knowledge from there. I'm still a fantl to this day and try to read novels in Japanese. I think it's absolutely fine even if you need a dictionary for your japanese dictionary. It helpa with gaining vocabulary.
 
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For reading, I have been buying bulk lots of manga/books made for kids in Japanese (Ebay usually has them, as does sites like CDJapan), or there are plenty of sites that offer the raw scans for free. Yotsuba! is a good one, as is Dragonball. They have the hiragana above the kanji, making it easier to read, and also helping with remembering what each kanji means. And the stories are fun/easy to follow, Yotsuba! is especially cute at times.
Moving up the ranks of manga into older teen stuff and novels helps with fully learning kanji, as they no longer have the hiragana alongside (unless it's some weird, obscure kanji combo).
 
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The fascinating thing about Japanese is Hiragana is a perfectly fine alphabet, yet the locals have a separate alphabet for all the foreign loanwords they need (because yamato tribe supremacy) and a separate alphabet they basically stole from the Chinese that even 2/3rds of the locals only kind of understand.
If you do want a crash course in the language though I can't recommend getting into Light Novels enough.
 
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Ms. Dia Gnosis said:
If you're a weeb, chances are you already can.


I haven't really been studying officially. As a long time weeb (think from ~2008 to this day), I naturally acquired some vocabulary. Around 2019 I discovered Japanese webnovels, tried translating a chapter I wanted to read and realized that I could understand more than I thought I would. I started translating regularly, cross checking words I didn't know, looking up idioms/grammar that came up, looking up word descriptions and I accumulated knowledge from there. I'm still a fantl to this day and try to read novels in Japanese. I think it's absolutely fine even if you need a dictionary for your japanese dictionary. It helpa with gaining vocabulary.
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Cool. I've been studying for four years and I'm still lacking. Well, I've been studying through Kumon and I don't know how Kumon method is evaluated for learning Japanese.
SentinentCloud said:
nice

now how do i say that but instead of sounding japanese i sound like a mexican dude trying to sound japanese?
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Just talk to these Nigerian host club staff in Kabukicho and they'll show you how it's done.
 
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Light novels are great. It's even better when you read LNs and then listen to the audiobook after for background listening.

I think of katakana like upper case letters. We have a whole separate form of our alphabet for shits and giggles too. Katakana is often used to show emphasis like italicized letters do. Also to portray strong accents in speech.
 
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I have worked as a language teacher in 3 languages, and am conversationally fluent in Japanese. One tactic I recommend is keeping a daily journal in Japanese.

Most people are much better at receptive skills in a language (listening, reading) than they are producing (writing, speaking). Keeping a journal helps close that gap. You should double-check the grammar, keep a list of new or difficult vocab, and practice reading the journal entry aloud so that you are confident speaking.

You’ll never quite know how much you DON’T know, until you try to produce the language.

Mao Hao Hao said:
For reading, I have been buying bulk lots of manga/books made for kids in Japanese (Ebay usually has them, as does sites like CDJapan), or there are plenty of sites that offer the raw scans for free. Yotsuba! is a good one, as is Dragonball. They have the hiragana above the kanji, making it easier to read, and also helping with remembering what each kanji means. And the stories are fun/easy to follow, Yotsuba! is especially cute at times.
Moving up the ranks of manga into older teen stuff and novels helps with fully learning kanji, as they no longer have the hiragana alongside (unless it's some weird, obscure kanji combo).
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This is the best advice for reading. Nothing really beats actual native language publications and the sooner you can get into them, the better.
 
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残念。 said:
But yeah flash cards along with goofy stories and what not work.
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When goofy stories don't work for me, bitching to my best friends about how retarded something is and how frustrated I am by it works for me.
Got me a pilot's license, its helped me with some kanji.

Ms. Dia Gnosis said:
If you're a weeb, chances are you already can.
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This actually fucked me up. Watched a Chinese anime in the last year and the names were completely incomprehensible to me. Its kinda interesting how a life time of slight exposure makes something sound familiar even if you have really no idea what it means.

Also consider adding Wanikani to your list of apps. You do have to pay for it after level three, but I think they've got one of the more solid SRS and Kanji Learning systems out there if you're like me and don't want to fuck with Anki.
 
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One of the most asked details about Japanese grammar is the difference between は and が particles. Which are kinda blurry as it is the case with most grammar points explained in English.

Same goes for の中に and で、まま and ながら、から and ので and other examples.
 
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Celestial Peace said:
One of the most asked details about Japanese grammar is the difference between は and が particles. Which are kinda blurry as it is the case with most grammar points explained in English
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Isn't は just the topic marker where as が is the subject marker. From my understanding all sentences technically have a が where as once you establish the topic of a sentence or conversation you don't need to keep reusing は
 
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Celestial Peace said:
One of the most asked details about Japanese grammar is the difference between は and が particles. Which are kinda blurry as it is the case with most grammar points explained in English.

Same goes for の中に and で、まま and ながら、から and ので and other examples.
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I did add an article about the difference between は and が to the OP.

I'm a bit confused about what's hard to understand with the rest. Do you have examples?

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I do like wanikani actually and used it for a bit. I'll add it to the OP.
 
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