Poll of the Day > Any native english speakers here ever learn Japanese?

(+) Yeah! (+)

If so, how long did it take you? What is your level of proficiency? What methods did you use?
What would you recommended to someone that is just starting out?
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Learn English first
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It's very relative, but most things suggest you can reach basic conversational japanese in 6 months if you knuckle down.
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No but I speak fluent hentai.

I'm in the midst of learning it right now, actually. Started back in February. I can hold very simple conversations now, but I'm still a long ways off from true fluency. In terms of characters, I know ~250 kanji, which is roughly a tenth of the common usage characters.

My advice:
-Your very first purchase should be a kana guide and your first exercise should be to memorize all of them, including the proper stroke order. Hiragana first, then katakana next (92 characters total). These are the building blocks of the entire Japanese language (akin to the Western alphabet) and you use them constantly (Hiragana especially).

-Figure out whether you want to speak Japanese, read Japanese, write Japanese, or all of the above, because they all require slightly different skillsets. You can be great at written Japanese and hopeless at conducting an actual conversation and vice versa.

-Flash cards are a godsend for learning Kanji. Don't bother wasting money on buying a pre-made set; learn the characters and make your own. Way cheaper and it helps with memorization.

-Use some form of audial learning as well (I use Rosetta Stone and a couple of other programs) - some parts of Japanese pronunciation are very difficult to describe without hearing them (lengthening vowels, the tendencies for "u" sounds to be minimized, etc.)

-Try and find someone who knows Japanese. Even if they won't teach/tutor you, you can still use them to figure out if you're saying something you shouldn't be (appropriate level of formality, correct gendering, etc.)

-On that note, Japanese is a highly gendered language. There are some things that men say that women never do and vice versa (for instance, men use the phrase "boku" to refer to themselves in Japanese, while women use "atashi"; both can use the slightly more formal "watashi"). Be aware of that, because it can get you into trouble - I used to attend a cooking class with some Japanese women, who would teach me bits and phrases. Occasionally I'd repeat one of them to a friend of mine who spoke Japanese, eliciting a chuckle and a comment along the lines of "You've been talking with your girlfriends again, haven't you?" - his code for telling me I was speaking like a woman, at which point I'd have to ask him how to say the phrase like a man would. Random aside - I saw an old samurai movie a month ago (can't remember the name) that very clearly had a female translator, because the gruff, hyper-masculine samurai protagonist was talking (in Japanese) like the most flamboyant gay guy you've ever heard. It was an absolute riot.

-Similarly, formality is very important in Japanese. There's sometimes literally dozens of ways to say the same thing, depending on how formal you want to be. Always err on the side of politeness, but learn the various forms so you don't come off like a complete stiff.
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darkknight109 posted...

I'm in the midst of learning it right now, actually. Started back in February. I can hold very simple conversations now, but I'm still a long ways off from true fluency. In terms of characters, I know ~250 kanji, which is roughly a tenth of the common usage characters.

My advice:
-Your very first purchase should be a kana guide and your first exercise should be to memorize all of them, including the proper stroke order. Hiragana first, then katakana next (92 characters total). These are the building blocks of the entire Japanese language (akin to the Western alphabet) and you use them constantly (Hiragana especially).

-Figure out whether you want to speak Japanese, read Japanese, write Japanese, or all of the above, because they all require slightly different skillsets. You can be great at written Japanese and hopeless at conducting an actual conversation and vice versa.

-Flash cards are a godsend for learning Kanji. Don't bother wasting money on buying a pre-made set; learn the characters and make your own. Way cheaper and it helps with memorization.

-Use some form of audial learning as well (I use Rosetta Stone and a couple of other programs) - some parts of Japanese pronunciation are very difficult to describe without hearing them (lengthening vowels, the tendencies for "u" sounds to be minimized, etc.)

-Try and find someone who knows Japanese. Even if they won't teach/tutor you, you can still use them to figure out if you're saying something you shouldn't be (appropriate level of formality, correct gendering, etc.)

-On that note, Japanese is a highly gendered language. There are some things that men say that women never do and vice versa (for instance, men use the phrase "boku" to refer to themselves in Japanese, while women use "atashi"; both can use the slightly more formal "watashi"). Be aware of that, because it can get you into trouble - I used to attend a cooking class with some Japanese women, who would teach me bits and phrases. Occasionally I'd repeat one of them to a friend of mine who spoke Japanese, eliciting a chuckle and a comment along the lines of "You've been talking with your girlfriends again, haven't you?" - his code for telling me I was speaking like a woman, at which point I'd have to ask him how to say the phrase like a man would. Random aside - I saw an old samurai movie a month ago (can't remember the name) that very clearly had a female translator, because the gruff, hyper-masculine samurai protagonist was talking (in Japanese) like the most flamboyant gay guy you've ever heard. It was an absolute riot.

-Similarly, formality is very important in Japanese. There's sometimes literally dozens of ways to say the same thing, depending on how formal you want to be. Always err on the side of politeness, but learn the various forms so you don't come off like a complete stiff.

I've started with Hiragana and it's slow going.. Kanji looks scary as hell. Seems to me that they are essentially emoji's, but other than memorization, I can't find a logical way to interpret the characters that I can recognize. Guess this is why Japanese students study in a repetitive manner for years!
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Peterass posted...

I've started with Hiragana and it's slow going..

A lot of good kana guides also have mnemonics to help you remember them (like hiragana "shi" looking like a SHIeld, for instance). That helps, but a lot of it is just brute force memorization at that point. I used to take them one set of five at a time and just carry a notebook with me and write them down over and over whenever I was waiting for something (I live on an island, so I spend a lot of time waiting for or riding on ferries, which makes for a perfect practice opportunity). As soon as I felt comfortable with one set, I'd add in another. I would guess it took me about a month of off-and-on practice to completely memorize both kana sets (probably could have done it in less if I'd really knuckled down on it).

Peterass posted...

Kanji looks scary as hell. Seems to me that they are essentially emoji's, but other than memorization, I can't find a logical way to interpret the characters that I can recognize.

It's not as intimidating as it first appears. Learn the simple ones first, like the days of the week - that will give you sun/moon (nichi and getsu) and the five elements (kai, sui, moku, kin, and do - respectively fire, water, wood, gold, and earth) - and slowly work your way up (using a grade syllabus helps). A lot of the time more complex kanji are mostly just amalgamations of more simple kanji put together, or will contain radicals (parts, basically) of other kanji you've learned before.
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I learned through 201 in college. I majored in Spanish and minored in Portuguese, so I already had language background, the syllables in Spanish and Japanese are similar, and I thought it would be a fun language to learn. I love the Japanese spoken language, but the written language is just complete garbage. Anyway, I remember almost no kanji, but my spoken and listening are still intermediate level.
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For kanji, I actually do recommend a paid website: Wanikani. It basically game-ifies kanji learning by giving you reviews of learned kanji at regular intervals based on how well you've been proven to remember them. The more times you get it right in a row, the longer it will be until the next review, until eventually it's convinced you've burned it into your mind. Every level teaches the radicals that make up the kanji, the kanji themselves, and a bunch of vocabulary words in which that kanji is used.

If you do sign up, make sure you google a 50% off coupon code. If you sign up with it you get 50% off for life.

This website is also really great for grammar: http://www.guidetojapanese.org
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Oh, oh, and there's also a mobile app called HelloTalk which matches you with native speakers who want to learn your language, so you can have back and forth conversations and learn from eachother. I haven't used it much at all yet but I've heard great things and the idea is excellent at least.
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Oui
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Gamechamp3k posted...

For kanji, I actually do recommend a paid website: Wanikani. It basically game-ifies kanji learning by giving you reviews of learned kanji at regular intervals based on how well you've been proven to remember them. The more times you get it right in a row, the longer it will be until the next review, until eventually it's convinced you've burned it into your mind. Every level teaches the radicals that make up the kanji, the kanji themselves, and a bunch of vocabulary words in which that kanji is used.

If you do sign up, make sure you google a 50% off coupon code. If you sign up with it you get 50% off for life.

This website is also really great for grammar: http://www.guidetojapanese.org

So... when do you start paying for this? I ask, because it sounded interesting so I signed up and it has yet to ask me for payment.
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