Thyndd

Opposite, huh? So I guess that would be a more traditional approach with textbooks for learning grammar and memorizing kanji along with their readings in the order japanese natives do? I admit that there are some points about AJATT and any non traditional method really that sound kinda dubious, but there are people who report plenty of progress following it. Of course that doesn't necessarily mean it's the most efficient, but it's not like I could find any research on the topic, so whatever. Plus, if you stop to think about why AJATT could work well (and read the motivations behind it in its official website) it actually starts to make a whole lot of hypothetical sense. Anyway, I'll be testing this in the future, and we'll see how it goes. The main reason I chose this method is actually the fact that I think I can stick with it and be consistent, which in the end is the only real key to learning a new language. As I said, I'd rather kill myself than read textbooks with a lot of overly simplistic grammar out of context, or learning kanji for words I don't even know yet along with 5+ readings that don't mean shit to me. I know I would give up, because I did in the past. So even if it technically wasn't the most time efficient method, it's probably still the better method for me.

*raughs*

Yeah, I'm planning on using VNs as a resource for getting my sentences In fact I've been reading VNs in Japanese for a while now, the problem is, while I do try to memorize the vocab and stuff, my focus is more on understanding what it says and moving onto the next sentence. That's mainly because I chose VNs way beyond my level, so the sentences couldn't be considered comprehensible input at all. If anything, comprehensible for Saint Google and several dictionaries and grammar books

And I'm leaving this post behind for the record, so that if I were to shamefully give up in the future you can humiliate me and rub it in my face to your heart's content. Please do if I fail. Starting from today, I'm gonna be putting a very considerable amount of time and effort into learning moonspeak to a level where I can stop learning it deliberately and just progress as I use the language. So, where's my current level at? Hard to say exactly, but let's see. I have a pretty comprehensive grammatical understanding of the language, but it's more on the linguistics side rather than the practical side. Not completely useless, since at least I won't have to beat my head against the wall trying to figure out how things work, but yeah. My active vocab is limited to the most basic day to day conversations. I know how to write the kanas and I should be able to at least recognize around 200 kanji with their meaning and hopefully some sample words. To sum it up, whilst I'm not starting from absolute zero, it's definitely still an early beginner level. So, what's gonna be my approach? Something that hopefully won't drive me to commit suicide, and the closest thing I've found to that that sounds like it could actually work, is the AJATT method, which is supposed to be an immersion based approach. You can read more about it on its website if you google it, but very briefly this is what it says: -First of all start off with Remembering the Kanji and learn all 2046 kanji and their meanings, without bothering with their readings. Use a SRS program like Anki to help you along the process. -Do not learn vocab. Learn full sentences in context instead. And not any sentences, but only those that could be considered "comprehensible input". That is, sentences where all you're lacking is one piece of vocab or grammar. Avoid sentences where you'd have to look up everything. Create Anki cards for those sentences, and at the beginning attach an English translation on the back, but don't go out of your way to try to memorize the translation: just focus on getting the meaning right and use the translation to check your understanding. Oh yeah, and the sentences won't have furigana, so you only know the flashcard if you are able to read it out loud, write it, and understand it. -As you get better you'll switch to 100% Japanese flashcards, describing every word in Japanese. -All this should be accompanied by frequent exposure to the language. Active exposure when possible. That means for example trying to listen carefully to movies and anime without subtitles and picking up on as much info as you can. And that's it. No magic involved, it just makes sense that it has to work if you are consistent. And with that said, I have some odd hundreds of kanji to learn, so I'll see you guys within 3 or 4 months, which is what I expect it to take me if I don't neglect my study. Oh yeah, and in case someone got motivated while reading this, feel free to join in. The more, the merrier. It'd be by no means to be taken as a competition, but it's true that turning it into a group activity would have its benefits. It's much less likely to give up on something when you're doing it together with other people, that's for sure.

What can I say, he he. I'd prefer them alive and in one piece Please don't ban me Dergonu-sama

Oh yeah, I didn't mention Basque now that I think about it, but I love it and have read my fair share of grammar books and papers about it It has way too many amazing features to go unnoticed. Morphosyntactically, it's one of the few ergative-absolutive languages in Europe; it features polypersonal agreement which is just the coolest thing ever and something you really need to move far from home to find (the Caucasus for example, look at Georgian); it also features surdéclinaison... a french term for inflectional morphology being used derivationally and recursively (e.g Bilbo-ra-ko bidea / Bilbao-ALL-GEN.LOC / The road to Bilbao), and a lot of other very cool features that I could keep talking on and on... It's beautiful, truly! As for the learning difficulty... it's just like any other language, really. Sure, it's not a indo-european language and if you've never left the family before it's gonna take some time to get used to it. The fact that every baby in every country in the world learns how to speak in the same amount of time on average, means that there's no "harder language". Just a matter of familiarity I mean, the "it sounds like they are angry" thing can be heard about any language people are not used to. I hear that all the time about Chinese and Arabic from people around me, for example. There's also the stereotypes and the contexts people often hear that language being used. To me, German sounds lovely, and I don't even frequently read german literature nor I'm particularly fond of any german band or anything. There you have it, my favorite butchered German in Anime. Just out of curiosity, how well can you understand what she's singing without looking at the lyrics?

I'm sure your memory is better than you give it credit for Just need some motivation man! Though I'm sure one to talk... I keep procrastinating my kanji studies because I'm lazy bum... Anyway, if it's only the kanas that are the problem, just give yourself a full afternoon to learn them and be done with it. As long as you keep using them they will stick. Then use your mighty chinese skillz and you'll be OP!

So how is it learning written Japanese for someone who is already fairly proficient with hànzi? I imagine that the multiple readings must still suck, but at least most kanji you may be able to recognize and at least figure some of the meaning (even if it's sometimes somewhat off), no?

Me extremely vanilla fucking normie. Me no understand. But keeping in mind the amount of weird and weirder kinks out there, I can't say I'm surprised either. I mean, there are people out there who get off to guro, so...

Madness!

If it's because of lolis that they are afraid of possible legal issues, I can understand that. It's stupid af, as drawings are not real people with actual rights, and I always thought it was pretty ironic that it has to be the otaku folks, who supposedly and according to popular belief and clichés can't tell apart the real world from their waifus, who have to explain that to people A drawing has no age, no gender, it's not an animal nor a person. It's a depiction of a person, and any crime against it will therefore be but a depiction of a crime. It makes no sense to have laws that protect the rights of fictional people. Unfortunately the world is a dumb place and such laws do exist. I can't bring myself to blame Steam in that case.

To be fair most "depressed" heroines are not really depressed in the clinical sense; most of the times there's a situation that if properly addressed will naturally lead to an improvement. Yeah see, that was one with actual depression

Gosh that could perfectly be a light novel title. Yes, it has happened to me that I felt bad for picking another route while knowing what that heroine was going through. It may sound stupid to humanize fictional characteres like that, yeah, but that also means that you are really invested in the story and therefore you are enjoying the medium to the fullest

Actually if you think about it everything we eat is disgusting. That's why I don't think about it.

Yeah I guess everyone is different, though if someone is facing the problem of having a huge backlog of dropped VNs, and is expressly looking for advice on how to avoid it, chances are this will hold true for them. That's definitely one of the biggest issues. And even if you do remember everything with more or less detail, you probably still lost all emotional involvement. It's like reading an scene out of context vs reading it having all the background still fresh. The enjoyment is just not the same, and this is also a factor that makes it hard to go back to a VN you dropped months ago, since you know that in order to get the most out of it you should probably reread everything.

As others have already said and I agree, avoid picking up another VN. It's not that you shouldn't read more than one at a time, but rather, if you are switching because you got fed up with your current read, you're most likely never going back to it. What's more, you're probably also gonna eventually drop the new one, in an endless loop If you're dropping a VN that is of course fine, but be honest with yourself. My advice is, if you find yourself tired of reading, just do something else for a while, maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks. Take the time you need so you come back to it feeling that urge to read again and finish that story.

The first thing that catches my eye is the sheer amount of isekais that is cropping up lately. Aside from that, I'm honestly a little out of touch with the anime world right now, so I don't know what I'll be watching, if I watch anything at all.

Fair enough. I guess a brilliant translator wouldn't normally be working with a mediocre team, and vice versa. Though I'll stand by the claim that no matter how mediocre a translator is, unnatural grammar in the target language is unacceptable. Every native speaker would be able to figure out whether something sounds awkward or not, and so should be the translator and make the corresponding tweaks.

I have some issues with the entries' descriptions that are making it really hard for me to place a vote. I can understand why subtle nuances would be missed. In fact, besides the nuances loss that could be chalked up to the translator inexperience or lack of effort, there are some cases where it might be necessary or else it would unavoidably sound awkward (you have to keep in mind that things that are commonly said in a language are not in another one). However, if an English native speaker is translating the thing, I expect the English translation to sound natural. There is absolutely no excuse if it doesn't. It's just laziness (I mean, a fairly good reason, but a very poor excuse nonetheless ). On the other hand, since I am not a native English speaker myself, I probably wouldn't pick up on every little detail anyway, so that should make my personal cut-off point somewhat more lenient. I won't even take typos into the equation because that's not really a translation issue. The translation should be gone over by the editors to at the very least fix those minor issues. If it's not, well, it will certainly give the final product a very unprofessional vibe, but it's not like it affects the translation per se. So... I guess my bare minimum to be happy should be around a 5 in that list? But as I said I don't agree with every point. It's a 5, but the grammar should still sound natural, ffs.

I'll have one, please! Since I suck at artistic stuff, I'll leave it at your discretion. Surprise me

Yeah, you were supposed to. Kind of. There are a lot of clues along the way and it's possible to figure out a good chunk of what's really going on. I'd say it's nearly impossible to figure out everything though, and that's because of:

I just found out that Amane from Grisaia, Sumika from Muv-Luv and Miyako from ef~ have the same seiyuu. I was flabbergasted even though it's so obvious when you think about their voices. I should probably be ashamed of myself for not realizing this earlier, considering they are not only from VNs I love but also characters I love too. Oh well

Man, it truly is a shame, but unfortunately it seems to be the truth. While there's usually a decent amount of users online It's only a handful of them who regularly post and sustain the little activity the forums has. On the other hand, and trying to look at the bright side, at this point we've become so acquainted with each other that almost feels like a little family I sure hope that even if the main site is dead some new people will come along as other leave so that the little activity the forums has at least stays constant.

No kidding, with all the time I've poured into Aiyoku no Eustia till now I could've read like 10 medium length VNs, and I'm not even halfway through. I consider it as a language learning exercise though so I write a lot of stuff down along the way, so that's why. As for the OP's question, there's this thread that was opened literally yesterday about the longest VN in existence. If we're talking about which VN took me personally the longest to finish... I guess that would probably be Danganronpa 2, but that's because I just couldn't find the motivation to keep reading, for some reason (not that the VN is boring or anything). Like, it took me about 3 months or something.

Oh finns...