Mr. Meogii Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 Hey guys So I just recently convinced myself to start learning Japanese. It's a beautiful language and is said to be not as hard to learn compared to other languages. In the past I had saved a site link on Fuwa that offered methods on how to go about learning Japanese. http://visualnovelaer.fuwanovel.net/2011/12/how-to-read-visual-novels-in-japanese-in-2-years-time-step-by-step-guide-%E2%80%95-learn-to-read-through-vn-or-anime/ Anyway the first step's links are both down and I am at a loss as to how to go about learning Japanese. Any suggestions would be much appreciated Arigato. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Down Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 First step is just learning kana, it's a cinch. Those links weren't important. See here for more resources, I recommend that you read a bit about the language before diving in (wikipedia, introduction from Tae Kim's guide, introduction from kanjidamage...) Mr. Meogii 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Meogii Posted June 13, 2014 Author Share Posted June 13, 2014 thank you for your advice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Funnerific Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 After you're done with kana, Tips for learning kanji: Check out kanjidamage (provides good mnemonics for kanji, gives names to radicals that dictionaries such as jisho don't acknowledge at all - mnemonics here also include a way to remember the ON-yomi reading, the one you'll be using for compound kanji words without okurigana (kana following the kanji) but that only really matters if you want to do more than read. Kanjidamage also excludes ~300-400 useless joyo kanji that, according to its author, are not used anywhere anymore) and memrise (a good trainer website that not only helps you memorize like normal but also has a good pattern for refreshing that knowledge - first it lets you "water" it (plants = knowledge and all) after 3 hours, then a day then more and more and if and when you fail, that will reset which is pretty convenient). Memrise also has a course based on kanjidamage's pattern so make sure you use that. If you find the mnemonic from kanjidamage ineffective (inevitably there are some, this is kanji we're talking about) and memrise's userbase fails to provide a better one, do your best to come up with your own. Take some time thinking it through, whatever works for your mind is good enough. You want to avoid relying solely on visual memory as much as possible. Trust me, I learnt over 3 grades of kanji (~500) before realizing how much trouble I have remembering many of them and need mnemonics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Berilium Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 Holy shit. I looked up KanjiDamage and it freaking hilarious, thanks for sharing. The explanations are quite comforting xD That guys knows what he's doing. Put another way, if you know the 'balls' and 'box' radicals, you can easily make a mnemonic to help you remember the kanji for country: "A country is a big box where the citizens keep all their balls." Then you can chuckle because you just said "balls." LOL. I think I love this guy. EDIT: Damn it I screwed up the quote thing ._. Akward... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HMN Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 at this website they have free E-books to help you learn hiragana and katakana http://www.punipunijapan.com/ and it also includes audio from a native speaker to help you pronounce correctly,they also have a free kanji book that includes 300 basic kanjis with a sentence for each kanji to show you how to use it and of course the ON and KUN reading the cool thing about this that they made it so you can print it and practice Mr. Meogii 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akerou Posted June 14, 2014 Share Posted June 14, 2014 Well, there is no general way that perfectly works out for anyone. A lot of people claim mnemonics're the (only) way to go, but when I was learning kanji they slowed down my learning speed instead of helping me, so I just shifted back to brute forcing kanji the "classic" way. What I always tell people who ask me how to learn jp is, don't focus all too much on kanji because for some reason most people are convinced learning kanji = learning japanese. That's not really the case. You need kanji to read proper jp, yeah. It's also true that they're indispensable for the language and help you understand certain parts about the language, but they don't make you understand the language itself. So my advice is, learn kana, grap Genki I+II and learn the basic grammar. There're so many translators (especially fansubers) that somehow seem to lack an understanding of basic grammatical structures so that I can't help myself but wonder how in the world they learned jp. I mean stuff like apparently not knowing that verbs that take を as the obj marker can take both を or が when used in their potential forms, leading to translators mixing up object and subject..... Understanding that basic grammar is the fundament upon which one should build everything else. Also, jp is a context based language, making experience with the language all the more important. Honestly, I know guys that freaking graduated with japanese as their major and when you set a vn/ln script before them and told them to translate a couple of lines of it, it was horrifying. That's what happens when people are stuck in a world of text books without encountering "real" japanese. So the key is (to my mind at least) to start confronting "real japanese" as soon and frequent as possible. That means learn the basic grammar, brute force the 500 most frequently used kanji (or use mnemonics, whatever works for you) and begin to read vn's with fairly low language levels. You may also want to stop watching anime with subtitles. What I also found to be pretty helpful is writing jp essays on a regular basis (once a week or so). Oh, and something that I can't emphasize enough is that you should avoid using jp->en dicts as much as you can. As soon as you've built a solid fundament, start relying on jp->jp dicts/explanations (eg. weblio, kotobank, zokugo-dict etc.) and if there're grammatical structures/idioms you don't get and you can't find anything on the mentioned sites, just ask some jp people at http://oshiete.goo.ne.jp/ , http://sooda.jp/ etc. to explain to you, that's better than anything else. zoom909 and Mr. Meogii 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Meogii Posted June 14, 2014 Author Share Posted June 14, 2014 Well, there is no general way that perfectly works out for anyone. A lot of people claim mnemonics're the (only) way to go, but when I was learning kanji they slowed down my learning speed instead of helping me, so I just shifted back to brute forcing kanji the "classic" way. What I always tell people who ask me how to learn jp is, don't focus all too much on kanji because for some reason most people are convinced learning kanji = learning japanese. That's not really the case. You need kanji to read proper jp, yeah. It's also true that they're indispensable for the language and help you understand certain parts about the language, but they don't make you understand the language itself. So my advice is, learn kana, grap Genki I+II and learn the basic grammar. There're so many translators (especially fansubers) that somehow seem to lack an understanding of basic grammatical structures so that I can't help myself but wonder how in the world they learned jp. I mean stuff like apparently not knowing that verbs that take を as the obj marker can take both を or が when used in their potential forms, leading to translators mixing up object and subject..... Understanding that basic grammar is the fundament upon which one should build everything else. Also, jp is a context based language, making experience with the language all the more important. Honestly, I know guys that freaking graduated with japanese as their major and when you set a vn/ln script before them and told them to translate a couple of lines of it, it was horrifying. That's what happens when people are stuck in a world of text books without encountering "real" japanese. So the key is (to my mind at least) to start confronting "real japanese" as soon and frequent as possible. That means learn the basic grammar, brute force the 500 most frequently used kanji (or use mnemonics, whatever works for you) and begin to read vn's with fairly low language levels. You may also want to stop watching anime with subtitles. What I also found to be pretty helpful is writing jp essays on a regular basis (once a week or so). Oh, and something that I can't emphasize enough is that you should avoid using jp->en dicts as much as you can. As soon as you've built a solid fundament, start relying on jp->jp dicts/explanations (eg. weblio, kotobank, zokugo-dict etc.) and if there're grammatical structures/idioms you don't get and you can't find anything on the mentioned sites, just ask some jp people at http://oshiete.goo.ne.jp/ , http://sooda.jp/ etc. to explain to you, that's better than anything else. This was very insightful. You pointed all the Good and bad stuff on how to go about learning Japanese. If I could like this post more than 1 Time I would :3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zoom909 Posted June 14, 2014 Share Posted June 14, 2014 This was very insightful. You pointed all the Good and bad stuff on how to go about learning Japanese. If I could like this post more than 1 Time I would :3 I'll do it for you. It really was a good post. Mr. Meogii 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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