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SC2013 Mephisto's Blog : Kanji Stage


Mephisto

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Heya all, didn't actually notice everyone made a seperate post until now, so setting it up now.

Goal 1: I want to learn Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana, as well as the grammar for it within two months. (Basics of course, not full in-depth madness)

Goal 2: I want to be able to read a full Visual Novel that has not yet been translated in to English

Goal 3: I want to improve my abilities enough to be able to assist in a translation project before Summer ends

I am aware that all of these are extremely lofty goals, but I find that I learn most efficiently by forcing myself to aim high. Of course, I also plan to make them happen!

Study Time: Weekends I have pretty much all day, from when I wake up to when I go to sleep. Only breaks for meals. Essentially, a language-learning marathon every weekend. I'm sure I will occasionally get distracted, (such as by this forum) but there aren't any major distractions for me right now. (Hiatus from VNs until I make significant progress). On weekdays, I have to attend school, but I'm one of those annoying kids that get through the basic school material extremely quickly in most of my classes and can do whatever I want the rest of the time. (The exception being difficult AP classes where I need to pay attention). I'll be able to at least bring my notebook that I'm using to take notes to school, and look over them during class. After school (about 3:00 P.M) I have all the time until I fall asleep to study, which is awesome. (The only after school activity that I'm involved in at the moment is Journalism, and the paper comes out on the 14th. After that, I'll have the full 3:00 P.M to about 10:00 unless I stay up longer.) Also, february break is coming up in two weeks, which is right around the time I should be having to review around 1200~ Kanji words a day, as well as learn new ones. It's timed perfectly.

Where I'm at right now: I started yesterday and went through around 100 words. I plan to be doing 100 Kanji words a day with the help of basic chinese, and more on the weekends when I have more time. So far there hasn't been any huge reviewing done since I just started, but I plan to overwhelm that by throwing vast amounts of time at it.

I apologize for the writing of this sounding like a kid with something to prove, but unfortunately that's what I am right now. I hope to phase through it quickly as I know it's extremely tiring to deal with, but I hope you guys can bear with me and help me when I need it. (I'll definitely need help when I get to grammar)

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Welcome! Glad to have you, and good luck!

What's about to come next isn't meant to dissuade you, or discourage you from the plan you've set forth. It is, however, advise that comes from learning Russian and now Kanji. The key to learning a language is steady, consistent effort. For me, it would have been VERY difficult to "absorb" huge quantities of a language during the weekends, with nothing in-between. On top of that, reviews for ~300 kanji take over an hour, and learning each set of 50 kanji takes ~30 minutes. There's also something to be said about "brain burnout", and the physiological limits of learning in a single 24-hour period.

Here's my advise: try it out, but have a plan B. Just like with learning an instrument, it's easiest to eat an elephant one bite at a time, instead of all at once. It may seem like a few months is a heartache-long period to learn the kanji/kana, but it's not. Life goes fast. Taking 10-15 (25) (50?) a day will get you there a lot faster than you'd expect, and you're a lot less likely to get burned out. I learned the first half(ish) of RTK at a pace of 100/day, and the reviews really buried me.

Like I said -- this is not meant to suffocate your enthusiasm : ). What it is is the accumulated knowledge of learning to fluency one language, and starting on another.

Now that that's out, if you're really going to try and work according to the plan you've laid out, you'll need a ton of support. I'm here for you, the other people taking the challenge are, too (Ryoji's another great choice for support).

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Welcome! Glad to have you, and good luck!

What's about to come next isn't meant to dissuade you, or discourage you from the plan you've set forth. It is, however, advise that comes from learning Russian and now Kanji. The key to learning a language is steady, consistent effort. For me, it would have been VERY difficult to "absorb" huge quantities of a language during the weekends, with nothing in-between. On top of that, reviews for ~300 kanji take over an hour, and learning each set of 50 kanji takes ~30 minutes. There's also something to be said about "brain burnout", and the physiological limits of learning in a single 24-hour period.

Here's my advise: try it out, but have a plan B. Just like with learning an instrument, it's easiest to eat an elephant one bite at a time, instead of all at once. It may seem like a few months is a heartache-long period to learn the kanji/kana, but it's not. Life goes fast. Taking 10-15 (25) (50?) a day will get you there a lot faster than you'd expect, and you're a lot less likely to get burned out. I learned the first half(ish) of RTK at a pace of 100/day, and the reviews really buried me.

Like I said -- this is not meant to suffocate your enthusiasm : ). What it is is the accumulated knowledge of learning to fluency one language, and starting on another.

Now that that's out, if you're really going to try and work according to the plan you've laid out, you'll need a ton of support. I'm here for you, the other people taking the challenge are, too (Ryoji's another great choice for support).

Yeah I understand where you're coming from since I thought of it from that angle as well. The greatest danger is if I let the massive amount of work swallow and consume me. As it gets closer to the end (or even the middle section) I will likely have to slow down, but at that point I should be more aware of my limitations.

Thank you for the support as I am sure I will come to rely on it in the near future (especially for assistance in reviewing. I think it'd be awesome if I could find someone to review with. It'd essentially be the other person typing out the kanji character via skype or some other chat relay system and then the other person responding with the english translation. It can go both ways as they trade places, and it would cover or at least assist in learning how to read the characters, instead of just writing.)

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Day Three Update

Kanji Status: Around 300 words studied. May be more since the flash cards deviate from the pdf of edition 4 of Heisig's book.

Reflections: The Kanji is progressively getting harder, as expected. There are also many potential problems developing.

The first problem has to deal with my short term memory. Whenever I remember a Kanji word after looking at the English description I can't be sure whether or not I actually know the word, or if I am only forming the connection due to working with the word recently. Part of this problem arose from the fact that I divided the 100 characters I planned to study in to smaller groups of 20~. This problem will likely fade once I have a larger vocabulary base to draw upon and a temporary measure I plan to use is to cover all the characters I want to learn for the day all at once.

A problem related to that is pattern recognition. It's not the good kind of pattern recognition that will help me learn, it's the bad kind that makes me think I'm learning when I'm not. Basically, it is occurring due to the small base of words I have to draw upon right now. It's allowing me to narrow down the possible answers like a multiple choice question, which although useful for test taking, is not particularly great for understanding. When my review burden increases, this problem will likely fade away slightly. An interesting note is that the flash cards that appear and are not in the pdf file I am using actually help break the pattern, if only for a short period, which is very helpful.

Narrowness/lack of fluidity by sticking only to RTK. Don't get me wrong, the book is useful and I like the flash cards, but it would be a lot better if I had other resources to draw upon as well. The thing with the other sources though, is that they assume you learn the kana first before the kanji. It's not a huge issue right now, but may be later.

Motivation Level: Still in the green. It'd take something really drastic to stop me right now. (Think inertia)

From here on out: At the moment I'm not suffering any severe mental strain from intensive forced studying, so I'll continue with my usual routine. I may attempt to learn the Kana earlier than expected since it may help me learn more efficiently. (Kana is used a lot and whenever I see it my mind just shuts down. I thought the language was going to be mostly kanji, but it's really a combination of all the three writing styles. The sooner I learn Kana, the sooner I stop thinking in Chinese.)

If anyone is interested and has time, it would help a lot if someone could type a sentence in Kanji (without kana), although it's probably impossible from what I've seen. Failing that, reviewing with someone else also learning Kanji would be helpful as well.

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Yeah I agree it progressively get harder for sure. I've found lowering the amount of Kanji per day studied, really helps.

Also, make sure you make time to review. As Tay has said previously, it can really add up fast. Ive found, outside distractions, i.e. Wife/girlfriend, can definitely distract you easily.

As far as reviewing with someone, I'm sure most of us here would like to do that. My wife helps me, which is a blessing. When shes not nagging me that is ;)/>

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Hmm.. Just to lay out possibilities here are the time's that people posted they would be studying at

torbin12: 15:00-16:00 (US) (Not sure EST or PST) (possibly busy)

Vax: 8:00? (??)

Ryoji: 20:00-21:00 (??)

Tay: 6:30-7:30 (US) (???)

thrvmn: 19:00-22:00 (??)

CartmanJr: 22:00-24:00 (??)

Mephisto: 16:00-22:00 (PST)

As you can see, there are some severe problems with the list I attempted to make. I think it'd be pretty cool if we could seriously organize a way to work together on learning.

Just to cover all bases, other people learning japanese/know japanese:

Steve

Mikel

Bolverk

Down

Daeyamati

zoom909

jun

SakuraFreak

DayLighter

Tief Blau

zhurai

Aaeru

That's a pretty strong list, and I'm sure some way could be figured out to help eachother.

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(Kana is used a lot and whenever I see it my mind just shuts down. I thought the language was going to be mostly kanji, but it's really a combination of all the three writing styles. The sooner I learn Kana, the sooner I stop thinking in Chinese.)

If anyone is interested and has time, it would help a lot if someone could type a sentence in Kanji (without kana), although it's probably impossible from what I've seen. Failing that, reviewing with someone else also learning Kanji would be helpful as well.

Sorry, I didn't come across a grammatically complete sentence that only use kanji. Phrases, yes (noun phrases).

But it's easy to find sentences that only use kana.

2eock0n.jpg

Ready to learn kana now? :-)

Yes, I'm still learning kanji--slowly. Not a Kanji warrior. Just trying to get 1000 most common kanji with their standard on readings and kun readings fully memorized. I have a normal day job, so I'm usually around evenings and weekends

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itsuka ra ita mekaha, wakaranai.

I think it's rather something like 'itsu kara itanoka wa, wakaranai' which would translate as 'I don't know since when xxx' (dunno what would ita no ka or itanoka means).

The kanas can be done in a matter of days, it's really nothing compared with kanjis because they are way simpler and you get to practice every single time you see a sentence, because hiragana are necessary to grammar and katakanas are everywhere. Considering your rythm of work you can learn them in a day and be done with it, since you can't do anything without it anyway.

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I think it's rather something like 'itsu kara itanoka wa, wakaranai' which would translate as 'I don't know since when xxx' (dunno what would ita no ka or itanoka means).

The kanas can be done in a matter of days, it's really nothing compared with kanjis because they are way simpler and you get to practice every single time you see a sentence, because hiragana are necessary to grammar and katakanas are everywhere. Considering your rythm of work you can learn them in a day and be done with it, since you can't do anything without it anyway.

I see, so you break the kana into words you know and try to work from there?

I'm no so optimistic about the kana. I have a solid basis when approaching Kanji which lets me work through them whereas the kana is uncharted territory. The only redeeming factor is that there are a significantly smaller amount of kana to memorize.

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The most useful device when trying to make sense of a sentence are the particles. Here I noticed the very noticeable presence of ’から’ and ’は’、both particles you can find all the time in your typical sentence. 'の' could very well be a particle here too. From there the compounds of such a small sentence is now determined and I can proceed to try to recognize the words before the particles and see what they mean. Once you have the basic grammar done, breaking down a sentence into words is much easier. It's even easier when there are kanjis in.

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Week one Update

Kanji Status: Around 500 Kanji words studied. Retention rate of around 90%~

Starting on monday, I cut down the Kanji's per day to 50. I also began working on learning Kana.

Hiragana Status: Estimate around 70% complete. vowels/k/t/r/s/n are all good. h/m/r are mostly good. Transformations are being worked on, but changing soft sound to hard sound isn't that much of a change. (Exception Ja/ju/jo sounds since it doesn't turn the vowel in to a y. working on that)

Katakana Status: Barely starting. only really have vowels down.

Reflections:

Heisig's theory of teaching reading/writing separately makes learning to recognize the word and the english meaning much easier, but it provides no means to learn the reading of the word. I haven't learned how the grammar works yet, so this may be a pointless concern and maybe you only need to know the meaning of the kanji, but it bothers me. That's why I'm going to attempt learning the kana and grammar before focusing on kanji again. I'll still continue at a steady rate in kanji, but not as quickly as planned.

As per Steve's suggestion, I downloaded annot for reading visual novels. I think using that to help make sense of the grammar and finding out the meaning of words I don't recognize with a dictionary will help me learn in a way that will complement what I'm doing right now. Most importantly, it'll allow me to learn the meaning of words written entirely in kana with no kanji. I was wondering if anyone had any untranslated VNs to start doing this? The annot player only recognizes 'galgames' or something, so I wasn't sure what fell under that category.

Mental Status: Monday was actually pretty bad since I was pressed for time. That partly factored in the decision to drop the daily kanji to 50. 100 is really a bit much each day since that results in going through a ridiculous amount of kanji a day without fully capturing all of them. It would have been a lot harder without knowing what the general meaning of most of the words meant in Chinese.

As of right now, motivation is still high. I've finally lost the childish exuberance that one attains at the start of a new adventure, so I should be able start seriously learning the language. I am currently reading through Tae Kim's grammar guide, and working on Katakana.

@zoom Why isは read as wa in that sentence? Saying it aloud it makes sense, but I was wondering if there were any rules.

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@zoom Why is は read as wa in that sentence? Saying it aloud it makes sense, but I was wondering if there were any rules.

When used as the topic particle, は is always read wa and you can never write わ. Same with を which is pronounced 'o'.

You'll understand that in the first few chapters of Tae Kim's don't be hasty :P

I have to agree that I prefer going on all fronts at the same time: grammar, kanji and sometimes vocab/practice.

Although retaining 90% of 500 kanjis in a week is a shitton lot. I feel like I retained only half of the kanjis I've seen so far and there are only like 300 :mellow:

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The 90% figure is probably misleading. It is based on how much I remember when I review on the kanji.kooji website, not how many that I can actually apply to reading things. The results from this are inherently biased since the words are all seperated in to sections (I can remember which primitives are in each section) and I'm testing from english -> japanese kanji. My Japanese -> english is significantly slower and slightly less accurate. For an example:

訓読み(Kun'yomi) I've learned both of the kanji here, but it took me a bit to figure out what it meant. I had to remember a stream of words = instruction and words that are sold = reading. Would also be cool if anyone wanted to fact check this, but I think Kunyomi = instructional reading (+mi?) idk what the hiragana does

Heisig's method is actually quite effective at remembering the kanji's themselves.

Oh yeah, Tae Kim's thing is pretty great. Going through it slowly though ;_;

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As per Steve's suggestion, I downloaded annot for reading visual novels. I think using that to help make sense of the grammar and finding out the meaning of words I don't recognize with a dictionary will help me learn in a way that will complement what I'm doing right now. Most importantly, it'll allow me to learn the meaning of words written entirely in kana with no kanji. I was wondering if anyone had any untranslated VNs to start doing this? The annot player only recognizes 'galgames' or something, so I wasn't sure what fell under that category.

@zoom Why isは read as wa in that sentence? Saying it aloud it makes sense, but I was wondering if there were any rules.

Sorry, I don't use annot player right now, so I don't know what all it supports...but from what I've heard, the vast majority of visual novels are supported...

But when you say "learn the meaning of words written entirely in kana with no kanji". So you're basically talking about vocabulary, right? Because kanji is not the same as vocabulary (maybe it is in Chinese). Given the set of all existing Japanese words, the ways of writing them are numerous and vary with each particular word:

-almost always written in kanji

-almost always written in kana

-almost always written in kanji+kana

-sometimes kanji, sometimes kana

-sometimes kanji+kana, sometimes kana only

etc. etc.

Regardless of how it's written, you still have to know what each word means. Knowing the meaning of kanji is helpful, but that's all it is--helpful. Not guaranteed results. Sometimes it works great. Sometimes you can see a multi-kanji word, and if you know the meaning of each kanji, then you can guess the meaning of the word even though you've never seen it before. BUT...sadly, the reason why certain other words are written with certain kanji have been lost throughout the centuries...

About は, see Down's response. Basically the same symbol は is used to write both the sound "ha" in normal words and the sound "wa" of the particle which is the topic marker. Also the same symbol へ is used to write both the sound "he" in normal words and the sound "e" of the particle which is the directional marker.

But when you are learning hirgana for the first time, just think of "ha" and "he".

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Oh, I thought the question was, what WILL run under annot player...

Okay, well here's some other games that maybe you can try besides Flyable Heart:

Nursery Rhyme

Kanon

Memories Off

Brighter than Dawning Blue

(Personally, seems like I didn't really find Flyable Heart any easier or harder than these)...

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Any download links for the above? ^

I think I found Flyable Heart, but no luck with the others.

(Kanon already has an english patch i think :o)

It seems a lot of those are mainly animes (or I could only find anime versions). I'm looking for stuff that will run on Visual Novel Reader, not the annot player. (It's too hard to learn from watching anime for me @_@)

What I meant by "learning kana without the kanji" was basically learn the pronunciations (or at least how to type them out in romaji). The sooner I stop naturally going to chinese, the better.

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Week two - 1 day Update

Kanji Status: 600 words?+

I was sick last friday, which led to me missing a day. After missing it once, I fell down the path of destruction and self annihilation and ignored kanji for several days thereafter. Basically, I will be taking a break from the kanji section until I feel myself far enough in the grammar to need it. I will still be doing the reviews (sheesh had so many piled up to do today....) and may learn 25 a day if I feel up to it.

Hiragana Status: Proficient. I can read it with no problems now. Can kinda write it, but its harder.

Katakana: /rage/cries/tears/rage more. Katakana isn't working well for me. I can struggle through it with the alphabet when reading. I can recognize a few of them.

Reflections: It's about time I took a break from the kanji... Too much of it is in my short term memory instead of long term, so I'm going to focus on making sure I remember the ones I have now. Oh. Grammar is hard as hell! I've been working on it a bit with Steve on TS3, but it's a freaking monster. きみはメアが大好きだね?And all I wanted to say was do you like mare... + subject acting particle + subject acted on particle + verb particle + implied question particle... - hopefully optional ko + toka particles.... It's a nightmare. And apparently adjectives have to come after the subject being acted/acting on or something @_@. I don't even know anymore.

I tried my hand at flyable heart. I didn't get very far, but this is what I understood with the help of a dictionary.

The protagonist's favorite phrase is "meal". Or it might be cooked rice, but i think it's meal. It makes more sense since there's no rice. He believes meals to be the best thing in the world on top of everything else since they're delicious and makes people feel happy. They are the happiest time for him right now, and it's mealtime soon. or something like that. Then dream bunny's appear! woohoo. The first one to come in, Lasagna I think, said some stuff about Chou-something(Margarita's last name? first name?) bringing a purezento or something like that. Dream Bunny Margarita offers him some black haired meat.. forgot what it was called. there was some weird katakana here.. i think it means either please or breeze. Another one of the dream bunny's interrupts and says protag.(His name is Ebi right?) is in the mood for fish or something.

That's as far as I got. If I mistranslated anything, tell me so I can see where I went wrong in my leaps of logic.

From here on out: I am going to start playing visual novels now, and try to learn some vocabulary from them. This includes both english translated and japanese versions. This would be impossible without a dictionary so thank the lord for dictionaries.

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Kanji Status: 600 words?+

Sounds like a very good start. Any readings yet, or just meanings?

Reflections: It's about time I took a break from the kanji... Too much of it is in my short term memory instead of long term, so I'm going to focus on making sure I remember the ones I have now. Oh. Grammar is hard as hell! I've been working on it a bit with Steve on TS3, but it's a freaking monster. きみはメアが大好きだね?And all I wanted to say was do you like mare... + subject acting particle + subject acted on particle + verb particle + implied question particle... - hopefully optional ko + toka particles.... It's a nightmare. And apparently adjectives have to come after the subject being acted/acting on or something @_@. I don't even know anymore.

Oh, I don't know...it's not any harder than 3D vector integral calculus... Okay, the grammar IS hard. But, you can learn short, simple sentences first. What are you using as a guide? Is it Tae Kim's?

I tried my hand at flyable heart. I didn't get very far, but this is what I understood with the help of a dictionary.

That's as far as I got. If I mistranslated anything, tell me so I can see where I went wrong in my leaps of logic.

I don't have it installed or anything...if you really want, then could we see the Japanese text?

From here on out: I am going to start playing visual novels now, and try to learn some vocabulary from them. This includes both english translated and japanese versions. This would be impossible without a dictionary so thank the lord for dictionaries.

Don't forget, you could always try ignoring the narrative and focus on just the dialogue, that would make it easier to understand, maybe.

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The text till where I am now if you want it.

本当に唐突だし、まったくもってどうでもいいコトなんだけど。

俺の好きな言葉は『ご飯』だ。

もしくは『昨日のご飯、何食べた?』でもいい。

俺はなによりもご飯が好きだ。あったかくて美味しくて、おまけになんだか幸せになれる気がする。

あ、ご飯だけじゃなくて、おやつも好きだが。

本当にどうでもいいコトだけど。

ご飯は俺に幸せを運んでくれる一番の素敵アイテムなんだ。今のところ。

夢のバニー:ラザニア『あらあら、そうなんだぁ』

(protag's thoughts): うん。ほんとに。

夢のバニー:マルゲリータ『そんなあなたには、超豪華な幸せのカタマリをプレゼントです〜』

夢のバニー:ラザニア『まずは黒毛和牛フィレ肉にトリュフ風味のソース』

夢のバニー:マルゲリータ『もしもお魚気分って感じなら、鯛のブレゼはいかがかしら? それともエビなんかがお好み?』

There was also a weird series of hiragana that I didn't understand. the "kagakashira" thing.

@Kanji, most of that is meanings. Although I've learned a few readings. (hito, gakkusei, genki, otona) Not many though.

@Grammar I'm using tae kim as a guide, as well as steve :P/>. Steve is helping me with it since he knows some too.

Hmm.. It's usually the dialogue that's the worst xD. Thoughts are usually uniform, but dialogue can be all over the place since people talk in strange fashions.

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I tried my hand at flyable heart. I didn't get very far, but this is what I understood with the help of a dictionary.

The protagonist's favorite phrase is "meal". Or it might be cooked rice, but i think it's meal. It makes more sense since there's no rice. He believes meals to be the best thing in the world on top of everything else since they're delicious and makes people feel happy. They are the happiest time for him right now, and it's mealtime soon. or something like that. Then dream bunny's appear! woohoo. The first one to come in, Lasagna I think, said some stuff about Chou-something(Margarita's last name? first name?) bringing a purezento or something like that. Dream Bunny Margarita offers him some black haired meat.. forgot what it was called. there was some weird katakana here.. i think it means either please or breeze. Another one of the dream bunny's interrupts and says protag.(His name is Ebi right?) is in the mood for fish or something.

Okay...while you do have the gist of the scene...

Margarita may actually be "Margherita" (since Lasagna is Italian food, I think it makes sense to have another Italian food)

Chou is a prefix similar to English's "super" or "ultra"

purezento is English "present"(gift)

Black-haired meat? That sounds gnarly :-) Actually I looked up those 4 kanji in my dictionary, it's a type of cow called "Japanese Black" in English. Those katakata after that are "truffle", which no one expects you to know, I only know it because of a Miku song called Doki Doki Truffle or something like that. The other katakana there is "sauce", which is a commonly used word.

Then in Margherita's line, the 1st katakana word is "braise", which I double checked, and the word at the end is "ebi" like you said, but that means "shrimp/lobster" It's not his name. It's just yet another offer of food if he wants seafood or something.

So you're just planning to jump right into VNs, then? Not reading any kind of tutorial/practice material first?

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Oh, I don't know...it's not any harder than 3D vector integral calculus... Okay, the grammar IS hard. But, you can learn short, simple sentences first. What are you using as a guide? Is it Tae Kim's?

I think i'd rather do 3D integral calculus than some of the mind-blasting points of japanese grammar <_<

I've no idea where I would go about finding tutorial/practice materials, so just jumping in right now.

Here are texts with ranked difficulty based on the JLPT levels:

http://chokochoko.wordpress.com/the-great-library/

Jumping right in might have its good points too, I don't know what you'll prefer.

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