how did you learn japanese?

Ashton · Post by **Ashton** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 7:13 pm

I won't say that I'm anything special, but I will say that with the possible exception of ErMaC and any registered native Japanese speakers, I am probably the best Japanese speaker on the org. Most people just assume that I went to Japan relatively useless in the language, and came out the other side relatively fluent. That's true, but it's only half the story. The other half of the story started right here in my little suburban town fighting off bordom last summer. I decided that the best thing to do was to make my time useful, so I went to the local liberary and chacked out 3 books on how to speak Japanese. I was determined that I would read them cover to cover. That didn't really work out, but something came out of it. One of the books I checked out was a Japanese instructional written entirely in Japanese. That was a lot of fun and all, but it was not going to work for me without any explanation. But, as is typical with me, I decided I was going to give it a go anyway. So there is my first step: learning hiragana. I recomend this HIGHLY as your NUMBER ONE most IMPORTANT FIRST STEP. I don't know how many words I have to caps to impress the importance of this, but DON'T EVER READ JAPANESE IN ROMAN CHARACTERS. The second you start thinking of the two languages as even remotely related is the second you start loosing ground on ever becoming truly fluent.
So that was the begining, and after that I had more one to two night stints with books I decided I hated because most were written in Romaji. I had to relearn hiragana about 3 times because I kept forgetting it, but after the third time it stuck.
Then, one day my high school counselor gave me a great piece of advice: he told me I could keep doing what I was doing, but get credit for it aswell. And so he recomended to me, one the best Japanese learning tools I have come across to present: http://ce.byu.edu/is/site/index.dhtm
Look it up, it's a high school independant study course. Check this out with your counselor before you try it, but even if it's a no go for credit, it's an awsome learning expirience for VERY cheap. Note to the high school kids: tell your parents about this, they will pay if they think you are getting excited about school.
After that, there can, of course be no exception to the 5 month foreign exchange imersion expirience that I had that leads me to present, I am almost entirely fluent, and can watch and understand most raw anime without great difficulty.

Golden Saucer · Post by **Golden Saucer** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 7:22 pm

I have a private teacher, very cute 25 year old gal BTW

I watch anime like it's the ned of the world and buy any pocket "learn japanese" book I see

でもわたしは勉強しない

The above was in japanese, if don't have global IME or know japanese I won't tell what i wrote!

HAHA

Ashton · Post by **Ashton** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 7:28 pm

Golden Saucer wrote:I have a private teacher, very cute 25 year old gal BTW

I watch anime like it's the ned of the world and buy any pocket "learn japanese" book I see

?? ??? ? ?????

The above was in japanese, if don't have global IME or know japanese I won't tell what i wrote!

HAHA

OK, quick Japanese crackdown time, are you a girl, or are you just being misinformed?

bloodyfang · Post by **bloodyfang** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 7:55 pm

Vazor wrote:I'm learning from a book I bought a while back. By learning I mean it sits in my room and gathers dust. ^_^;

Ditto

Roke · Post by **Roke** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 8:20 pm

Yeah, same thing here, Vazor.

Damnit, I paid 30 bucks for that thing, and I'm going to learn that language!!!

Lyrs · Post by **Lyrs** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 8:48 pm

I soaked it up listening to japanese songs and then i found the lyrics translations and then i did something and after that i learned something.

/end

gadoo · Post by **gadoo** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 10:56 pm

is there a way to do it without memorizing constantly though?

Alucard_FoN · Post by **Alucard_FoN** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 9:50 am

Well, I took a class at my psuedo-college, which I failed. The reason I failed it is because I failed to realize just how much work you have to put into a foriegn language class in college. It was WAY more work than spanish was in high school. I learned stuff well enough, but I still have a lot of problems with katakana, and we barely learned any kanji. We only learned like 2 kanji symbols (watashi and hito). I know the hiragana well though, and quite a bit of vocabulary and sentence structure and such, but not really that much, since it was just a first semester class. BUT I'm determined to llearn it still. Even if I have to teach myself.

afree87 · Post by **afree87** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 11:57 pm

The best Japanese book I've ever come across is the Oxford Starter Japanese Dictionary. It actually uses hiragana and katakana instead of romanji like all those other dumb books, and it comes pretty darn close to being an efficient reference for the entire system of grammar. I went all the way to Oregon to get it at Powell's (j/k. I was already in Oregon for vacation), and I got the only copy, so ha ha. =P

afree87 · Post by **afree87** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 11:59 pm

Oh, and:

WA DOES NOT MARK THE SUBJECT! SO STOP IT!

The end.