help me learn japanese

mirroring the "help me learn mandarin chinese" thread but more relevant to what i'm actually doing, though both languages present similar obstacles. anyone else who has learned/is learning japanese please feel free contribute!

to begin: does anyone know of any good podcasts aimed at english-speaking learners? is japanesepod101 actually worth paying for?

are there any ilxors living in japan?

also i feel like it is not as common for english-speakers to study japanese anymore due to the economies of korea and china outshining japan's. confirm/deny

I have learned (very, very fundamental) basics over the course of 1,5 years in 2008-2009. It was great fun back then but for reasons I know longer can remember I dropped it completely.
Having returned from my first visit in Japan just last week I'm making some very serious plans to picking the stuff up again in the next few months.

Iirc a great appeal was the logic and clean structure of everything grammatical along with learning and using new writing systems. But then again it was only basic conversation in Hiragana/Katakana, without spending too much time with learning Kanji. Which of course is unavoidable at some point and will be the real challenge to face, I guess.

up to 400 kanji now

Yes! I've been wanting to start the exact same thread, but wussed out incase nobody was interested.

well, at least two people are! :D

how long have you been studying?

Will get a screed together after I get home from work, yay

pingu = penguin IIRC.

I nearly made a go of it in high school—I think I still have this packed away in some box of books—but the only people around me making a similar effort were hardcore anime nerds, which turned me off of it.

400 kanji is probably better than i managed during my ~4 years of high school level japanese (we had a beloved but not very strict teacher—perhaps partly beloved because not strict). it's been like 9 years since i last studied it but i still have an ok grasp of the grammar, all of the kana and some kanji. have been meaning to start studying it again for well, probably like 9 years, so i'm also interested in this thread.

wakarimasen

Totemo muzukashii desu, nihongo wa

I'm picking it back up again after almost a decade (college), and I'm trying to throw myself more into it than last time. There's a meetup in DC for people interested in Japanese culture, and that's been great for finding other people to practice with. And also people to drink with. I've been using the Android app Obenkyo to study vocabulary - anyone else use it or have other recommendations for apps for practice?

i've used anki in the past but never kept up w/ it enough to make a real judgement. it seems p widely used and also has phone apps that sync i guess (iphone one is a paid app tho)

i stick with paper flash cards for now. i'd like to work w/ an app though, if/when i get a smart phone/ipad/whatever.

the only people around me making a similar effort were hardcore anime nerds, which turned me off of it.

this is pretty much my entire class, ha. the weird thing is, none of them are very good at it, or at least don't seem to study outside of class.

i got into japanese because i was a hardcore anime nerd and was probably one of the best in my class until later on in high school when i stopped caring about school entirely (had also stopped caring about anime a while before that). but most of the anime nerds in my class were indeed totally lazy and really had no interest in wider japanese culture at all.

which actually just means they were on about the same level as most of the class tbh

teenagers

Made a few failed attempts to learn and swore I would never try again but perhaps will read this thread and even participate.

Used Anki for other purposes but not for Japanese. It is a pretty awesome tool, as long as you use as directed- "don't learn what you don't understand," etc. iPhone app is hella expensive but well worth it, try the desktop version first.

In 2011 I spent a couple of weeks in Japan on honeymoon, because we were travelling outside of the cities I decided to learn a bunch of phrases that might be useful, I got this 'Survival Phrases' Podcast to listen to on my commute.

Just simple stuff, but I started getting into it and by the time the holiday came around I had a couple of dozen little things down cold. When I got back I decided to try and learn.

There's an awesome ILXor I've known irl for yonks who is married to a Japanese girl and has been studying for 5 years or so, he helped me find a great teacher, gave me advice and patiently answers all my dumb questions. I've only really been studying for 6 months or so, I have a private lesson every 10 days and self-study in-between times.

I'm a habitual buyer of books on Japanese, there's a fantastic publisher called Kodansha who have a series of little books on different subjects (How To Tell The Difference Between Japanese Particles/What The Textbooks Don't Tell You/Handbook Of Verbs etc), so I try to read ahead despite being out of my depth most of the time.

I'm learning Kana, I have the Hiragana part pretty much down, time to move on to Katakana I guess, I'm scared the Hiragana will leave my head though. I started in with the Heisig book, it's okay but his tone annoys the crap out of me and his mnemonics didn't really click visually (rather obscure). There's a great little App called 'Kana Drills' that I use all the time.

I always have a ton of questions and I could make this an epic post but I'll stop for now.

I've used Anki as well, whilst preparing for a trip to Spain last summer. It was excellent for vocabulary building and for moral support, in that I felt I could actually measure the progress I was making. Much helped by the Android version being free.

Free? Now I've got Android envy.

Did you make your own cards or download someone else's deck?

I ended up making my own, as I couldn't find a pre-made deck to my liking (and didn't have the patience to wade through the hundreds of decks): an image representing the word on one 'side', word on the next. It was a bit of work but I was well-pleased with the result.

Right answer. That's what they recommend, I think, and when I've done it I've had better results as well.

http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html

Self-made versus pre-made
Creating your own deck is the most effective way to learn a complex subject. Subjects like languages and the sciences can’t be understood simply by memorizing facts - they require explanation and context to learn effectively. Furthermore, inputting the information yourself forces you to decide what the key points are, and leads to a better understanding.

If you are a language learner you may be tempted to download a long list of words and their translations, but this won’t teach you a language any more than memorizing scientific equations will teach you astrophysics. To learn properly, you need textbooks, teachers, or exposure to real-world sentences.

maresnest, i used heisig for kanji to begin with but stopped partially for the same reason, but also because his method doesn't even TOUCH readings until the 2nd book (after you've remembered the english "meaning" of each kanji, which is not always exact). i feel like in the long run it was a waste of time, but the one good thing he does is get you to think of kanji in terms of being composed of radicals, which i feel that most lower-level japanese classes (i.e. when it's most important to learn radicals) skip.

now i use a book that just presents the kanji along with stroke order, on and kun-yomi, and a couple compounds. kodansha is indeed very good - i have their furigana dictionary and it's awesome.

Which specific book are you using, clouds?

"essential kanji" by p.g. o'neill. it is super old-school (published in the 60s, still uses romaji) but v. thorough. the only odd thing about it are the example compounds, as it only lists examples using kanji that you've already learned (assuming you're working through the kanji in the order the book presents them), so you get some obscure examples — e.g. for 声 "voice" one of the example compounds is 少年の声変わり "breaking of a boy's voice", which is not very useful. to make up for this i just use the furigana dictionary or jisho.org to look up compounds.

actually jisho.org is probably the best japanese dictionary in existence, but i'm not always near a computer when i'm studying and actually prefer pen-and-paper.

does virginia plain still post? he was living in japan for a while iirc.

Thought VP was a lady.

oh, oops. i made the mistake of assuming an internet person was male until proven otherwise.

I don't recall her mentioning anything about Japan either but I'm not really sure.

i remember her mentioning it on the "do you speak a second language?" thread

Looks like you are correct.

While looking for that found an interesting discussion of Japanese levels of politeness here: Are you a different person when you speak a different language?

taught myself hiragana/katakana last year but my brain kinda went "wtf nope" with the whole at-least-two-ways-to-pronounce-each-kanji thing - funny cos i mainly just want to learn how to read japanese, so many books/rpgs that will never get translated into english :_;

I lived in Kyoto for 3 years in the late 90s. Learned about as much about the culture and the place as I could without ever getting good at speaking the language. My listening skills were much better than my speaking skills, and I could read quite a bit (though only slowly). Found it much easier to understand women than men in conversation (most of my students were women). Really liked kanji, spent a lot of time studying them, learned most of the elementary school ones (for recognition and at least 1-2 readings / uses). It was fun being able to read and understand more than I could say -- my clumsy spoken Nihongo led many people to believe I couldn't understand them, which could be interesting.

Married a Japanese woman who spoke excellent English. We've always spoken English to each other but she speaks Japanese to the kids, who are fluent for their ages. My 5 year old reads Doraemon manga (kanji with hiragana superscript) and follows the Nihon Daihyo on video and in magazines. He was barely 3 the first time he translated a Japanese word for me that I didn't recognize on TV ("kazaru", to decorate). I've forgotten a lot of what I used to know but can still understand most of what the rest of the family are saying to each other, and can make up jokes and little songs. Keep meaning to go back to studying but that hasn't happened yet. Meanwhile my boy's in French immersion so we'll share a language his Mama can't understand in another year or two.

I can probably help with some of your questions about the language (and I can ask a native speaker and former Nihongo teacher if it's too much for my limited abilities), but I don't know much about how to study JSL in terms of what books or courses to recommend.

Except one: "Remembering the Kanji" by Heisig. Weird, weird book of mnemonic tricks more or less divorced from Japanese as a language, but surprisingly effective if you follow through with it.

ya do not recommend heisig

it works, in a zen denial crush your soul kind of way.

Japanese Demystified, I kinda like this book, it's a good counterpart to Japanese For Busy People or Genki or whatever. It's no-frills beginners self study guide, it's concise and well laid out, good to lay yer hand on in moments of doubt.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Japanese-DeMYSTiFieD-Audio-CD-2nd/dp/0071797718/ref=sr_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366500650&sr=1-15&keywords=japanese

Back to the books after 3 weeks holiday and I've forgotten, maybe the last whole month of studies. Feels like I'm always playing catch-up.

me too. i will likely be working all the time this summer but i hope to fit in as much study as possible.

Still can't seem to retain the Hiragana for Me Nu Na & Re for any length of time, why lord why?

for the time being i suggest dumb mnemonic systems:

me can mean 'eye' and if you look at the hiragana of it it is kind of like a quick-sketched cartoon eye? め

re has like a little tongue flick on the end, like the shape of your mouth when you say 're' れ

nu is like a diagram of a knot, like maybe a... noose? ぬ

na i can't really think of anything but seriously you use it all the time so it's v hard to forget, you might have to just muscle memory this one. (it is from the 'na' of nara 奈良). な

Feel like the sole benefit of my attempt(s) to learn Japanese is that it makes learning any other language seem that much easier.

i've been trying to remember my old japanese teacher's hilarious mnemonics for hiragana, but the only one i can think of is for む: he turned it into a little drawing of a man mooning the moon

rabbits make mochi on the moon, apparently

I am taking a lead from the mandarin thread and chimping, chimping...

it depends on what your goals are. are you aiming just to visit for a few weeks days and want to be able to get around? are you trying for complete fluency?

for reading, start with getting down hiragana perfectly, then katakana before even thinking about kanji. write the characters over and over, reading the pronunciation out loud to yourself until it becomes mind-numbingly boring, and then do that again the next day, and again, &c. you'll never forget them.

for kanji, most kanji learners dictionaries will do. kodansha is a good publisher and i'd recommend picking up anything you find from them.

find a textbook. my university classes use nakama, but that book is really set up with the assumption you are taking a class with a teacher. a lot of people like genki and youkoso for self-study, but i haven't tried those myself.

pimsleur is okay for learning set phrases, but eventually you'll want to be able to express yourself in situations where those phrases don't quite fit, and so learning grammar and sentence construction is important. but pimsleur at least gives you a taste of the rhythm and pronunciation of japanese.

really the best thing you can do is: find a native speaker and talk to them. obviously you won't be able to do this until you've been working at the basics for a bit.

i can't speak on the rosetta stones, but to make a maybe specious anecdotal observation, i've never met a single person who was fluent in another language solely through RS. take that as you will.

n.b. i myself am not fluent, but i'm into my 2nd year of study and finally having tons of breakthroughs, and am now looking into study abroad options for next year. it's tough going, but worth it!

oh, and FLASH CARDS. USE THEM.

it depends on what your goals are. are you aiming just to visit for a few weeks days and want to be able to get around? are you trying for complete fluency?

I'm hoping to be near fluency. I speak other languages, so I understand one can never be completely fluent. None of them are Asian languages, though.

for reading, start with getting down hiragana perfectly, then katakana before even thinking about kanji. write the characters over and over, reading the pronunciation out loud to yourself until it becomes mind-numbingly boring, and then do that again the next day, and again, &c. you'll never forget them.

Cool. I'll look up resources to learn to read and write hiragana first. Do you recommend writing it out on a piece of paper as opposed to on a smartphone? I would think the former is better.

find a textbook. my university classes use nakama, but that book is really set up with the assumption you are taking a class with a teacher. a lot of people like genki and youkoso for self-study, but i haven't tried those myself.

I was debating on whether or not I should buy Genki 1. The problem is they don't teach you Kanji. There is a romaji/English version but I've heard it's not good for you, which makes sense.

really the best thing you can do is: find a native speaker and talk to them. obviously you won't be able to do this until you've been working at the basics for a bit.

Yes. The very first thing I did (many, many months ago) was go on a tandem language learning site. I met a bunch of Japanese people. BUT...it didn't work out with any of them. Mainly because, like you said, I needed the basics, which I didn't have.

I know one resource isn't going to cut it, and I'm perfectly happy with that. That's why I'm trying to get my hands on as many resources as possible. And choose a few and stick with them.

Actually, my girlfriend was born and raised in Japan. I've been seeing her for over a year and she always talks to me in English. She is incredibly patient but I know she secretly wishes I would learn a little bit of Japanese. She has taught me a few words but nothing consistently, so I always end up forgetting everything.

I'm finally going to stick with it and really learn the basics and start to have conversations with her in Japanese. I already told her and she loved the idea.

I'm hoping I can take a break from everything and go teach for a couple of years in Japan with my girl.

Anyway, thank you for all your feedback, @clouds!

Kana drills is the best App for keeping it in your head, it's a multiple choice setup but if you cover up the options with yer thumb it works better. However writing Kana is a different deal and it won't help you do that.

I'm on holiday in Japan as I type and even though I've only got six months of decent study under my belt, I'm enjoying the challenge.

@Maresnest, ah, lucky you! My girl is over there right now and comes back tomorrow. I can't wait to go to Japan.

I guess Kana Drill is only for the iPhone, because I don't see it on my Galaxy S4.

i would say pencil + paper is best because you get a feel for the formation of characters more than you would touching a screen (imo).

it might seem obvious, but one cool side effect of repeated handwriting in japanese is that eventually you'll develop personal shortcuts for writing the individual characters and form your own handwritten style.

to memorize kanji i was using p.g. o'neill's "essential kanji" which has nice models for the 2000+ kanji that one sees in newspapers and public writings. it is a bit dated though, and some of the sample usages he gives for kanji are strange.

i would also say that simply trying to memorize the individual kanjis can be beneficial, but the best thing to get them in your head and to understand their meaning is to use them, again and again. it's difficult to do this studying alone, i think, because you aren't being forced to write compositions or do any homework, so the challenge is to find ways to force yourself to write/type and get used to using them repeatedly.

i forgot to mention -- i really only use o'neill's book to check readings of previously-learned kanji that i've forgotten, but all new kanji i learn are in the context of my class, in the order the textbook shows them. it's a lot slower going than the rote method, but i almost never forget any of the readings.

@clouds, great info. thanks!

Also, get the correct pronunciation licked from the beginning, it's actually really straightforward and quite consistent, unlike some other aspects of learning Japanese.

Sitting at Kyoto Eki waiting for the train back to Tokyo, this is our last stretch, treating ourselves to three nights at the Park Hyatt, can't wait to see that view.

jealous!

i'm trying to decide between summer programs at hakodate (hokkaidou) and fukuoka (kyuushuu). going to either one would be a dream come true but i've had a crush on hakodate for a long time, but fukuoka looks amazing.

We did six straight days in Takayama, Gifu this time, with a couple of local side trips (Shirakawa Go, Furukawa). I think it's one of my favourite places on earth.

Sitting at Kyoto Eki waiting for the train back to Tokyo

This is my favorite building in the world

it might seem obvious, but one cool side effect of repeated handwriting in japanese is that eventually you'll develop personal shortcuts for writing the individual characters and form your own handwritten style

i dont recommend getting into the habit of doing this as stroke order is v imp if you want to be able to write intelligably, esp when u

...esp if u plan to take exams at some point. fucking tablet! anyway, i think its one of the first steps to falling in love w japanese, being able to see the strokes flow through the character, poised and purposeful

oh, i didn't mean to imply that i ignore stroke order (though sometimes it is hard to remember for some more complex kanji).

So, I've been in rote mode and been learning five hiragana characters a day. So far I've learnt 30 and I have them down pretty good; stroke order and all. The stroke so far comes naturally, because it's basically up, down, left, right.

I'm still on Pimsleur, but I will be ordering Genki 1 after I finish learning hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Though I guess there are thousands of kanji...so I'll reassess when I get to kanji.

I'm still doing Pimsleur, if only to have the decency to at least be able to say some words in Japanese to my girl and let her brain rest a little from English.

I find it is good for vocab right now, as well.

I'm starting to write characters on my phone but using a keyboard that turns romaji to kanji or whatever, and she's getting a good laugh. It's going so slow and I wish I could go faster, but apparently I'm doing a good job.

Oh, I got hiragana and katakana flash cards, as well.

Kana flash cards with words as well as characters on?

Those are good for the first steps in reading especially given the occasionally chaotic (imho) rendering of Kana-Eigo.

I'm not long back from my trip, tried to read as much Kana as I could, I found some of the fonts kinda troublesome especially the ones that mimic brush strokes.

Well, it's only hiragana and katakana (not kanji). And yes, one side has just characters, and the back has romanisation and English translations of words that use them.

Actually, the flash cards use brush stroke fonts, so, yes, the bottom curve in /sa/ for example disappears a bit then reappears toward the end of the curve. It was confusing at first, but I think I got the hang of it.

These are it: http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Hiragana-Katakana-Flash-Cards/dp/4805311673

I must dig through my cards and find the Katakana for 'Brazil' that was on one.

ブラジル

I'm 38 characters in hiragana.

I guess after I learn those, I should continue with the hiragana with diacritical marks and combos? Or should I learn these later?

There are soooo many. But I'm determined!

my sensei told me that japanese ppl learn the characters w/ diacritics and combos as separate characters, but it's not difficult to remember that き sounds like "ki" and ぎ sounds like "gi", and so on.

^That's what I'm thinking, as well

They are easier to learn but worth learning early. Assuming you're only reading words in hiragana right now, it helps keep your reading speed up not to have to think about it. Also there's some tricky ones like じ.

Ya, I think I'm going to continue with diacritics and combos soon. Then move onto katakana. Feeling pretty good about hiragana. Does it really get easier and easier the more characters you know?

Right now the only thing that troubles me is the fact that I'm learning pretty formal Japanese. So when I talk to my girl she laughs and answers in a way I have never heard before, so she teaches me how to talk informally. She insists I could use boku, for example, but is this really recommended? I'm 31 and I thought boku was for teenagers or used in anime/manga more. I'm still not sure which one to use with my girl. I heard things like anata could be used formally or with a significant other, but I sometimes read contradicting information, as I'm just going through forums.

Thoughts?

I think you're generally taught the formal version in case you need it - in Japan it'd be a hideous faux pas to be all "hey bro, like cool daddio" to your superiors. Once you've got a handle on that the more casual forms make a bit more sense.

I understand. I guess the logic behind not teaching both at the same time is it's just too much to retain? I've not been able to find a good resource for different degrees for formality.

Like, in Spanish, you have formal and informal third person, but they are taught at the same time. I think maybe the concept behind formality in Japanese is different, not just a matter of verb conjugation.

i think the level of formality that's taught to japanese beginners is m/l how you would speak to (most) strangers. talking to your boss would probably be a step up in formality
i assume you've encountered this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorific_speech_in_Japanese

^I had not read about it, but I had heard about it casually in general terms, but never this specific.

Thank you

my four-year old daughter just got into a Japanese immersion school. super-stoked

Half way through katakana (finished hiragana), and now my question is:

What is the best method to learn kanji to a level where can I have normal, everyday conversations?

My goal is to be able to converse with natives on deeper subjects, such as literature and, if this is even feasible, philosophy, as well as current events.

I know, it's going to take a lot of effort, but I'm willing to do it!

I just want to hear people's experience

where I can* (maybe I should learn English first)

Oh, and previous suggestions haven't gone unnoticed, by the way.

I am looking to get a penpal. I think that should be good for writing in kanji.

Maybe even a chat/skype buddy could help?

Otherwise, I don't have any plans on going to Japan any time soon.

get started learning the ~2000 jouyou (general use) kanji, which are the kanji used in most newspapers and other publications which japanese students are expected to have learned upon exiting high school. kanji learners dictionaries are really helpful.

using some kind of flash card (digital or otherwise) and writing by hand and learning the stroke patterns are essential for learning kanji.

sounds good, clouds.

i'll search out for good jouyou kanji flashcards. i had a look at some kanji characters closer, and the stroke patterns in itself look daunting, because each character is so complex. i keep wanting to find hiragana or katakana characters in kanji but there is nary a trace of them in it.

has anyone used wanikani, by the way?

actually all kana are based on kanji, but they've been so abstracted it's hard to see unless you know which kanji they're based on. at one point japanese simply used those kanji to stand in for the morpheme, and in some cases that pronunciation is no longer common except in archaic usage.

here's a chart:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/FlowRoot3824.png

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ after 2 months what do you think was the best know nothing start from scratch way of going about this? esp spoken japanese.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ after 2 months what do you think was the best know nothing start from scratch way of going about this? esp spoken japanese.

― dylannn, Tuesday, June 24, 2014 12:18 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The best way was to learn basic phrases, any which way. I did it through Pimsleur's. That was just to start SAYING something. I think a lot of beginners have that desire to just speak. And honestly, it doesn't matter what or how you learn the phrases. I started with that audiobook but I also looked online. Translated phrases and asked Japanese friends/acquaintances/people. I used them any time I could.

Learning how to write hiragana/katakana helped tremendously because when people told me how to say something, I had no idea what sounds some were. With learning the basic writing system, I at least was able to visualize the sounds in my head, even though some are still romanized. I'm only just now getting to visualize sounds in kana or whatever.

Lastly, practicing it everyday and squeezing it in conversations with people here and there.

MY UPDATE:

So, after learning hiragana/katakana, I've picked up a "graded reader". It's cool because I can now actually read something and recognize every character, as opposed to reading Japanese newspapers, magazines, or web sites and spotting a few hiragana and katakana here and there.

I bought kanji flashcards and have kind of stopped using Pimsleur's audio CD and have instead bought Genki I + workbook, which is pretty much a standard in this part of the world.

I think I'm finally ready to learn some grammar rules and how to break down some sentences, plus verbs, conjugations, etc.

It helps that I am seeing a Japanese girl, so I ask her a lot of questions, and she talks to me in Japanese sometimes, and she explains some things, such as pronunciation, phrases, informal vs formal differences. She's from Osaka, though, so I know there is a small difference, which is fine, because the more I study Japanese, the less I'm digging Tokyo-style of things (no offence). I still really like and want to learn about Tokyo and many other parts of Japan.

wahh! that was my stream of consciousness opinion

Oh, I forgot to mention, now I watch Japanese movies and YouTube videos a little more and pay attention to pronunciation and phrases. I look to see if I can recognize anything. That helps a lot. This kind of passive and active learning method thing works, I find.

So, all of a sudden, I am extremely interested in Zainichi Koreans and their history and culture. I have always been obsessed with third culture kids, so this is kind of related. I'm kind of a third culture kid and was always interested in identity and definitions of the self that we as a society impose on all individuals.

So I found this girl's YouTube channel and have been watching that.

http://learnjapanesepod.com/kana-invaders/

Deciphered my first katakana word yesterday, karaoke

I'd have thought that would be in hiragana, shows what I know.

カラオケ

Genki III is coming out next year, apparently: http://genki.japantimes.co.jp/archives/3298

(3 columns into Hiragana via a couple of youtube videos but I need to get a rhythm going if I don't want this to fizzle out like most of my big plans :-) )

Have a look at Cure Dolly on YouTube. Once you get past the odd 3D avatar presentation the material is very good and a better introduction to Japanese grammar than most books.

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkdmU8hGK4Fg3LghTVtKltQ

The LingoDeer app is pretty good for some basic grammar and practice.

Also once you get your hiragana down, time to get on the WaniKani train

thanks!

どういたしまして