Is this a good way to learn the language?
 

Hey there,

I have picked up about 3 Shonen Jump manga from a local Convention. They are in the native Japanese language both Hirigana and Katakana with SOME Kanji, but they have furigana next to it.

My question is, if I translate word for word what is going on, would this help me read the language?

Of course. Probably one of the best methods, IMO. (Don't care what others think of it, lol)
Haven't you heard of AJATT? I don't agree with all of AJATT, but I do agree with this, at least.

Oh and I'm in love with your sig, by the way. NESS pretty much equals pure ownage.

Assuming you knew the grammar, it would help with reading comprehension a bit. There's certain grammatical points that can't really be translated or looked up using a dictionary, so if you don't know them, you'll get hung up on those. You should very much be at an intermediate Japanese level if you want to tackle manga.

Yea, I have been reading AJATT since December, Great methods. I doubt I will contact him until I am fully capable of holding a Japanese conversation.

Do you brawl? And I can make you a Sig if you like? ( For free ^_~ )

But back on topic... Umm, Yea, I have Prince of Tennis and 2 Soul Eater Mangas... Are these good for starters? or are they Too advanced?

It will greatly help with the understanding of sentence structure, and vastly increase your vocabulary.

So, it's a great way to study.

Sounds like it might be easier to just buy a program or something.

Forgive me, but.. Fucking buying a program. Why should I purchase language? I thought it was all about Freedom of speech? I've downloaded 20+ gigs solely to learning the languge.. I just have not applied myself and the time to take it seriously. -_- I'm too much on a budget to pay someone to speak.

In my personal opinion, and this isn't true for anyone because everyone learns differently, it may help you and it may not. What I would recommend as a good way to learn the language is to get a textbook of some kind (like Genki/げんき) followed by a grammar/verb book (I have Oxford's Guide to Japanese Verbs), then get a book for learning the kanji efficiently (I am using Remembering the Kanji with Wakan/Internet supplement). The language is a huge task to take on, but with dedication I'm sure you can find your way on the road to victory. I also think going with the method I said will save you time in the long run, and give you more of a vocabulary so you can read more manga without looking up each word and sentence! :)

Also, if you are on a budget, you can find MANY books on the Internet, Google is a great resource.

AGREED.

It should a 100% natural process. Just like everyone's first language. Purchasing bilingualism is total BS.

Because it's someones idea transitioned into a product. People worked hard and spent money so that others who wanted to learn second languages could do so in a more efficient manner. Surprisingly enough those same entrepreneurs needed money to make a living, which is why they charged you to buy it. That has nothing to do with freedom of speech, at all.

Yeah, and the outcome of this is FAIL like "Remembering the Kanji"

Even though that is a book....

but still. Same thing lol

I don't consider Remembering the Kanji to be fail. In fact, I have had extremely promising results with it. Regardless, it can't be used alone, it needs supplements, but it is extremely helpful for remembering and distinguishing characters.

THis is from another thread

Not really. You can't drive a car and study a book.
However, you can pop in a language CD.

Ok , well this is going no where. Fast. Which should I learn first. Hirigana or Katakana

What kirakira said just shows some ignorance to his method. He shows you those kanji because they are building blocks for other, more commonly used kanji, which allows you to fully understand it better.

As for katakana vs. hiragana. Whichever one you wanted. I started with hiragana and am struggling to learn katakana, which makes me think I should have started with katakana.

Hiragana, hands down.

then katakana, then the dreadded kanji.

I`ll jump in to try and help get this back on track.

The biggest problem you`re going to have with looking things up from manga is that at early levels of Japanese it is going to be very hard for you to tell where a word begins and ends - and to tell what part is modifying it (and how it is modified). You will likely be able to figure out the very basic gist of it, but not a lot more. I don`t believe it will really help you learn anything unless you have a good basic background to link something to. But if you do, reading (be it manga or books) is an excellent way to improve vocabulary and learn new patterns...
The thing is, you just have to get to the level where you can recognize a new pattern when you see one first.

I too agree that language acquisition should be a natural process, much like acquiring your first. However, in order for that to happen - you will need to be in a 24/7 environment with that language lacking access to things in your native language... And you will need interactive guidance. Children acquiring their first language who are never spoken to do not acquire functional language skills - just like you won`t if you don`t have some interaction. In a normal situation this is parents, then friends.

Both of those things are hard to come by if you are not in Japan. That is where textbooks and software comes along - to try and fill the gap that is going to form no matter how hard you try if you`re not in the best environment. Is there crap (like I consider RTK) out there - yes. But there is also a lot of decent stuff which will at the very LEAST help get you to the point that allows you to make the best of the native resources available to you. Infants and toddlers don`t learn the beginnings of language from adult level conversation - they learn it from repetition of simple baby level words, then later simple conversation from a parent. At the very least, you can use a book to fill in that section so that you can begin to parse more difficult stuff.

Thank you so much for putting the time out to respond to my thread.

I appreciate this deeply and will take this into consideration.

If you've not even begun learning Japanese (as I've gathered from your asking whether to learn hiragana or katakana first), manga is going to be too difficult. But I would say at least pick up Doraemon or some other children's manga and see what you can make of it.

Also, let it be known that the people who denounce textbooks are often the same people who lack the discipline to actually learn from one. Immersion is key to learning languages, but it has to be supplemented with proper guidance - from a textbook or a tutor or a university class. Self-study with Japanese is very difficult, but you if you buy a proper book (such as Genki), you can at least get a grasp on some basics.

Textbooks are boring (tried using Genki for a few months learnt absolutely nothing, good job I didn't pay for it). My suggestion, go the AJATT way and those manga you have will be very usefull. In my experience once, it doesn't take long atall untill you can read pretty much anything if you use a dictionary (Including those Soul Eater manga).

All I did:
Learnt ひらがな、カタカナ.
Learnt all the kanji in "remembering the kanji" (If you don't want to buy, I'm sure you can find a scanned version somewhere *wink wink*) (Don't make flash cards for this like heisig suggests, it's far too cumbersome, use an SRS like anki, or Remember and review kanji flashcards online with James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji")
Added sentences to an SRS (I used Anki) from Tae Kim's Japanese guide to Japanese grammar

After this If I used a dictionary I could get an understanding of pretty much any manga I had, any website...

Then after that you can add sentences from you manga or whatever...:vsign:

Can someone tell me how AJATT works? I goto the website and its more like a blog. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong.

This is how I do it:
Learn ひらがな(hiragana)、カタカナ(katakana) (AJATT blog says to do this after kanji, but I needed it for motivation)

Now learn ALL kanji in Heisigs book, "remembering the kanji". The easiest way to do this is to use the site: Remember and review kanji flashcards online with James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" . You might find buying the book helpful (for stroke order and such), you can find a free sample somewhere (forgot where), or you can "aquire" the full book from elsewhere if you want. Try to do this step as quick as you can, don't learn anything else, just concentrate on getting it done, since after you're finished it makes everything a lot easier and faster. Also don't worry about the readings of the kanji, you can learn them later from context, which is much more fun.

Now at this point you will know ひらがな(hiragana)、カタカナ(katakana) and 漢字（かんじ）(kanji). Know you need some grammer.

Using an SRS like anki get your favourite grammer book/resource and add sentences of the grammer points. I used Tae Kim's Japanese guide to Japanese grammar (Which is nice and free =D)

If you don't know what to put on your cards heres a basic template on how I would do it:

Question Side:
アリスは食べる。

Answer Side：
食べる　＝　た・べる　＝　To eat

When I do my daily reviews I write out the sentence and say the sentence aloud.

After adding sentences from all the sections of that guide, I had a good enough grasp of the grammer to be able to get sentences from manga, games, blogs, whatever. (I'm playing Final Fantasy 7 in Japanese at the moment) Just look up the words you don't know, understand the sentence and add the sentence to you SRS. If you still can't understand when you've looked up the words, then skip it, eventually you'll be able to understand it.

When putting in your sentences, don't translate them. You want Japanese to be Japanese and English to be English.

Also try to have something Japanese playing in the background all the time. Be it anime, doramas, Tv, radio, whatever. This will help your listening, and your pronunctiation. You can download japanese shows with bittorrent, share, winny, perfect dark, or you can stream live japanese tv with a program called KeyholeTv. Just play them in the background.

I'm not very good at explaining, most of it you just figure out as you go along.

If you have any questions about AJATT, kanji.koohii.com forums are very useful.

AJATT is basically a blog with a bunch of suggestions of how to learn Japanese. It includes such wonderful and easy-to-do methods such as:

1)Use Remembering the kanji.
2)Throw away every single thing you own in English (essentially all of your belongings; movies, books, games, etc.) or sell them.
3)Purchase all new things that are only in Japanese.
4)Pretend you are a Japanese person.
5)Use a Japanese only dictionary to look up Japanese words you don't know in Japanese.
6)Read Japanese books and write 10,000 sentences in Japanese each day.
7)Don't have a life
8)???
9)Japanese fluency obtained.

Manga is a great learning tool and will help you learn a lot of commonly spoke language. It is actually much better to study that than old out of date study materials. The one disadvantage is that you don't get listening/speaking practice.

I think the problem here will be actually finding out what the grammar points are. Even if you're successful in translating whats written, would you know where to put all the は、が、で、と、に...(and so on). Best bet is probably going to be a textbook, pen & paper. Read, write, and repeat.

Just translating manga will probably make you sound quite funny if you attempted to use that kind of grammar in real conversation, since their forms are mostly dictionary & conversational (since its simulating conversation in written form.)

Japan?
 

Then again going to Japan for like 6 months or more would do the trick, you would learn more than you ever did here reading books or what not. Though that a bit more on the extreme end and costly like nothing you ever heard of.

Err, that is real conversation - written out. Not "simulating" it. You`ll sound quite a bit more natural using grammar used in manga (unless you`ve learned it from a character with a very unique/unnatural speaking style) than the stiff forms presented in most textbooks.

My mistake, what I meant was that most of the mangas Ive read (not very many) tend to lack the ます／です form. I know its an easy converstion to change to, but for beginners it may be confusing.

I agree that it might be difficult for a textbook learner to understand... But I`d say that most Japanese is spoken without ます/です.

I am always annoyed by forms lacking ます being referred to as "dictionary forms"... As if they`re only used in reference and not real life.

To be fair it does make more sense to teach ます／です with greater emphasis for beginners. The worst that can happen is that they will sound too formal, which isn't so bad.

Would this help you "read" the language? Yes. Will it help you "learn" the language? That is debatable. It just depends on what the content is. Translating a manga is the best selling point for actual textbooks. They may cost a little more, but they are worth it.