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Japanese girl looking for English help in exchange of japanese! -
11-21-2008, 04:28 PM
Right, Now I've got your attention of
" kawaiisugoipockylololol!!11!111oneoneoneeleven clan" And that of everyone else who can’t speak a word of Japanese on this website. I'd like to make an announcement. On most the threads I post in here I come across as an annoying, opinionated, sarcastic tool who’s job it is to complain and put other people down. While most of the above is true I'm not a bad person and I'd like to take this moment to redeem myself. My Japanese isn’t brilliant, far from it in fact and in no way am I in a position to teach people how to speak the language. However.. I'm going to use this thread to tell others how I am studying and hopefully people with the same learning styles as me can catch on and together we can make JF a better place. I’ve studied Japanese for over a year now, so you could say I was a beginner like yourselves if it makes you feel better?  First of all, lose the crap that Japanese language is mystical and amazing. Yeah it’s cool but if Naruto was made in Germany or Kenya, JF would be a lot quieter without you lot bumming it. Yes it’s cool because it’s complex and minimalistic at the same time and it uses weird symbols that you have never seen before and tend to blur into each other when you first see them. Then you start to wonder how in the world anyone could write “ 紫 ” instead of “purple”. Look at this: Interior Inferior Two words that look very similar - especially to a foreigner. Only very slight changes to how you write each “character” and you get two very different words with two very different meanings. You can manage to look at these words as a whole and instantly know their meanings and pronunciations, Kanji is the same. Now that’s over with, onto the actual language. I made the mistake of jumping right in there and learning how to speak before I could handle kana (the basic Japanese writing system) and then I hit a wall where kana was necessary for me to continue and it felt like a real chore to learn it. This may be OK for casual learners who just want to get around Tokyo without getting in a pinch but for those like me who aim to become better than the average learner (or aiming for fluency) you really need to learn kana. I can’t stress this enough, please learn from my mistake. The sooner you learn it the better and the sooner you convert and abandon Romanised Japanese the easier it is. Trust me on this. You can start this right away, for free at Hiragana and Katakana Practice - Real Kana (I’m from Yorkshire so all this Japanese learning will be as cheap as it gets) This site only teaches you to recognise kana, to be able to write it is very different as stroke orders can be confusing, this is where the next part comes in. Buy a book called “Japanese for Busy People 1” (£20 in all good bookstores, I got it for less than £6 on eBay) I recommend the Kana version as you can get the kana stroke orders from the back and rough it for a bit until you have kana down. This book will also teach you a good chunk of Japanese language too, starting at your level and slowly building, building, and building upon what you learn. Everyone raves about “Genki“ for learning Japanese but I died inside when I saw how many digits were on the price tag. Don’t stress about Kana. It’s important but it’s not difficult. The way I did it was to get the book for the stroke orders and copy out あいうえお like 6 or 7 times, then I’d try doing it without looking until I got it right. Then when I could do that, I tried to get あいうえお、かきくけこ until I could do those perfect, then 3 lines, 4 lines etc. I did this 10 maybe 15mins a day during my dinner break at university until I could write the whole table without looking, then same for katakana. Got them all down in less than 2 weeks (not counting weekends here). 10mins a day? That’s a total of what? An hour and 45mins maybe 2 hours of solid practice/dedication? It’s nothing really so get going! Other good language resources are “Japanese for dummies” for the causal learner as there’s no kana and “Japanese from Zero” for someone who really wants to get into it. “I’ve no time to do all this, I just want to learn some language” This was my attitude to begin with, and it also can be done. I guess it’s so easy that’s why it’s so popular. It’s also very cheap/free! I spend a lot of time driving to and from my girlfriend’s house, whenever I’m in my car I listen to audio lessons. They can be expensive too, but not for us! Go to Learn Japanese and sign up for the 7day free trial, in those 7 days download as much content as you possibly can before the time runs out, then your free to listen and learn at your own pace the majority of what I know comes from doing this, I could read the last test of the “for busy people” book and understand it all after 100 audio lessons (also only 10-20mins each) and there is 1000’s of FREE audio lessons on this site. While you’re doing this, stop trying to translate everything you hear, just try to understand. It really helps if your not overworking yourself with translating every little thing, especially since most words don’t have direct translations or if they do they don’t make sense, you’ll just be left starring blankly at the person who is speaking to you. Another tip would be to start thinking how to answer questions (or anything that gets said you in English), in Japanese. I find this helps a lot (except for the other day when I bumped into a man in Tesco and said “Oh! Sorry でした” You should have seen the look on his face! And mine! I just ran away... If you get stuck, you can’t ask a book a question, so come to JF instead. The guys here can handle anything! The last thing I would suggest is to ring up/email (the latter if you lack social skills) your local college/university and ask them if they do a Japanese language class in the evenings. These can be expensive (In England you get can get in for free if your between a certain age range when you enrol, might be the same for your country) but they are really useful as everyone learns at the same pace in a group and you can bring up any questions with your Teacher. Classes are best because they give you practice in forming sentences on the spot and force you to become better at speaking. If you just read and write you can get memory block when trying to talk under pressure - trust me, I’ve been there. That’s enough from me for one day, if anyone has any questions, drop them here or PM me. Shadow 
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11-21-2008, 04:41 PM
So you are not a japanese chick? Darn... I was hopping I could score some... Free japanese lessons from a native chi... child of Japan... xD
  Natural Born Headbanger \m/ TAG Game Score: Crani:51
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11-23-2008, 12:30 AM
No it didn't. I actually really respect you posting this and I think you made a lot of valid points. I've been learning Japanese for a little over 2 years now and I think you're right about everything you said on here. The written language is difficult to learn but it's not impossible, and if anyone is really dedicated to learning the language, then they'll do it
thanks for posting a helpful, thought out thread.
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11-23-2008, 12:40 AM
Quote:
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11-23-2008, 12:52 AM
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 Well..........................
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11-23-2008, 12:55 AM
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wish me luck!Sorry but I dont use any of those instant messaging programs.. they do my head in.
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