Nipponese learning thread

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I remember when Gideon said that. I always thought he was a cock sucker, that confirmed it.

Most of the fan translators are dickheads, and they have an inflated ego large enough to send them aloft and float them to the moon. They hoard patches, act like you owe them, and bitch and whine. They forget that just because they know nipponese that it makes them superior to everyone.

If anything spurs you folks to learn the language to play these JRPGs, it's faggots like Gideon. That's why I finally did it a year ago.

They think, not forget.

Forgive me, I've been drinking.

Oh and I really hate when a game otherwise avoids it then suddenly you have huge plot points that are either voice only during battle or somehow auto-advance

Is there someone who can direct me to some entry level vidya?

Something like that doesn't even have kanji. to see if my kana, grammar and translation are good.

Famicom games are great for this. We bullied a friend into memorizing kana by making him play the original Fire Emblem on Skype and mocking him relentlessly when he forgot or misread something.

you must be some very good friends

What's a good way for somebody with an absolute shit memory to start learning Japanese? Is there any good programs or books I could pirate?

Just now starting to learn because I want to play Nier: Automata. Is there anything like Real Kana without ads, or is that my best resource?

You're not expected to remember things the first time around, that's the whole point behind spaced repetition. Go to realkana.com, if you don't drop out after that then follow the instructions in the OP link.

Right click, block element.

All kana is a pain in the ass.

You want something with low level kanji at the very least. Maybe script dump (セリフ seems to be the world you want for finding them in Nipponese) so you can look stuff easily too.

黄金の太陽 is pretty easy and it seems NoA's translation is sketchy enough at many points it's worth a play.

Scipt for first two games is here
homepage3.nifty.com/apple62/serihu/golden.htm

so apparently if you neglet reading your flashcards with anki for too long it fucks with the algorithm or some shit

thing is my phone im using ankidroid broke and I didnt get it fixed until a week later, should I keep going from where I left or should I reset the counter somehow?

Well. shit. apparently i'm not ready for vidya. back to learning new verbs vocab and maybe some kanji

I can delete element and hide element, but the ads return.

That's the point.

Sync your stuff everyday.

How bad are the ads? I used it back before it had ads and it was really useful, so I'd just deal with them if they aren't that bad.

Not very bad. I'm dealing with it now, but it's less responsive than it should be. It's faster for the short period that the ads are hidden/deleted.

What the fuck?

I'm thinking about creating a RPG that teaches you Hiragana and the 1000 most common Japanese words by tying it to gameplay by a critical-hit or accuracy check, and then have what NPCs say change from English to Japanese as you learn each word, with the game starting entirely in English and ending with everything changed to Japanese.

that sort of sounds like hiragana wars

I'm aware. The difference would be that it'd teach you vocabulary and basic grammatical structure as well, it wouldn't have a black guy with blue hair as one of the MCs, there'd be more qt waifus, and the game itself would be much better since it'd be subjected to Holla Forums's scrutiny.

yeah, hiragana war was not very self aware.
well, as you know japanese, i can assume you are a big fan of japanese vidya. on that basis, i trust your judgement on the vidya aspect of the game.

as for waifus and the setting and memes, that's up to you. do it faggot, and good luck

Thanks!

Sounds interesting.

As long as the plot is something cheesey like "THE BIG BAD IS CORRUPTING LANGUAGE ITSELF AMASS OUR TEAM OF HIGHLY TRAINED 12 YEAR OLDS" I'd play it.
I miss cheese filled plots.

Also speaking of Japanese learning games, I am still waiting for this game:
papurika.moe/game.html
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=530071666

Though considering how long they have been silent, I am beginning to think it's dead.

I had what was almost a proper conversation today in Japanese with a Japanese stranger. I'm excited because until today all of my interactions I'm Japanese have been either transactional, aided by my girlfriend, with a purpose or otherwise pre-planned.

This one was just me being haggard on a mountain trail, seeing another climber and striking up conversation and inviting him to walk with me. It was probably pretty broken on account of not having access to a phone dictionary. He understood well enough to enable conversation though.

Sorry for the blogpost, but I'm just excited to have authentically used the language.

Realkana is a bully

That could be arranged. Kind of like an Earthbound-esquee cosmic evil changing the way people speak without anyone but the main characters realizing.

Install anti-adblock killer by reek. It's a script that works with greasemonkey

congrats, m'man! you can only improve from here! keep at it, you're pretty much free from the shackles of plebian localisation

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No point in learning since TPP will go into effect soon.

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Are there resources for kana-only reading material ? I'm awful at grinding and work much better with a context when it comes to memory, but obviously the constant interspersed kanji in regular nipponese shit on that.

What does this mean anyway? Surely the effect of a free-trade deal like TPP will be to make importing Japanese products easier?

By that argument we all might as well just kill ourselves personally, I just say move to Japan, you might not be able to avoid TPP but at least you can still play video games

Manga with bulk furigana is essentially かな material. I've been reading よつばと! on the train between cities in Japan. Before coming to Japan I had barely done any study since I left school (4 years ago). よつばと! is at an easy enough level that I could read some pages without a dictionary at all. Yet it's also genuinely interesting, unlike most child friendly manga.

On that note, is there any Manga that people in this thread could recommend as good for beginners? I'm currently in Hiroshima and my hotel is across from a fantastic bookshop. Are sports manga good only if you're interested in the sport?

They don't like foreigners.

I thought they only liked good looking foreigners, and didn't care much as long as you assimilated?

Is there a definitive kanji/vocab anki deck? Everyone keeps recommending variations of the Core2K deck so I'm guessing that's the one to go for, that is unless the consensus has changed.

Furigana is definitely a help, but it usually covers only the most complicated kanji, from what I've seen.

I'm doing fine here, haven't had any problems whatsoever everyone's too busy being racist against the Chinese

Stuff that runs in Jump like Hokuto no Ken and JoJo has furigana for almost if not every kanji

well, it wasnt my fault, how do I reset it so I start from the beggining?

Not the user you replied to, but thanks. Realkana is much faster now.

Will katakana or hiragana be more important in the long run? Is one used less often?

Also reminder that TPP will kill fanmade content.

This includes the death of fanmade touhou.

As I said in a somewhat unrelated thread, it isn't worth being bilingual with both anglonese and moonspeak, and having moonspeak slowly overtake your anglonese until you unlearn anglonese and all you can speak, understand, and read is moonspeak and you have to relearn anglonese. Also, moonspeak is a dead language.

Try again.

They are both essential.

This realkana shit is incredible. Holy fuck.

So will this guide teach me how to speak and read, or just how to read?

WHERE'S MY FUCKING SEQUEL

Also, don't listen to stupid TPP defeatists. Even if the thing passes, we'll find workarounds. While the system's reach grows indefinitely, so does ours. This is nothing new. It's the same neverending back-and-forth we've always had.

Hokuto no Ken has furigana? I thought its target audience was a little older than that.

Why learn jap when you can learn programming?
Legit question.

For fun. And why not both?

It ran in Shonen Jump. Japan's comics are hardass and give hardly any fucks about gore, unlike their television and video games.

Ideally I'd like to learn both. But Japanese comes first for me.

Why learn programming?
Legit question.

To make gaem

why would i want to make a game? it's an artless piece of shit medium for children and fags. ANY idea you possibly have would be better executed in the form of a book. and best part is, anyone can start writing now rather than waiting for ten years of studying programming.

I don't want to make games though, I want to play them.

You can play your own games

Why would you want to do that? It's no fun if you know the game inside and out.

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It is if you make a good game.

So this isn't really a nip learning question, but when you make a Japanese proper nown (like a given name) can you use any reading of the kanji you choose, or are there linguistic rules that limit it?

Like could I name a child 木本 but say that it's pronounced 「こボん」

No rules. You could pronounce 天使 as エンジェル if you wanted.

It's true that almost all Shonen jump comics have furigana, but I'd still stay away from any fantasy/sci-fi manga until you're more developed in skill. Just because the vocabulary gets tricky and specific with some of those.

Filthy goyim, stop wasting your time with this language! Learn Hebrew for a better future! Read the Talmud and the Torah and be enlightened!

Try an app called Hirugana Learn Experiment. It's free and actually gives you something worthwhile to do while you're stranded outside, since all mobile games are trash. It forces you to get the stroke order correct to. Only downside is sometime is doesn't recognize you're handwriting, so you get a 'lower score' even when you know you're right.

Is this game any good for learning vocabulary? Or is it just Hirugana, since the latter is really easy to learn, but the former is a massive grind that could benefit from some fun.

All I get looking that up is some rpg maker game called hiragana battle. Is that it?

I started to learn nipponesse using realkana. It's fucking great.
I started 5 days ago and with the little time I dedicate to studying it, I've almost learnt all Hiragana.

Keep going fellow anons. Do it for the game

It only took me a few hours to recognize most, if not all hiragana. From what I hear, kana is the easy part, everything else is hard.

Fuck you guys, you always let the fucking thread die.
I'm fucking tired of doing a daily bump and seeing the thread die once I don't bump early enough.

I don't want to go to halfchan for my nip learning needs, man the fuck up and push the thread ffs.

I try, user.

I stopped after learning Kana

What's the count word for firearms cartridges?

okay
lolno. What master lets his slaves have power?

You could probably just use 個.

This is why no one is learning this language. You weebs keep changing words like this. It's Japanese not "Nipponese." Get used to it. If I wanted to learn the language of a conquered people you bet I want to keep the names right.

Kana is the easy part, because its the most like the alphabet you learn in other countries.
Kanji is where stuff starts getting nuts.

But still, keep at it, embrace your successes, and don't stop learning until you can read.

What sort of vocabulary level would be needed to play something like Yakuza in Japanese? Is it the kind of series that I can start from a later iteration, in this case 4?

Very high.

Fug. In that case, what's good to practice Jap on PS3? I'm not interested in weaboo JRPG. Persona looks ok though, due to the grounding of a school setting

CRBR and CRA were released in NA, not nip only

I'm too busy not learning Japanese

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Any games for someone that knows 300-500 kanji? And as a side note for any one learning, don't bother playing something all in hira/katakana. The more kanji you learn, the more you realize why they don't do it. It's worth spending the time learning kanji over trying to decipher all-kana.

Yeah. I have a weaboo limit. Persona is relatively fine. Shit like Kantai Collection, Strike Witches or anything that feels like it sells more on fanservice than gameplay isn't interesting to me.

Can't answer your question, but I can agree with you. Kanji is a pain in the ass to learn, but the benefits are great.

Apparently there's a Minecraft server for people learning Japanese, started by a guy who left to get a PhD. Has anyone tried it? kotobaminers.org/

Why the fuck are you on Holla Forums? Did you mean to type Holla Forums?

Have you never played a game that you're good at? Besides, it's different if it's your own creation. It's special.

Nippon = Japan, バか外人

That's western brainwashing for you. Can't like overly sexual things because sex is bad :((((((((

Pretty sure and were ironic.

I don't see how Minecraft could help learning, but I can imagine this as being one of the things that Second Life would actually be useful for. Too bad from what I understand that game is only played by autistic furries that can barely speak their first language.

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Lewd should be built around the game, not the game built around lewd.

Speak for yourself, nerd.

But the 3 other games weren't.

Pretty much starting to learn.

はぶ ふん

Gaijin Goomba says it takes years to learn and it's extremely difficult.

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you can do it fags

almost 4 months of dillegence and i still don't know grammar, never fucking give up

s'okay though, after I hit 2k i'm gonna lower my new cards to a very few so my review count is feasible in short times and spend more of my work breaks on grammar, as soon as I can read shit reasonably, things'll really kick into gear.

I'm also planning a massive hitchhiking/camping trip through Japan, maybe even two at that. Though I have no idea how much I'd spend focusing as much as possible on cheap/free amennities. I wanna try and stay for the 3 month maximum. Thought it'd be the best way to really pick up on the language. Travel wiki says urban camping/camping out of the way of people isn't illegal nor exactly frowned upon, so I'm going mad cheap.

so there's my current and only ;_; goal. I don't plan on doing it until late next year so I get a reasonable grasp on the language.

Can you give some better reasons as to why one shouldn't acknowledge Gaijin Goomba?

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Good enough reason to me.

Gaijin Goomba says it years to learn nip.
He's lived in Japan and knows the language.

Someone that knows Japanese advising on how difficult it is to learn and the years it takes is someone worth listening to.

The problem is that that statement is purposefully vague. What is it that's difficult and takes years to do? To read kana? To play the average video game? To be fluent? This faggot is trying to dissuade you on purpose by obfuscating the point.

If you know, how long did it took you?

I don't think anyone would disagree that it takes years and is difficult. You don't need some shitty eceleb to tell you that.

Problem is that this thread acts as if anons can learn in a few months.

Years aren't worth playing games.

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Why not? People wait years for just one game to be translated, why not take a few years to learn and never have to wait again.

I was kinda curious about everyone's Japanese knowledge, so I made this poll.
strawpoll.me/10740915

On a different note, I guess I am the prime example that you can't learn Japanese by watching anime and reading manga. I have been watching anime since 2004, but I only really started studying text and language some 6 months ago. It feels like I've learned more these last six months than I learned of Japanese these past 12 years.

I bet you play on Easy too

I can't find any free coursware on Japanese, I can for a lot of other languages but never Japanese. I wouldn't mind dedicating a lot of time to a course but I have trouble learning on my own from textbooks, I don't know how to pace it or what's really important, there's no testing really either. Not excuses, I'm just dumb. I hope someone releases something on edx or a place like that eventually.

Japanese grammar is relatively important, and much faster to pick up with a book. If get onto that as soon as possible. It makes reading much easier.

Congratulations though. Keeping on top of Anki is vital. Let it slip just a few days and it becomes easy to get overwhelmed.

As for your trip. I'm not so sure about urban camping. I haven't seen anyone do it. Most places that you could do urban camping in have "no camping" signs. Accomodation can be had for fairly cheap here if you don't mind how dank the place is. Best of luck with the trip though. Immersion is the best method!

Sites like that typically cite kanji as the main reason they don't have any Japanese courses. Apparently nobody can figure out a way to teach them through a digital course.

Just read the link in the OP and start out by grinding your kana 50 times each, you bitch and then get some anki decks.

Just like, read runes.

Grinding by writing down kana is also effective if you don't feel like using flash cards.

That's actually what I meant, I suppose I should have stated it more clearly.

I found that I absorbed kana and especially kanji much more easily when I wrote them out a few dozen times.

That's what makes RTK so useful for learning kanji. The proper way to use it is to get an Anki deck with all the meanings on the question side, and the kanji with its stroke count and order on the answer side.

It lets you learn the meaning, stroke count, stroke order, and the different radicals all at once, and writing them out helps you more easily memorize them.

A concern I have with flashcards is not learning pronunciation, is there something I should do in addition to supplement this if I go the flashcard route?

Also how do you start something like that, do I just draw any card and pick what I think it is at random until I start to know them? With lectures I'm assuming they'd do something along the lines of "This is X it sounds like 'ecks' now write it 50 times." etc.

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Actually it's Nihongo faggot.

You mean pronouncing the basic syllables? That's probably the easiest fucking part of the whole language. Everything is pronounced exactly how it looks with no exceptions. None of this shit like in English where sometimes a 'C' is pronounced as a 'K' and other times as an 'S' just because. Once you learn how to pronounce あ い う え お and ん you're basically set, everything else is just a variation of one of the first five with a consonant attached (except for を which is pronounced the same as お). You could watch Namasensei's videos on YT if you're that worried, he could teach you everything you need to know about kana, although it takes a bit longer.

For the flash cards, all you have to worry about is Kanji. Everything else is just basic memorization grinding. For Kanji, you download one of the anki decks listed in the OP and it'll show you the kanji on the front with everything else you need to know on the back (or vice versa) such as onyomi/kunyomi, meaning, stroke order, etc.

Basically. To practice you could just go through the deck and write each kanji 5 times every time you see it and repeat the definition aloud or something like that until you know it by heart. Eventually you'll figure out what works best for you and you'll get into your own rhythm, and at that point it's like second nature.

Kanji is honestly really overwhelming at first, but once you figure out how and why everything works, it's actually not only pretty easy but also fun. And I'm a massive fucking アホ, so if I can do this shit I'm confident that anyone who isn't literally retarded can do even better.

出て行けこにゃろ

Thanks for the explanation and help, user.

Namasensei fucks up the stroke order and I think the pronunciation sometimes. He is good for motivation, but not really for learning.

Is there porn of this girl? Her downsy anime face makes me hard.

Of course it's easy if you enjoy the grind.

No prob onii-fam

It wouldn't surprise me if he fucked up the stroke order, but I don't think even he could fuck up the pronunciation of kana, no matter how many beers he slams.

If nothing else it would be helpful to watch the first few videos since all that user really needs help with is pronunciation.

My Japanese teacher is a middle aged Japanese bloke that hates weebs because he's sick of explaining that Naruto or whatever uses phrases that a regular person just wouldn't.

It's like learning English from Friends or something. Good on you for motivating yourself though, keep it up and good luck. I literally needed a class after high school because learning Japanese with others and having the opportunity to talk to others on my level is invaluable to me.

Kanji is a bitch, there's no hiding from it, but if I go through an all hiragana text now it's like starting all over again.

Might be different if they had spaces between words, but even so.

Maybe I just enjoy learning in general, I don't know. All I know is that every time I master a new Kanji and can read it properly when I see it written somewhere, the feeling I get is indescribable.

If you're planning on coming here you probably don't need to do "urban camping". You can get cheap accomodation for cheap as chips. I found this one on my way to breakfast.

Also, you will get moved on if you try to sleep in public places. Police move people who sit down in train stations or otherwise loiter.

For づ and ヅ, Realkana accepts both "zu" and "du". Is one more proper? Are they interchangeable?

I belive 'du' is more propper.

Just found another way to represent 'du' in the extended katakana.

All that matters is that they're both pronounced zu, du is just one way to write it with a keyboard.

If you want to write out an actual du sound you have to use ドゥ.

thanks

I don't know how realkana works, but it's a good habit not to think of them as あ=a, か=Ka etc. try to distance it from the English writing and think of it only as its own thing.

If, however, realkana wants a romaji answer づ is "dzu". Which looks shit in English. Hence why you just think of them as Japanese sounds.

I'm pronouncing it /dzu/ and I will you're it like that too. I don't care if it gives me an accent or makes my romaji harder to read I don't actually know if it would, the language has a voicing marker diacritic so I'm going to take the base consonant and voice it.

Bump

Anybody watch these videos?

I recommend this book if you're new and haven't learned grammar yet. It deconstructs sentences to make our inferior western minds comprehend whats even going on in moonrunes. It also has manga cutouts to make it less boring.
I know the cover makes it look like shit but oldfags recommended this years ago when cuckchan had textboards.

My anti-adblock killer has stopped working on realkana. :^(

How is Genki II? The first book is too simple for me.

Reek's anti-adblock killer isn't working on Realkana for me anymore. No idea why, it was working only two days ago.

バンプ～

I'm fucking retarded. How am I going to learn Nipponese like this?

Keep studying!

You just have to get used to the way the nips adapt English words to katakana.

Don't worry, it took me a while to get used to Engrish written in katakana too

Just say it out loud really fast over and over. Eventually it'll make sense.

あげ

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ん/ン tends to be softened to a M sound before a hard sound like P. I've never asked one personally, but supposedly most nips don't even notice it.

Depending on which adblocker you have, you can probably right click and select "block element".

Realkana has an extended section for katakana, but not hiragana. Would the same combinations work in hiragana, or is there some rule that says you can't do that?

No, those special combinations are just for foreign words, which are only written in katakana.

One more バンプ before bed to keep this thread alive.

Are visual novels actually fun or just weebshit? They seem like a good, cheap way to practice at my own pace. They also seem very much like non-games and full of loathesome anime tropes.

If you don't like them in English, I don't see why you'd like them in Japanese

Ahahahahaha no

You can never assimilate. People whose families have lived there for centuries aren't counted as citizens.

It's progress though. I can feel it. We're all gonna make it.

Like most genres, they're mostly garbage with a few stand outs, though in this case the only one I know and like is the one everyone knows and likes, Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney.

Is anki the best way to start learning kanji?

はい。 Do it like I said here:

If a thread hits the bump limit, or a mod bump locks it, it's out of the hands of everybody.

I need fancy text versions of kanji and kana in a consistent style for an art thing. What's a good website to find them on or a good font to make them with?

Not videogames

But it's cute.

OK

I've been studying Japanese since the 6th and am already stumbling through よつばと! Thank you for all the resources.

For fun, can anyone translate this screen from Hoshi no Kirby: Sanjou! Dorocche Dan?

Jisho has つついて as an inflection of つつく (to poke). Otherwise, I don't know! The English version doesn't help me much.

How to use the bubble(s)

Poke them with your finger and try to pop them!

Good things will happen!

You can store up to five of them.

I miss my free time Holla Forums, I mean I want to keep going but I either learn or have fun.
I don't have time for both.

The new MonHun's been out since November, user.

If you play Japanese games you can do both though.

where do I buy children's manga like よつばと at a reasonable price? when I look on amazon I can only find used copies that take nearly a month to ship

Here is a greasemonkey script to allow adblockers on realkana.com
pastebin because Holla Forums is being a shit
pastebin.com/raw/Rnei1Rhc

Last minute あげ！

This is why the realm of 2d is superior.

makoto is worst [email protected]/* */

They're all worst [email protected]/* */, becuase the entire thing is a cancer that should be purged

You're the worst [email protected]/* */!

Thinking about going full weeb, quitting my job as power plant operator and studying International Business Management (Japan).
Could be the best experience in my life but I'm afraid I'll regret it in the end and waste time and money.
Fuck kinda want to go back to school and giving my best though, not sure if I'm too old though.

You're right. Guess you'll have to sit at home and do nothing for the rest of your life.

I recommend playing VNs with gameplay like Galaxy Angel, Sengoku Rance and Sakura Wars.

I'm more afraid that I won't make it than anything else, you know they are learning business Japanese and how to write kanji and all that shit.
I'm 25 when I start next year and it takes 4 years so not sure if I'm still capable of learning to write all these kanji.

Why wouldn't you be capable?

Are you saying you can't learn a language at only 25?

Now that I think about it, it was stupid to be afraid like that, my coworkers were talking shit, I guess that influenced my way of thinking.

I should man the fuck up and just try it, maybe I can make my dream come true.

That's the spirit. If a lazy neet like me can learn, anyone can. The most important thing you need is the motivation to just do it.

Whoops, we almost died there.

バンプ
ン
プ

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They're all so cute, but Nagatsuma Juri's Seiyuu is the cutest one in the picture, holy shit.

nah. Akkarin and her snaggletooth is the cutest.

That's not duckface, man.

meant for

What?

Don't ask me man, I never cooked beef strokin off in my life.

It thickens the broth, making it creamy.

I'll give you some creamy broth alright.

Bamp

I figured this would be a good place to ask since I'm sure there are a few TL fags around. I want to learn reverse engineering. I want to not only learn it in general but i want to learn it in the context of understanding video game roms. I have no idea where to start.

What system?

It really depends on the game. Some store plaintext which you just replace, sometimes there's character limits you either have to live with or do assembly hacking to bypass. Sometimes you have to figure out how to decompress and recompress arbitrary file formats.
Seriously the people who sit and analyze HEX code and do assembly hacks are wizards.

The problem is that I want to be a wizard but have absolutely no idea here to start. Reverse engineering is something I've been interested in for a LONG time but there aren't many resources out there it seems.

How has everyone been learning vocabulary? I’ve been learning the pronunciation and meaning simultaneously, but I seem to be going at a snail’s pace with only around 4 new cards a day as opposed to my 12 cards a day for kanji/radical meanings.

I have an anki deck that has three cards for each word. One with just the kanji on the front, one with the just the meaning on the front, and one with just audio of the pronunciation on the front. They are set up so that it won't show more than one of those three cards on any given day, so I learn them all separately.

I haven't started learning yet but I was thinking once I get the basics down a fun little project to help mentally solidify the language might be to translate all of Calvin and Hobbes one strip a day

Learn how to program and how to program in assembly. Then read up on compression algorithms and cryptology.

The process is pretty much finding out where the game stores text, if you're lucky someone else has already made tools for the file formats the game in question use. If not, you have to guess and study all the game files in a hex editor to find clues, if you're lucky again you might find plaintext while doing that and then it's a matter of finding out if that file is an archive and/or if it's compressed. Then you have to see if you can find any clues about its compression algorithm so you can use known algorithms to decompress it. If you're unlucky you have to guess which is fucking grandmaster level magick. If you're extremly unlucky they might store the text in the game's .exe or whatever other file format the system uses as executables. Then you have to assembly hack it which is another can of worms.
There's many other problems you can encounter all dependant on the game in question like having to implement latin fonts, having to edit loads of texture files with text on them, timing issues, character limits etc.

Here's an introductory page on the subject: en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Reverse_Engineering/File_Formats

Anki shows a star for a few cards. How did it get there and what does it mean?

It's just a marker you can use as a reminder for something about that card. You might have hit the hotkey for it on accident or something. It's * while reviewing and ctrl+k while in the browser.

I can't emphasize this enough. You're going to burn out so fast if you try to just memorize Kanji every day. Read manga and play video games. A lot of manga, especially shounen manga like DBZ and One Piece have furigana so you can look up definitions on jisho.org if you need to. There are less video games that have furigana, but if you have a 3DS you can find quite a selection of games that have it. Do some research on games to see if they have furigana if you need it. Immersing yourself in the language while having fun with it is seriously the best way to learn any language. You'll start to notice repetition and common phrases, and that's what'll help you memorize vocabulary. Hell, I knew someone who started learned english from playing Final Fantasy games with a dictionary.

I would NOT recommend starting off by playing Pokemon unless you're still practicing hiragana and katakana. You need to get into the kanji as soon as possible, and the furigana is definitely a very helpful aid for that.

The problem is that you're looking on the English amazon site. You want to go to amazon.co.jp. They ship globally now for manga and video games, and you can get them new for a good price. I order my mangas from them and they usually arrive within a week. Man, I should read some more Jojo today.

For real? That's sick.

Yeah, they've been shipping mangas internationally for a while now, but they just started with video games in March. All you gotta do is make an amazon.co.jp account and make sure you click on the option for the international address before you check out.

I should make a followup though because I don't want to be misleading. Amazon Japan ships pretty much all of their manga internationally, but they have a pretty limited selection of video games that you can import. I would say use Amazon Japan for buying manga, and use PlayAsia for buying new video games (after all, they're pretty based). For retro games, I would suggest using Ebay. Hopefully that clears things up.

Greetings, all. Before I begin, please excuse the lengthiness of this post.

I've been working on learning 日本語 for two or three years, now–though, ever since starting kanji, my progress has slowed. I thought I could get some advice from you all.

The first thing I want to ask about is Anki in general. I'm currently using it to learn kanji; how it works is the first problem I need help with. I only have about 45 minutes each weekday morning to go through the flashcards (they were originally set to 30 new, 30 review, 30 learning–or whatever each category is called). At first, this wasn't too bad, but–as I progressed–I completed my daily sessions less and less. It got to the point where I had to drop each category to 25 each, and then to 20.

Eventually, even that proved to be too much, as I was having too much trouble recalling the cards I'd learned even days prior (not to speak of weeks-old cards).

I ended up setting new cards to 0 and attempting to review the cards that I've gone through to date, but even that could eat up far more time than I have. I'd always hear about people going through 100+ cards a day–I didn't know whether they just had tons of time or it was just hyperbole, but I did see one user here going through 12 cards a day. I wondered if such a reduction would be okay for me to effect; any other input would be highly valued.

The second problem is the deck I use–the reordered KanjiDamage deck. I was dissuaded from it at first because of things I'd heard, but I also heard some say that it worked for them, and that RTK wasn't as easy to remember as you'd expect. That being said, KanjiDamage DOES seem to be written by someone who's trying too hard to be funny, cool, and/or edgy (even though the latter is the point). I've also noticed some inconsistencies with what I'd learned before I picked up that deck, and its definitions of some words (jukugo) sacrifice accuracy for humor. That aside, it does get right to definitions and other valuable info without giving me too much extraneous material (like kanji names which, apparently, aren't used much at all) I do not know whether I should continue with it or drop it for another.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Play-Asia's prices tend to be a bit high for Nipponese releases (OK for Asian releases though). AmiAmi is an option, though they tend to be pretty high on shipping and rarely restock.

This is true. I forgot to mention that I came very close to this happening (and, on an unrelated note, that I've been using Tae Kim's app to learn grammar…but kanji's been taking up all my time).

Nice, keep going at it. I only have a 1,5 experience (still learning now) but i'll try to help。

Well, other than if you need to learn Kanji fast (maybe for the JLPT test?). Just set it to with your comfortable with. Or maybe try other method of learning Kanji?

Well, me too. I rather learn from a book, but i guess it's depends on the people.

I can deal with a higher price if it's a reliable service. AmiAmi seems like it would be a good secondary option, but most of the games I looked up were out of stock, unfortunately. I mostly buy retro games and manga anyway, but good to know nonetheless.

Restricting your amount of reviews too much per day isn't good as it goes against what Anki is about, spaced repetition. You want to review the cards at an optimal time, shortly before your about to forget them. If you restrict your reviews too much you'll end up with a large ever-increasing backlog that all should have been reviewed a long time prior and be constantly missing that optimal review time. I think 30 new is a somewhat high start number. It would have been better to start around 10 or 15 and raise the number as you adapt and feel you can take on more. Just dealing with reviews for a bit until they come back to a more manageable number before starting with more new cards might be the best thing to do in that situation, I'm not really sure.

I don't know how that deck is formatted or how you're going about studying that's taking up time, but if you're writing each kanji out of ton of times when you come across it, I'd recommend stop doing that. Just write it once if you remember it well, maybe 2 or 3 times if it was difficult to remember. What I do with kanji cards is look at it, think or say the meaning/s then write it out once while saying the readings aloud (a lot of people don't do readings with kanji, but with vocabulary though), then next card. Probably like 6 seconds a card. Maybe 15s or so on a new or bad recall card or when I was still not used to writing kanji.

Changing the settings so is what I had in mind. I can't think of any other method that's as convenient as Anki, though.

That was actually one of my worries, but–to be clear–the only thing I dropped to zero was the new card count. That being said, I don't restrict my reviews intentionally–I just do what I have the time for (mind you, this is on a 45-minute train ride; I tried continuing on my way leaving work, but I'd end up nodding off).

Here's more info for you. The deck I use can be found at ankiweb.net/shared/info/1917095458 . The cards test you on writing the kanji (and stroke order, but I feel learning the kanji in the first place has a higher priority), the meaning of the kanji, or the onyomi + kunyomi + first jukugo on the list for that kanji.

I imagine writing kanji would help, too, but I don't feel comfortable enough to do that on the train. That aside, the only writing I do is on my phone's screen, when being tested by a given card on writing the kanji.

What takes up most of my time, I'm sure, is trying to remember whatever the card asks for. If I do not remember, I select "Again" (or whatever it's labeled). That seems to be the only option if I have trouble recalling the info.

By the way, forgive my explanation if it was unclear. Truth be told, I do not have a solid understanding of the Anki system (or the app, for that matter) as it is.

These are the most important cards. You should be writing them out too and learning the stroke count/order.
Important, but the best way to learn that is meaning > kanji, not the other way around.
Completely useless, suspend/delete all of these cards, they are just wasting your time.

Building up a collection of PC-98 games I decided I'm gonna start learning the language alongside my other learning hobbies, so I wanna ask you guys, how long do you guys spend in average per day on grinding moonrunes?

I only spend about 40 minutes on actual studying per day, the rest of my learning comes from playing games.

Thanks a bunch user

How are the cards helping you to learn the readings of a kanji useless?

Because you learn that anyway when you learn vocabulary. There is no point in learning the readings without the context of vocabulary.

When I learned Spanish, I did it I school with a textbook. The best thing about learning this way, is that you get thematic vocabulary in blocks of related words, and you have practice exercises with them to help you learn them. For me, this is the best way to study vocabulary. Having related words together and having then sectioned into predefined sets makes the focus a lot easier, and having practice activities and worksheets is a much better way to learn vocabulary than just flashcards.

Does anyone know of a way I could replicate this without buying an actual Japanese textbook? specifically I'm looking for:

If nobody does, can anyone recommend a textbook that has those characteristics? Preferably one that has a PDF I can plunder?

Genki might be what you are looking for. It has a textbook, workbook, and answer key. Dunno where you could get a PDF, but make sure it's the second edition one as that has some corrections/revisions.

simulradio.info/#kinki

Here's a link to all the radio stations in nippon land. Just drag them into winamp or something and make a playlist out of them.

Find some stations that you like and make a habit out of listening to them all the time. You must replace your every waking thought with pure Japanese.

That's user, that's pretty cool.

nippon thread
is the mother three translation good?

I just realized that I mistyped "thanks user"

Retro games are a comparative pain in the ass. You're going to have to use a proxy shipper or buy with a hideous markup off Ebay type places.

Ironically, Japanese versions of retro games on Ebay are way cheaper than American versions in most cases. You can get Japanese Earthbound for ~$20 while the American version costs ~$180-210. Japanese Super Mario RPG is around ~$12 while American Super Mario RPG is around ~$50-60. Famicom games can sometimes be pretty expensive, but in my experience Super Famicom, PS1, and PS2 games are sold for a pretty reasonable price all things considered. If there's a better solution, feel free to tell.

Why don't you just emulate?

For collecting purposes. Obviously you can get them for free through emulating, but I already have a pretty big collection that's been growing for a few years now.

Does anyone know what 夢色 means? I hear it in my weeb music sometimes but I can't find the meaning. Is it actually just "dream color(ed)" and it's some abstract poetic shit?

When you say you "hear it" do you later go back and look at the lyrics to see if that's what it's actually saying? Are you sure it's not a homophone?

what reading of 夢 are you using?

If it's ゆめ.みる, then the weird might be 夢見る色
If it's くら.い, then the weird is probably 暗い色

Oh, they're definitely cheaper. It's just all the people selling them on western Ebay and the like have hideous markups most of the time.

I did see lyrics and it being used in other contexts so I'm sure it is written as 夢色 and pronounced ゆめいろ.

Oh yeah, fuck that. I only buy from about two or three sellers anyway, but if I ever see shit like that, I just avoid it. Thankfully my games are in good condition and I always buy old PS1 and PS2 games with a case and manual.

Looking it up on jisho.org brought me to "夢色パティシエール" and a quick wikipedia search translates it to "Dream-Colored Pastry Chef". So yes, it literally means "Dream-Colored".

その言葉では送り仮名が省略された？
例: 知り合い → 知合い, 知り合, 知合
言葉は全て同じ

実は他の言葉と送り仮名を見つけてできなかった

I'm still doing fine with kanji and vocab but still.

I started learning moon last year at 26.

Today's my day off work and I'm literally spending it translating doujinshi for fun. 25 isn't too late at all. Stick with it, user. Your co-workers probably only speak English, anyway. The fuck would they know?

Pic related. Proof I'm not pulling your leg, user.

Got any study tips? Most importantly, where can I find that when it's done?

Do your practice every day (anki, memrise, etc…) for vocab/kanji. I tried to learn ~10 new kanji and 10-20 new words a day. I've been able to do my reviews every day for the past 450+ days straight. That includes during a 2-week trip to Hong Kong. I'd do them in my hotel room of a night/morning, depending on how drunk I got.

As soon as you can string sentences together you should totally find a language partner. Like one you can literally talk to online. My biggest regret is not doing that earlier. Spent about a year just studying vocab/kanji/grammar, so my reading/writing was great. But my speaking/listening was terrible as I was used to having all the time in the world.

Studying is sort of like giving yourself the potential in the language. Actively using it to speak to someone is where you start "learning" it as it were. You'll be surprised how many words you forget when you need to speak with someone. The amount of times my partner would be like "Oh, do you mean x"? And I'm like "Fuck, I actually know that word, already!".

It takes me a while to translate shit because for half the bubbles I have to check a dictionary for a new word or some grammar point I'm not familiar with.

Also I finished translating that one a few days ago: exhentai.org/g/958475/5180d6877e/

なぜ人がこのゴミに興味を持ってる

ノーマルファッグ！　立ち去れ！！！

I'm 24 and I only started learning Japanese like three weeks ago. I have the hiragana and the katakana down, gonna start grammar study and vocabulary tomorrow.

I was just thinking today that I really regretted not studying Japanese earlier, either on my own and/or in college, but your post is very encouraging. Thank you very much for sharing your experience with learning Japanese.

リア充と言う積もりだった？

えーと。。。もしや(´・ω・`)

ノーマルファッぐとリア充は全然違う。

Don't forget your reps, user!

...

Has anyone here actually succeeded?
Have you actually gained the ability to watch anime and play games and understand everything and be able to enjoy it naturally as if you have always spoken this language?

Or are you tortured by the burden of having to hear words and pronunciations, remember exact characters, look up new definitions, etc.

Plenty of us play Nipponese games already.

I'm at the point where I mainly just need more practice to improve my reading speed, listening comprehension, etc. I can enjoy most games just fine.

I'm certainly capable at this point. But I'm slow as fuck so I can't like play games or watch anime in real-time.

Practice makes perfect, basically.

...

Explain these meme to me

The meme is that Nipponese is hard. I'm convinced that the hardest thing about it is the writing system. The Nipps don't want filthy gaijin to read their secret codes.

But aren't all languages hard? Why is this complaint even here?

For English speakers Japanese apparently ranks amongst the hardest of languages to learn. There was some ranking of languages for like US diplomats, I think it was, and how long they take to learn. Jap is top of the list with romance languages being at the bottom.

Saying that. If you're going to learn another language; you might as well fell like a badass and learn a fucking hard one. No half measures.

What said.

Language difficulty depends on compatibility with languages you already know, and since most of us start with western languages, learning moon is quite a challenge.

I don't play games in English at all anymore.

Plus, it's a useful one - people can go on and on about how many countries speak Spanish, but all the Spaniards have done for vidya lately is ruin Castlevania.

It's not worth it, is it.

Maybe if you see yourself watching anime and playing these games for the next ten years of your life, but I don't think it is truly worth it.

Unless you can convince me otherwise.
I mostly got curious because I wanted to watch anime without subtitles.
But why the fuck should I care if subtitles aren't awful, even if they aren't optimal, and that will be the only fucking thing gained after 5 years of this shit to reach fluency.

Its worth being able to get the kanji jokes in anime and listen to it, understanding each and every word.
Its worth being able to point out the translation fuck up, and not rely on them for the full experience.

Looks like someone needs a vacation.

Man I can't fucking say.

These are things I ==want==
But these are not things that I can practically and quickly get.

As much as I want to understand that joke, I can't help but think about the massive investment it would take to achieve.
The massive amount of time, and stress.
For a joke.

I am sad at myself for saying this shit, but I can't see past it. My head swirls with conflicting ideas and I doubt that I can stick to this if my mind isn't set to it.

I'm living in Japan and sitting on a pile of games that either won't ever get translated or will get raped up the ass if they do. I'm having the time of my motherfucking life. It's so fucking worth it.

If I can do that, then it is worth it.

Do you have permanent citizenship?
Are there night clubs to go to, and cute women to hit on?
Are programming jobs in high demand?

Nope, just here on a working visa, haven't seriously considered looking into citizenship yet

Probably? I'm an anti-social fuck so I don't leave the house more than I need to, and I'm in Nara, so a quieter place, but I wouldn't doubt there's a night life in Osaka and Tokyo.

I don't care for 3DPD, but probably? Being foreign will be a selling point to a not small number of women, so you can use that to your advantage I'm sure.

Probably, but not my field of expertise so I haven't looked.

Sorry I can't be more help mate.

How hard would it be for me to get a job without a degree? Saying that I knew enough japanese to be able to get by. Maybe some volunteering first? Try making contacts while I'm there? I'll have enough money to make a lot of long trips there.

I've been adding and learning my own vocab in anki for about three and a half months. And I can't imagine starting off with essentially around 30 words a day. I had to start off with like 2 first going in, and then build up to where I am now, which is 6. Pretty soon I should be able to hit 7 once it gets a bit easier. I can never tell if this is normal or if I'm just not pushing hard enough.
Also, what do you prefer to use with learning grammar?

I've only been at my core 2k/6k for about 5 months with 20 words a day. You can do it. I just do reviews for a while if they get too overwhelming.

Which I've been doing for a bit too long.

For kanji I used kanjidamage and then a course that filled in the remaining jouyou kanji.

For vocab I originally added whatever vocab was in the chapter I was up to in genki. But eventually I decided fuck it and basically added the JLPT N5 wordlist and memorised that.

As it stands I've learned N5, N4 and N3. Though N3 I still forget a lot of them. Doesn't help when Memrise marks me wrong for putting in a synonym.

As for grammar, the Genki textbooks are a good introduction to grammar points as they go in-depth. But if you're ever like "what the fuck's with this verbs ending in ～たら shit?", then Tae Kim's guide is good.

With grammar I've found I've sort of naturally learned a few points outside of Genki by reading/translating stuff. Because you'll see them pop up enough that you google it and eventually learn what it means.

Amerifag here, going to take N5 in the spring. I can draw all the kanji and most of the vocab from memory but can't ignore romaji if it's on the page.

I'm really worried about the listening portion. I'm a complete recluse socially and I'm not sure what to listen for at all in children's anime.

I've used no learning tools since realkana and completion of Genki I, except the flashcards I make for myself.

Why do they hate Joseph Boo so much?

何で？

I've got my deck backed up on a flash drive along with my agains.

Lads, do I do it.

About 75% done with N5 vocabulary and I already learned a bit of the basic grammar, it's going pretty well so far. I can memorise most words really quickly but I take a lot of time nonetheless to write every character multiple times so that it properly stays in my memory. I'd like to know what JLPT level vocab I would need to read some manga without looking up almost every word in a dictionary. N4? N3? I'm most interested in reading JoJo, not sure how difficult that is language-wise.

Unfortunately the ads will refresh and you'll have to block them repeatedly in my experience

Not familiar with those classifications for vocabulary, but JoJo has furigana/yomigana for every kanji, so that should help if nothing else.

N5-N1 are the levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, I forgot to add that in my previous post.

Well that makes looking up the words a lot quicker and easier, I guess I could manage that. Still going to learn more before I actually attempt to read them, I don't have any money to buy it right now anyways.

Learning Japanese is a lot like Gunbuster, it takes a lot of Hard Works and Guts!

Never give up on your dreams Holla Forums.

We actually made it to the bump limit this time.

It's finally over