Nipponese Learning Thread: 春休み Edition

I find this to be charming and endearing.

LET ME IN, ION

So I've got the syllabary down and have started in on the near endless task of learning kanji, grammar, vocabulary, and the like but I find that I'm starting to fatigue on standard textbook learning so my retention is slipping on it. I've tried cracking some elementary level manga but I'm getting slaughtered damn near every panel so I don't feel like I'm getting much out of it.

Any suggestions for getting over this hump? It was easy when I had a definable goal but I'm honestly not sure what I should be shooting for at this point. Anyone have a good suggestion for an achievable milestone early on that they're personally familiar with?

There's something you have to understand about learning Japanese. It's going to take a while to feel like you're making progress.

Check this shitty graph; X is time spent and Y is proficiency.

Do n chapters of a grammar book ever m days. Use manga/vn/anime/music as a guideline to see how far along your practical ability has come. Once you finish the grammar book/get decently into it increase the amount of manga/vn/anime/music you do to keep yourself progressing at a good pace. Not an easy pace, but a good pace.

I understand. I've been speaking English for damn near 30 years and learning Japanese doesn't have the same synergy a romantic language would have, so I'm not expecting miracles. The biggest problem I have with finding things to learn from is just that so much of it is brute force learning by rote devoid of context. Learning like that is damn near anathema to me. Combine this with a langue like Japanese where context is fucking everything and it starts to feel like a perfect storm of sorts.

Romance languages are absolutely terrible for learners though. You have to memorize a dozen tables for each verb group, and half the verbs are irregular and have to be memorized individually.

I'd argue that verb conjugates are tricky whenever learning a new language. But sharing a common linguistic root does make learning vocabulary a hell of a lot easier. This of course doesn't work when the languages don't share one. But I get what you're saying, just looking at existence verbs alone makes English look like a mess compared to Japanese.

I don't know , it seems pretty near to romance languages and also we have an advantage for the sounds since japs pronounce vocals much more similar to us than germanic languages.

Perhaps. I suppose it would depend on which romantic languages you're most familiar with. I remember skating through Spanish classes just by finding common Latin roots and sussing out meaning with that and context. Japanese having an order of magnitude fewer syllable sounds than English definitely gives us an advantage in learning proper pronunciation.

I don't really play a lot of japanese games, or read manga, or watch anime, so could someone recommend some?

How complicated is the language in Etrian Odyssey 5?
I'm starting to think that it will never be translated, so maybe I can put my Japanese study to good use.

I'm interested in this as well. Not necessarily EO5, but working on something that has never been translated so I can gauge my progress with something that I couldn't have done without learning what I have.

Just download it and find out. You do have a hacked 3DS of course, right user?

I do and I can report that it's walls of kanji. I probably understand enough to know vaugly what to do, but certainly not enough to appreciate any of the dialouge.

If we're talking about games to get that aren't getting translated, SaGa: Scarlet Grace is a must.

How does that dedicated 3DS translation tool that I've heard about work? If it straight up gives you the text without any painstaking hex-editor reverse engineering autism, anyone with babby-tier moonrunes knowledge could just punch whatever kanji they don't know into jisho and stick at least vaguely coherent English back in. Might take a bit longer but I can't imagine by much.

I hear Sakura Taisen is greatly coveted by the monolingual plebes but I haven't played it yet so what the fuck do I know

Try Dai Gyakuten Saiban. It's got a close to 0% chance of ever being translated, and it has a lot more text than something like EO.

Hey, quick question.
How many kanji should I try to memorize before going into grammar?

A grammar book should have a list of Kanji it uses in each example. Sometimes it doesn't if its been used before in the book. There's no real need to wait.

Just do a bit of both vocabulary and grammar at the same time. There's no need to study Kanji on it's own because you will learn how Kanji are used through vocabulary. For example, [日] is pronounced "ni-chi (nee-chee)" when it means day, and it's pronounced "hi (sounds like he)" when it means fire. If you just learn the words for "day" and "fire", you've already learned this Kanji's readings. Of course, you can study Kanji on their own if you want, but the point is that it's not necessary.

If you want to study vocabulary, use the core2k/6k deck and anki. If you want to study just Kanji, you can use KanjiDamage, K-LINK, or the Kondansha's Learner Course deck. All of this is in the OP. Anki is a great tool because it uses spaced repetition to expose you to the learning material at specific intervals. You can think of this as very efficient rote memorization.

Learn the correct stroke order, do your reps, and keep a steady pace. This is how you will slow but certainly attain literacy.

Thanks mates.

I use jisho so much I put a button for it on my deck. ankimobile supported.

For anyone doubting their ability to learn a new language, especially one that is considered "difficult" like Japanese, watch this video. Pretty insightful.

It means sun. It can also still mean day when pronounced ひ. I wouldn't be surprised if it has some etymological relation to fire, but practically it's not used to mean fire.

I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure 「火」 is used for "fire".

My mistake, 「火」 is also pronounced ひ

thanks

Yotsuba& is supposed to be good for Japanese beginners. It's a cute slice of life manga.

What are some of your favorite Japanese fonts? I'm getting tired of looking at these fonts in my Anki decks and want to change things up. Gothic or mincho, whichever is fine.

hell, I changed devices and I stopped being able to recognize a lot of my cards.

I assume you're talking about Ankidroid and you're phone is english by default. If that's the case then what you're seeing is Chinese hanzi, not kanji. You have to actually add the fonts into the cards and into your collection.media folder. Sync it, then you should have kanji on Ankidroid

I accidentally made that discovery a while back and made a post on it. And yet, for some reason, even with the same font, but across devices, my character recognition ability goes down.

I'm almost at 2000, but I don't know how much longer I can go on.

Time to lower your new cards if you can't handle it. Don't stress yourself out, stick to a pace you can handle every day.

I'm also looking to change fonts but the ones I was trying that I liked were missing kanji that I want. I do use one called さなフォンP or SNsanafonP for one of my decks which only contains either jouyou or kyouiku kanji, I'm not sure. It's a hand written style one just to change things up.

For my main deck I'm currently using 游明朝 but will switch when I find something better. I think I was just using whatever the Anki default is prior.

Jap writing is crazy but it looks pretty neat. Rate my calligraphy.

I need a good offline dictionary J>E and a J>J one, does anyone have some suggestions?
Also there is a text hooker for games in general instead of only visual novels?

It looks like you're doing れ in 3 strokes, but it's written in 2.

The ム looking bit in 留 is one stroke at the top, one stroke down and right, then the third stroke at the end.

Your box shapes, (田,日,口) would look better if you got the bottom stroke closer to the bottoms of the vertical strokes.

You forgot to write the left side of 拘 in the first and last black one and a stroke in か in the red.

さ and き are often written with a gap in the bottom arch, not that it's wrong not to, just quite common to.

Keep in mind people sometimes write things different than how they appear in fonts. You can try looking up stroke order or searching 'character 書き方' or something in Google if you're unsure.

As far as hiragana goes, there's also some alternate ways to write わ, れ and ね, and そ if you want to look them up. I might be forgetting something too.

but other than that, it looks good

Are there, cause I can't find anything about those. I know そ can look like pic related but I don't remember those other three having alternative writings

番号を見ているか？

That's a bongo, not a bangou. バーカ

Yeah, I know that, but they sound very similar, so it can be used as a mnemonic.

Make sure you don't confuse the pronunciation if you do that. ぼんご =/= ばんごう

もちろん

Like so without the zigzag motion, just straight down to the left of the vertical stroke.

Amagami is on sale again. Posted this a while back last time it was on sale, but that was like a day before it ended.

Recommended if you want a bretty good dating sim for cheap.
store.playstation.com/#!/ja-jp/ゲーム/エビコレ-アマガミ/cid=JP0117-PCSG00291_00-AMAGAMIPLUSAPPRI

Also the Super Robot Wars franchise as a whole.

I made these just for you.

...

10/10

Anything that ran in Jump will have yomigana, which is good for learning. Hokuto no Ken, JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken, and Dragon Ball would be classic examples.

This is fucking great and I'm going to try giving it to some of my students. 忝い

Furigana is bad for learning imo. It discourages you from learning how to pronounce the kanji.

Bwuh?

It helps you read kanji, it doesn't help you learn it. If you are relying on furigana then you aren't learning anything.

...

I think what matters more there is attitude then, because for me it's been a good way to pick up the different readings of kanji, and getting a feel for when it will be one or the other. I play a lot of games that don't have yomigana or voice acting, so when I do read shit with it I don't think of it as "Oh I don't have to learn" I think of it as "Oh this is helpful"

Yo user, gimme an image of just the girl on a transparent background so I can make a shop.

Nevermind, the edges were clear enough to just cut out the background.

That's lucky because I didn't save the file, so the transparency would have had to been added manually anyway.

Thank you, user. I wasn't the guy you responded too, but I've asked for porn of her as well. I want to fuck that smug bitch until she's too tired to talk shit.
Also, I always felt "You can't make me cum" would be more appropriate.

I just started vocab about a month ago, and I noticed stuff like あ゛、 ん゛、 and う゛in stuff pretty early on. I just wish I knew exactly how it was supposed to sound, instead of just knowing they're supposed to be more emotive than normal. Maybe I'm over complicating it.

You are. I don't think those are really used for anything besides random moaning.

Slingshot is pachinko, apparently.

ぱチンコ

Could you anons which already know it make a English->Japanese Duolingo course happen? They have a Japanese->English one.
I have been using it to learn German and Russian and I like it a mile better than most anything else I have used.

romancE
The only romantic language is whispered French.

YOUR phone is English.

Yeah, I was up too late binging on Nier. I meant "romanic" of course.

japaneseverbconjugator.com/
このウェッブページは大きな手伝うだろう。

バンプ～

「大きな手伝う」 is gibberish.
What you want to say is 「役に立つ」.

Still too early for me to read most stuff, but I decided to download a game I intend to play and test it to make sure it worked okay.

ow

You've got my attention.

3 months and I'll be fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. tbh I don't really care if I fail so long as I'm motivated to improve. I can always take it again.

Where can you practice? I'll probably just start with N3 or N2, just to gauge if I'm ready for N1.

wut

I already took and passed the N5 last July, I've just been slacking off since. I thought I wouldn't be ready for the N4 in January so I decided to wait 'till this July, but without the looming fear of an encroaching deadline I just ended up slacking off.

Threadly reminder of why anyone with an interest in Japanese games should just skip the middle man.

Is it alright to skip the videos for tae kim grammar? Even in school I watched video lectures at 2.0x, but if I can just read the lessons rather than listen..

I mean where did you get the practice paper?

The tests here are only in December, so I have pretty much a whole year to get even more ready.

...

I think I got it from jlpt.jp/samples/sample12.html

Yeah you don't need them.

I see what happened here. The dumbfucks used two different types of parentheses, so it didn't trigger properly.

Thanks.

It's a cute little game that fairly fun. Also has great music.

Where'd you download from? Can't find the Japanese version in the usual spots.

Emuparadise. It's listed under its Japanese name, Garakuta Meisaku Gekijou - Rakugaki Oukoku.

Oh, I just looked under R for Rakugaki Oukoku. Thanks.

No problem, it's one of my favorite games and I'm happy to see someone else try it.

This is a koi fish right? The description references something about transforming into different things, what's the story about that? My Google-fu is weak and I can't find anything about it

It's not a koi, it's some legendary fish with a human face. UMA is the Japanese term for fake creatures like Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster.

top kek. Nice.

core2k6k is weird

The core deck for Anki, the one I used at least, was disordered and didn't give cards in the actual order the core presents them in.

If you check the browser for that deck there's probably numbers in the sort field column. That's the actual order of the core. りんご is 121 and 交通費 is 1888. I'm not sure if there's an easy way to fix the ordering.

Yeah core 6k has some obscure words, and also doesn't have some more common words. I just finished it recently, but I'm going to have to make another vocab deck for the words it doesn't cover.

My sort column is kanji (sorting by kanji??), and all cards are dequeued in that strange order. The "Notes" field seems to have better sense of order.
Meaning I've been studying out of order for the past 2 months. How to fix:

I tried that for two days. It's like a random order compared to the default Optimized-Voc-Index. The words weren't grouped together in a similar style and there wasn't any katakana words to soften the daily load.
Maybe I'm autistic for noticing patterns, but the default seems to prioritize grouping together words with the same kanji (階段　段階) or related meanings (立つ　座る) while also putting in katakana words as freebies. It's much more organized and I think it's easier to learn with this setup. I don't think it's a good idea to change the order of all the cards just because you didn't like how one word you already knew came after another word.

Is there a way to restore it or do we need a new thread?

Is it really that necessary? You can find the thread by looking for the picture, not to mention it's sort of hard to miss with all the information in the OP.

I thought the thread was dead at first, since it didn't show up in a catalog search.

Nah, not dead, just slow. We did just get hacked, after all. Site's been down for a while, so I imagine things will pick up as more people realize we're back online.

any of you mind translating the far bottom left text bubble of ?

It's supposed to be 駄目, "dame," but all slurred speech so it comes out "rame." Basically saying "no more"

Thank you very much.

erigado guzaimasuuuuu
:-DDD

Sounds too formal.

ｵﾏｴﾉｼﾜｻﾞﾀﾞﾀﾉｶ

(checked)

I found a phone app called memrise that teaches japanese. Has anybody got good instruction from it?

It's written in all Katakana to indicate it's monotone roboty/zombie/etc. talk, so that's fucking with it probably. It says "It's your fault Tanoka," with I presume Tanoka being someone's name.

If I want to send a picture of my penis to Misa, which email should I use?

She's a real qt, I want to bully her.

NANI !?

it's actually 「お前の仕業だったのか」, a line from silent hill 2's dog ending
the japanese type it out in katakana to make fun of the way the va pronounced the line

ワンワン

Man, it's amazing how much difference no っ can make. Is the pronunciation as bad as Onduru?

finished learning the kanas and i just realised that i've forgotten how to learn vocabulary.
last time i had to learn words for a language i was in junior high school. wat do.
also flash cards dont do it for me, memory is shit.

then your language learning is shit. Repetition is the only way. If your memory is shit, you have to repet even more.

guess what, they totally do

Usually what I did to learn shit in university was just write it down bunch of times until it started coming out automatically without me needing to remember what it was.
But that was like programming language commands and theorems for physics and maths.
How do i adjust that for a language?

thanks for the encouragement but

You need to feel meaning in your words. Look around you, look at the things you see in your house everyday, and say what they are in Japanese. If you don't know, look it up. If you live alone, maybe even try writing what they are in Kana on post-it notes and pasting them on the objects.

Yo that sounds deep. BRB getting post-it notes.

Threadly reminder to never skip your reps.

当たり前だろう

Reps?

EVERY
DAY

今まで、　毎日は日本語が勉強。　勉強は１０８日。 俺はとても嬉しい, でもまだ下手。

AM I SAYING IT RIGHT SENPAI

いいえ

Reps of what though?

「今日俺は10８日連続で日本語を勉強したことになる。とても嬉しいことだけど、まだまだだ。」 would sound more natural I think?

i think the japanese release also had english voices

Konami's got a pretty huge hardon for Western shit so it wouldn't surprise me.

バンプ～

I finished my first anime with the subs turned off. My listening comprehension still isn't great, but I think I was able to follow along pretty well.

whoops, didn't mean to quote

偉い！

バンプ

How to learn grammar? Tae Kim is great but I need like an anki deck for grammar or something. Like, a book that teaches me the concepts, and then the anki deck that makes me think about and recognize the concept as its being used or something like that. I guess I could do genki, but fuck genki, it sucks. Is there anything better?

Tae Kim is just a reference. In order to learn grammar you have to read.

Go find a Japanese game or manga you like and just play/read it.

Do you think it's good enough to just read the example sentences in core2k/6k? There are a lot of sentences in there, but they're typically short, you know. Basically, I need very easy reading material, and games require a basic working knowledge of the language, which I don't think I have yet. I mean. I know a shit ton of words by now, but not enough that I can play without stopping to look something up.

教えてください、　輩先！！！

I dunno, I never bothered with those example sentences.

Then play while stopping to look them up. I did the same when I first started playing games.

What?
Anyways just read manga or play a game. You don't need to understand 100% of what you read, you don't even need to understand 50% of what you read. The more you read the more you'll retain and the easier it will be. I'd even recommend watching yu-gi-oh raw, most dialogue is simple but there are more complex moments and anytime someone activates a card effect it will probably bring up a more advanced grammatical construct for you to practice understanding.

Well, I don't know. It's supposed to read as "ぱいせん”, which is supposed to be a deliberate, slang corruption of 先輩. Like a more casual way to say that word. I don't know if that's true or not, I don't live in Japan, I just heard some random youtube person say it in a video.
Alright, thanks for the advice. Do you think it's alright to watch with English subtitles? I mean, I feel like, when I can read the English word, it sometimes helps me recognize the word as it's being spoken. You can make that argument with Japanese subtitles as well, but I am a fucking master at English, it is my native language, and so I think I can read along and listen to what's being said very easily without to exerting much effort.

Not if you want to learn.

Watch it raw/jap subtitles first. Write down the times for anything you're unsure of, then download the subs and compare what you thought to what they said.

そうだ。　ありがとう。

Jap subtitles seem best to me. Though at that point I would rather play a VN, which doesn't sound like a bad idea. Though I have no idea whether there are easy ones.

Japanese subs download:
kitsunekko.net/dirlist.php?dir=subtitles/japanese/

Listening competence is starting to become my Moby Dick. I have know idea how to properly practice listening and less idea on how to find stuff at an N4 level (or lower, I passed N5 but I practically guessed my way through the listening section); listening to hours of Japanese radio talk shows clearly isn't working.

Also I'm starting to get really pissed off at Core 2/6k and its newspaper frequency order; why the fuck am I learning a hundred words for electoral reform but only know 5 colors and don't know the words for 'chair', 'table' etc.

Yeah, I understand your frustration. I've read that anki decks are supposed to be regarded as supplementary material, and not your primary source of learning. In other words, you're supposed to take it upon yourself to learn words outside of anki's schedule, but I don't do that shit. I've also heard that spaced repetition is the best way to put words into your long term memory, so I figure that I might as well just stick with it, and eventually I'll get around to learning all the other stuff. Also:
椅子 is chair
テーブル is table
ドア is door
ベッド is bed
テレビ is television
モニター is monitor
コンピュータ is computer, you can also say パソコン
All this shit I learned from anki in a few months time. I know a bunch of colors, too:
青い and 青 are blue, the one with い is an adjective
赤い　and 赤 are red
白い and 白 are white
黒い and 黒 are black
緑色　and 緑 are green
茶色い and 茶色 are light brown
オレンジ is orange, both as a fruit and a color
黄色 and 黄 are yellow
I don't know if you already knew many of these or not, but whatever, I just wanted to point out that the core2k/6k deck also shows common words along with strange as fuck words like 都合 and 各国.

Listening comprehension is also my weakest point, but watching unsubbed anime is slowly but surely increasing it. You'll need to know a lot of vocab beforehand though, or it'll just be gibberish.

都合 isn't strange, it's pretty common. Especially to say convenient (都合がいい) and inconvenient (都合が悪い).

See I tried this but at the level I'm at there's only kids anime which seem to all be voiced by screeching harpies having a shouting contest to see who can hit the highest pitch.

Yeah, but what I mean is that it's easy to conceptualize words like chair, monitor, bed, or something very simple like colors or numbers. On the other hand, at least for me anyway, it's difficult to memorize words that you may not know how or when to use, because their usage is tied to specific situations, like 間に合う. How the fuck do you use that word? What the hell does it mean to serve the purpose? I don't know. It took me forever to learn this word for this exact reason, and I still wouldn't know how to use it.

Focus on your reading/vocab first then, and save listening for later.

Well I'm taking the N4 in 3 months and the only section I'm set to fail is listening, so that's not really an option.

Yeah, that's a drawback of trying to attach a simple English meaning to every Japanese word/phrase. Sometimes you just aren't going to get it until you see it in context.

Dunno what to tell you then. I'm not even bothering with N5-2, I'm going straight to N1 when I'm ready.

I need the fear of a deadline to keep me from complete lethargy.

Well then buckle up and listen for 3 months straight. You'll probably improve in that time.

You should sign up for a class at your local community college, or pay someone for private lessons.

I think something like this could be good for listening comprehension. He says the names of the birds, and the kana appears on screen. Also, he make very simple commentary.

I think it's something like "It doesn't seem like you mind me taking it off"
"If you see that then you understand"?

For context, I'm going to do the whole conversation in your pic.

"What's wrong Mikurio?"

"Don't 'what's wrong' me, the hell are you doing with that hand"

"Ah, I just thought I'd strip you"

"I can tell that just by looking!"

When you think you can handle it, using a Japanese dictionary will usually give you a better idea than a JP>ENG dictionary.

There's also a number of sites that have example sentences with translation which can give you a decent idea of how to use a word. But beware that with some sites sometimes translations can be overly liberal, inaccurate or unnatural at times or in the case that sentences are translated from and meant for learning English, the same can be of the Japanese sentences. You also might struggle to find entries for some less common words or usages of words.

Here's one site with translated sentences and one Japanese only. Goo.ne.jp is also a Japanese dictionary site (国語 section.)
dictionary.goo.ne.jp/je/71893/meaning/m0u/間に合う/
yourei.jp/

研究 [けんきゅう](verbal noun): research; study
Ken gives you the cue to begin your studies
I hate this word because I can't seem to remember it and I need to make a damn mnemonic.

Makes sense, I'll try it.

I had trouble with that word too, and strangely I had a similar mnemonic.

You had one job.

You could just say "90% of worthwhile games" and be done though

I was trying out this game since it looked kinda interesting, but I gotta say I wasn't expecting this, lel.

ugh how problematic.

I really like Toshinobu Kondo's art

The giraffe necks are kinda weird though.

バンプ～

thx mark :^)

lrn2format you nigger

I had mark edit the title so people can find the thread, since it seemed slower than usual. I guess he fucked up the rest of the OP when he did.

We'll fix it in the next thread, nobody uses the OP anyway.

Anyone have a proxy shipping service they recommend? Amazon.co.jp and some other sites works fine for the most part, but I feel like it would be a good idea to find a proxy shipping service I can use in case I ever need one.

OP is a illegible wall made of a mess of text and links with random strings mixed in. please show me where to start

Can somebody give me a hand with this? I don't know enough to understand the bit about his car's tires/suspension (around 4:30,) other than that he used a car height adjustment kit.

Also, I will never get tired of that comfy, mid-90s, low-budget Jap stock music it has. Reminds me of old anime games.

You're right.
realkana.com
Memorize both hiragana and katakana, then then come back to us in a week or two when you can answer 300 times without getting any wrong.
If you need more guidance we'd be happy to spoonfeed.

Obenkyo is a really helpful android app for studying Nip.

here's a tip; when you use anki, I think it's a good idea to give yourself time to "consume" new words. Make a point of pressing "good" on a card after you carefully read its contents. This will put the card away for a 10 minute period while you deal with other cards. I think it's better to carefully review the card once every 10 minutes than it is to spam the "again" button fifty times and try to ingrain the new word into your brain.

thanks guys, I've hit communication capabilities in a few languages in the past though I've forgotten everything since then because I saw no reason to practice them so I should be capable of staying properly paced and actually learn this language

Fuck me I can barely read, but I can speak it and listen far better. I only decided to start learning Japanese after realising how much I knew from years of watching subbed anime alone. The same thing happened to an extent when I was learning a different language. The only problem I have with this dying language is the fact that there are symbols that I need to read, where 紫＝むらさき and having trouble reading to fast as it were a letter based sentence structure and getting lost.

おい、煩いこの野郎。

10000 hours in paint

this is why I learn japanese

I think that's Chinese though

I'm really regretting it. Each time I try to dedicate myself to something I always give up, no matter what it is. My new years resolution was to start learning Japanese and after two weeks I got side tracked 3 months later here I am, not learning a damn thing. I already forgot kana and shit. What are some ways for someone with depression who doesn't want to seek professional help get motivation?

ask yourself, do you REALLY want to do this? People who want to do things dont sit around looking aloof while wondering if they want enough, they do it. What you seem to be doing is you WISH you knew japanese but dont really WANT to learn it. Unless you psych yourself up a little and actually WANT, go do something else. You sound like those smokers who are like "I want to stop today" and come around next day with 3 smokes in their mouth due to withdrawal. Those fucking fags that just wish they'd get results while still being lazy cunts that dont walk the talk.

Now how do I psych myself up for something?

Just think of all the games that were ruined in localization or never left Japan.

Also the beginning is always the hardest. Refer to

Cheap plastic surgery?

You are correct.

...

That description is terrible. The translator is some ancient Australian faggot who speaks some weird outback dialect of English or something. Basically 間に合う has 2 meaning, either to be on time, or to be sufficient (good enough). In the second meaning, you can think of it as being synonymous with 十分。

...

だからどうした。

for you

Don't make me fap to her.

This video just tore a hole in my pants

...

And most of those games can be played without any knowledge of any language. It's not like you need to learn Japanese to play a game like Etrian Odyssey V when you can just memorise the menus. I've imported plenty of games and beat them without any knowledge of Japanese. Pretty much the only reason for me to want learn Japanese is for PC-98 vn's that will never be translated.
The real problem with me is that I lay in bed for 18 hours a day, and only do shit when it's required. Where can I get the energy to learn Japanese when I don't even have the energy to leave my own bedroom?

Well if you don't care about playing untranslated games then there's obviously no reason to learn Japanese.

I though I would learn it because I though it would be a good distraction. Ironically I ended up getting distracted from it. Shit, I have a small collection of Spanish and Russian learning books and cassette tapes, but I never get around to studying them.

I don't care if she's made out of plywood, as long as I get to hear her siren's call

My head hurts now, thanks.

more like banshee's call

Rote memorization is enough for most games, true, but you're missing out on a lot by not being able to read in, say, Super Robot Wars.

Just going to say the same as always, if you are just getting to eastern languages: Learn by listening and (talking). Forget learning hirakana and katakana, just for a few weeks. Download a shit load of childrens audio books in your preferred language make sure that you download the pdfs in your language as in the one to be learned one.. Now you need to start going to long walks listening only to those audio books. Make a mental note to everything you don't understand, and check them later when you are at home. Check everything, and keep listening the same audio book until you understand it fully. Then go to the next one.

If at any point you feel over whelmed, hopeless or lost interest, go back to learning the hira and kata. And then go back to audio books. It just works to change things.

This is just how I got through the basics. Worked wonders.

No. That is literally the first thing you have to do. Everything after that is up to your discretion.

What program/website is this? I desperately need to start studying vocab.
Remembering kanji is a breeze for me, but it's kind of useless if I don't have a good vocabulary

That's the online JLPT test.

Do both.

jlpt.jp/e/samples/forlearners.htmll

美的 - A E S T H E T I C - 美的

Thanks

There are many ways to learn, many free programs. No excuses.

Nice cherry picking sentences? I told to ditch the hira and kata learning for a while (not forever). Understanding speech and speaking, might work for other people, so that is why I post this every time I see this "You can learn japanese thread". If you can't learn by listening, nobody cares. Wait…

Yes, both are important. I just want to give a different advice to learn.

Seri

This is kind of bad advice. They can't even read hiragana but you want them to start understanding grammar and vocabulary? This isn't any different than "I learned Japanese in 2 months by watching anime". Obviously they should listen, but knowing the kanas is vital for getting to grammar which will let them actually comprehend why what they are hearing is what they are reading.

Learning kana is tied in with learning how all the vocal sounds work in Japanese. If you don't even know the kana you won't even be able to comprehend speech.

...

Ok. My point was an advice to those that have a very basic grammar and words. Like a 6y child. Obviously, if you don't know anything about he language, listening to gibberish will not make a difference.

A bit circular logic, but who cares. Learning a language as a second one is always a challenge. Some are fairly easy, but you always have to start from the very beginning, but not as a child learning his/her first language, but as an adult learning a second language. The difference is huge.
Anyhow for me learning through audiobooks has been the most efficient and probably the only way I could learn any new languages.
I just wanted to tell you a different way of learning. I don't really care if you like it or not, it's for the people who come to these threads and learning kata was not for them.

I completely agree with df025e, I stated earlier in the thread I learned nip mostly by watching anime, I could form basic sentences and had an in depth understanding of grammar when I actually decided to start learning, when I couldn't even read あ. It's honestly not just Japanese, its any language.

Got any recommendations? Links to where a person could get this stuff?

You're a lucky motherfucker is what you are. The homophones, the fucking homophones; while my brain is trying to figure out which one the speaker means the speaker is finishing up the next sentence and I haven't caught any of it.

460 Kanji learned, and I've been at it for about 2 months now. I'm feeling pretty good.

You can do it user.

Good job, user. Keep it up. Meanwhile, I still don't understand shit. I know all these fucking words, but I can't put them together to make sentences. That is the most frustrating part of all this, not being able to read or listen to anything and understand it, and not being able to formulate my own sentences. I am

NOT GIVING UP FUCK YOU I CAN LEARN JAPANESE

but it's just a lot slower than I'd originally hoped for. 俺は日本語がまだ下手よ、　外国語はとてもむずかしい、　このはとても悲しいだ。

Are you learning kanji by itself?

get on my level

man I wish I could write English that nice, seeing as I write everything as a hasty scribble that is some bastardization of print and cursive combined. by slowing myself down to retard slow levels, I am currently capable of writing legible but sloppy Hiragana

That's called chicken scratch, user. I do the same thing

So far, yeah just the kanji, then I plan to build up my vocab from the kanji I already know.

Thanks, mein tomodachis. :^)

I want to learn French, German, Japanese and Icelandic but I have brain damage that makes me literally unable to concentrate on anything

hahahaa i wanna fuckin die

So just learn Japanese since those other languages are useless for gaming and porn.

I'm not interested in Japanese for gaming in porn, I'm interested in it because of Japanese internet and their art resources.

Japanese internet culture seems to be really fucking neat, and I'm seeking to tap into their power source. Same goes for the French and Germans.

Icelandic just sounds really cool and I've started to listening to Icelandic music recently, too.

Give me some artists, dropped-as-a-babyanon
Inb4 bjork

oh that's boring, I guess you really do have brain damage :^)

Mum, Sigur Ros are the first two that come to mind. The rest are just random tracks on my playlist.

Dude, I can get porn in the West. Those fucking slants got some real esoteric shit going on up in their gay nippon with their gay nip art, I need to know what's up and what I'm missing out on. I feel like a rat clawing at a jar of peanut butter over here.

You should be learning vocab and kanji at the same time. Doing it one at a time doubles the work time, and kanji have multiple readings depending on the word so just learning kanji alone doesn't help. In the two months you spent learning 460 kanji, I've learned around 1000 words with the kanji and am already starting reading practice.

Write words, not kanji.

Why are you on a video game board if you're not interested in video games?

Straw-manning isn't funny, even as a joke.

Why people prefer hiragana and katakana is beyond me, Jesus fucking Christ.

I could imagine hiragana and katakana being easier to physically write some words,　but overall kanji is best for reading. Playing older games that only use hiragana and katakana is going to be annoying.

I legitimately found the N5 reading comprehension questions harder than the N4 sample ones I've been doing because of this.

Are you using a fine-point pen or a ball-point there?

How is that strawmanning?

Same. I want to get in on that sweet Nippon internet culture. You just know they've got some kind of Holla Forums equivalent/hikki gathering place out there. (Not 2chan, as it seems to be pretty dead tbh)

Being able to play the Logh games and watching unsubbed anime will be a bonus

Where the hell do I start with learning vocab? What are you using to learn that much vocabulary that quickly?

The Anki deck that I thought everyone was using. 2k/6k, it has always been in the OP as far as I know.
Default is 20 new words a day, some people have trouble with that many but it seems fine for me because they water it down with katakana words.
Also, don't wait until you get 2k words down before you start reading because reading will also increase your vocabulary and help you remember it better than flashcards. Think of it more like a supplement.
The Yotsubato reading pack is nice, I just started it a few days ago. I'm assuming you've already started grammar, though.

I started with the 2k Core deck, but learning the what the phrase meant PLUS how to say it was extremely difficult. But I guess I should just go back and tough it out.

This. I don't understand how I'm supposed to memorize the character, it's meaning, AND it's pronunciation, when all I have to remember it by is its sound and shape, which are completely arbitrary.

Understanding logh and not needing those horrible engrish subs is a rather
noble goal in itself.

Hold on, what reading pack? Where can I find it? I've been trying to find something to read.

ankiweb.net/shared/info/1237389412
This anki deck

Also, can someone point me in the direction of an explanation as to why kanji are pronounced differently in different circumstances? It's very disheartening to think that you know a character, only for Anki to say "No, it's something else, but I'm not telling you why :^)"

I've been using that. I was talking about that Yotsubata reading pack.

It was in the DJT guide. Although they want you to pay $10 for it, if you don't have money to spare you can get it for free too. You'll need to get a raw version of Yotsubato somewhere else, though. livingjapanese.com/pages/reading_packs.html
It comes with a guide, a vocab list ordered by the page numbers, and Anki decks for both vocab and sentences. It doesn't have grammar words or particles in it, though, so you'll need to learn that stuff first.

Scratch that, I understand why it happened, and under what circumstances on-yomi are usually used in, but is the on-yomi pronunciation completely unpredictable even if you know the kun-yomi?

I see. Would you mind telling me what manga is in the list? I could just try to find raws for those then.

For those more advanced perhaps, how do non non biyori and Berserk read themselves? Would they be appropriate for someone far from fluent?

Generally, when a kanji is by itself (立つ) it uses kun, and when it's with another kanji (立派 ), on. Learning each kanji's kun and on readings is kinda useless though because they can have multiple. This is why you should learn words instead of kanji, in a word, the pronunciation will always be the same.

The manga is Yotsubato.
I'm not 100% sure, but apparently anime and manga that don't take place in contemporary settings, and even some that do, often use different words that wouldn't normally be used. Naruto is ninja speak, One Piece is pirate speak, etc. I'd guess Berserk would be the same way. Even in the yotsubato pack, they have to list the actual spelling and readings next to how its changed in the comic. (すごい　is spelled すげぇ in the comic)

Then why is everyone constantly promoting the Anki deck? Am I simply not thinking about the learning process right?

I think you're confusing kanji for words. Words contain kanji. Kanji aren't words, but some words are made of one kanji.

There is an Anki deck for just lone Kanji, and there is an Anki deck for actual vocabulary. (kanji conjunctions or kanji + okurigana)

user is implying that learning the vocab words is more effective than just focusing on the plain kanji.

I see. Pretty interesting. That explains a whole bunch of things now that I think about it.

This makes me wonder. Is there any kanji that doesn't have a word assigned to it and is exclusively used in conjunction with other kanji to make a word?

It's the same as reading English, really. If you see someone type, "I like deilcoius food." You can still tell they they meant to say "delicious." This is because you're reading the word and not the letters.

It's possible, but I wouldn't know how to look for it.

He really is Kira

I get that, but there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to pronunciation.
These have a clear logic to them that makes sense.
These on the other hand, I'm not grasping. It's easy to see that the kanji within each word has a meaning that it imparts to the greater whole. However, I'm not seeing a pattern in pronunciation. By what virtue does 二 become pronounced Ha in 二十日?

Yeah, I don't know why either. It annoyed me at first, but eventually I got used to it. 仕方ない。

jisho.org/word/二十日
Observe the kanji on the sidebar. When you see a certain kanji, those are the possible readings it can take on. Of course, then there's things like rendaku which gives rise to headaches like "hiragana" even though "katakana", tokidoki and hitobito.

animejpnsub.blogspot.com/
Here you go. You can watch anime with Japanese subtitles on this website. Not that wide of a selection, but it's fucking free, so quit yer bitchin'

Alternatively you can torrent raws and put in subs from kitsunekko.net/dirlist.php?dir=subtitles/japanese/ on media player classic. Wider selection, but slower because you have to download videos first.

Something I'm more curious about is getting raws.
Is there any good source in particular? Sure, popular manga is easy to find but I wonder about some more obscure ones being available as well.

nyaa.se/?cats=1_0
This place has manga, too. Not sure if it has more obscure stuff, but you can take a look and see.

...

I don't like ball-point. I am using one of these.

After you learn enough words you will usually start to know when to use which pronunciation.

hello I am new to this

Why are there 3 different ways to read/write numbers and what is the difference?

I learned the "preferred reading" a long time ago and was surprised when Anki used the other two.

See and
You're looking at kanji readings, not words. I'm not sure why that page lists a "preferred reading" because how a kanji is read depends on the word.
一 is the word for 1, like how we have "one." It is pronounced いち.
一つ is a word used to count things, in this case it's "one thing" and it's pronounced ひとつ.
一日 is a word meaning "first day of the month" and it's pronounced ついたち.
This is why you don't learn individual kanji by themselves.

I will hold out hope they expand their selection someday.

Unfortunately raws on Nyaa lose seeders really quickly.

I knew kanji can have multiple readings and meanings depending on context but didn't know the same applied to numbers. Thanks

Definitely, same as in English when you have things like "one" versus "first" versus "once"

Those are ordinal numbers which are different.

The alternate readings for numbers (ひとつ、ふたつ、みつ) is the native Japanese numbering system that was in use before the adoption of Chinese numbers. It's only used in some contexts and you'll rarely see it extend beyond three or four except in a few set words like 二十歳 (はたち).

Granted, just saying, the idea of there not just being one word to express the concept of X number is in English too

after four days, I have Hiragana memorized. I'm not fast yet, and I make dumb mistakes every once in a while, but I can also go through every Hiragana character on realkana without fucking up. I'm going to spend another day or two just practicing Hiragana before adding Katakana into my practice. With any luck, I'll have finished the kana by Tuesday
I think I can learn Japanese

お前は日本語が出きる、　頑張ってね

The real Japanese learning starts after katakana. You can do it.

Would this thread benefit from this application thing I made? It's for memorizing kana.

I made it for myself long time ago because Realkana is gay, and fixed it up today. You can add and change the characters pretty easily. It runs on the browser without internet connection.

Can Americans learn to read subtitles? If you didn't grow up with reading it will take you years.

Of course.

I just wanna learn nipponese so I can understand these videos.

I found out about them very recently. Fucking weird as shit.
She's surprisingly funny though.

is it worth memorizing these extra katakana characters while I work on the rest of them, or should I learn them on a need to know basis?

In my experience, Katakana are very rare in themselves, so I guess it's not absolutely necessary to memorize now. Just learn them along the way.

Those are only used for foreign words. You can just look them up as you come across them.

thanks, looks like I'll be done with the kana by Tuesday then