Nipponese Learning Thread / Japanese Learning Thread

So you're walking down the street when all of a sudden, this fucker slaps your favourite game series ass.

Consumer awareness is the only way localisation companies will ever be held accountable, but it's only a recent trend. It's time to git gud and stop relying on kool-aid sipping intermediaries to decide what is and isn't okay for your consumption.
Japanese isn't too difficult to learn, just time consuming, so start as soon as possible.
And hey, learning a new language is pretty fun in it's own way.


docs.google.com/document/d/1ynwmcFwy0ccT70cVRp-G97fYlcf-GYZ86T62SvQMDdY/pub?embedded=true

If you are already learning or already know Nipponese, post the Nipponese

games you are playing and the Nipponese only games you hope to play.

Other urls found in this thread:

docs.google.com/document/d/1pKgBm8Aa58mjB1hYhbK-VOPZsRBTXBuPBzw8Xikm2ss/pub?embedded=true
nihongonobaka.com/top-11-games-for-learning-japanese/
thejapanesepage.com/fun/nintendo_ds_study_japanese
jlpt.jp/samples/sample12.html
guidetojapanese.org/pdf/hiragana_trace_sheet.pdf
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

old thread is on page 12, but I'll allow it this once

I ctrl+f'd the catalogue for both "japanese" and "nipponese" and didnt get anything
I just checked p 12 and 13 and found fuck all

So I'm either retarded or there's no subject line in that thread

Daily reminder that 8-4 is localizing NieR automata.

remember

chigaimasu

you can learn quite a bit just playing famicom RPGs with a kana chart

What are various methods for learning kanji and vocabulary? I don't need to know the best way, but I need to understand which approaches are common so I can figure out which is best for me.

For kicks, I've been using handwriting recognition and multiradical searches to translate booru image dialog. That's fun, but it doesn't feel like it "sticks" well, like there's a 50/50 chance I'll recognize a kanji when I come across it again and I still probably won't know how to read it.

Flash cards. They work as long as you stay consistent and don't cheat yourself.

The guide in the op will tell you how to learn Japanese. However there's also a more updated version of that guide that goes a little more into detail about that, as well as some other resources here.

docs.google.com/document/d/1pKgBm8Aa58mjB1hYhbK-VOPZsRBTXBuPBzw8Xikm2ss/pub?embedded=true

if you didn't catch the gay and ended up liking games for faggots maybe you wouldn't have this problem

I forgot to ask this in the last thread, but is there any actual reason to learn Japanese if you aren't a weeaboo?

Olympics in Japan in 2020 will likely create a boom in the translation/interpretation industry, so jobs if you're a real fast learner.

Plus it's a marketable white collar skill in general depending on your industry.

From my non-weaboo, but Japanese speaking girlfriend: "No".

My answer: Mostly no. Depends on your career or job you want. If you're in the business liaison world it's helpful. It is also good for military and foreign service type jobs. Those are pretty generic language learning points though.

You can't learn japanese. Just give up, life is too short anyways. Nothing bad's gonna happen if you don't learn it. Give up. So what if you dont get to play some hidden PC98 gem? Just give up.

I personally started just a while ago. Japanese vidya is a big part of why I started learning, as is nip culture which I have experienced through some japanese buddies.

But I also genuinely like the language. I like that there are so many ways to express yourself. And learning a new language is satisfiying in it's own way - forming a sentence is as satisfying as piecing together a puzzle. Actually, that's how I feel about it.

But it's mostly because of the jews taking my vidya.

At the very least, it is possible to reach a low level of competency with little effort. With sustained, concentrated effort the possibilities are there.

I can't learn Japanese.

がんばって

Not with that attitude, you fucking faggot.

You are not going to learn japanese.
You are going to learn 日本語

Currently playing Coven and Labyrinth of Refrain, while replaying SRW BX. Sitting on my backlog are SRW Z3, Caligula, MeiQ no Chika de Shisu, 7th Dragon III, Tokyo Xanadu, Valkyrie Drive Bhikkuni, Odin Sphere, Muramasa, Project X Zone 2, and a ton more that aren't coming to mind. Planning on picking up Gundam Breaker 3 when the price drops, then Ys 8, Sword Town's Foreigner, Sekaiju no MeiQ 5, Demon Gaze 2, and SRW V as they come out.

thas rite, lern ur place bitch nigga

Anki. A RTK deck will help you recognize the kanji, and a vocab deck will help you learn vocabulary.

You should also be constantly playing Japanese games (or some other kind of practice) to help reinforce what you learn.


Why is メアリー such a slut?

みんなの金髪女はやりまんだよ!

But Alice isn't a slut.

What's the vocabulary level in SRW like?

Also, is it worth buying a JP 3DS for moon games?

What? No, what the fuck are you saying? You'd spend an extra $300 out of pocket just so you can be a good goy for nintendo's region locking?

Homebrew is out and has been for a long time. Region free, piracy, VC injects, it's all there.
So just get the homebrew channel installed and you can work out the rest yourself.

I don't have any portable console other than a GBC, plus I've seen then for ~~7500円. What I'm more of asking is:

Yeah sorry, I assumed you had an US/EU 3DS and were considering getting a JP one in addition, which would encourage regionlocking which is a terrible thing to do.

I can't answer you since my reading is very elementary.
Here's what little I know - there are some games on the NDS that may help you improve your reading.
nihongonobaka.com/top-11-games-for-learning-japanese/
A couple of those are apparently for high school students to improve their Kanji, so there's that.

You've missed 3 generations - GBA, NDS, 3DS, all with a great libraries which is available to pirate if you enable firmware. NDS will probably keep you busy for years on its own.
With about $20~30 of additional hardware (depending on how expensive SD and micro SD cards are for you) and about an hour or two of your time, you will have homebrew installed for good, giving you access to piracy for all three generations too if you wish.

That was the wrong link.
I wanted to share this one
thejapanesepage.com/fun/nintendo_ds_study_japanese

Literally nothing of value was lost.

Expanding your consumption of good vidya is good enough reason, and doesn't make you a weeaboo.

Hey Holla Forums what do you think is the best way to learn grammar?
What book or site do you think is the best resource and what did or do you do to not forget what you learned?

I personally read through "Japanese the Manga Way" first, I acquired a very very basic knowledge of how Japanese works, at least easy things like particles are explained rather easy to understand, but when it comes to conjugations or shit like ba forms I'm pretty lost as the few examples aren't enough to get a feeling for it.

I had fun reading it due to the funny manga panels, but as learning resource it's trash imo.

Please don't just say X or Y is shit and tell me what you like or dislike about it.

Pic related, mfw I try to understand grammar.

I can't help much since I'm still new to Japanese myself but I just took the N5 and I used Tae Kim and Japanese the Manga Way. I'd only finished the Basic and Essential sections of Tae Kim and read about half of JTMW by the time I took the exam and I felt pretty damn comfortable in the grammar section (I also aced the vocab but almost certainly failed the listening).

I felt Tae Kim was definitely the better of the two especially in terms of how it's organised; it's much easier to go back through and find what you're looking for, but JTMW was pretty fun and I might not have stuck through the early stages of learning how to learn without it, though it feels fairly redundant now.

I'm going to finish up Tae Kim and JTMW, I've also got Kanzen Master N4 Grammar and Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar ordered and on the way to study for N4, since there's no point me retaking N5 if I only failed the listening.

Revise, I probably read over the entirety of the Basic and Essential sections of Tae Kim at least 6 times over, there are still some things I need to go over again. I also made and laminated some cheat sheets for basic conjugations and stuff so I had them close at hand when practicing read and such.

If you haven't got Tae Kim and you're at that level I can strongly recommend it. It's free online but I bought the paperback as my eyes need a break from all the shit I do on a computer. I should note that the paperback version has a few errors, most noticeably the table for past tense verb conjugations is laid out wrong but it's very obvious as to how it's wrong so it didn't cause me any problems.

In short, Tae Kim should be my bible for 日本語 learning.
Thank you for the advice.

Is N5 really that easy?
What's so hard about listening, do they speak fast or did you just not recognize the words or how does it work?

How do they test vocabulary and do they test kanji alone without vocabs?

Listening was first and foremost the area where I had BY FAR the least amount of practice. The speed is obviously not as fast as natural, but at only N5 level by brain isn't listening and understanding Japanese, it's listening to Japanese and translating it to English to try and understand it. This is obviously bad with the listening sections that are longer than a single sentence, hell, even in a single sentence my brain could sometimes get bogged down making sense of the first clause and not quite catch the second.

Furthermore, you have no second chances in listening. In grammar I actually fucked up the first section because I was in a rush to get to the tougher questions at the end which are worth more points, but I had time to go back and fix the stupid mistakes I made. In listening, when the sound clip ends, the sound of a bell will go *ding* and then the next question will begin, if you're attempting to unravel a conjugated conjugation or trying to remember the meaning of a word that's on the tip of your tongue to get the right answer, you have all of the time of that *ding* to get it done before you miss the start of the next question.

I also did much better in listening when I gave myself a mock exam than in the actual thing; listening while wearing earphones at home is very different from being in an exam room with 30 other people and being hyper aware of every scratching pencil, shuffling feet, cough, sneeze etc. Your brain can't so much as flicker or you might miss the tiniest conjugation that will make your answer completely wrong.

But as I said I did barely any listening practice and I do mean barely any, so no worries right!

There are past exam papers here which'll show you all that stuff.
jlpt.jp/samples/sample12.html

Tae Kim and maybe some Genki. For start I'd watch some of the early Namasensei videos. He really explains the basics well and breaks down sentences to make it real simple.

...

You'll see some military and science terms due to Gundam and the like, but if you're familiar with the series used it shouldn't be too bad.


Absolutely. The 3DS has been hands down the strongest of the 8th gen platforms, although the Vita has been catching up recently with shit like Coven and Labyrinth of Refrain two weeks ago.

Sup guys, first time posting in one of these threads after lurking around and trying to figure out how to start. I keep seeing posts in other threads that remind me this thread is here but I never really do much about it as much as the desire is there. I HAVE tried using rosetta stone but that doesn't feel natural to me, while some of it did stick it just didn't feel right.

Anyway I have these Moekana and Moekanji flash cards that I've been wanting to use and I was just wondering how I should go about doing that? What kind of game should I play or how exactly should I be using the cards? Should I just get a pen and paper and just start writing the information on the cards until it sticks? When will I know to move onto the kanji cards? About how long should I be doing this a day?

Sorry if it sounds like I want to be spoonfed or anything, I just really want to fucking start and get structured so I can get the first step over with and just start moving ahead rather than putting it off and never starting at all. Game are honestly secondary as the reason on why I want to learn the language. I am a Teppanyaki Chef so learning the language fluently or at least semi fluent would be extremely beneficial in my line of work dealing with customers and maybe even in finding a better restaurant to work in. I HAVE seen japanese salarymen every now and then and it would be interesting to have casual converstaions with them.

Also I dont really want to be on the computer for learning the language, I'd rather just do pen and paper work so I can get the writing down as well. I also frequent Daiso Japan a lot, so I guess I should start buying the children's work books I see there.

Thanks in advance and good luck to everyone.

I'm disgusted by anime, but I do like the more conservative Japanese culture.

Since no one else is answering I guess I'll try, though I'm really not qualified since I only just took N5.

Absolute first thing you need to learn is Hiragana and Katakana, you can't do anything else until you've got them down. You can memorise them all for recognition purposes in a day but if you wanted to learn to write it'll take slightly longer learning the stroke. I used white rabbit press cards and just went through them constantly until I could write both sylibaries from memory.

After you've memorised the Kana you have three main fields you need to learn simultaneously:

And two you should maybe wait a month until you've built up some vocab.

Some people don't bother to learn Kanji separately from vocab and that's fine; I can read a metric fuck ton of words I've learned that are written with Kanji that I haven't learned, but I wouldn't be able to write them down or recall them from memory, only recognise them, and I'd have trouble telling them apart from similar characters.

Other people use methods like RtK and Heisig, which use memory tricks and other arcane shit to remember Kanji quickly. I don't really know shit about this method as it doesn't interest me since I want to be fully literate and able to write, even though most people use keyboards nowadays, which brings me to:

The slow way. If you want to be fully literate and learn the stroke order, kunyomi and onyomi of every Kanji and be able to write them you can do it the slow and grinding way, which is what I dot. I'm sure everyone uses different resources etc. but I use a series of Kanji text books published by Bonjinsha, but the information in the books is available freely online, I just prefer not using a computer for everything except vocab and listening (and reading I guess). I use the textbooks and a giant stack of Japanese manuscript paper, with one piece of paper for each character I write out the character multiple times down an entire row and write the meaning and the readings hidden in the margin. I do roughly 4 new characters a day and revise every previous character (within a time limit, else I'd soon spend all day doing Kanji revision). I revise each Kanji by glimpsing the character, saying out loud the meanings and readings, then checking the margin, if I get it right I write down the character once, if I get it wrong I fill out the entire row while reciting the readings. Even though I use this method I can't really recommend it to you in good conscience, for 90% of people just learning to recognise Kanji and remember the readings will be fine. The only reason I use this method is because learning how to write makes reading handwriting and shitty fonts a lot easier, which will help with my imaginary future career as a translator.

I know you said you don't want to use a computer, but short of reading a dictionary I don't know what you could do without Anki, I've never met anyone that doesn't use it.
Install Anki, import Core2k/6k with sound, install Meiryo UI font, change the card font to Meiryo UI, turn off suspensions, turn off review limit. Don't be too worried if you have false starts with Anki either, it has a UI from hell. Oh and fiddle with the new cards per day option in the deck options, don't feel bad about lowering the default if it's, I only do 10 a day and I just aced the vocab section in N5, sometimes I turned new cards off all together for a few days if an annoying word group was clogging up my revisions. Always do your revisions, every day. This is the only method I know and I'm sure some people disagree with my Anki setup or whatever, so feel free to chime in if you've get any other ideas

Get Tae Kim, everyone I've talked to says it covers N5 and N4. After that I'm as clueless as you, though I plan to get Kanzen Master N3 Grammar and Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar once I pass N4 (or if I only fail it by a slim margin). Tae Kim is free online and has a paperback version as well.

I'm am REALLY not the guy to help you here.

Nor here really, though I feel I did okayish on the reading comp questions in N5(I read very slowly though). A lot of people recommend Yotsubato. I already "read" a lot of raw manga using capture2text and Rikaichan, but that's not me trying to learn Japanese it's just me wanting to know what happens next and not being able to wait for the real translators.

Oh yeah, install capture2text and learn how it works, also install Rikaichan/kin/sama depending on what browser you use. Hope I could help in someway but I only have my experiences to go on, hopefully someone more experienced can come along and give you some better advice.

Don't use this.
I have tried it in the past and I think one of the main problems is that is gives you no incentive to learn hiragana or katakana.
Also there is the bit of not teaching you grammar. Showing a picture of man running and saying "otoko no hito ha hashitte imasu" gives you no understanding of what whats, for example "imasu".

Thanks a lot for the info! I don't really understand what RtK and Heisig are but I would like to learn the stroke order, I feel like it would just help the process along rather than hinder it. I'll just google them at a later time when I have gotten used to Hiragana and Katakana. I have been fiddling around with both of them for a while now so I do know some by memory but no where near confidently enough.

Where can I learn the stroke order for those? I plan on going through my flash cards and just writing the information that is on there until it sticks. The Moekana cards give me both the Hiragana and Katakana writings along with a word written in Hiragana and english and a picture. The cool thing is that it comes with cards that describe what a small ya is and the kana it fits next to, along with a small yo, yu, and tsu. It also desribes the dakuten and han dakuten and what a choonpu is. It does not give me stroke order so I haven't gotten started with writing these down for myself yet.

I hear that the namasensei or whatever the hell his name is, that white dude that cusses and drinks beer is a good tool as well. Should I be watching those videos and going through his tutorials as well or what?

I frequent Japanese malls and grocery stores so what are some textbooks/materials I should ask for that you guys would reccomend? I bought my little 2 year old daughter a Sophia japanese board book that she likes to play with, so I don't mind buying children's materials seeing as how I can just pass them on to her if she ever feels like it. If not well shit it will undoubtedly help me so anything you guys suggest Im all for it.


Yeah thats what I took from it, I mean I was picking up the obvious words but other then that the rest was left for my to figure out but without any context it just didn't work.

After travelling, I've really come to appreciate asian cultures a lot more. Just little things, such as how someone always stood up to offer my old man a seat on the train (Hong Kong), though of course that level of consideration is in a lot of asian culture.

Cheers mate, both links seem useful. What's the situation with homebrewing a Jap 3DS for region free? What about using the Jap eShop while outside of Japan?

I'm not interested in piracy, so I'd rather not be locked out of content due to purchasing another region.

Right. Let me explain that then.

Systems are hard locked to three regions by default, EU, US, JP.
You can only access the eshop of the same region of your nintendo account,
And you can only make a nintendo account of the same region of your 3DS. You cannot change your region (you used to be able to change your COUNTRY in your region, but now you can't even do that).

If you want to pay for japanese vidya, you must either buy a JP 3DS so you can have access to the 3DS eshop, or import games from play-asia or something and run them through the region-free launcher on your 3DS.

As of now, Nintendo's eshop servers have been thoroughly fucked. There is software called freeshop you can run which will allow you to access and download games for free straight off nintendo's servers. These include japanese games.

If you ever do get a 3ds, there are usually 3ds homebrew generals on Holla Forums which you should search for.

I got tired of all the shitty translations and censorship, so, I just started learning tonight(currently grinding on real kana) Good luck with your learning anons, keep at it, you can do it

That's the spirit user. I just started recently myself, and I printed these out while learning kana to help me with my handwriting.

guidetojapanese.org/pdf/hiragana_trace_sheet.pdf

Make sure you practise on lined paper too, since the trace outlines are a huge crutch.

Thank you for this, I was having trouble with the "a" hirigana

The more of us learning nip, the less reliant we, as a playerbase, are on shitty companies like 8-4, NISA, Treehouse and the rest of them. Nevaa_givee_uppuu.webm

Not lined, graphing paper. Notice how characters are proportioned to be square, unlike roman characters which are typically rectangles. Graphing paper with larger squares divided into 4 smaller squares with fainter grid lines is top, if you can find it, otherwise just use 4 squares of normal graph paper per character so you're not writing for ants.

Is there a version for Katakana as well? This looks great. I guess I should wait until I have the resources to start writing these down, I down want to pick up bad habits. I already free handed Hiragana and it doesn't look too bad but I just want to make sure.


So I should look for graphing paper eh? Are there graphing journals? Watching anime I have noticed that they use paper with squares on em rather than lines. When writing reports for school would they write from top to bottom in lines?

原稿用紙位
Is the paper you're looking for; it's what I use for Kanji learning/writing.

Graph paper is probably cheaper though.

原稿用紙*