/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I'm too lazy and unmotivated to move past step 1.

If I was going to put effort into a language it would have to be Mandarin, because China's taking over the world

You are missing the part where your stack of 200 daily flashcards over 6 different decks stalls your study for several months

>remember the kanji
>implying it's useful
hahahaha NO

>>8060338
but that involves rote-memorising moonrunes as well, though.

I have no reason to.

>Rememberi the kanji
NOPE

>Kanjidamage
Now we're talking

>>8060347
>as well, though.

Looks like someone needs to learn english first before they move onto another language!

How the hell I am supposed to answer the kanas if the fucking site shows the answer before I can even try to type what I think it is?

I started to, after a week I had stalled at like 15 kana and gave up. I'd probably be more out for it if there was a real point. If Japan was still on top of Asia and it could get you a job or something it might be cool..

Anki depends on Qt and Python, both of which I refuse to install for ethical reasons.

Is moon more conducive to computer interpretation than English? I'm talking natural language processing and the like.

>>8060360
but I'm not an anglophone, though. my native language isn't even european, though.

>mfw a friend went to japan for 1 year and i know more japanese than him

>mfw he knows only 200 kanji

>mfw i know 1500

>mfw this post will get reported for bad grammar, being a normalfag, not having a face and greentexting

>>8060387
for Japanese, it's quite difficult, becuase software is unable to 100% accurately pinpoint the correct reading. There is to some degree correction due to context, however they have to determine for, example, 中 whether to parse "naka" or "chuu".

for Chinese, most (~98%) of characters only have one reading. Then, for 98% of the time, it is a 1:1 correspondence between a character and a reading, which is easy to for computer to parse.

sorry if difficult to understand, my English is horrible

>>8060387
err, you'd need unicode for that

>>8060387
I think English would be easier because a lot of Japanese is based on phonetics and the glyphs as they're written. Though I haven't looked into it thoroughly and I barely know any Japanese, maybe its grammar is more rigid than English.

This is why we should all use a logical language with a limited alphabet, like Lojban.

>>8060401
for the clarification, consider the sentence
俺は中国人だ
in this context, the software (might) deduce that 中 is chuu.
中出しされるの喜び
in this context, 中 is naka.

However, some cases, software will find difficult to tell the difference, as software is not 100% perfect.

However,
子宫中射精的快乐 (traditional Chinese: 子宮中射精的快樂)
in this case, 中 is always "zhong", no exeptions. 98% of Chinese the character is only one reading, except for a tiny select few, for example:
音樂 (music): the 樂 is pronounced "yue"
快樂 (happiness): the 樂 is pronounced "le"

>>8060390
was your friend studying or just on holiday? I can take it that if you're just screwing around, it's not that much to take in a language. If he's just there to use the pantsu vending machines, and not for a serious reason, it's rather expected.

You know, I'd love to learn Japanese - considering I already know French, Russian, and English - but then I realize there is no real fucking point aside from reading untranslated manga or watching raw anime. And the shows/manga that don't get translated are far and few between.

>>8060411
I never understood why there were so many chinese people on /jp/.
I swear, there's almost as many of them as /k/ goers.

>>8060478
they're here to compete with the coreans

>>8060487
but the coreans on 4chan aren't even real, they're gaijins pretending to be corean

>>8060463
What's the use of French and Russian then? Do you speak and do business with Russians on a daily basis or something?

There's an ocean of untranslated VNs I want to play/read (whatever) and watching raw animu is always something I wanted to do too. Then I can also read this book I wanted to read about modding some dolls. I really want to be able to read it.

>>8060333
I'm too unmotivated to even start step 1
even though I really want to... I just don't want to

Such is life

This is fun though?
Why not do it?

>>8060328
I already have, OP.
But I'm one of those queer faggots (a double faggot, if you will) who fucking loves learning.
I can understand people who enjoy Japanese media not wanting to take the plunge, it's a bit of work and the language isn't exactly a money language.

I've already gotten past the kanji and grammar, but simply lack the motivation to grind tens of thousands of vocab words. Fuck.

There's no reason to learn Japanese if you aren't interested.

And if you think you're going to learn Mandarin because it's going to help you with your career, I would really suggest you find better motivation.

Both languages are very hard to learn for gaijin. Like the Chinese anon said, Mandarin is very standardized, and there is no ambiguity for example, in pronunciation of hanzi. Japanese on the other hand, can have a whole myriad of alternate meanings. 80% of manga jokes are based on puns, because they're plentiful in Japanese.

Japanese is very gaijin unfriendly. Mandarin is a smooth ride once you're proficient with tones, which is in my opinion the hardest thing for non-Chinese people to learn.

>>8060625
>Chinese anon said
I am not Chinese, though I have studied both Chinese and Japanese. I am a Thailand-Burmese (father Thai, mother Burmese) university student studying exchange in Australia, originally born in Thailand. English was my third language, and so I may not be very fluent. I take an interest in Business and Asian studies.

>>8060625
>Japanese on the other hand, can have a whole myriad of alternate meanings.
I must mention that Chinese has plenty of homophones as well, and similarly puns are a significant part of Chinese humour.

For example:
>日本自衛隊 --> 日本自慰隊
is a Chinese joke.

I will only use it on videogames and anime/manga (lol), so I don't think it's worth the effort.

>>8060757
I don't understand how doing it for something you like can be "not worth the effort", it's quite the opposite, actually.
Trying to learn a language for anything but something you enjoy is pretty much bound to end in failure.

So, how do people manage their Kanji?
When Is the best time to delete them from the deck?

Why would you learn the grammar after you've learned the kanji?

>>8060942
master the difficult part first. grammar is the easy part of learning nipponian.

>>8060946
>master the difficult part first
If you think mastering kanji takes just 100-130 days I feel sorry for you

I'm kinda stuck on the grammar lately, so I've been studying a lot of kanji. I know almost 200 now.

I don't know, in japanese grammar starts easy but then it gets really frustrating where I'm at now. Any protips guys?

>>8060924

Never. Anki will space them out for you.

1. Buy Rosetta Stone
2. Install Rosetta Stone
3. Learn japanese with Rosetta Stone
4. ???
5. Profit

>>8060968
But,

okay.

What about Kanji like 1? -

>>8060970
Y U TROL

>>8060973

What about it? Answer it right enough times and you won't see it for another year and a half.

>>8060981
Okay then. Thanks.

>>8060391
>Qt and Python, both of which I refuse to install for ethical reasons.

WAT

>>8060989
>ethical reasons
>read: because I'M A HUGE FAGGOT

No problems here, anon.

>>8060989
I understand him. Anki is slow as fuck and I guess it's because Qt and Python suck on Windows.

>>8060942
>Why would you learn the grammar after you've learned the kanji?

Because without the basic kanji provided by kanjidamage you won't even understand what Tae Kim is talking about. You'll be learning them sooner or later anyway.
AND seeing a word's kanji form can help you identify the type of verb/adjective, guess its meaning quickly, conjugate appropriately...

>>8061002
Jesus the only parts of the program that take more than 2 seconds are when you write the whole deck to your hard drive or modify more than 3000+ cards at once. You'll spending 99.9999% of the time staring at kanji doing nothing, not asking for an improvement in performance. In fact it could be written in Java and slower than pig and I still wouldn't complain. I'm not exactly playing Battlefield here.

My main problem with kanji is that they all have a shitload of readings. Pretty much all logic gets thrown out the window when choosing the readings.
For example, how would you read this: 十六夜
"Juu-roku yoru" right? WRONG. It's actually read as "izayoi." What the fuck? And what does it mean? "Sixteen nights," right? NOPE. "Sixteen-day-old moon." Seems to me you'd have to remember every little exception to the rule when learning kanji, which is just overkill when you already have to memorize the readings, meanings and stroke orders.
And yes I learned that term from Touhou

>>8061021
Get a dictionary. Starters can use EBwin with JMDict.
95% of the time you'll guess the correct reading. For the rest, use anki.

>>8061014
I click like "GOOD (3 days)" and sometimes it freezes for 5 seconds until it shows me the next card.

Seriously, you can't say this isn't shitty for a fucking flashcard program.

>>8061021
Your just retarded.

>>8061021

I've been over this in two-dozen threads trying to explain studying the kanji individually is stupid, but most people don't listen and still persist in believing they're some kind of magical lexical codex for helping gaijins internalize several thousand years of entirely foreign vocabulary they've never seen cognates for.

>>8061021
Izayoi is rarely used in an everyday context, and this is why learning all readings from the start is retarded, it forces you to remember bloate you'll forget within two weeks of actually reading actual japanese.

>>8061035
Then it's your own problem. Never happened to me. Even when I'm using 5 custom fonts that are bigger than 20 MB.

>>8061037
Its "you're" anon...

>>8061021
That's a name right? Yeah, when it comes to names kanji gets a whole other level more complicated...

I remember seeing a dictionary with name readings sections and holy shit they're almost always long.

>>8061043
What's a better way to study them?

Once owned an English-Japanese dictionary and their index used the first hiragana. Good for hiragana words but hell difficult to use for kanji especially when I don't know how to pronounce something, which was usually why I need to look it up in the first place. If only it had a radical index like Chinese dictionaries do.

>>8061053

Grind voacab, it's what you'll end up doing anyway. You can pick up the meanings of the kanji from kun readings and cross-association with the compounds you see them in, as you would with latin or greek in English words.

>>8061063
Did you do this?
Tell us about your study regime or some shit.

>>8061045
My computer is a little bit old. Can't run Portal, can't watch 720p videos

and can't use a fucking flashcard program, FUCK YOU ANKI

>>8061071

...okay. This is a deck I've put together from random terms over a year and a half I've encountered while browsing the web and playing video games or reading VNs. I study once a day for a half-hour to an hour and a half, usually. Not much else to add.

Anki moved 4 kanji from old Jouyou one to new Jouyou one day in an update and now they don't register correctly, and it bugs me.

>>8061063
In the end you're still gonna have to learn how write the kanji.
Learning a bunch of them in one sitting is more efficient than opening the dictionary each time you catch a new one. You are basically STALLED every time you see a new one. But if you already know it, it's just a matter of learning the reading.

That's why for some people, not learning the reading and just the kanji makes sense. It's quicker. But I tried doing that myself, but found that I can easily cram the onyomi into the mnemonic anyway, so I know the onyomi, and totally disregard the kunyomi (unless it's so easy and memorable).

Actually, I advise everyone to disregard the kunyomi when using kanjidamage (unless the word has no onyomi and kunyomi is the most used reading). You'll die from trying to remember the kunyomi.

>>8061071

...okay. This is a deck I've put together from random terms over a year and a half I've encountered while browsing the web and playing video games or reading VNs. I study once a day for a half-hour to an hour and a half, usually. Not much else to add.

Anki moved 4 kanji from old Jouyou one to new Jouyou one day in an update and now they don't register correctly, and it bugs me.

Add a deck with actual sentences to the list and you're ready to go. Studying kanji without any context is useless

>>8061098
Actually that would be completely counter-productive. Example sentences, in order to work, require you to at least know a lot of basic japanese words and constructs already.

The idea here is to get people to the same level with Chinese people who've just started learning Jap, and already have a mental map of the kanji and what concept each of them stands for. You don't even need to learn the reading. This is something that should happen even before you try to learn a single word in Japanese.

>>8061091
>In the end you're still gonna have to learn how write the kanji.

Not unless I move to Japan. That's otherwise a pretty useless skill.

>Learning a bunch of them in one sitting is more efficient than opening the dictionary each time you catch a new one. You are basically STALLED every time you see a new one. But if you already know it, it's just a matter of learning the reading.

I disagree, and if you don't know what the word is and can only fumble around guessing at the reading or the meaning of the individual kanji, you're stalled anyway. Or you're not, and you're making things up as you go along, which is measurably worse. Kanji usually have several misleading hues of meaning, or are completely mismatched to the overall compound, or randomly are kun-compounds, or will have any of one to five ON readings to choose from as Japanese vocab derives from about five dialects of Chinese. You can't pretend to know words you don't or get away with learning them. If I don't know a word, I add it too my deck and study it. If it looks like a one-off and I can already grasp the meaning of a sentence without, I'll skip it. I do this even when I fully recognize and can read the kanji, because kanji seldom offers you anything concrete, reliably.

I need flashcards for Kanji, actually. Can someone help me out with that?

Even the Japanese forget how to write by hand so they write the text into cellular first and then copy it from there into the paper. You just don't need handwriting skill these days and it is a complete waste of time for a gaijin to learn it.

>>8060970

0/10

>>8061115

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about/overview-page

He goes over the flashcard Kanji method (heisig or kanjidamage both work) exclusively.

>>8061121

I'd tell you, but I'm angry about greentext.

>>8061092
>Kanji Statistics
>all my jelly

Haoow?

>>8061118
learning stroke order can actually be useful if you use manual input dictionaries and the kanji you're looking for isn't electronical text
though I'd guess for most of /jp/ that isn't the case

>>8061098

Incorrect. "learning" the kanji heisig style first allow for you to have the ability to actually write them, and it makes learning the readings magnitudes easier.

>>8061110
>what the word is and can only fumble around guessing at the reading
It means that a person that knows the kanji already just needs to look at the reading in the dictionary. Use either EBwin or WWWJdic and you're done. Unless you have bad luck. The person that doesn't know the kanji will need to memorize its shape. This takes much more time.
>Not unless I move to Japan. That's otherwise a pretty useless skill.
Not at all. Looking at the stroke order font takes barely seconds. And once you know how to write the basic parts, the rest can be extrapolated. Why would you spend years memorizing things and not do easy stuff like that ?

>>8061122
ごめなさい

Prease tell.

>>8061121

>jelly

>>>/b/

Any tips in starting to remember the basic hiragana and katakana?
I mean, sure you can just sit down and do it, but is there any tips on how to actually go about it? Realkana pretty much just throws you straight into memorizing them.

>>8061129
Learn in groups of 5. Review whenever you reach 15.

>>8061118
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia
the phenomenon is well known to be a problem in China and Japan.

>>8061129

Remembering the Kana.

>>8061128
jelly

>>>/r9k/

>>8060328
Why would a filthy Corea be teaching glorious Nihongo grammar?

>>8061108
>The idea here is to get people to the same level with Chinese people who've just started learning Jap, and already have a mental map of the kanji and what concept each of them stands for.

goddamn it makes me jealous sometimes to think that I have to learn ten times the things that they have to learn, because they already have a significant headstart.

Though, only some vocabularies are the same, and some are actually quite different.
>http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A9%BA%E4%BC%BC%E8%A8%80%E8%91%89
>http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BC%AA%E5%8F%8B
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Xenic

Chinese and Japanese have plenty of "false friends". In Japanese, 手紙 tegami means "letter", but in Chinese 手紙 shouzhi means "toilet paper". 愛人 is one's genuine romantic lover in Chinese, but a sexual lover in Japanese; 百姓 is a derogatory word for farmer in Japanese, but "the populace" in Chinese; 人参 means "carrot" in Japanese, "ginseng" in Chinese; 電車 is a train in Japan and an electric car (like those Toyota prototypes) in China...

>>8061127
>It means that a person that knows the kanji already just needs to look at the reading in the dictionary. Use either EBwin or WWWJdic and you're done. Unless you have bad luck. The person that doesn't know the kanji will need to memorize its shape. This takes much more time.

If you're going to concede memorizing kanji doesn't allow you to automatically understand all the words you see upfront, then In the end, you're still memorizing words and remembering kanji regardless of the way you choose. One route is overly pedantic and tries to memorize semantically useless characters up front and still later leads memorizing vocab, the other is just doing the same as you would in any language is learning terms through exposure. Neither of us have firsthand experience of learning kanji through both methods, so I'll put aside how difficult it is to "remember the shape" of them, but memorizing kanji is all about picking up readings and meanings of a large body of kanji before even being exposed to them. That isn't useful for the reasons I've already given above.

>Not at all. Looking at the stroke order font takes barely seconds. And once you know how to write the basic parts, the rest can be extrapolated. Why would you spend years memorizing things and not do easy stuff like that ?

Because it's useless and you still really haven't argued otherwise. I did it a little up front to study how it's done and I guess aid in visually breaking down radicals, but I'm not going to do it for ~2300 kanji. Like others have posted, even East Asians are rapidly losing the ability to write them, while becoming stronger at recognition thanks to computer IMEs, so writing is clearly not in any way bound to the ability to recognize them.

>>8061127
>It means that a person that knows the kanji already just needs to look at the reading in the dictionary. Use either EBwin or WWWJdic and you're done. Unless you have bad luck. The person that doesn't know the kanji will need to memorize its shape. This takes much more time.

If you're going to concede memorizing kanji doesn't allow you to automatically understand all the words you see upfront, then In the end, you're still memorizing words and remembering kanji regardless of the way you choose. One route is overly pedantic and tries to memorize semantically useless characters up front and still later leads memorizing vocab, the other is just doing the same as you would in any language is learning terms through exposure. Neither of us have firsthand experience of learning kanji ground-up through both methods, so I'll put aside how difficult it is to "remember the shape" of them, but memorizing kanji is all about picking up readings and meanings of a large body of kanji before even being exposed to them. That isn't useful for the reasons I've already given above.

>Not at all. Looking at the stroke order font takes barely seconds. And once you know how to write the basic parts, the rest can be extrapolated. Why would you spend years memorizing things and not do easy stuff like that ?

Because it's useless and you still really haven't argued otherwise. I did it a little up front to study how it's done and I guess aid in visually breaking down radicals, but I'm not going to do it for ~2300 kanji. Like others have posted, even East Asians are rapidly losing the ability to write them, while becoming stronger at recognition thanks to computer IMEs, so writing is clearly not in any way bound to the ability to recognize them.

>>8061140
doesn't 先生 mean husband or something, too? I remember my chinese teacher telling me to say "this is my teacher", so I read that word from my notes thinking it was the same as sensei and she laughed her ass off telling me I said "this is my husband"
arara dou shiou

>>8061153
先生 means:
1. "Mister" in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese
2. "Gentleman" in Hakka
3. "Teacher" in Hokkien (spoken in Taiwan, southeastern China and Singapore)
4. Generally someone of status, such as doctors and teachers, in Japanese.

>>8061156
To clarify, in Mandarin Chinese, "李先生，很抱歉可是你老婆死了" means "Mr Li, I am sorry to inform you but your wife is dead". 先生 (xiansheng) means "Mister".

In Hokkien (which is likely where the Japanese usage comes from, if not partially... especially since the region that speaks it is just across the sea from Japan), "先生講，學生清清聽" means "A teacher speaks, the students quietly listen". (The usage of 先生 as someone of high knowledge has been present in Chinese literature in Ancient times; use of 先生 as "Mister" in Mandarin is a 20th century development/concept.) 先生 (Sian-siⁿ) here means teacher.

In Japanese, 先生 is just "sensei" - you can call a buddhist teacher, a school teacher, martial arts master, or a doctor, "sensei". In Chinese, 老师 (laoshi) is teacher, 师傅 (shifu) is master.

>>8061164
>use of 先生 as "Mister" in Mandarin is a 20th century development/concept
oops, I meant to say "contemporary concept", i.e. following contact with the west, since the Europeans introduced the concept of "Mister". I'd assume this was used in the 19th century as well, since Sun Yat-sen was referred to as 孫先生 in early newspaper publications.

>>8061152
Actually we're going around in circles if you keep this up. All it boils down to is whether you want to learn like children through exposure or you can use logic and rules that strongly aid your memory. We don't need 'all words' to follow the rules. If 90% of them follow the rules, that just means it is that helpful and you'll have that much less to remember. In fact, in my case, I just need to remember wacky words that don't follow the rules.

An analogy in English would be : do you learn the past tense of every verb in existence or just learn the irregular ones ?

I've actually been using smart.fm after the fact, and been enjoying it thus far.

>>8061153
先生 means mister, however a woman can say "This is my mister" and be implying that he is her husband. Kind of similar to "anata" being used as "darling". One would never say "这是我的先生" (this is my "mister") unless implying husband.

>>8061164
>"先生講，學生清清聽"
should be "先生講，學生輕輕聽"

>>8061179

We are indeed going in circles. The rules in the pronunciation of kanji are consistently broken and foolish to rely on, and there are absolutely no rules for deriving the meaning of words apart from a handful of obvious suffixes and prefixes.

I'll leave you to your own method, then.

I've found the best way is to learn words, but learn keywords for the radicals in the words. Countless times, thinking about the keywords has helped me remember a word I would have forgotten.

that's my post. i hope you enjoyed it.

皆さんはゐあぶだぞ！

>>8061236
ゐ, what the fuck is this?

ヰアブさま達、どうしてに漢字を勉強する？日本ゑの旅行の時間に、あなた
が漢字を理解していれば誰も気にしません。勉強ではないがヱジヤです。

>>8061252
ゑ, what the fuck is that?

>>8061252

People are learning it for their own knowledge, not to impress people. No one here wants to go to Japan.

＞ヱジヤ
What is that?

>>8061251
>>8061262

wi and we.

>>8061270
What the fuck? We and wi?
I've never even seen these before. Are they, err, advanced hiragana?

>>8061251
obsolete/archaic kana usage.

>>8061277
NOT WEEABOO ENOUGH

GLORIOUS JAPAN IS DISAPPOINTED IN YOUR SHAMEFUL DISPLAY

YOU ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTED BY GLORIOUS JAPAN AS SUBJECT OF EMPEROR

>>8061282
>SHAMEFUL DISPLAY

NOT

>SHAMEFUR DISPRAY

WHITO PIGU

>>8061276
there is also the hiragana for "yi", pic related (not supported by unicode)

>>8061294
So, guy who's been asking about these whack hiragana here.
Why aren't these used anymore? Are they still used?
Should I know them?

>>8061296
They are rarely used in modern times. They were used hundreds of years ago, and you'll only find them in dusty historical texts, and slutty girl's internet blogs (apparently its the new chic thing to do, replacing い with ゐ, and え with ゑ).

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana#Table_of_hiragana
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana#Table_of_katakana
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentaigana

>>8061296
why aren't obsolete words used anymore? Because they aren't used anymore.
You can be perfectly safe not knowing them, most of the time they come up in old names that kept those characters or shit dealing with old japanese, in which case knowing those hiragana is probably the least of your problems.

>>8061296

also, there is katakana for "yi" and "ye" on that Wikipedia page on Katakana, in the table; it's not supported by Unicode input however.

Wi is still used today in some places, such as ニッカウヰスキー (Nikka Whiskey), よゐこ (yowiko, a comedian) and てゐ (Tewi, from Touhou).

ゐ is still used in Okinawan, and it represents the sound "kwi/gwi". ヰ is used in the Ainu language as well.

The Japanese beer brand "Yebisu" is written as "ヱビス" or "ゑびす".

You can also add dakuen to these: ヷヸヹヺ

There are also ligature ka, ke and wa: ゕゖゎ

There are specialised katakana for writing the Ainu language in Unicode, but I can't find them.

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi_(kana)
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(kana)

>>8060328
>1) hiragana / katakana flashcard sites like realkana.com (3-4 days)
People have no idea what it means to learn the kana. Sure you can write them and recognize them and give the sound after maybe 1-2 days, but you are by no means fluent at reading them, or writing them at that point. That actually takes time and lot of exposure to text.
>2) anki + kanjidamage/Remeber the Kanji (100-130 days)
That is nowhere near enough for fluency, nor will it help you actually read. In order to become better at reading you need to actually read things outside of your SrS. The SrS will give you false confidence, because after a while you'll only ever encounter familiar constructs and vocab, which gives you the illusion you know more than you actually do.
>3) Tae Kim's grammar guide (2 weeks)
Logically understanding something is not the same as feeling it. Again, you're going to have to dissect sentences to be able to tell if it's a ru potential or passive form, or if it's a causative etc. You will not be able to understand Japanese just from learning grammar, reading VNs has learned me more than anything I formally studied.

〻 is used to duplicate Kanji in vertical text (same as 々 in horizontal text, e.g. "hitobito" 人々)
sasaki can be written as さゝき - ゝ is the hiragana iteration mark
仝, 〴, etc are other typographic symbols
〆 This character is used to write shime in shimekiri ("deadline") and similar. There is a variant, 乄.
〽 This mark is used to show the start of a singer's part in a song

>>8061315
>reading VNs has learned me more than anything I formally studied.

Are you gonna keep being captain obvious and tell us what VNs are ? Getting a proper dictionary and other reference material are all self-explanatory if you have questions about something. And playing VNs is why we're doing it in the first place.

>>8061092
>330 remaining
Holy fuck I can barely take about a hundred reviews a sitting, by 150 I would start spacing out or get too frustrated or something.

>>8061320
some of these can be found at
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_typographic_symbols
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_punctuation

also, katakana: la ラ゜ li リ゜ lu ル゜ le レ゜ lo ロ゜ was used in old 18th century books, and are now obsolete.

>>8061286
>
>WHITO PIGU

NOT

>WAITTO PIKKU

KONO GAIJIN BAKAYAROU

>>8061315
>after a while you'll only ever encounter familiar constructs and vocab, which gives you the illusion you know more than you actually do.
This is true for every method of learning language, including your native language. Don't worry about it. Learn as much as you need to read what you want to read or write like you want to write.

>>8061301
yes, words are obsolete because usage becomes irrelevant in the modern era. In English, words like "thou" and "methinks" are only used in archaic literature (or by faggots taking like faggots), and no one says "skaepan", the Old English word for "sheep".

>>8061331

I got lazy and skipped yesterday; it's usually around 150 - 200 lately.

I just mine the VNs I read for sentences with unknown vocab, I add those to anki and SrS them. Works very well, especially when you're mostly interested in reading VNs cause a lot of them tend to use similar vocab/expressions.

>thinking of installing Anki
>25 new packages will be installed
nope.jpg

>>8061708
I find reading VNs more useful than textbook shit. VNs, and to a lesser extent manga, and quite helpful in that they have the language in everyday speech, as opposed to the overly literary style you have in newspapers, or the overly formal speech they put in Japanese textbooks that in real life aren't that practical (Guy starts a fistfight with you - address him in the most polite manner as possible?). Television shows also help too, especially if they have subtitles for the elderly/hearing impaired. The thing with VNs is you can read the text and hear the speech, something that's not the case for manga, and television if there's no Japanese text subs.

>>8061751
Your loss.

>>8061754
> (Guy starts a fistfight with you - address him in the most polite manner as possible?)
That sounds awesome.

>>8061818
a parallel in English would be:
A: "Hey faggot, you starin' mah gurl again?"
B: "With all due respect, dearest sir of sirs, I would like to interject for a moment, I certainly did not--"
A: "Shut up wit' yer fag talk, faggot. I'mma beat your shit"
A throws punch
A: "How ya like that, asshole?"
B: "From my point of view, that was a terrible punch. Is it my turn now? Here I go."
etc etc

>>8061837
Still sounds perfectly awesome, starting sputtering nonsense is going down to their level.

I think I need adderal or something to actually grind these kanji. I've tried to make times, I know the kana some basic grammar and maybe 20 kanji.

Am I the only one who supports the Rosetta Stone method for learning? Of course, it doesn't teaches you the tables, but if you have those memorized, it's actually a pretty good resource to have.

I mean, you don't have to invest too much time into it. Just do one lesson block a day. It doesn't deserves THAT much hate.

>English: I've already eaten today's dinner.
>Mandarin Chinese: 今天的晚飯我已經吃過了。/Jīntiān de wǎnfàn wǒ yǐjīng chīguò le.
>Cantonese: 今日嘅晚飯我已經食咗喇。/Gam1yat6 ge3 maan5faan6 ngo5 ji3ging1 sik6zo2 la3
>Taiwanese Hokkien: 今仔日ㄟ暗飯我已經食過矣。/Kin-á-ji̍t ê àm-pn̄g góa í-king chia̍h-kuè ah
>Japanese: 今日の晩御飯はもう食べた。/Kyō no bangohan wa mō tabeta.
>Okinawan Ryukyuan: 今日ぬ夕御飯ーなー噛だん。/Chuu nu yuu'ubanoo naa kadan.
>Korean: 오늘 의 저녁밥 은 이미 먹었다./Oneul ui jeonyeokbab eun imi meok-eotda.

Of these languages:
1. Which does /jp/ think looks the neatest in regards to orthography? Which is aesthetically pleasing and prettier?
2. From the readings, which do you think sounds the nicest, and which sound horrible?

>>8061931
>Gam1yat6 ge3 maan5faan6 ngo5 ji3ging1 sik6zo2 la3
the fuck is this shit?

>>8061947
the numbers are the tones. Chinese is a tonal language.
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonal_language

>>8061931
Where's the simplified Chinese you faggot. That's the best kind of Chinese.

今天的晚饭我已经吃过了。
Look how much less faggotry(read: strokes) this entails.

>>8061931
Learn sociology before asking such stupid questions.

>>8061947
To clarify, Mandarin has 4 tones, Cantonese has 7 tones, Hokkien as 9 tones. Japanese does not have tones, but it does have voice pitch (e.g. 日本 ni-HON "Japan", 二本 NI-hon "two books"), and Korean is entirely non-tonal.

>>8061968
>Mandarin has 4 tones
How about the one with double dots on top? green- lu.
I can't trust the rest of your sentence if your first statement is already false.

>>8061956
lol communists. simplified characters for simplified people.

you mad you're never gonna get this island? face it, ROC is the real China - we're democratic, and we don't poison ourselves for the sake of Apple Corporation making a few bucks.

>>8061970
they're not tones, it's just a vowel that can't be represented by the usual Latin letters. Chinese has more vowels - 奴 "nu" sounds like "nuuh", 女 "nü" sounds like "neeew".

>>8061972
Jokes on you, I'm >3000km from any part of China, not born in China either. Grow up and accept the superior choice.

>>8061968
>Korean is entirely non-tonal
False.

>>8061986
prove that it is tonal then.

>>8061970
>I can't trust the rest of your sentence if your first statement is already false.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Mandarin

but you're probably going to say "LOL WIKIPEDIA" anyway.

>>8061981
>they're not tones, it's just a vowel that can't be represented by the usual Latin letters.

This is the wrong place to argue about several centuries of established linguistics and classification. They're tones.

>>8061997
>article on Standard Chinese phonology

This is as bad as a mathematics article on wikipedia.

>>8061997
>Neutral tone
>
>Also called fifth tone or zeroth tone (in Chinese: >輕聲/轻声 qīng shēng, literal meaning: "light tone")

Told.

>>8062005
>>8062011
0/10

>>8062014
>zeroth tone
but zero isn't a cardinal number.

>>8062018
It's like the word that came before it was completely invisible!

also, saying there is 4 tones is different from there is only a fourth tone and no fifth.

You're getting told harder.

>>8062019
jokes on you, I was only pretending xD

>>8061993
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_accent#Korean

>>8062021
LOL EPIC WIN xD

>>8062029

Binary pitch accent is not the same thing as tonality.

>>8062042
Ok, sorry.

What I really meant was "Korean also has a pitch accent".

Korean Kanji
〇, 㪳, 㫈, 㔔
Spot what is wrong with this picture.

Does ankiweb suck or something? Multiple people have mentioned not installing anki.

Does anybody know how to transfer decks to other computers? I have to go back to my dorm next week and I really don't want to use anki web because it doesn't allow some very basic settings that I use for my decks. I already have it set to sync with anki web, but I want the same decks on a different PC synced with the latest version of the deck.

>>8062096
Just install it. It really is the best flashcard software out there.

>>8062096
they probably have computers from the last century. it requires a non-1998 computer.

either that, or they're /g/entoofags who use GANOO/Loonix and are opposed to installing various components because it violates their "freedom".

>>8062101
there should be an anki folder in your documents folder
just copy the decks from there

>>8062107
actually, if you think about it, if they're /g/anoofags they probably won't be on /jp/. Installing Touhou violates their freedoms because ZUN wrote the code in C++.

On the topic of Japanese, I have a question regarding Japanese input.

Whenever I try to switch to Japanese input after opening a new window, it defaults to direct input. Which means I'm still typing in the Roman alphabet, and in order to type in Japanese like I intended in the first place, I have to take my right hand all the way from the keyboard and back to the mouse, drag the cursor down to the language selection icon in the taskbar, click the little A icon, and select hiragana. Which is extremely annoying.

Is there any way to make it default to hiragana input? Or at least some kind of keyboard shortcut for switching between input types, since that would be a million times more practical than having to use the mouse.

>>8062137
I don't know. I have to hit Alt + Shift, then select Hiragana in the taskbar (once) too. Then I can just alt+shift between English and Japanese Hiragana in the same window only. I just don't mind it.

>>8062137
Alt + Shift switches from English to Japanese.
Ctrl + Caps Lock switches to hiragana.
Alt + Caps Lock switches to katakana.

>>8062173
I wish it were working for me.
Probably because I made sure I type in azerty instead of qwerty.
Same problem with GoogleIME

>>8062695
is there a customisable setting you can edit with your IME?

Fun fact: All the AVGN videos are uploaded on Nico subbed in Japanese. You can learn some Japanese curse words from that.

>>8062771
Excuse me, could you explain further?

I just started learning Japanese not too long ago and I've got 15 Hiragana down, a few words memorized, and a small amount of grammar down.

It's pretty easy so far, and I'm liking the language.

>>8062107
I've used Anki on Ubuntu. You have to download the version from the Anki web site if you want to download decks or sync your decks between different computers. The version in the Ubuntu repository isn't up to date.

>>8062798
ＦＵＣＫＬＯＩＤシリーズ０１　　ＡＶＧＮ

Too difficult.

>be able to express anything I could possibly want to express with merely 26 characters
I feel stupid.

Quick question, is it better to learn keywords rather than learning the kanji individually?

>>8062695
Here, I'll try to explain my problem further.
The Japanese IME is working (both google and microsoft),
I can use Alt + Shift to switch from French to Japanese just fine, but I can't use
>Ctrl + Caps Lock switches to hiragana.
>Alt + Caps Lock switches to katakana.
It does nothing.
So I have to use my mouse to change from direct input to hiragana or katakana. EVERY TIME.
Either I failed somewhere, or it is because I changed the layout of the Japanese IME, azerty layout instead of qwerty.
Sorry for being an idiot

>>8062861
If you're in Japanese Input, Alt+Tilde switches to Hiragana input. Then you can just use Space or F7 to convert whatever you type to katakana.

>>8062861
ＴＲＹ　ＳＨＩＦＴ　+　ＣＡＰＳＬＯＣＫ

>>8062805
>15 Hiragana down, a few words memorized, and a small amount of grammar down

Gana first, kana second, grammar third, vocubulary fourth and finally you learn them moonrunes.
Going for grammar before even finishing the hiragana seems pretty retarded.

>>8062840
You could express anything you wanted with ONE character. What do you think this text is on your screen? A's, B's, and C's engraved on your hard disc?

Also, who are you quoting?

>>8062901

I thought the Gana were the moonrunes?

>>8062917
those are runes.

>>8062927

Oh god what am I even getting into

>>8061082
I can run it on my shitty phone (Xperia X8). How is that fuck is it possible not to run Anki on a computer?

>>8062933
Actually just start kanjidamage and that shit will become elementary. All you need to remember in order to write, read, and understand that kanji is : Each heart in that nest LOVES (AI) George.

>>8062897
>>8062875
Sadly not working (except for F7 and space when I'm already in hiragana (thanks to mouse click))

>>8062970
I don't like these kind of mnemonics.
It just seems easier for me to remember the radicals of the kanji directly instead of making a sentence out of them.

I recently started. The arsenal with which I am attempting to pick up Japanese consists of a kana table, a Japanese-English dictionary, and a very large amount of written and sung Japanese involving Touhous.

Wish me luck in Japan!

>>8062901
>grammar before kanji

Good luck with that. ONLY after you know kanji can you start learning vocabulary. You'll be able to understand the words better and guess its reading most of the time, too. And reading grammar guides without kanji ? Heh.

>>8062988
Does it matter ? You're gonna form a link between them radicals anyway, both textual and visual. Make your own mnemonic or funny image. Or rely on your photographic memory, whatever works for you.

>>8062996
Though inadvisable, it can be done. It's possible to know how to speak a language without being able to write it (ie, illiteracy.)

>>8062996

I'm actually just watching Namasensei on youtube to get started. It's very basic shit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZEA54VJEdE&feature=channel_video_title

>>8062992
Oh, I should probably note that the only reason I expect to get anywhere with this and not just die in a forest of Kanji is because I have a rudimentary knowledge of Chinese.

>>8062901
>Going for grammar before even finishing the hiragana seems pretty retarded.

thats exactly how they taught on a japanese course i followed a few years back. they did everything in romanji with that piece of shit japanese for busy people.
needless to say it did not go well.

fuck, a few youtube vids and some helpfull anons taught me more than on that course.. for free..

>>8062996
>ONLY after you know kanji can you start learning vocabulary. You'll be able to understand the words better and guess its reading most of the time, too.

Yeah, we already had this conversation above; this is bullshit.

>>8063272
hey, different methods work for different people. it might not be the case for you, but for many it is the best way to learn.

Anyone else really hate Tae Kim's grammar guide?

It's like...his example sentences are terrible. They have no context to tell how things are supposed to be and stuff. It's been a long time since I looked at it, but I remember spending more time trying to figure out what the fuck he was trying to do with the example sentences than how the rules worked.

>>8064018
The guide is okay in my opinion - it still has its flaws but the overall mindset it encourages when learning Japanese is excellent.

Plus, the guide is only half of the package; the forums contain lots of great discussions and information for Japanese learners of all levels. It's a very open, friendly environment.

Additional Japanese learning resources:
http://pastebin.com/Y3eLSAqV

two bungo resources.

http://yslibrary.cool.ne.jp/haroajapa000top.htm
warning: japanese

http://www.sengokudaimyo.com/bungo/bungo.html

Is following this picture's advice a good idea?

>>8062901

Oh fuck.
SQUAD BROKEN.
RETREAT, RETREAT.

>>8060621
Then use machine translation to look up kanji.

The only reason I would do this would be for import games really. I'm debating if it's worth it for that.

>>8064348
I'm also learning Japanese only for its media and games / VNs. Do it, as long as you're sure that the reason you're learning it is good enough to motivate you for a long time.
It's better and easier than learning any random language at school which you don't like.

And you're supposed to be able to read this shit?

>>8065392
The right side isn't that hard.
But... is that on the left writing?

>>8064204

Kind of oldschool. He gives you no way of learning the Kanji.

>>8065392
Same shit as reading some people's really weird cursive writing. Even if you can't who cares, or do you have an historical documents fetish or something?

>>8065469
fucking weeaboo.

>>8065406
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive_script_(East_Asia)

It actually means something.

>>8065481
Looks like Arabic.

>>8065481
Huh, fancy that. The wiki article has some images I don't have any problems with recognising and accepting as writing but >>8065392 really looks just like some random scribble done by a small child.

>>8065916
Nah, not enough dots.

>>8065998
Well >>8065392 was written 900 years ago.

>>8065916
Chinese writting still looks like childs play compared to Arabic. The message is written around the smaller circle.

To the RtK haters, here's my take on it:

In my experience--and this is a tiny bit different from what Heisig spells out in the book--the main benefit of RtK is that it builds an intimate familiarity with the kanji and gives them all a 'name.'

People misunderstand this, and part of that has to do with Heisig's referring to the keyword as the kanji's 'meaning.'

So what is it good for?

Well, in my mind it's sort of made an 'alphabet' of the kanji, although that's also a very awkward way to word it. I'm not learning words in terms of 自転車　being 'spelled out' as oneself-revolve-car, although this is a useful fallback for strange or difficult compounds. In fact, in my mind, I don't recall the characters by name at all. The stories and keywords have mostly dissolved. I simply 'know' the kanji.

I have never studied readings. I've learned lots of vocabulary (in the context of sentences--the only way to do vocab, IMO), however, and over time I've gained some sort of innate feeling for how new compounds should be pronounced. I have a close relationship with the kanji because I've written them hundreds of times over the course of my reviews, each time recalling a clever story that mapped out the primitives and their position.

I took long breaks out of both laziness and necessity during my study of RtK, and when I'd come back after months of no review I could still recall 70% of the kanji I'd learn, which was always an exciting feeling.

>>8066384

So where does Kanjidamage come into play?

The gist of the method is very similar, really, but there's simply just more to remember. It can make reviews frustrating if you are strict about them, and it makes the process of gaining familiarity with the kanji take longer. Sure, it's more fun to learn some Japanese while you are studying the kanji, but when I flirted with Kanjidamage I could not come close to matching the retention I had with RtK.

This is completely to be expected as it's simply more information (I had to recall my stories word-for-word instead of from the more vague images the RtK technique built in my head), but I really wanted to just get kanji out of the way as fast as possible so I could really dive into grammar and sentence studies as fast as possible.

I feel like RtK is better-suited for somebody who is planning to and is willing to spend a lot of time with Japanese. With RtK you'll spend about a month (and reviews for many months snf urstd to come) learning absolutely no Japanese. It's all about building familiarity with the kanji--not knowledge of the kanji--very quickly so that the kanji becomes invisible to you by the time you really begin your studies.

Kanjidamage has some definite strengths, but it simply wasn't for me. To me, Kanjidamage goes too far.

That isn't to say you shouldn't use it! It's very well put together and if you're smarter than me you can probably learn a lot from it. But I feel like RtK gets a very unfair wrap here simply because of misunderstandings about its purpose.

RtK and Kanjidamage don't set out to do the same things. It's all about how you want to divide up your study of the language. There are people in this thread who know more Japanese than I ever will who didn't use either method. I'd say you should give all of the popular methods a try to find the one that works for you.

>>8066389
So, say you finish RtK? What then?

>>8068060
You go through Kanjidamage.

>>8068060
Just follow the AJATT guy, his Japanese turned out just fine and he used RTK. I'm not sure other anons are aware of this history of kanjidamage but here:
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=2813
http://www.animeforum.com/showthread.php?62913-%26%2326085%3B%26%2326412%3B%26%2335486%3B%26%2321193
%3B%26%2324375%3B%26%2365306%3B%26%2312452%3B%26%2312531%3B%26%2312479%3B%26%2312540%3B%26%2312493%3
B%26%2312483%3B%26%2312488%3B-(internet-sites)

Just a random guy making crap up along the way with his studys, it works but if you decide to go from RTK to kanjidamage, the "damage" sure will take effect. Just start reading after RTK.

>>8066389
>Sure, it's more fun to learn some Japanese while you are studying the kanji, but when I flirted with Kanjidamage I could not come close to matching the retention I had with RtK.
Actually if you're not a complete faggot, you can read the thread and heed the warning against learning kunyomi. The very idea of kanjidamage is to learn things that matter, and you choose what to learn. You can just learn the keywords if you're too mentally impaired.

In fact, I learned nearly 200 kanji yesterday together with their onyomi (or kun if onyomi is never used) and I still remember them. In fact, I only learned the reading because it was piss easy to have it in the mnemonic, not

>I had to recall my stories word-for-word
Who learns like that ? Like with 胸, the only things I still remember about the mnemonic are "Today, her breasts blah blah terrible organ wrap blah blah". Heck I'm gonna die if I have to remember shit word-for-word. If you are having that problem, it's because the mnemonic does not work for you. Change it, make a new one, whatever. I never remember more than 1 sentence for each kanji.

>>8068608
>Change it, make a new one, whatever.

This a thousand times.
It works wonders to have them personalized to you.

I know japanese grammar and kana, but won't touch kanji. Logograms are fucking stupid, and character amnesia is solid proof of that.

>>8068630
Splendid. Report back when you can play untranslated VNs. Oh you mean you can't but just want to gloat over your inability ?

>>8068608
>learned nearly 200 kanji yesterday together with their onyomi (or kun if onyomi is never used) and I still remember them
I totally believe that.
Because I know Chinese and I can't do that unless you are referring to the easiest 200 ones, and then still maybe not.

>>8068630
it's really not that hard once you get to know how it works. also helps a lot with vocab learning

>>8068634
Then feel free to be astounded.

>>8068640
you're probably just thinking of common readings. the readings can be completely different or slightly altered in some words

>>8068643
Well thank you, Sherlock. I never knew that. Obviously I learned every possible exception for each of those kanji as well.

>>8068645
so you could read a word you've never seen before based on the kanji readings you've learned so far? ok...

>>8068634
For me, if I can't write a kanji from memory it is purely superficial learning. Sure I can look at it and be like "Yes, that is x.", but the true knowing comes from when muscle memory and short term memory goes together to create a long term memory.

I'd like to see the guy who learned 200 on/kuns yesterday even recite 50 from memory today.

>>8068640
That doesn't help your case. You need to learn stroke order hints on easy words? I already know practically every stroke order for every word and I even know the (chinese) words used to describe the different strokes.

>>8068631
Oh, I play them all the time with TA.

I'm just saying LOGOGRAMS ARE FUCKING STUPID.
Nothing but a complete waste of brain capacity with no purpose whatsoever. I think character amnesia shows this perfectly.

Wonder how long it'll take before east asian languages get modernized.

>>8068656
>need to learn stroke order hints
I did not know I needed to learn stroke order for words that are composed of radicals I already know.
/sarcasm

Stop your assumptions. The font is just there.

>>8068653
You know that in Kanji there are reverse cards, right ? How do you think I manage those ? I can not give you the list in the exact order I learn, but give me the keyword and I'll write it.

>>8068650
I think my fine touch of humor was somewhat lost on you.

>>8068664
What do you mean manage those? You apply the same principle of superficial recognition that you did the other way around. I'm not saying you will never retain what you read, I'm saying that it's impossible for anyone to retain 200 character readings for any longer stretch of time without repeated exercise. If I were to ask you: Write down 50 characters that you learned yesterday on this blank sheet of paper, are you actually goign to go ahead and say "yes, that would be no problem." You do not "know" 200 new characters since yesterday, you simply went through them and can at a glance deduce what their meaning is.

>>8068670
my point still stands. it's a complete waste of time to learn individual readings

>>8068672
Hi there Anakin, please write the list of every English word you've learned. The words you forget are the words you have never learned. That is the way of the force.
>I'm saying that it's impossible for anyone to retain 200 character readings for any longer stretch of time without repeated exercise
Oh wow. I think you got a point here. I was planning to uninstall Anki by the time I finished going through all the cards the first time. Thanks to you I now know I do not actually remember anything and it's only a dastardly effect of using Anki.

>>8068663

Among Asians who grow up with them they're said to improve visuospatial ability in the brain. They mark word etymology and require memorization to about the same degree as English spellings.

That said I've tried to have discussions here about why they're otherwise stupid, and you're not going to get anything but dickwaving about you can't understand kanji in response.

>>8068663

Among Asians who grow up with them they're said to improve visuospatial ability in the brain. They mark word etymology and require memorization to about the same degree as English spellings.

That said I've tried to have discussions here about why they're otherwise stupid, and you're not going to get anything but dickwaving about how you can't understand kanji in response.

>>8068684
>In fact, I learned nearly 200 kanji yesterday

>>8068690
Guess I should have said I learned nothing.

>>8068693
Now you're understanding.