/jp/ - Otaku Culture

No point in doing anything, aniki.
Just relax and rot

Getting started on learning my nihongo was my New Year's resolution as well.

Chill out dude, it's only been 3 days.

すごい物語りお兄ちゃん

Oh right it's 2012 already.
I might as well start learning Japanese again.
At least this time I'll know exactly how long I lasted before giving up.

>>8343815
At least I set up nice fonts and input modes and shit so I can go 日本語.

>>8343819
I know.. three of those symbols..

>>8343825
スゴイモノガタリオニイチャン
What about now?

>>8343820
That's the spirit!

>>8343833
I think those are all katakana.. which I don't know any of yet.

>>8343815
>it's only been 3 days.
That's how it starts. You're never getting anwhere ｗｗｗｗ

When I get a job I'll pay for some lessons. I can't learn it by myself but there are too many untranslated VNs I'm interested in. I wish I had a different hobby

>>8343838
B-But it's still winter break

>>8343863
That's the perfect time to start. You have even more free time.

>>8343801
Why is Captain Haddock sad?

http://www.donmouth.co.uk/web_design/javascript/kana_test_002.html
http://www.easyjapanese.org/kataquiz.html
http://www.realkana.com/

Use these to drill the kana into your brain.
also >>>/lang/

>>8343881
heh it's gao from 火の鳥.

>>8343875
Well ok, I guess I'll work on my hiraganas a bit.

I have yet to start

If you can't even learn the fucking hiragana in one day you should just give up, you'll never make any meaningful progress anyway.

>>8343912
say what you want, I'm not giving up

>>8343919
He is a faggot.
Just try to learn them steadily, you should be able to do hana + kana in < week. And you should reherse, a lot.

>>8343912
I consider learning Japanese like playing Touhou.
At first I felt it was impossible and I was incredibly bad at it for quite some time I almost gave up on the game thinking that danmaku games just aren't for me.

But I didn't give up and with enough practice I eventually got incredibly good.
So don't give up.

Inb4people that say they went from easy to lunatic in under a month and learn 10 kanji a day.
I don't care about your elitist opinion. You can stay smug in your opinion of being smarter than a fellow /jp/er.

>>8343912
it took me about 3 hours to learn the hiragana (the katakana took a bit longer) using "Remembering the Kana" from James W. Heisig. It's not really necessary though.
Maybe you can find the PDF somewhere.

However, fucking Kanji and grammar.
I didn't make much progress the last 2 years because I was too lazy.
If you want to gain useful japanese skills you really have to hang on.
Don't even try to study complex kanjis without repeating them regularly.

がんばってね

>>8344021
> it took me about 3 hours to learn the hiragana

fucking superhuman!

I done Hira in 2 days, still struggling with Kata though

>>8344058
Its possible, if you try hard enough

>>8344021

I second using "Remembering the Kana" from James W. Heisig. There are a few torrents floating around for the PDFs.

Where should I go from here, after learning hira and kata?

I first tried to learn hiragana when I was 15. Ten years later and I still don't know it.

Maybe by the time I'm 50 I'll have hiragana and katakana down.

I memorized hiragana and katakana, and that's about as far as I got. I pirated Human Japanese and used that for a bit, and I know that "no" is possessive, and "wa" indicates the subject, but that's it.

I think the problem is I just can't memorize the words, and since there aren't spaces I can't find the beginning of the next word and the end of the first one. So I'll look at a sentence and read, "a...na...ta...no...su...shi, wait, what word is this?" Even though I know hiragana, I don't know it well enough to recognize characters as immediately as I can with Roman ones.

>>8344139
> Roman
U MENA LATIN

Depends on what you mean by "learned".
Memorized to the point where I could write all the symbols in hiragana in the order I learned them? A couple hours, doable in a single day if you're motivated enough.
But to actually be able to single out each and every symbol effortlessly, recognize them instantly when they form compound words/sentences, and write longer sequences without having to pause at every single symbol?
Yeah, you bet it's going to take you longer.

>>8344139
といれはどこですか

Use kanjidamage for kanji grind, learn them by common radical instead of "usefulness" or something.
Also, 10 kanji a day is not something amazing, it's incredible easy once you now how sit rolls and are in the flow, starting with 3-5 until you're at that stage is better, of course.

watch all of these
now

トイレはどこですか。

eroge every fucking day

Oh wow. You just need 1 - 2 days for hiragana. Don't be so lazy.

Okay, maybe you just can't get the shit done for your self. So, here's the deal. Load Dreamkana, close every other programm (especially your browser) and just sit there and repeat the programm until you have the shit down. This is the autism proved method, so just do it.

>>8344171
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqJ5wU4FamA&feature=BFa&list=PL9987A659670D60E0&lf=plpp_v
ideo

Does anyone have good sources for parallel texts? The most obvious examples are pop songs and ancient poetry, but I feel like I'm neglecting the practical and spoken aspects of the language.

Katakana and Hiragana are simple to remember, just keep memorising them using something like Anki.

Also keep trying to read moonrunes.

>>8344175
memorizing kana is one thing.
understanding what the fuck it means is another

>>8344170

No shit, that's how I review the stuff I've learned. Download a generic (but it shouldn't bore you to death) eroge, hook it with AGTH, copy the stuff via Furigana Inserter on a blank HTML and use Rikaichan for the translation of the stuff you don't know (that would be most of it when you start). Also a good method to remember kanji. It's impossible to forgett them if they're repeated over and over for several hours.

>>8344215

...no. Those two things are exactly the same.

>>8344224
Indeed. The best thing, though, is when you come to the next kanji on your list and get to think "wait, I know that one!" because you've naturally picked up one of it's reading while reading eroge.

>>8344227

It's one thing to be able to regurgitate back what you've memorized but it's another to know what you meant.

>>8344236

No it isn't. It's a fucking syllabary. If you know what sound the characters represent, then congratulations, you're done! That's fucking everything!

>>8344244
...there's a difference between being able to read it out loud and knowing what it means.

>>8344250

Are you dense? They don't have a meaning. They're basically like a alphabet.

>>8344250

This whole argument started by talking about kana, not japanese.

>>8344058
Of course it takes some time and practice until you can read at acceptable speed without making mistakes.

>>8344096
Katakana are annoying to study. ノソンツシメフラヌタ hurr

>>8344118
That's actually a good question.
If you want to read japanese you have to study the kanji.
There are also books from Heisig (Remember the Kanji 1-3), but it takes a fucking long time.
The first book teaches you how to write them and one approximate meaning at first without actually reading or using them.
The second book is pretty useless, the third is basically the same as the first.
It takes a long time and it's fucking boring. You'll also forget everything if you don't repeat for some months.

Of course you can try it the classic way, but I think that's even worse.
I know because I'm doing both myself.
For example try to remember 洗濯屋 せんたくや Washhouse. Well, it's not the most common word, but you should know it.

You could also try studying only the spoken language, but that's not easy either.

I recommend "A Dictionary Of Basic Japanese Grammar" (+ Intermediate / Advanced)
It's the bible of the japanese language.
I heard "GENKI I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese" is nice book for beginners.

Oh yes, they're fucking expensive.

トキコ

Am I doing it right?

>>8344256
>>8344262
I misinterpreted because I am a retard.

>>8344264
Maybe it's because I mostly learned for reading eroge, but spoken language is twice the pain learning kanji is.

>>8344264

8344118 here. I seem to also be having similar issues as >>8344139 where I'm able to read the kana, but have no idea where one word actually begins and ends (probably cause I lack vocab?).

I took a look at the Heisig books and I'm confused as to where it teaches you how to pronounce each one. I might just use kanjidamage as someone else recommended.

I've also taken some classes hosted by a club at school and I've basically gone through the particles, tenses/conjugations and random vocab. I'll look up some of the books you mentioned. Thanks

>>8344299
Heisig's method is only about teaching you to recognize kanji and associate them with basic meanings.
Because of the way Japanese works, this is a pretty natural limit for the book's scope. Being able to recognize many kanji and easily memorize others allows you to approach the vocabulary aspect of the language more easily, reducing the task of learning a new word into something much easier than learning a new word in a different language.
You could grind each kanji's many readings along with the kanji itself, but you sort of hit a point of diminishing returns with the false security it gives you.

>>8344299
Sometimes it's confusing, but if you know some grammar and some words it shouldn't be a big problem.
Of course text written only in hiragana is hard to understand, but with Kanji it's quite easy.

You're right, Heisig doesn't teach the pronunciation.
Well, he does, but in Book 2, which is (like I said) pretty useless.
I haven't tried it, but Kanjidamage should be fine.

Oooh, language thread. If /jp/ could tell me if I'm missing anything, that'd be great;

1. Learn kana, and begin Pimsleur's audio lessons
2. Begin Heisig's method for kanji
3. Sometime during, or after finishing Heisig if I fail during, begin using Anki for sentences, as opposed to just kanji/kana. (Find sentences from books like Genki)
4. After ages of step 3, begin trying to read manga/light novels/etc, and add stuff I don't get there into anki

I can't think what else I'd do, except maybe find some lonely Japanese guy to chat with.

>>8344401
Use Anki for Heisig, everytime you encounter a kanji you know from Heisig, put it into a sentence and then add the sentence aswell into your flashcard deck.
http://tatoeba.org/eng/home is a good place for sentences.

Also to the people bashing Heisig: you're obviously doing it wrong.

>>8344171
>>8344176
Namasensei teaches kana nicely, but his grammar is fucked. Don't do it his grammar.

>>8344401
Read VNs like this. >>8344224

> 2011
> not learning kanji from manga

>>8344428

Suppose I'm at a point where I don't know an awful lot of kanji, so there are barely any sentences I can make. Should I try and 'skip ahead' by learning kanji so that I can add sentences, or should I wait until I know all the kanji (from Heisig) in the sentences?

Don't forget this.

>>8344401
>pimsleur

It's good for speaking and listining practice, but it has almost no grammar. I would add at least one source for grammar, be it Genki or http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/..

>>8343801
I'm 4 out of 6 lessons through the first book in remembering the kana after 5 days or so...

>>8344139
You'll get the particles in your head eventually and know when words start and begin just like you can english.
When you were little, you read words out slowly and were told to break them down: The process is the same with what you're doing now. It's natural. Remember: you're a baby learning from the beginning.
http://www.ajatt.com

http://japanese.about.com/blparticles.htm

Also if you have google or firefox look for the addon 'Rikaichan'. You hover over a japanese word, kanji, kana etc it will translate it for you in a little bubble underneath. It identifies particles too so that can help.
As much as I dislike Namasenseis grammar teaching, his particle usage is correct. Though he misses out some such as ni, de, he.

>>8344445
No, keep muscling through. When you identify a kanji in a sentence, apply the reading of the kanji in that sentence in to your brain then the sentence into the flashcard deck. The above mentioned rikaichan can help with that.
Along with kanjidamage, http://jisho.org/ etc.

>>8343912
It's not a race or whatever. If I burn myself out by trying to go at some fast pace, I'll quit in no time.

>>8344466
Learn two sets a day, eg vowels + a-to first day, sa-so + ta-to the next etc, it will be done fairly quickly without burning yourself out.
Either use anki to flashcard them or do it the namasensei way or writing each character out 50 times will saying it in your head.
Create a small story of what the kana looks like in your head to aid the process.

EG き = ki, which means tree, and it looks like a tree, so it's ki.
と = to, and it looks like a toe.
た = ta, and it looks kind of like 'ta'.

>>8344464

So is my primary goal there to learn the reading of the kanji, or the sentence as a whole?

この気持ちいつは日本語。

>>8344444
where can i do this?

Fluency in Nippongo was my new years resolution last year, I stuck with it for about 3 months then relapsed. Fluency in Nippongo is my new years resolution this year.

What does /jp/ think about the idea of learning a lot of vocabulary fast using only kana but learning kanji much slower? I mean, kids in Japan learn to speak before they can read and write so why can't I?

Also, this site is incredibly useful. http://iknow.jp

>>8344455
What is this?

know the kana
now i'm doing rosetta stone

I learned katakana and hiragana a few months ago, but this winter break I've been slacking so I've gotten slow at recalling them...

>>8344478
>I mean, kids in Japan learn to speak before they can read and write so why can't I?
Because you're not a kid anymore.

>>8344484
hmm

>>8344483
>now i'm doing rosetta stone

Why would you do this? It's utter shit.

Hoping to finally reach JLPT 2 proficiency by the end of the year.

>>8344485
reading would be more useful since you live in a western country

>>8344475
You learn the reading by applying it in the sentence.
It should probably come when you have a good amount of kanji logged so all the kanji in the sentence can be read.
eg 私は日本語が話せない。
(watashi wa nihongo ga hanasenai. I don't understand japanese) From this sentence, you'd learn the reading of 私, 日本語 and 話せ
Eventually they become common knowledge through constant repetition etc

It sounds complicated now but you'll get your head around everything.

>>8344483

I tried Rosetta Stone after learning the kana.
What a waste of bandwidth and space.

>>8344483
I've tried Rosetta Stone, I can also say it is indeed shit. Try http://iknow.jp MUCH cheaper (unless you pirated RS like I did) but still worth every penny.

How do you SRS sentences, anyway? I got a sentence deck and tried grinding it along with my kanji deck, but it didn't prove very useful. I could only manage two or three sentences a day, and my retention was terrible compared to the kanji. Each sentence basically required be to know several new kanji along with one reading each, as well as some new grammatical structures.

>>8344492

also this might be useful
http://pastebin.com/Y3eLSAqV

I learned hira/katakana and some basic grammar until I stopped and just started watching more animes and playing games in nippongo.

I've been able to catch and learn words much faster after knowing a bit of how the language works.

no shez not japanese

>>8344495
True but I also watch a shit ton of anime and the idea of being able to speak and understand would help me learn kanji faster, wouldn't it?

>>8344504
>rosetta stone
stopped skimming there.

>>8344513
Doing so separately takes twice as long. You may as well kill two birds with one stone and learn how to speak and understand AND learn to read and write, rather than speak and understand THEN learn to read and write.

Minna-san, what is the point in learning japanese. all their best media is translated and released to us in west. to be realistic, you will never be a japanese, even if you work there they will tolerate you but not love you, and you will never be fluent or have nihon girl.

>>8344527
So we can continue to shitpost on /jp/ when moot implements the kaniji captcha.

>>8344478
>At 18 months, most babies can say 15 words and understand even more.

Tell me how much nippongo you know after 18 months of hearing it every day.

>>8344527
>all their best media is translated
Because no.

>>8344527
Most doujins + manga go untranslated. Why wait for translation when you can learn and read it for yourself/translate for others?

>>8344513
I don't really think so.

Just learn the words and learn what the kanji mean. Unless you plan on reading out loud to people, you should be able to figure it out eventually with just that if you have half a brain.

>>8344527
all their popular media is being translater

>>8344527

The chances that I'll ever communicate with a real Japanese person are slim. But that doesn't matter. Hell, I don't even care about Japan. The only reason why I learn Japanese is because:

>all their best media is translated and released to us in west
^
|
This is bullshit. I want to read my VNs after they're released. I don't want to wait months or years for a translation.

Is there a big ass list of words somewhere that I could start studying from to improve my vocabulary? At the moment, my vocab is quite poor, and I can't find a single list of words that I can start building off of.

>>8344542
Also, it will be hard to write like this, but you'll be fine on a computer.

So you cut half the work, but you can't write on paper or read out loud.

>>8344531
>implying you won't frequent futaba if when you learn japanese

might as well post this here:

I've been trying to figure out a way to play Japanese games without actually having to learn Japanese. So far I've been grabbing the text, copypasting it into a notepad, and then trying to split up the sentences into words using a kanji dictionary and then looking up the kana. then I write down all the different possible meanings each word can have and try to arrange it to get an idea of what the sentence is supposed to say. the problem is that I still get gibberish. most of the nouns and verbs (for example 攻 or 軍, which I've seen used for anything remotely military related) are pretty vague and can be interpreted in different ways. Even if I had everything memorized, how am I supposed to know which meaning was the author trying to use for each word? context is not enough. surely there must be a more practical way than just guessing... on normal games this isn't really a problem but infodumps in VNs always end up as pure gibberish.
telling apart the tone each character is using is also a problem, sometimes even when their sprite is on screen. I can only get the "idea" behind what they're saying.

Ideas, solutions, tips, etc?

>>8344582
>trying to figure out a way to play Japanese games without actually having to learn Japanese
You do know you're only giving yourself more trouble, right?

>>8344582

>>8344224

>>8344587
I'm not. playing the games and reading the stories, that's where the meat is. I don't want to memorize anything. it's boring.

Actually, I'm aiming to finish Heisig's RTK 3 by March. Started and finished the first 2 in 2011. Feels like I'm wasting time though.

I'm still unsure if I should use remembering the kanji or not, I've heard a lot of conflicting opinions on it.

>>8344582
If you see kanji together eg 日本, then don't seperate them otherwise you will get jibberish. Most 'combine' to create one meaning eg 日本 means Japan, 日 means sun, 本 means book. If you split them up into 'sun book' you're gonna think what the fuck.

>>8344598
And going at the unintelligible text blindly isn't boring? If you have the autistic power level to go through whole paragraphs like that without wanting to hang yourself, you might as well start grinding the languge for a few minutes a day and see some results.

>>8344609
Try it, if you like it continue. If you don't then stop. It's very slow to start though.

>>8344224
Is there an easy way to automate that process?

DO NOT remember ひ as a ballsack.

>>8344610
This helps a lot. Do I combine all the Kanji that I find together? Or am I supposed to look up the individual meanings and them compare them to the combined version to see which one works better?

They should have just made the written language simpler. You don't have to even know anything about Latin-based languages to realize written Japanese is fucking dumb and unnecessarily complicated. They need 16 bits per character and have to have stupid shift-in/shift-out character encoding hacks just so they can type words into a computer.

>>8344578
>implying I can find a nipponian proxy

>>8344630
http://jisho.org/
If you go here and input both the kanji (jukugo, 'compound kanji') it will give you the word as it means as a jukugo.
If you then click 'kanji details' underneath, it will take you to a page with the kanji from the word and give you the dictionaries for both on the same page.

eg
http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC&eng=&dict=edict
http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC

>>8344642
Great. I'm going to use this.

>>8344621

Yes, learning the language.

Learn the proper pronunciation first, I'm fluent in spanish so it was easy for me.
<---That and rikaichan are what I've been using,

How do I type a small つ using IME? I hate having to keep a notepad file with common names and letters.

How can I get a Japanese input method for GTK+ applications? There was some plug-in on SourceForge but it seems to be dead.
Given how much projects like GNOME are all about international stuff, you think this would be easier...

>>8344867
っ　It will come up when you have a double consonant or whatever.

>>8344867
L + つ = っ

>>8344867
if it's in words like toppa just write ppa and it'll be converted automatically, if not just write tsu and spacebar until you find the small tsu (the more you use it, the higher it'll be placed and the less you'll have to spacebar

>>8344882
ありがとうね。

>>8344874
Install Gen... I mean IBus.

>>8344882
thanks

>>8344867
>>8344882
xtu also works.

http://images.4channel.org/f/src/Kana%20Trainer.swf

Download, practice daily.

I have no motivation to continue studying Japanese...

Well I just started seriously practicing Japanese thanks to tofugu. I have been doing it for a couple of days and it helped me stay on track.

Don't give up, try different methods until you find the one that feels the best.

I've been studying for almost a year and I still can't read shit. Let me tell you that in my experience studying kanji en masse with only memorizing the meanings is fucking fruitless. I find it' been much productive to study a kanji as part of a word.

I suggest you do it that way if any of you don't feel like you're getting anywhere with Kanji Damage or RtK

8344299 here again. I gathered all the GENKI material I could find, as recommended by >>8344264 but I'm working with kanjidamage right now.
What I'm confused about is ONYOMI and KUNYOMI.
From my understanding, onyomi is how a kanji is pronounced in compound words and kunyomi is how the kanji is pronounced by itself.
So for example, the kanji, "女" is pronounced おんな in 女の子, but it is pronounced じょ in 彼女.
So I'm wondering how to differentiate when a kanji is used independently and when it is used as a compound word. (Or does this just come with experience?)

Also, can anyone explain this?
"in KUNyomi, the asterisk (*) shows where the okurigana begin. For instance, if the kanji is 食 and the kunyomi is た＊べる, then it's normally written 食べる."

^Does this mean that the "食" is pronounced "ta" in "食べる"? Or rather, what does "okurigana" mean/refer to?

>>8345493
If it took a year to do RTK you probably wouldn't get anywhere with any method.

>>8345517

/jp/ - Discouragement/general

It didn't take me a year to do RTK, I've tried plenty of methods, but they've all had the same premise, that being, "remember the meanings, ignore how they're actually used in words"

It's great if I want to forget everything I tried to memorize in a week.

I'm grinding them kanji with anki using heisig's flashcards.
I'm happy with my progress so far.

>>8345500
>So I'm wondering how to differentiate when a kanji is used independently and when it is used as a compound word. (Or does this just come with experience?)

It comes from experience.

>Does this mean that the "食" is pronounced "ta" in "食べる"? Or rather, what does "okurigana" mean/refer to?

The "食" in "食べる" is pronounced "ta", yes.
"Okurigana" are kana suffixes following kanji. It is referring to the "べる".

>>8343833
>>8343819
I feel so childish for only being able to understand the full kana sentence.

>>8343801
I'm not, really if you're doing it for porn then just learn hiragana, katakana and some grammar.
Use machine translation for kanjis and you're set, no point in wasting brain space for one of the worst language in the world.

Meh, waste of time, by the time you get to the point to be able to play games you realize how much time you wasted just for a stupid hobby.
Also, Katanaka>Kanji
Kanji is easymodo compared to that forgetful piece of shit called Katakana.

>>8345600

How would you recommend learning meaning of the kana combined then? Memorizing is one thing, but actually understanding them is another.

>>8345607
>waste of time
Better than sitting on 4chan for days on end.