Learning Japanese

[Anonymous No.]

I know this question probably comes up a lot, but can someone recommend some material for self-teaching? I've been using My Japanese Coach on the DS for the last couples days and made it up to Lesson 21. Really, this thing kinda sucks. It was useful for learning Hiragana and Katakana, but it fails miserably at everything else.

Right now I'm downloading "Genki I+II - Integrated Elementary Japanese Course" is there anything else I might want to use?

[Anonymous No.]

I've got this site bookmarked too: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/index.html#contents

Anyone?

[Anonymous No.]

>Right now I'm downloading "Genki I+II - Integrated Elementary Japanese Course" is there anything else I might want to use?
No. This is all you need.

[Anonymous No.]

You can try this if you want.

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about

[Moonspeaking Anon No.]

>>3458210
>>3458279
Read those all the way through to get you started. Once you have the basic grasp of the language, start grinding kanji. Heisig can work, but learning everything that way is only the first step in a much longer process of learning the kanji, and arguably an inefficient one. Your other option is to just start grinding off a kanji list, e.g. http://www.hellodamage.com/kanjidicks/all.htm or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_j%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji.. You'll also want a dictionary, e.g. jisho.org, Yahoo Jisho, etc. I'd advise finding a couple different ones to cross reference, as they all have different advantages and disadvantages. Always read the example sentences, as they show you how a word is actually used, which is much more valuable than a simple definition. Once you hit a thousand or so kanji, you can start on raw manga, VNs, or whatever else you want to give you some real experience, though you'll still need to reference your dictionary a lot. At that point, you just need to keep grinding away at it until you reach the point where you can read smoothly and unassisted.

Keep in mind that every step of this process will take fucking ages, even if you spend several hours a day on it.

[Anonymous No.]

Read Tae Kim's guide to grammar (it doesn't cover everything but it's a good start), grind kanji, read some books/VN's and voila! 3 years from now you'll be able to read Japanese.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3458421
Meh, I wouldn't trust hellodamage. He screws up some pretty basic kanji so god only knows how trustworthy the rest of that list is.

>>3458210
Yeah, "My Japanese Coach" is pretty crap. It's more of a kid's game/way to con you out of $30 than a learning tool. If you want to go the DS route though, and have a flashcart or are willing to blow a lot of money on imports, I've heard good things about "Tadashii kanji kakitori-kun shogakukan" and "nazotte oboeru otona no kanji renshu". They're both kanji practice games though so they probably won't be terribly useful to you until you get deeper into the language. Also, there's a DS "game" out there called "kanji sonomama DS rakubiki jiten" that essentially turns your DS into an electronic kanji dictionary.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3458505
I've got a flashcart so I'll download those games and throw them on there. I probably won't be able to actually play them for a while but it's good to have.

I prefer using software whenever possible, which is why I started out with My Japanese Coach. I've been playing it some more since I started my Genki download and now it's throwing particles (?) at me that I've never seen before during the minigames...

Like in this game I just played I had to structure this sentence: かれわやまにあるきました。(He walked to the mountain.) The problem is I've never seen "ni" used like that before so I have no idea what the hell it's supposed to mean. I've also seen "ga" in there, and again I have no idea what it means.

[Blick Winkel !arWAHAn1/. No.]

>>3458587
ni is a preposition, ie the "to" in "to the mountain."

[Anonymous No.]

>>3458587
I'm just a beginner myself, but I believe that "ga" is the particle you use in place of "wa" when using question words or when adding emphasis. So, for example, "dore ga" instead of "dore wa".

I could be totally fucking wrong though.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3458210

http://nihongo-dekimasu.blogspot.com/

All the ebooks and Jap learning resources you will ever need.

Pick and choose according to your needs. (I recommend taking a look at the "Dictionary for basic / intermediate / advanced grammar" (3 separate books) after you have a basic grasp of Japanese grammar.

[Anonymous No.]

>>3458636
You use wa when the important information is after the wa.
Who are you?
あなたはだれ？
I am Bob.
おれはにっぽん
You use ga when the important information is before the ga.
Who is Bob?
にっぽんはだれ？
I am Bob.
おれがにっぽん。

[Anonymous No.]

http://www.hellodamage.com/kanjidicks/all.htm

[Anonymous No.]

>>3458344
seconding this.