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/jp/ - Otaku Culture

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5892680 No.5892680 [Reply] [Original]

Just about done with the German courses, I've decided to start up Japanese, because Inoue Yasushi is fucking awesome. (And because Chinese is hard a hell).

Anyway, anyone have any thoughts on this game? From all I've heard, Japanese is a fairly simply language (at least relatively). I imagine the hardest part for me will be learning how to read/write. All those different characters... they just look like random chicken scratches to me. Would this game be a beneficial learning tool?

And if not, is there something else I should be looking at? It feels like it could potentially be very helpful, what with the stylus and all.

>> No.5892688

To be honest, pirate it and play on your PC/ upload to your flash cart before you waste money on those types of things.

>> No.5892687

KanKen DS3 Deluxe is better.

Also, Heisig.

>> No.5892694

European languages, to me atleast, seem much easier to learn than Japanese. That's probably because they all use the alphabet unlike Japanese where you have to start from scratch basically.

>> No.5892696

It's okay. Not very good in helping with writing and memorizing the kanji. They give around 10 at a time at very varied times and fill the rest of it with grammar and vocab. It's an alright game if you're just learning casually, though, and not really taking it too seriously. Either that or use it and do a lot of outside practice.

>> No.5892714

>>5892688
I don't know anything about flashcarts. At all. And I though PC emulators still didn't work with games that used stylus controls. That no longer the case? (If so, which emulator ought I check out?)

>> No.5892718

Is it possible to learn Japanese by translating manga´s?

>> No.5892721

>>5892687
being entirely in japanese, wouldn't kanken be harder for people new to japanese to get their heads around?

>> No.5892722

DS - how to learn japanese - /thread?
Post sauce if possible.

And i haven't tried MyJapaneseCoach, i've heard that it's not so good.

>> No.5892723

>>5892718
You still have to learn about grammar and such, otherwise you won't advance much i think.

>> No.5892724

>>5892722
It's even worse than notsogood. I wouldn't even shit on it. It's not worthy of my turd.

>> No.5892728

>>5892714
no$GBA. You have to use the mouse as the stylus.

It's a little annoying to get set up though(You have to keep changing the "size" of the cart in the options, and there's no list that tells you what games have what size).

>>5892718
Limited conversation potential. What would probably be the best is learning for about a year and half, then translating a slice of life anime/manga/VN to practice your skills, and continue practicing.

>> No.5892736
File: 16 KB, 327x327, memory.cgi.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5892736

>>5892680
I played it until I got to the open study lessons.
It takes too long until you get to the part where you actually learn something, and even now, it doesn't teach you new words with kanji, you learn words and kanji separately.

Also, they got the stroke order for 馬 wrong.
It has stroke 1 and 6 combined into a single stroke.

>> No.5892739

>>5892721
True, but it's better for people who prefer being thrown into the deep water right from the start.

>> No.5892753

>>5892739
Those people play FF1 in Japanese.

>> No.5892754

It won't teach you Japanese, it will get you started on the way. As long as you acknowledge that, I'm sure you'll find some use for it. Not the best tool you can use, but not too dry as the best tools, so many will find it a good place to start.

Also, Japanese is commonly considered the hardest language for English speakers to learn. Acknowledge that first. Tell yourself "okay, I realize this is a really fucking hard language and that I need to put a lot of fucking effort into this shit if I am to get anything out of it at all" before you begin. You have to be completely aware of the challenge before you if you are to conquer it.

>> No.5892767

>>5892728
I don't need to be able to have Japanese conversations,just want to read mangas/light novels
>>5892754
I am Dutch and I hope Japanese won't be as hard for me as it will be for you but we have some fucked up grammar and some otherthings which makes our language also one of the hardest.

>> No.5892797

>>5892721
I would say so, yes. I tried KanKen 2 for a while, but even though I'm not a beginner with the language, it didn't really help me at all. The problem is that it's meant for people who already have a decent spoken Japanese vocabulary, since you have to tie every kanji to a reading, which you won't understand if you're new to the language.

Personally, I'd recommend those games to people who feel that they can hold a conversation in Japanese without much trouble, but who still feel the need to brush up their kanji knowledge (just like the native Japanese people they are aimed at).

>>5892753
Fuck, I'm glad we're not seeing any more of that faggot.

>> No.5892819

>>5892767
>I hope Japanese won't be as hard for me
No, that's the wrong approach to take. You shouldn't want something to be easier, you should want yourself to be smart enough to handle it.

>> No.5892844

>>5892797
>>5892753
How would that even work? Most of the text in FF1 is made-up shit, like "Cura."

>> No.5892853

>>5892844
It was a joke. There was some guy around here a few weeks ago who was convinced he could learn japanese by translating FF1, and we all made fun of him for thinking so(How often are leather swords and goblins going to come up in conversation?).

>> No.5892855

Okay, this is how I'm approaching Japanese

Heisig for the characters (book + http://kanji.koohii.com/ very useful site, greasemonkey scripts exist at least for Spanish)
Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide for grammar (http://www.guidetojapanese.org, avaiable in a lot of languages)
Pimsleur for pronunciation and getting used to hear and speak it (torrent it)

When I feel proficient enough I will test the waters with a VN or something where I can copy and paste words, to learn vocabulary.

This is my ultimate guide to Japanese. With this, I will learn Japanese with certainty.
It's taking up at least 1 hour per day, but it's working.

>> No.5892863

>>5892767
I don't see how you'd have an advantage being Dutch. Japanese is time consuming to learn to write and read but pronunciation, grammar and all that other stuff is pretty straight forward. I wouldn't call it very hard, just don't expect to be fluent any time soon.
Duits is moeilijker dan Japans.

>> No.5892877

>>5892855
>When I feel proficient enough I will test the waters with a VN or something where I can copy and paste words, to learn vocabulary.
I did that and worked really well.
Use AGTH and JWPce. Really convenient with them, all you need to do is select a word by highlighting it with the mouse, AGTH will automatically copy to clipboard and JWPce will monitor the clipboard and automatically look it up for you.

I started with Clannad, and found it great. Has a pretty easy grammar and doesn't use too weird words often.

>> No.5892880

>>5892855
Relax once in a while anon...

I'm using several flash games and sometimes some japanese dictionnary/cards/books for kids to learn new vocabulary or kanjis.
Why is that? Because they have lots of pics and at least they're not as boring as any 'grown-up black & white & fucking plain dictionnaries' out there.

It's hard to find GOOD learning-games on DS though.

>> No.5892924

>>5892853
The worst part was when he came back and admitted that he didn't understand anything, and wanted us to walk him through every sentence he didn't understand, all while still insisting that he was really amazing, so jumping into it like this wasn't any problem.

>> No.5892931

>>5892880
If you aren't a kid you shouldn't be learning as kids do. 'grown-up black & white & fucking plain dictionaries' will make you learn much much faster. Why do Japanese for morons if you're smart?

>> No.5892933

This is also pretty damn useful for vocab.
http://smart.fm/series/3318
Has two more parts, for a total of 6000 most common words.

>> No.5892971

>>5892931

Some people are just better by recognizing through visual memory like when they say へ is a like a he-lmet.
No need to get mad.

>> No.5892985

>>5892855
Quite similar to my approach, just that I don't use Pimsleur and use kanjidicks instead of Heisig. Definitely recommendable to anyone doing self-study. At my current stage, reading eroge with AGTH+rikaichan is no problem. Note the distinction between eroge and VN, though. A VN can have the difficulty of a real novel at worst, but eroge are usually pretty simple.

>> No.5892986

>>5892931
>Why do Japanese for morons if you're smart?
>implying he is

>> No.5892983

>>5892931
> Why do Japanese for morons if you're smart?
What are you talking about?
What's the point of opening such a book if you don't even know how to make a sentence from scratch?

Well if you want to act tough with the "look i'm only using high-quality book" that's your choice, i'll just take the long way if you don't mind.

School cursus = Child --> Teenager --> Adult, not the other way around.

>> No.5892998

>>5892863
Niet als je Nederlands bent.

>> No.5893029

How come /jp/ seems to have these Japanese Coach threads almost daily nowadays? I have a hard time believing so many of us have a DS.

Anyway, before you start learning the language I highly suggest clearly identifying *why* you want to learn it. You must realize that most "fun" Japanese-learning products are aimed towards casual learners. They're totally OK if you're not so serious about the language, and have fun learning the language for itself, without necessarily ever being able to read any advanced text.

I started with the purpose of being able to read visual novels [you can probably replace 'visual novels' with any form of written media in the sequel] comfortably in Japanese. If this is your goal, I suggest studying Tae Kim's guide well, optionally do Heisig's book, listen lots of Japanese audio (stuff like drama CDs should be OK, even if you don't understand much about it), and - as soon as possible - start playing visual novels in Japanese, taking note of every kanji and word you don't know, and review them later. When you start out, it will be a massive pain in the ass more than anything, but it's probably the fastest way you can accomplish this goal - classes and casual textbooks advance way too slowly with the kanji, as you need to know at the very least 2500, preferably more than 3000, to read some of the more difficult ones.

If you do this, your writing and speaking abilities will soon be far behind your reading and listening abilities. It's a price I've been willing to pay; it's not like I'm ever going to visit Japan anyway.

>> No.5893039

>>5893029
I don't think most of the people creating these threads are a regular user of /jp/.

>> No.5893044

>>5892983
>What's the point of opening such a book if you don't even know how to make a sentence from scratch?
(Good) Japanese material for adults will teach you too how to make a sentence from scratch. And it will do it in a more efficient manner, taking advantage of your adult capabilities.
Children are stupid, with their though processes not fully developed yet. A child must be taught by brute force, and very slowly, but you can grasp complex concepts on the fly and focus on stuff even if it doesn't have pretty animals and flowers. Learning like a kid is just a waste of time. Wasting time is bad when learning languages, because there's more chances for your motivation to sink and drop the process. If you make lots of fast progress, your motivation is kept high.

>> No.5893069

If you already know the correct German pronounciation, then at least you won't have any trouble with the Japanese one. They're mostly the same, except for the japanese "u" sounding more like the German "ü".

>> No.5893115

I tried the game for shits. It teaches incorrect stroke order for a good chunk of kana, and punishes you for writing it correctly. I have a hard time believing it can redeem itself after that.

>> No.5893116

>>5893044
> (Good) Japanese material for adults will teach you too how to make a sentence from scratch
Remember, i said : "Relax once in a while anon..." in my first post.

Of course i'm using 'adult' books to learn the basis.
I'm using children books too because you'll find more examples with words/kanjis in their context than advanced books.

For example :
- Advanced : Kanji Xa = Ya, Kanji Xb = Yb ect...
- Children : Kanji X = Y + pictures + 3 to 5 differents sentences, where you'll eventually learn additional words if you're smart.

>> No.5893162

I like kana. They're comfy and easy to read.

>> No.5893186

>>5893069
Pronunciation doesn't seem like it'd be an issue (even German pronunciation ain't that hard) and speaking, in general, seems "easy." The hardest part from my perspective is just memorizing all of the kanji and katakana.

Anyone take a college Japanese course? I'm a bit curious on how quickly we'll be expected to go through the characters...

With German, at least, there are still people in the upper-level courses who have trouble with basic vocab and tenses... I wonder if Japanese gets quite that screwy. Guess I'll find out.

>>5893029
Said it in the OP: I'm studying Japanese principally because of Inoue Yasushi, and a few other writers I've been exposed to (Kawabata, Yasunori, etc.) Honestly, I'd prefer to read their stuff in English... but so very little is actually translated. It sucks. Chinese is exactly the same way: there's a shit-ton of Chinese literature I'd die to read, but very, very little of it is translated.

The biggest reason I chose Japanese over Chinese is because the people in the Japanese department here are, in general, a lot friendlier and more helpful than the people in the Chinese department (which, to be fair, is because there's a pretty high faculty turnover rate there).

And everyone has a DS these days. Everyone.

>> No.5893199

>>5893186
Just audit their classes if you like them so much.

>> No.5893206

>>5893186
I took a Japanese class in university. They went through hiragana in about a week (like 2 classes or so) and katakana the following.

>> No.5893261

>>5893186
My class was expected to know the hiragana and katakana in a week.

>> No.5893333

>>5893261
I learned it in 3 hours on my own with Heisig, so that doesn't sound too hard.

>> No.5893365

Why are you guys only commenting on the first week of Japanese courses? Did you drop the class?

>> No.5893394

I tried the game. I didn't like it. Seemed boring. And this is coming from a guy who likes writing all the kanji he doesn't know into microsoft IME for fun.

>> No.5893433

>>5893333
I had learned the kana over a couple days before starting the class, which is what the program suggested but apparently no one else did that and most of them had major problems remembering them (some even dropped the class because of it).

>>5893365
The guy asked about learning the characters, and we only learned them during the first week.

>> No.5893441

>>5893433
I mean we only learned the kana the first week. Kanji we learned throughout the two years I took the course, obviously.

>> No.5893590

MJC is incomplete. lol "open plan"

>> No.5893638

>>5893365
Yea I dropped it.

>> No.5893904

>I've decided to start up Japanese, because Inoue Yasushi is fucking awesome. (And because Chinese is hard a hell).

Japanese is actually harder if your native language is English.

>> No.5893921

>>5893904
Why does everyone tell this?
I have to admit that English is my second language and Japanese is my third, but I don't see why it would be so hard for an English speaker.

>> No.5893931

>>5893921
I didn't say it was necessary hard, just harder than Chinese and Chinese is already pretty fucking hard for most people. At least according to this site

http://web.archive.org/web/20071014005901/http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectati
ons.html

>> No.5894053

>>5893931
that link was useful thank you

>>
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