/vt/ - Virtual Youtubers

>>585201
>he lacks the critical information

I wouldn't hate learn english type streams half as much if the majority of them weren't this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvXzZ-qc940

You who succeeded in learning Japanese to be closer to their oshis, what is the best method?

>>586129
I started learning and then found out about vtubers later. I read some grammar guides/watched cure dolly, learned a few thousand words in anki, and then started watching subbed anime/reading manga looking things up as I went

>>586129
Learn grammar and basic vocabulary with an actual book.

Learn kanji with an actual book.

>>586129
Anki for learning and Twitter for practice. Grammar is a bit tricky though, I enroll in a language school for that.

>>586129
>>586251
Wouldn't say I succeeded yet though, but understanding regular gaming streams, understanding tweets, and some zatsudan content is possible. No idea what the best method is but worked for me.

>>585201
It's actually shit.

>>586129
I use a kanji and romaji site plus deepL to translate text and take notes of the commonly used words and grammar syntax but I'll probably just enroll in a class once the pandemic is over.

>>586743
>once the pandemic is over.
I like your optimism.

I've only ever learned a language (German) through school. The main issue is you really need to be committed to learning it and embrace the language. With Japanese this is very easy, since you can just watch anime. However, you're going to have problems with staying committed unless you really want to learn. I actually took 1 Arabic course and I can't even tell you how to read Arabic or speak it past a few phrases.

>t. American.

>>586129
Do you want to just talk like a gaijin and understand spoken language decently enough while being illiterate ?
Get Pimsleur or a JapanesePod101 subscription and grind it out.

Do you want to compreehensively learn the language and get fluent enough to deal with most situations.
1) Install Anki, download premade decks for the stuff bellow.
2) Get "Remembering the Kanji vol.1" and grind it out - it's exhaustive prep work but it's 3~4 months that are going to save you 2 years down the line. Don't skimp on it, don't use abreviated versions, don't worry about it not being the end-all resource for learning Kanji - Install a pre-made Anki deck or or use the KanjiKoohi website for review and keep your streak and your reps going.
3) Learn Hiragana + Katakana, any beginner japanese book worth its salt will start with them but you can just check the guides on JapanesePod101 and grind it in a day or two, then spend roughly a week to consolidate what you've learned in a week.
4) Install Microsoft IME or Google Input Tools so you can type in Japanese, the google one has an App for android phones and Chromium-based browsers.
5) Torrent Genki I and II (the old edition, not the new one, there's plenty of material for stufy free online for the old one, not so much for the new one) and study through it - there's also people on youtube who have taught the entire book on video.
5-Alter) The Japan Foundation has released their Irodori books for free, they roughly cover the same content as Genki and are good and have more modern formatting, they also pair with their Marugoto Platform which gives you a good exercise platform.
6) Supplement grammar with Tae-Kim and CureDolly. Use Jisho and Yomichan for your dictionary needs - if you need a physical one, Kodansha's Kanji Learner's Dictionary is excellent. Use the Anki Core Decks (Japanse Core 2k, Core 6k) to help with learning new vocab.
7) While doing 5 and onward, check easy to understand material, Shirokuma Cafe, Yotsuba&!, Erin's Challenge. NHK Easy News.
8) During the entire process, watch things in Japanese, try writing and building sentences in Japanse, try incorporating Japanse in your life. Be curious and play with Japanese while enjoying yourself.
This process should take you about two years and will likely bring your japanese from the border between beginner and intermediate (roughly passing N3~N3 on JLPT). At this point you should be able to speak enough Japanese to not die, have some decent level of comprehension and and read like a 5th grader (or above if you did RTK vol 1 properly and stuck to it until the end). From then on you can:
9)Grind media and try to improve your skills by using it, as well trying to find conversation partners online.
9-Alter) Do 9 Regular while studying books like An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese and/or Tobira and/or do the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course+Graded Reader companions to round up your Kanji Reading Knowledge.
9-Alter-Grand-Fate) Get a student visa, enroll in a Japanese Language School for Gaijin and immerse yourself full time in Japanese for a year. If you're a college-Educated native English speaker you can apply for the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme and do so while being paid to do so (you'll have to deal Japanese work ethics, so it's not going to be a cake walk).
10) Do your reps for a few years until you reach a level you find satisfactory, maybe get into the JLPT test mill while you're at it and aim to pass N2 if you want to use Japanse for work purposes. N1 for work that involves the language directly (and for bragging rights).

>>587168
Yeah that is it really getting good at a language isn't really hard in the sense you need to be super smart. More it just takes time and effort that without sufficient motivation most people are never going to put in. I guess that's why there are so many people who can successfully learn English, lots of motivating factors, most of the world's most popular entertainment is in that language, the internet is dominated by english language, almost certainly going to be useful in real life regardless of if you intend to work in an english speaking country or not.

>>587342
Yeah my German professor stopped speaking English day 1. It's tough love, but it's the best way. Books can help, but they're not actually going to teach you normal language. How much slang do we use in English? How bad is your average person's grammar? Unfortunately, it does help to have someone to speak to, especially a native speaker. My professor grew up in Germany and could decipher the word I meant that I used with my basic Germany and explain it to me.

I guess if you really want to learn, watching Japanese TV while taking a course is the best way to learn. However, you're not likely to find many Japanese people in the States. I went to cultural festival and found my shrine maiden speaking k*rean.

>>586067
has anyone actually learned a language with duolingo?

>vtuber grinding duolingo
>"aaaa muzukashii neee"
I secretly get pissed off about how difficult Japanese people find English. How on earth is it more difficult that some turbo gaijin trying to learn 2000 different moonrunes and retarded politeness levels just to get to get to a basic school grade level. Astel was right man...

>>587631
This one is complaining that the site is making fun of her because of how simple it is
>>586067

>>586129
get anki core vocab deck
find a textbook course like genki, minna no nihongo, japanese the manga way, whatever it doesn't matter
consume japanese content

that's it, just study, vocab, grammar, and get listening practice

a lot of people get so focused on optimizing their learning that they spend more time browsing threads and subreddits about this months latest flavor of the month method for speeding up results than they do on learning. just study everyday, and stick to it for the next few years and you'll get there.

you will have days when you don't feel like studying, and you have to try and push through it, because a one day break becomes a week long break, which becomes a "man i wish i didn't stop studying 2 years ago, i could have been decent at japanese by now if i stuck to it."

>>587652
>>586067
>choose the fruit/item that sounds pretty much identical to the way its pronounced in your own language
I'm Spanish, and English wasn't even this easy for me. Japanese people have it easy.

>>587528
Realistically, no.

>>587528
Duolingo is decent enough for western languages and more so if they're close to yours (i.e. if you speak Portuguese and want to learn Spanish/Italian/French).
I've worked at a language school and it was not uncommon to have people who went hard into duolingo and completed their lessons to skip from basic to intermediate after our leveling examination.
That may not seem much and it's not enough to fully utilize the language for work, but it was roughly 120~140 hours of classroom study and covered the basic necessary for survival and simple conversations.
Sure, you'll not be reaching the level of someone who actually uses the language for work or study, and nowhere near a native, but it's free.

>>587631
Correct. I'm really sick of people in general talking about how "difficult" English when in reality the hardest part for most people is just the "th" sound. We don't have genders. We don't use declension. Conjugation, plurals, and articles are all generally simple. You don't have to learn how to draw thousands of pictures just to represent words (most of which have multiple meanings and shit).

>>585201
>be japanese learning english
Oh cool. Everything is in this script that we learn while we're still little kids. So we can just read everything we see, and even if we don't understand it at least we're getting exposure. I don't know this part, or that part, but they have these neat things call spaces which tells me this word is different to that word. Even if my pronunciation is awful I can at least attempt it and get better, because it's not a picture and tells me what to say.

>be any westerner learning japanese
>can't just start reading things because everything is locked behind a glorified paywall of thousands and thousands of symbols
>even if it's kind enough to tell you what it is in kana, that doesn't matter because that's not how its written in the real world

>>587953
>You don't have to learn how to draw thousands of pictures just to represent words

You certainly don't have to do that in japanese either if you stick to computers and phones.

>>588026
stop whining and do your anki reps

>>587631
japanese and english may be the least compatible languages in the world for some reason.

>>588026
Ame. We understand the struggle. But stop skipping your reps and you'll be semi-fluent in 4 years.

>>588082
>chingchong is easier than japanese
no way

>>587953
The hardest grammatical features of English are all in the "sounding like a native instead of ESL" area. Things like verbal phrases ("to set someone off" vs "to set something up" vs "to set out to do something").

>>588122
Yeah, I call bullshit as well. We can bicker about Japanese all we want, but Chinese is worse in every way (all Hanzi, tonality, etc.), and that's not even accounting for the hundreds of dialects.

>>588122
it's true according to the US foreign service department,
japanese is a category V*

I was born in Switzerland. I speak our retarded version of German and I learned Italian, French and English. Fluent in all of them. I'm confident I can learn any language that doesn't require me to memorize several thousand different pictures. If Japanese people really want to learn English, they can do so easily. But they have the same mentality to other languages as Brits, Americans, Australians etc.

>>586067
It's not like this if the vtuber doesn't pick the retard tier.

>>587631
English is a very strange language. It's a combination of Latin, Greek, and German, but with some French pronunciation added in due to Norman conquests.

I'm not saying Japanese is "easy", but it does follow more rules than English.

>>588193
This. If you're a native English speaker, you've been dealt the worst possible hand at learning Japanese.

>>588244
>tfw native english speaker

>>588178
Chinese has less readings, each Hanzi character is one syllable and the grammar is surprisingly similar to English.

>>588239
following too many rules is the problem not a feature

>>588193
Shame I have to learn Japanese through English then since my country is irrelevant with not a lot of speakers

>>587631
We are really finding out the most vtubers are just straight up not that smart. Ever ESL japanese I've spoken to at university only ever complained about slang and analogies.

>>588026
I've never understood why Japanese schools don't teach pronunciation of English constants and vowels prior to learning the actual language. They would be able to kill the L and R stereotype in one generation.

>>588985
japanese schools use textbooks written with 0 input from native speakers. they really don't give a shit.

>>588985
>why Japanese schools don't teach pronunciation of English constants and vowels prior to learning the actual language
I think it's a bit more subtle than you think. The phonemes for several English sounds (L most specifically and infamously) simply don't exist in Japanese, so if you never learned how to make the noise as a kid (when you have that weird learning speed buff we all spawn with), it's difficult to figure out how to recreate it as an adult, as you never just idly recreated the noises your parents and adults in general were making near you.
Same reason why shit like trilling or rolling Rs just doesn't come naturally to English speakers, or the glottal R of French or similar languages. We never made those noises as kids, so most of us have difficulty making them as adults, unless we make a conscious effort or spend inordinate amounts of time repeating it till we can kinda sorta make it naturally.
>t. had a semester of an English class in university several years ago that spent a lot of time on phonetics, basically a PhD at this point not really

>>589126
Their system is garbage that's for certain.

HELLO HOW ARE YOU
FINE THANK YOU, AND YOU?
- The English level of every Jap once they finish school.

JPs should just learn Spanish. Easy as fuck for them to pronounce and they already have the rolling Rs down.

>>589305
I mean, by that logic, after learning French through middle school, about all I retained was
>Bonjour! Je m'appelle anon! Comment t'appelles-tu? Ca va? (Hello, my name is [I am called] anon. What's your name [how do you call yourself]? How are you [it goes?])
>Ca va bien, et tu? (I'm good [it goes well], and you?)
Even the fact that I remembered the transliteration of what those words actually mean astounds me, it's like 15 year old knowledge.

>>589499
Génial ! Ton français est très jouzu anon !

>>589499
i literally just googled how to say "i don't speak french" in french and checked out for the next 2 years classes knowing i learned as much as i'll ever use in life.

>>589625
>Jouzu
I've literally never seen this word before. And I continued studying french through HS and college, despite my implication otherwise. Is this some slang-y shit?

>>589665
you just got jouzu'd

>>589704
I can't fucking tell if you're just fucking around and I'm too proud to Google it. Context would suggest it's just a word for "good", but it most resembles the verb jouer, play.

>>589288
I understand English has phonemes that don't exist in Japanese. What I'm saying is that its surprising that they don't teach those phonemes first before anything. Because they are the basic unit of language, you are basically setting the up with an incomplete tool set. I took a Russian class in university and the first half of the semester was basically learning new phonemes that don't exist in English.

>>589766
I think he's playing on the fact that Japs say "nihongo jouzo" when you say pretty basic shit.

>>589766
it's a play on the Jap phrase for "your japanese is good." Jouzu is a moon word.
>>589769
I mean, I'm not trying to sperg out and go REEE NO YOU'RE WRONG, and like I said in my bigbrain post yes, you can EVENTUALLY train the phonemes up... But unless you are specifically learning "higher level" classes for whatever non-native language, and/or going to need it for a professional purpose (intl business, etc.), no first world country teaches beyond rudimentary pronunciation of foreign language studies, and for damned sure they don't practice phonemes. Not during the mandatory second language class during primary education, at least.

>>589305
>FINE THANK YOU, AND YOU?
Has anyone ever used the "and you?" in real life. Maybe it's because I'm American but I always go with "how about you?" or "how have you been?"

>>589914
Autistic samefag
It's very hard to teach phonemes. You can say "okay, place your tongue against the back of your upper teeth, then release a voiced breath around it as you snap your tongue down", but actually MAKING that noise (an L) won't come naturally until and unless you experiment. And it's simple psychological development that kids are more likely to learn subtle movements like that. Can an adult learn it, sure, can you sort of approximate it by imitation, of course. But the actual core of "this is how you make an L sound" is like asking how one breathes. It's just a natural act. You can explain how you push your diaphragm down and chest out to expand your chest cavity, but every living person just, like, does it.

https://streamable.com/8lk8vq

>>590020
I'm a full on stilted language tryhard IRL. Always ask it.
>"How's it going, anon?"
>"Well (i.e. "it's going well" makes more grammatical sense than "good"), and you?"
>everyone's face when I actually answer their rhetorical question-as-a-greeting
>"Uh, good, good, thanks for asking"

>>590020
it's still taught in frequently in textbooks, it's something ESLs have to be untaught if they want to sound natural.

>>588244
Must be the same for french people I guess. I don't see how it could be closer to japanese than english.

>>590331
i'd say everything in category 1 is equally fucked when it comes to japanese.

>>590331
English is objectively one of the weakest euro languages, at least in terms of how many sounds we're expected to need
>Bastard love child of both germanic and romantic languages
>Except every loan or derivative word we just compress to a singular pronunciation ruleset
>Lost like half of our vowels over the course of the past 500 years
>What phonemes we DO still have are basically the lowest-effort ones left, literally and scientifically speaking
We begin at a severe disadvantage in terms of vocal flexibility.

>>590331
For starters, A frenchie's first reaction upon seeing an "i" is not to say "eye", and when they see an "r" they don't curl their tongues.
Basically, phonetics is not a problem and makes both speaking and understanding speech way easier.

>>587314
>rejected from JET
worst part is I know the program accepts literal retards and i'm lower than them

>>590140
I don't really get how this became known as a peculiar thing that Japanese do. It is just being basically polite isn't it? Even English speakers do this to vtubers all the time, they say something barely understandable and everyone in the chat tells them how good their English was. I think most English speakers that weren't scummy would probably do the same thing in real life when confronted with someone clearly trying if they had even the slightest connection to them too.

>>590554
I mean, it's just being patronizing in general, and yeah, you're right, you'd see the same virtually anywhere. I think the main reason it's highlighted for nips specifically is because it's a clear illustration of "MUH HONORABU AND PORITE PEOPORU". Put more simply, fits the stereotype of the hyper-polite nip who is deathly afraid of causing offense

>>590554
It's a meme because of how disconnected from reality it is. It's one thing to be polite, but it's another to be all "holy shit, your fluency is amazing!" after someone says "thank you" or something.

>>590554
japan probably does it more than typical else because they don't expect foreigners to speak their language at all. if an asian goes to america people will more or less expect them to be able to hold a conversation in english until proven otherwise, while the vice versa is true in japan

>>588122
It honestly is. Chinese you just need to learn the kanji. There's much less contextual bullshit and grammar than japanese

>>586129
For me it was
1.Hiragana and katakana ( practiced it by writing words in my native language)
2. Easy nouns first (no abstract nouns, just tangible stuff)
3. "i" Adjectives and onomatopeia
4. Greetings, numbers
5. Verbs
6. Conjugation or gramatical structure (Mizenkei, rentaikei,etc) and auxiliary verbs
7.particles (case, connective,etc) and adverbs

Kanji is like a separate language with its own pronunciation according to radical sounds, simplifications etc so I started practicing it after I had a basic understanding of Japanese, I recommend an app called 手書き漢字ドリル1026, it's all in japanese and it lets you draw the kanji and choose the difficulty for them (number of strokes, order of strokes, etc) and it separates them by grade. Very useful.

>>587314
got any tips for On'Yomi and Kun'yomi readings? For example when reading a Japanese article where they use some single kanji, other times double, etc? Which reading does one deicde one?

>>591401
This is not an absolute rule by any means, but serves as a general guideline:
- If it's a solo Kanji and/or followed by kana, use Kun'yomi.
- If it's a compound, use On'Yomi.
Other than that, learn the vocab and the writing, the readings will come naturally.

>>585201
I do my daily Duolingo reps ever since Ame's stream

>>591401
Don't learn readings by themselves. Just learn vocabulary and you'll remember them as needed.
For instance, if you learn both 水 and 水曜日, it's obvious that みず is the kunyomi and スイ is the onyomi. But learning "スイ" in a void is useless.

>>587314
saved this post, thanks.

>>590331
Languages with Latin roots have similar phonetics to japanese so you have one less thing to worry about. Italian LITERALLY pronounces letters the same way with the exception of things using ch (like ち) that is read as ki in italian.

>>591682
Does Wanikani do it this way?

>>591952
And even then, the sound still exists in Italian.
It's just written with 'cc' instead of 'ch'.

>>592002
It has you learn a reading (can switch between on and kun) and teaches vocab along with it.

>>592002
Kind of. Kanji cards test just the onyomi reading, but vocab cards test both the onyomi and kunyomi based off what the vocab word it is.

>>586129
* immerse with raw Japanese media for 2 hours minimum each day.

In order: tofugu's hiranga and katakana, RRTK, N5 and N4 Tango Decks while doing Tae Kim's Grammar Guide, Sentence mining.

>>592107
*It usually is the onyomi for the kanji card, but I believe sometimes it does give you the kunyomi.

>>592002
Kinda but not really, it does teach vocabulay but it's more like: "here's a list of words that use this Kanji". And it also teaches only on'yomi readings like >90% of the time.
Unless you really need the gamification to stay engaged, I'd recommend the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course over it. You can get the KKLC + graded readers for cheap and you'll learn the vocab as you study kanji along in a more natural way - and you can always use Anki to be your memorization system (there's a KKLC premade deck already, so you just have to suspend the cards and unsuspend as you go). Plus, it and all the graded readers (digital editions) are cheaper than one year of Wanikani.

>>592582
>it does teach vocabulay
The vocabulary are mostly for learning the readings. WK is meant to be used for learning kanji and if you want to learn vocab you will need something else to supplement it.

>>586129
the one that suits you. you were on /jp/ for so long and never saw djt?

>2 years to have some basic literacy
How do people do it? I learnt hiragana+katakana, some grammar, verb terminations and numbers but stopped there because I can't deal with kanji, I find it so obtuse and retarded that it drains my will to learn

>>594822
>I find it so obtuse and retarded
The long answer is that you weren't born in a society that uses ideographic writing and thus it makes no sense for you and you should use a system created to teach Kanji for foreigners that use a systematic approach that explains the logic of it and has mechanisms for you to remember it.
The short answer is that you're the target audience for Remembering the Kanji or it's derivatives (KKLC, WaniKani), so download it, stop being a little bitch and get started on your reps.

>>595220
>get started on your reps
Guess I'll derust on basic kana, because I still mistake some of them (fuck シソンツノ)

>>588122
Yeah, there's got to be something missing in this analysis
>Hebrew less difficult than Arabic
>All of these at the same level of difficulty: Greek, Russian, Turkish, Laotian, Polish....

>>594822
Wanikani is a subscription service but absolutely helped me. I'm no expert but it's the easiest time I've had learning Kanji

>>595220
I mean, this sentiment is not limited to English speakers learning Japanese. The Koreans recognized the potential issues of logoraphic script and replaced it with an alphabet in the 14th century. I'm really surprised the Japanese didn't adopt a similar system considering they already have 3 different character sets.

>>595820
I didn't have much trouble because I really paid attention to stroke order and there wasn't much trouble differenting シ from ツ or ン from ソ.
Here is something that will help:
>>>Learn Hiragana in one hour: https://youtu.be/6p9Il_j0zjc?t=8
>>>Learn Katakana in one hour: https://youtu.be/s6DKRgtVLGA?t=12
Take more than an hour though. Get some pencil and paper, write the kana down in the correct stroke order, practice the pronunciation and write down the vocabulary they give together (not to remember the words themselves, but to practice the writing) in practice the vocabulary
If you'd rather have something written, here are the Tofugu guides:
>>>Hiragana Guide with picture mnemonics: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/
>>>Katakana Guide with picture mnemonics: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-katakana/
Then use the Tofugu/MIA deck anki deck for retaining the information:
>>https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2141155567
Here's the anki deck for the videos above, it quizes you so it's pretty nice (it got DMCA'd from AnkiWeb because the deck uses Risa's pronunciation straight from the video, so it's a catbox link):
>>https://files.catbox.moe/k6oofc.apkg

I'm level 20 in WaniKani and I can generally comprehend most topics that the vtubers I watch talk about (mostly Aqua and Shion.) I don't do any supplementary reading aside from Japanese tweets.

>>587528
if you actually complete the full course, including reading the explanation that goes with each lesson, it's a good start. basically you will learn the essential grammar and the most common words. no, you will not achieve fluency with duolingo alone

>>587528
If you mean to the point of fluency, I highly doubt it. I found it enjoyable for getting my feet wet with japanese and spanish. I learned the kana, some kanji, very basic grammar, and some basic situational stuff with it. The lessons start to drag after a certain point, though.

I need some r34 of the thicc headscarf hoe. She's always looking like she wants it. Bet she's got some good puss too. Need some for the purple bitch as well.

>>597681
Eh...
Hangul was mostly created to be an easy-to- learn phonetic alphabet to remedy the illiteracy of peasants and it failed miserably at it until widespread compulsory education became available after WWII - and by then it was used mixed with Hanja (chinese ideograms) just like
the Japanese used Kanji+Hiragana and Katakana.
Hanja and only really fell in disuse in the 70's when the government decreed that Hanja was to be phased off from elementary school. Still it never fully disappeared: it's still part of the 6th grade curriculum onward, a student who finishes high-school is supposed to learn 1800 Hanja,and occasionally it's still needed to disambiguate homonyms in newspapers and academic texts, as well as being necessary for the study of humanities in university.
Meanwhile, the Japanese also achieved the same extremely high literacy rates while keeping Kanji as part of the writing system with mixed phonetic alphabets (and Japan managed to do it before WWI as a result of Meiji Era educational reforms). The Chinese did the same while having only ideograms as their writing system, and that's for both mainlanders (which use the 1953 Simplified Hanzi) and islanders (which use Traditional Hanzi).
In the end , the writing system wasn't as much of a problem for them compared to the lack of compulsory education.
Also:
>14th century
15th century, anon. From year 0 to 100 was the first century, so 1444 was the 15th century.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGphvPYRHQs
DO YOUR REPS, JUST DO IT

>>605489
ok hubuki

>>587528
the courses on Duo are an extremely good start for core competencies of a language but the actual nitty gritty of learning fluency for stuff like business or travel is more involved than "spell orange in Portuguese"

Keep in mind Duo also has a very involved community post section that you can use to flex your muscles or look for more resources. Duo is among the best resources for learning a few different languages right now - Namely Hawaiian.