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Saturn Learns Japanese
So, blogging about my learning of the language might motivate me to go forward with it more and work hard, when I know people are expecting me to. So here you go.
Here, have a Pastebin. http://pastebin.com/KaWcfU4K That's to DYRE for the fantastic link of resources. I'll be referring to them throughout my experiences.
The main site I will be using is TextFugu. The site has developed quite a lot, and is really considered to be the definitive resource for self-learners of Japanese, developed and consistently updated by a self-learned pro of the language. It is currently at about the Intermediate level, and gets a few lessons everyone 2-3 months. I'm going to be doing the entire Season 1, for free before I decide to by the full $120 lifetime subscription.
So, I start the course, and here is what I get.
Japanese The Hard Way
“The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.” – Winston Churchill
I'm looking forward to it.
Comments
ahahahahaha you poor bastard
good luck
huh. you exist.
My thoughts exactly.
I how you are saying that because it is had, Blackmoon, and not because I have no hope.
Like "You want to go to Mars? hahahaha good luck with that."
I did have forgotten he is more of a lurker. And really, I'll wait till I get a hold of the language courses here st college. Self-taught language lessons are a pain.
I don't have the money to be taught professionally. I also don't want to waste the transfer credits.
I'm currently using Rosetta Stone after leaving college after two semesters of Japanese.
I think Rosetta Stone is probably the best way to learn a language without taking a class or living in the country.
It isn't good, per se. All the alternatives just suck more.
I minored in Japanese, I can confirm it's hard.
So good luck.
You poor bastard.
How do you know that, CU? Have you tried all the alternatives?
I've heard plenty of bad things about Rosetta Stone.
First advice almost anyone who attempts to learn Japanese is given is "don't bother learning Japanese".
I have never seen a language community so thoroughly resistant to new members. I'm not sure if that's just because it's particularly hard (and it is), or what the deal is there.
I've tried lots of them. And frankly, the only really good way to learn a language is by talking to people.
Rosetta...has its issues, as I said, but I found that its approach had more merit than anything else I tried.
Super Lazuli, the problem with that advice is that I don't care about going to Japan.
This is why I can speak only about a dozen words of Dutch despite having technically learned it the same time I was learning English (I was very young and after a specific relative moved away, I had no native speakers to talk to, and no one was interested in teaching me), and being completely blank on Ukranian and German, despite having taken language classes of both at different points in my life.
I don't know why that advice is given. So I cannot tell you how right this conclusion is.
^^Um.
Lazuli didn't say anything about going to Japan.
That's the way I read it. My bad.
The point is, CU, people don't seem to like Rosetta.
http://language101.com/reviews/rosetta-stone-japanese-review/
http://www.tofugu.com/2009/12/01/alternatives-to-rosetta-stone-japanese-i-e-should-i-buy-rosetta-stone/
Worth note is that one of those articles says it is better for people who already know some Japanese. And you DID take two years.
Ah. Well, that's what I'm doing after taking a year of actual courses, so maybe that's why I like it.
It isn't a comprehensive course; it's very much just a getting-by-with-speech-and-vocabulary course, with a bit of reading.
But that still puts it head and shoulders above everything else I've looked at other than taking an actual class.
Ninja'd.
One year >.>
I think that's mostly just because most people who try end up quitting anyway once they realize they have to memorize 2000+ kanji to be able to read anything.
I have faint memories of attempting in in the 8th grade, then quitting after a day. I didn't care back then. I have strong motivation now.
Grammatically, Japanese is maybe as difficult as German. Not bad at all for an English speaker; much better than, say, Chinese.
The writing system WILL throw you if you're new, though. Pro-tip: Learn all the radicals before you learn anything else, and then start learning kanji in order of frequency of use. That will first make it as painless as possible, and second make all your knowledge as practical as possible. Learning kanji is not actually that horrible (because although there are 2000+ characters they're made from combinations of the same ~200 radicals) but it does take a lot of getting used to for an English speaker.
Well, I am fluent in German, having taken it since 8th grade, and going on three separate 3 week long trips. Maybe that'll help me then.
It has some vague grammatical similarities to German inasmuch as syntax and word order is concerned.
But BlackHumor gives good advice: first learn hiragana, then katakana, then kanji radicals, then the most frequent kanji. I was taught kanji in no particular order, and it's sort of jarring.
silly Blackmoon what are you doing in ijbm
get off the tree you are not an ijbmer
Japanese is nowhere near as hard as most people make it out to be. It's just kind of frightening in the beginning because of all the kanji (and I guess hiragana and katakana, though one can actually learn that pretty quickly). However the grammar is really simple, though it is obviously very different from Germanic languages which might give you problems in the beginning, but once you get used to it, it's actually pretty easy. Still, it takes a lot of effort and time, especially learning kanji. It's been about 5 months since I returned home from Japan and already I've forgotten how to write a lot of the kanji that I learned, if I have to write something by hand without a dictionary, though I can still read them and therefore also write them on a computer.
Maybe I should put it differently, it is easy to become proficient in Japanese in the sense that you can communicate with Japanese people about almost anything. It is however hard to master in the sense that you can just read any random Japanese book.
I guess it'll be a little harder for me then. My goal for this is to be able to have access to more Japanese media, mostly video games. Still, I'm looking forward to it.
In that case, my second bit of advice:
jisho.org is your FRIEND. USE IT.
Once you get far in enough to understand the grammar, the thing with video games/manga/stuff like that is that they will use tons of words that you've never heard of because the vocab that you've been learning is pretty practical household sorts of things and the vocab that they're using is stuff like "iron sword" and "gunpowder" that you've never needed to use before.
Getting some kind of electronic dictionary might also be useful. I certainly was happy to have one while I was living in Japan and when you're reading a book or something like that it is really useful to have a dictionary in which you can just write the kanji you don't know how to pronounce, rather than looking them up by radicals.
Playing games is generally easier than reading books though, I am currently playing through the Japanese version of Disgaea 4(which I haven't played before) and while I don't understand absolutely everything, I'm not really having any problem understanding the story or getting most of the jokes. But those Legend of Galactic Heroes novels that I have standing around still seem pretty daunting. On the other hand I can read the manga of Monster surprisingly well, I guess that even seinen manga is just easier to read than actual novels (for adults, obviously novels for children are fairly easy).
ラーカーのスレ
頑張って！
Putting that into Jisho isn't giving me anything. I could look it up piece by piece I guess.
おかま団！