Weaboo Me

[Alexcalibur]

So I want to start learning some Japanese, where do I start? I am currently a Junior in HS and want to move out to Japan after college rolls around. I want to be able to speak and write pretty fluently by then. So what do I do to get started? I haven't done much research myself on it, so I am pretty lost on what is normal for the language. Thanks in advance

[AlTech]

On ‎6‎/‎7‎/‎2016 at 0:09 PM, IskanderEXC said:

So I want to start learning some Japanese, where do I start? I am currently a Junior in HS and want to move out to Japan after college rolls around. I want to be able to speak and write pretty fluently by then. So what do I do to get started? I haven't done much research myself on it, so I am pretty lost on what is normal for the language. Thanks in advance

If I was allowed to make a LMGTFY link I would because this is so face palm worthy.

 

 

 

type into YouTube: Learn Japanese beginner

 

OR Duo Lingo where you find Japanese and you learn it. 

[Guest]

Weeaboo* 

[Alexcalibur]

3 hours ago, Noire said:

Weeaboo* 

You would know wouldn't you lol

[PCgamer324]

11 hours ago, IskanderEXC said:

You would know wouldn't you lol

why the fuck would you want to move to pollution and radiation island and furthermore why would you want to become a self-proclaimed Weeaboo...

 

 

you need to rethink life sir

[Suika]

Isn't there a program for learning another language? What was it called, Rosetta Stone or something?

[LAwLz]

Here are a few posts about how I learned (and recommend other learn) Japanese:

On 12/26/2014 at 8:03 PM, LAwLz said:

Japanese requires at least 1 more step than most other languages because of their unique "alphabets" so I think it's best to get that out of the way before even beginning with grammar and vocabulary.

There are 3 alphabets you will have to learn. Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji.

 

Hiragana is used to conjugations, regular Japanese words and grammatical components (like linking subjects with verbs and so on).

 

Katakana is used for loan words such as "konpyuuta" (computer).

 

Kanji is the dreaded "each character is an entire word". If Hiragana is the cement keeping the wall together, then Kanji are the bricks. Usually a sentence will consist of kanji for the noun, verb and adjective, and then hiragana to tell how they all relate to each other. Kanji is really really hard to learn though, and there are so many of them so you shouldn't put that much focus on it to begin with. You'll just end up feeling like it's impossible. Don't worry though, you only need to learn a handful to start making sense out of simple texts.

 

 

Hiragana/Katakana are 46 characters each. All Hiragana characters has a katakana counterpart. For example あ(Hiragana) and ア(katakana) are both pronounced the same (pronounced as A). The same goes for い (Hiragana) and イ (Katakana) (pronounced as I). By the way, once you know Hiragana and Katakana you can read all Japanese texts out loud assuming it has furigana (reading aid that tells you how to pronounce kanji characters).

For pronunciation see this video.

The great thing about the Japanese "alphabet" is that it's actually a "Syllabary", which means that each character has a specific way of being pronounced. You never have to guess "oh how is that character supposed to be pronounced in this scenario? Is that O pronounced like in soup or as in door?".

So once you have learned one of them, it is slightly easier to learn the second one since there are no new sounds you have to learn.

Hiragana is easier to learn than Katakana so I recommend you start with that. It's also far more common so you will have far more use knowing it.

 

 

Like I said before, I highly recommend memrise. My friend (who has a job, and plays lots of games and do other stuff on his spare time) started learning Japanese on that site the 21th October and he fully learned hiragana and katakana like 2 weeks ago. So yeah... It took him about 2 months to learn hiragana and katakana. In my Japanese course we had 1 month to learn it. If you do it a lot, you can probably learn it in even less time than that. My point is, it might look really hard at first but it's actually surprisingly easy to learn if you have the motivation and the right tools.

Here are links to good Hiragana and Katakana courses on memrise. On top of giving you good ways to remember the characters, memrise also kind of forces you to study because it will remind you which characters needs to be "watered". The more tardy you are, the more watering you will have to do.

 

Edit:

I should probably add that learning how to write by hand is (in my opinion) a waste of time. The only benefit I see is that learning how to write the characters will help you differentiate between similar looking ones like for example あ and お. You will be able to tell the difference if you just practice reading though, and that's far less tedious and more fun than writing the same character 100 times, so therefore I recommend against it.

On 12/26/2014 at 9:09 PM, LAwLz said:

When you have learned hiragana and katakana all that is left to do is to learn grammar rules, build up your vocabulary, learn kanji and practice practice practice and practice.
Personally I'd ignore kanji until you got a decent vocabulary (a 200-300 words or so).
 
You should practice grammar and vocabulary at the same time.
For grammar I recommend a book called "Genki: An integrated course in elementary Japanese" (usually just called "genki"). I've heard "Tae Kim's Guide to learning Japanese" and "Japanese the Manga way" are popular too but I have not used them personally.
 
 
For vocabulary nothing even comes close to being as good as Anki. Not sure where you're from but if you've ever learned a second language in school you will probably remember those dreadful nights, sitting at your desk writing foreign words on a piece of paper over and over again in order to try to remember them. Remember how your teacher said that it was the only way to learn the words? Well slap her across the face and show her Anki. Anki works the same way as Memrise (spaced repetition) but instead of being confined to courses made by other people you can create your own. Good video explaining Anki, how it works and why it's so fantastic:

 
The Genki book also has a list of vocabulary in each chapter (you can find all the words and which chapter they belong to here). I recommend learning them in this order (by making Anki decks and practicing), but you can skip a few words because they are fairly useless. For example in lesson 1 of Genki you will learn really useful words such as "Number", "language", "right now" etc... As well as useless words such as "anthropology", "office worker", "lawyer" and "international relations". It's pretty easy to tell which words you should focus on and which words are less important.
 
 
Oh and remember this:
It's better to practice 10 minutes a day, every day, than it is to study 45 minutes twice a week.
In the beginning you forget things really really quickly, so you constantly have to refresh your memory in order to make sure it is stored in your long time memory. Waiting a few days will be enough to essentially erase all the progress you made on remembering something. Every day you skip practicing, you destroy some of the fresh knowledge you acquired the days before.
It's also great to expose yourself to as much Japanese content as possible. Do you have some manga you like to read? Download the untranslated version and try reading it. Watch anime? Try putting less focus on the subtitles and more focus on what they are actually saying. Try reading out loud for yourself. If you know someone else who studies Japanese then try having conversations in Japanese with that person.

 
About Kanji:
There are three ways of learning kanji.
 
Most kanji are made up of smaller components. For example 好 (love) is made up of 女 (woman) and 子 (child). Sites like KanjiDamage teaches kanji by teaching you simple kanji first, and then teach you more complex kanji only after you have already learned all the individual parts.
Benefit: It's a lot easier to learn 女 (woman), then 又 (again), then 心 (heart) and then finally putting them all together and learn 怒 (to get mad), instead of trying to tackle 怒 to begin with.
Drawback: Some of the most useful kanji are fairly complex, and with this technique you will spend a bunch of time learning useless stuff like 灯 (used in the word for "streetlight") long before you learn 飲 (which means "drink/drinking/to drink").
 
The other way of learning is to just learn the most common ones first. This is the way you will learn kanji if you follow the Genki book. In that they introduce kanji in chapter 6. The benefits and drawbacks are the exact opposites of the method used on KanjiDamage. You will learn useful stuff sooner, but there is a steeper learning curve. Learning how to read 姦 (used in the word for "rape") a full 638 characters sooner than 曜 (used in "-day", like "Monday" and "Tuesday") might be easier, but it's not as useful.
 
The last way of learning is to do a bit of mixing. Start learning the simple kanji but throw in some of the most essential ones as well.
 
 
There are pre-made Anki decks for all 3 methods and I recommend you experiment a bit to find out which one you like the most. In all three cases I strongly recommend you use Anki though. It's simply the best way to learn with the least amount of effort.

[Alexcalibur]

14 hours ago, PCgamer324 said:

why the fuck would you want to move to pollution and radiation island and furthermore why would you want to become a self-proclaimed Weeaboo...

 

 

you need to rethink life sir

bc I already have connections over there lol

[LAwLz]

Also, for speaking you simply have to get in contact with someone who can speak Japanese. It's not something you can practice alone.

 

がんばって！

[Misanthrope]

Not to piss off many here, but don't : a few pieces of media isn't worth the effort of an otherwise deeply racist culture that rarely accept outsiders . 

 

Only Otakus would be welcoming as as you can see they also speak English. 

[LAwLz]

15 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Not to piss off many here, but don't : a few pieces of media isn't worth the effort of an otherwise deeply racist culture that rarely accept outsiders . 

 

Only Otakus would be welcoming as as you can see they also speak English. 

Well he said he was planning to move to Japan. Even if that doesn't work out, learning a language is quite the experience.

 

Also, there is a ton of great untranslated Japanese porn he would never be able to understand.