help me learn japanese

I'm not sure what you mean by situational language but Genki is pretty focused on grammar and sentence construction. The exercises are split about half for solo, half for groups, maybe more favored towards solo - sounds like it might be what you're looking for (nb: I only have Genki 2, but I assume Genki 1 is similar). It's a lot better at explaining concepts than the book I used in college, Yookoso. I still use the Android app Obenkyo for vocab practice, but I'm sure there are better ones out there. I haven't looked much.

situational as in "how to order at a restaurant" or "japanese weather reports"

iirc we used both youkoso and genki at different points in my "formal" japanese education but i don't think i remember enough to compare them. i do remember liking genki. also lol at me saying at the beginning of this thread that i've been meaning to start studying again—still haven't gotten around to it, don't really know how to go about starting. i've had a copy of rosetta stone sitting on my computer for a while now though

I'm getting ready for the final next week in JPN 401 at UHawaii @ Manoa. We've been using 上級へのとびら (Tobira) as our textbook for 1 1/2 years. Class has been brutal, but I've progressed in the language. Also kind of burned out by now. It feels like we hit a plateau where acquiring vocab is like an endless battle. The reading focus has taken precedence over situational stuff, but I suppose you should get that through watching TV/movies and listening to music. Vocabulary is supposed to be acquired well through "extensive reading", but you have to get through a lot of kanji to even start into native materials. I must be a masochist, because it's mostly been enjoyable, though having a great sensei helps.

just submitted my placement test for the upcoming semester at depaul — i'm expecting to start at JPN 105 instead 201, since the courses at my community college were probably a lot easier than depaul's. i don't mind a bit of backtracking, and it'll be good to have some structured learning again.

err, quarter not semester

XP I'm looking back at the grammar in my last post, I think I'm turning Japanese.

Anyway, what an insanely hard language to learn it is.

so classes have been going for a coupla weeks — this is my first class taught IN japanese and it's a challenge, but i feel like i've improved in the language already. after classes a few of the students and the t.a. chat in japanese for about an hour. she's a bit younger than sensei and so a bit easier to talk to, and actually knew who YMO were when i said i liked them... afterwards she asked if liked perfume because she thought they were similar. :D

:) I think you could draw a line between the two very easily, as you probably could with most JP pop acts.

the other day during my conversation practice i was having trouble explaining how people from where i'm from (georgia) can sometimes be very polite and friendly to your face, but insult you when you're not around/if you're perceived as an outsider — which made me realize that i have no idea how to talk about things that i don't like (apart from simple things like food and movies, and only then as the opposite of "like")! which made me wonder: does learning to talk about troublesome or unfortunate situations comes later than talking about positive things in language learning?

also finding it extremely jarring to go back to english after these chat sessions, like i've suddenly recovered an amazing power of description i'd forgotten i'd had. weird.

anyone have any experience with using ANKI for kanji/vocab learning? is there any way to "yoke" it to, say, jisho.org to streamline adding new cards? share tips with me!

There are amazing free apps for Android called Japanese Katakana and Japanese Hiragana that show you the symbol and the stroke order and you can practice as much as you like and just flip through the alphabet. It's pretty good for keeping in practice! I bet they have a Kanji one too.

i don't have a smart phone, but i'm thinking of getting one just so i can use apps like that. also carrying around my giant furigana dictionary everywhere is kind of impractical.

So I just started learning Japanese.

I'm doing the Pimsleur audio MP3s right now. It's going pretty good but slow. I'm doing 2 to 3 lessons/audio files a week because I don't advance until I got it all down. But I just started! I'm on lesson 4, going in to lesson 5.

I also acquired the Rosetta Stone for Japanese (1, 2, and 3). But I'm told not to start on that yet til I'm more advanced.

SO, my question is:

What are good resources to learn to write/read? Am I looking to write/read kanji, hiragana, katakana, or something else or what?

I signed up for WaniKani for now.

it depends on what your goals are. are you aiming just to visit for a few weeks days and want to be able to get around? are you trying for complete fluency?

for reading, start with getting down hiragana perfectly, then katakana before even thinking about kanji. write the characters over and over, reading the pronunciation out loud to yourself until it becomes mind-numbingly boring, and then do that again the next day, and again, &c. you'll never forget them.

for kanji, most kanji learners dictionaries will do. kodansha is a good publisher and i'd recommend picking up anything you find from them.

find a textbook. my university classes use nakama, but that book is really set up with the assumption you are taking a class with a teacher. a lot of people like genki and youkoso for self-study, but i haven't tried those myself.

pimsleur is okay for learning set phrases, but eventually you'll want to be able to express yourself in situations where those phrases don't quite fit, and so learning grammar and sentence construction is important. but pimsleur at least gives you a taste of the rhythm and pronunciation of japanese.

really the best thing you can do is: find a native speaker and talk to them. obviously you won't be able to do this until you've been working at the basics for a bit.

i can't speak on the rosetta stones, but to make a maybe specious anecdotal observation, i've never met a single person who was fluent in another language solely through RS. take that as you will.

n.b. i myself am not fluent, but i'm into my 2nd year of study and finally having tons of breakthroughs, and am now looking into study abroad options for next year. it's tough going, but worth it!

oh, and FLASH CARDS. USE THEM.

it depends on what your goals are. are you aiming just to visit for a few weeks days and want to be able to get around? are you trying for complete fluency?

I'm hoping to be near fluency. I speak other languages, so I understand one can never be completely fluent. None of them are Asian languages, though.

for reading, start with getting down hiragana perfectly, then katakana before even thinking about kanji. write the characters over and over, reading the pronunciation out loud to yourself until it becomes mind-numbingly boring, and then do that again the next day, and again, &c. you'll never forget them.

Cool. I'll look up resources to learn to read and write hiragana first. Do you recommend writing it out on a piece of paper as opposed to on a smartphone? I would think the former is better.

find a textbook. my university classes use nakama, but that book is really set up with the assumption you are taking a class with a teacher. a lot of people like genki and youkoso for self-study, but i haven't tried those myself.

I was debating on whether or not I should buy Genki 1. The problem is they don't teach you Kanji. There is a romaji/English version but I've heard it's not good for you, which makes sense.

really the best thing you can do is: find a native speaker and talk to them. obviously you won't be able to do this until you've been working at the basics for a bit.

Yes. The very first thing I did (many, many months ago) was go on a tandem language learning site. I met a bunch of Japanese people. BUT...it didn't work out with any of them. Mainly because, like you said, I needed the basics, which I didn't have.

I know one resource isn't going to cut it, and I'm perfectly happy with that. That's why I'm trying to get my hands on as many resources as possible. And choose a few and stick with them.

Actually, my girlfriend was born and raised in Japan. I've been seeing her for over a year and she always talks to me in English. She is incredibly patient but I know she secretly wishes I would learn a little bit of Japanese. She has taught me a few words but nothing consistently, so I always end up forgetting everything.

I'm finally going to stick with it and really learn the basics and start to have conversations with her in Japanese. I already told her and she loved the idea.

I'm hoping I can take a break from everything and go teach for a couple of years in Japan with my girl.

Anyway, thank you for all your feedback, @clouds!

Kana drills is the best App for keeping it in your head, it's a multiple choice setup but if you cover up the options with yer thumb it works better. However writing Kana is a different deal and it won't help you do that.

I'm on holiday in Japan as I type and even though I've only got six months of decent study under my belt, I'm enjoying the challenge.

@Maresnest, ah, lucky you! My girl is over there right now and comes back tomorrow. I can't wait to go to Japan.

I guess Kana Drill is only for the iPhone, because I don't see it on my Galaxy S4.

i would say pencil + paper is best because you get a feel for the formation of characters more than you would touching a screen (imo).

it might seem obvious, but one cool side effect of repeated handwriting in japanese is that eventually you'll develop personal shortcuts for writing the individual characters and form your own handwritten style.

to memorize kanji i was using p.g. o'neill's "essential kanji" which has nice models for the 2000+ kanji that one sees in newspapers and public writings. it is a bit dated though, and some of the sample usages he gives for kanji are strange.

i would also say that simply trying to memorize the individual kanjis can be beneficial, but the best thing to get them in your head and to understand their meaning is to use them, again and again. it's difficult to do this studying alone, i think, because you aren't being forced to write compositions or do any homework, so the challenge is to find ways to force yourself to write/type and get used to using them repeatedly.

i forgot to mention -- i really only use o'neill's book to check readings of previously-learned kanji that i've forgotten, but all new kanji i learn are in the context of my class, in the order the textbook shows them. it's a lot slower going than the rote method, but i almost never forget any of the readings.

@clouds, great info. thanks!

Also, get the correct pronunciation licked from the beginning, it's actually really straightforward and quite consistent, unlike some other aspects of learning Japanese.

Sitting at Kyoto Eki waiting for the train back to Tokyo, this is our last stretch, treating ourselves to three nights at the Park Hyatt, can't wait to see that view.

jealous!

i'm trying to decide between summer programs at hakodate (hokkaidou) and fukuoka (kyuushuu). going to either one would be a dream come true but i've had a crush on hakodate for a long time, but fukuoka looks amazing.

We did six straight days in Takayama, Gifu this time, with a couple of local side trips (Shirakawa Go, Furukawa). I think it's one of my favourite places on earth.

Sitting at Kyoto Eki waiting for the train back to Tokyo

This is my favorite building in the world

it might seem obvious, but one cool side effect of repeated handwriting in japanese is that eventually you'll develop personal shortcuts for writing the individual characters and form your own handwritten style

i dont recommend getting into the habit of doing this as stroke order is v imp if you want to be able to write intelligably, esp when u

...esp if u plan to take exams at some point. fucking tablet! anyway, i think its one of the first steps to falling in love w japanese, being able to see the strokes flow through the character, poised and purposeful

oh, i didn't mean to imply that i ignore stroke order (though sometimes it is hard to remember for some more complex kanji).

So, I've been in rote mode and been learning five hiragana characters a day. So far I've learnt 30 and I have them down pretty good; stroke order and all. The stroke so far comes naturally, because it's basically up, down, left, right.

I'm still on Pimsleur, but I will be ordering Genki 1 after I finish learning hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Though I guess there are thousands of kanji...so I'll reassess when I get to kanji.

I'm still doing Pimsleur, if only to have the decency to at least be able to say some words in Japanese to my girl and let her brain rest a little from English.

I find it is good for vocab right now, as well.

I'm starting to write characters on my phone but using a keyboard that turns romaji to kanji or whatever, and she's getting a good laugh. It's going so slow and I wish I could go faster, but apparently I'm doing a good job.

Oh, I got hiragana and katakana flash cards, as well.

Kana flash cards with words as well as characters on?

Those are good for the first steps in reading especially given the occasionally chaotic (imho) rendering of Kana-Eigo.

I'm not long back from my trip, tried to read as much Kana as I could, I found some of the fonts kinda troublesome especially the ones that mimic brush strokes.

Well, it's only hiragana and katakana (not kanji). And yes, one side has just characters, and the back has romanisation and English translations of words that use them.

Actually, the flash cards use brush stroke fonts, so, yes, the bottom curve in /sa/ for example disappears a bit then reappears toward the end of the curve. It was confusing at first, but I think I got the hang of it.

These are it: http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Hiragana-Katakana-Flash-Cards/dp/4805311673

I must dig through my cards and find the Katakana for 'Brazil' that was on one.

ブラジル

I'm 38 characters in hiragana.

I guess after I learn those, I should continue with the hiragana with diacritical marks and combos? Or should I learn these later?

There are soooo many. But I'm determined!

my sensei told me that japanese ppl learn the characters w/ diacritics and combos as separate characters, but it's not difficult to remember that き sounds like "ki" and ぎ sounds like "gi", and so on.

^That's what I'm thinking, as well

They are easier to learn but worth learning early. Assuming you're only reading words in hiragana right now, it helps keep your reading speed up not to have to think about it. Also there's some tricky ones like じ.

Ya, I think I'm going to continue with diacritics and combos soon. Then move onto katakana. Feeling pretty good about hiragana. Does it really get easier and easier the more characters you know?

Right now the only thing that troubles me is the fact that I'm learning pretty formal Japanese. So when I talk to my girl she laughs and answers in a way I have never heard before, so she teaches me how to talk informally. She insists I could use boku, for example, but is this really recommended? I'm 31 and I thought boku was for teenagers or used in anime/manga more. I'm still not sure which one to use with my girl. I heard things like anata could be used formally or with a significant other, but I sometimes read contradicting information, as I'm just going through forums.

Thoughts?

I think you're generally taught the formal version in case you need it - in Japan it'd be a hideous faux pas to be all "hey bro, like cool daddio" to your superiors. Once you've got a handle on that the more casual forms make a bit more sense.

I understand. I guess the logic behind not teaching both at the same time is it's just too much to retain? I've not been able to find a good resource for different degrees for formality.

Like, in Spanish, you have formal and informal third person, but they are taught at the same time. I think maybe the concept behind formality in Japanese is different, not just a matter of verb conjugation.

i think the level of formality that's taught to japanese beginners is m/l how you would speak to (most) strangers. talking to your boss would probably be a step up in formality
i assume you've encountered this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorific_speech_in_Japanese

^I had not read about it, but I had heard about it casually in general terms, but never this specific.

Thank you

my four-year old daughter just got into a Japanese immersion school. super-stoked

Half way through katakana (finished hiragana), and now my question is:

What is the best method to learn kanji to a level where can I have normal, everyday conversations?

My goal is to be able to converse with natives on deeper subjects, such as literature and, if this is even feasible, philosophy, as well as current events.

I know, it's going to take a lot of effort, but I'm willing to do it!

I just want to hear people's experience

where I can* (maybe I should learn English first)