trying to learn Japanese

2014-02-08 07:11:54 am

MP2 also a bit MP1 speedrunning

Hi, im currently trying to learn Japanese and so i thought it'd be a good idea to make a thread about it here, so i might find some people to help me out a bit.

i already got some knowlege, but not that much, so its fairly difficult for me to move on with it.

i've got a few little questions on how start learning it, how much you worked on it and what you actually started doing, or if you think that the order you learn it doesnt matter.

also i can just barely imagine how you could read something by just using Kanji alone.
so are most sentences are just wrote by kanji?
I could just hardly imagine to read something by just using Kanji, since they only stand for words and so they dont really do involve grammar.
that sounds pretty confusing to me. like even after learning all Kanji's the Katanaka and the Hirugana. i wouldnt know how to continue my learning process at that point. so understanding something would probably help, like being able to build small sentences would be cool.
so yeah, just like knowing the way to start learning it, and finding the best order to do it would be cool. i could imagine learning the Kanji's would be easier if i had an idea about other stuff too. And also i wonder how i could learn grammar the best way.

Thread title:

Hi, im currently trying to learn Japanese and so i thought it'd be a good idea to make a thread about it here, so i might find some people to help me out a bit.

i already got some knowlege, but not that much, so its fairly difficult for me to move on with it.

i've got a few little questions on how start learning it, how much you worked on it and what you actually started doing, or if you think that the order you learn it doesnt matter.

also i can just barely imagine how you could read something by just using Kanji alone.
so are most sentences are just wrote by kanji?
I could just hardly imagine to read something by just using Kanji, since they only stand for words and so they dont really do involve grammar.
that sounds pretty confusing to me. like even after learning all Kanji's the Katanaka and the Hirugana. i wouldnt know how to continue my learning process at that point. so understanding something would probably help, like being able to build small sentences would be cool.
so yeah, just like knowing the way to start learning it, and finding the best order to do it would be cool. i could imagine learning the Kanji's would be easier if i had an idea about other stuff too. And also i wonder how i could learn grammar the best way.

BioSpark

2014-02-08 12:49:36 pm

a few resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system - for answering your question about kanji.
http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/ - really great popup dictionary for firefox.
http://jisho.org/ - great japanese dictionary, also has a useful "kanji by radical" section
http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Vol-Complete-Characters/dp/0824831659 - useful way to memorize kanji shapes and later associate further meanings/words with them.

i took a year at my university and spent a year studying in japan, so i have a decent foundation. my biggest weakness right now is kanji, but it takes a lot of dedicated studying to make any progress.

arkarian

2014-02-08 12:52:21 pm

red chamber dream

if you want to be an elevator, learn onegai shimashita

BioSpark

2014-02-08 12:56:18 pm

i think you mean shimasu, and i'm not sure why you'd want to be an elevator

arkarian

Edit history:

arkarian: 2014-02-08 01:09:10 pm

arkarian: 2014-02-08 01:07:15 pm

2014-02-08 01:06:17 pm

red chamber dream

heh it's from the talking elevators in my hotel, this super cute female voice would always say it when the doors closed (you heard it several times but probably don't remember). it was definitely shimashita, i heard it a million times - remember looking it up later and it being a super polite form or something

arkarian

Edit history:

arkarian: 2014-02-08 01:06:59 pm

2014-02-08 01:06:43 pm

red chamber dream

iirc in that context it meant something like "i'm pleased to serve you"

ryu

Edit history:

ryu: 2014-02-08 04:45:41 pm

ryu: 2014-02-08 04:44:38 pm

2014-02-08 04:43:23 pm

you might want to start with a japanese language course. starting off with self-study may just leave you too confused to figure our where to start and what to do.

i'm using the minna no nihongo textbooks for self study (always made up of a book in english and one in japanese with tasks and texts). with those you get a bunch of vocabs and some grammar per lesson. the beginner level textbooks encompass about 50 lessons which will teach you a very good portion of basic japanese grammer (you can easily finish 1 lesson a week). for kanji there are books from the minna no nihongo series as well, but i'm using this web resource instead. i recommend heavily learning 5 kanji a week instead of 5 a day though. i did that at first but ended up forgetting a lot of readings and meanings.

just be prepared to always be taking 1 step back and maybe 1 and a half forward. getting all of this into your head is gonna take a long time unless you can dedicate more than 1-2hours a day to studying japanese.

you might want to start with a japanese language course. starting off with self-study may just leave you too confused to figure our where to start and what to do.

i'm using the minna no nihongo textbooks for self study (always made up of a book in english and one in japanese with tasks and texts). with those you get a bunch of vocabs and some grammar per lesson. the beginner level textbooks encompass about 50 lessons which will teach you a very good portion of basic japanese grammer (you can easily finish 1 lesson a week). for kanji there are books from the minna no nihongo series as well, but i'm using [url=http://www.nihongoresources.com/index.html?section=language&page=learning%20kanji&action=dailyjouyou&day=1]this web resource[/url] instead. i recommend heavily learning 5 kanji a week instead of 5 a day though. i did that at first but ended up forgetting a lot of readings and meanings.

just be prepared to always be taking 1 step back and maybe 1 and a half forward. getting all of this into your head is gonna take a long time unless you can dedicate more than 1-2hours a day to studying japanese.

MrSpEeDrUn

Edit history:

MrSpEeDrUn: 2014-02-11 01:26:26 pm

2014-02-11 12:52:05 pm

MP2 also a bit MP1 speedrunning

i think im pretty good at learning kanji, i got like 30 in two days and remembered them pretty well. learning hiragana took me an entire two days, though and i really still am not consistent at it at all, i think its really difficult. Considering i have to learn like 2000 kanji, getting 5 a week would take way too long, though. i'm actually putting like 6 hours a day into it, cause of free time in school. I'm also learning it at home when i watch streams in meantime.
i found this to learn hiragana and katakana: http://unckel.de/kanateacher/index-en.html?field=
and i thought its really awesome for it. Firstly, though i want to learn speaking/reading it, so writing is really not necessary for me, i think im fine with learning kanji, just grammar is the part im having trouble with, idk how to learn that at all.
I'm currently learning hiragana and katakana afterwards, till im fine with it. Afterwards i want to learn grammar somehow and learn kanji in meantime. I'm using this list to learn kanji http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_j%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji
I personally prefer to learn tons of kanji's at once and repeat them like 10 times just by looking at them and trying to get something into my head to remember it, it worked really well for hiragana. i like hide the german meaning and look at the romaji, the symbol and try to find out the meaning. Afterwards i hid the romaji and at the end the symbol, i think thats the best way to learn it. and i did that with 40 at once, afterwards i knew 10 of them after like 3 hours of practicing them or so. next day i learned the same for like another hour and got like 30 out of it. Learning lots of them at once works really good i think instead of learning like 3 a day its better to learn like 40 in two days. (practice 40 in day 1 and continue practicing them the next day)
I did that for english vocabluary and it worked very well. (though english is a lot easier cause, well no symbols, but still its not that much of a difference) I have no idea about how to learn grammar in japanese though, cause i learned most of english grammar in school, even though grammar in german is probably the hardest in the world, therefore i should have knowlege with learning that, but i really dont know how to learn japanese grammar anyways. So a good online page or something would be awesome. I think im really good at not having an accent, so i dont really need to practice that much.

Edit: okay i'll learn the lessons now, never really have been good at grammar :/
also i think it'd be easier to have that page in german tbh. but oh, well you can't have it all i guess.
thanks a lot that webside is cool. :D

i think im pretty good at learning kanji, i got like 30 in two days and remembered them pretty well. learning hiragana took me an entire two days, though and i really still am not consistent at it at all, i think its really difficult. Considering i have to learn like 2000 kanji, getting 5 a week would take way too long, though. i'm actually putting like 6 hours a day into it, cause of free time in school. I'm also learning it at home when i watch streams in meantime.
i found this to learn hiragana and katakana: http://unckel.de/kanateacher/index-en.html?field=
and i thought its really awesome for it. Firstly, though i want to learn speaking/reading it, so writing is really not necessary for me, i think im fine with learning kanji, just grammar is the part im having trouble with, idk how to learn that at all.
I'm currently learning hiragana and katakana afterwards, till im fine with it. Afterwards i want to learn grammar somehow and learn kanji in meantime. I'm using this list to learn kanji http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_j%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji
I personally prefer to learn tons of kanji's at once and repeat them like 10 times just by looking at them and trying to get something into my head to remember it, it worked really well for hiragana. i like hide the german meaning and look at the romaji, the symbol and try to find out the meaning. Afterwards i hid the romaji and at the end the symbol, i think thats the best way to learn it. and i did that with 40 at once, afterwards i knew 10 of them after like 3 hours of practicing them or so. next day i learned the same for like another hour and got like 30 out of it. Learning lots of them at once works really good i think instead of learning like 3 a day its better to learn like 40 in two days. (practice 40 in day 1 and continue practicing them the next day)
I did that for english vocabluary and it worked very well. (though english is a lot easier cause, well no symbols, but still its not that much of a difference) I have no idea about how to learn grammar in japanese though, cause i learned  most of english grammar in school, even though grammar in german is probably the hardest in the world, therefore i should have knowlege with learning that, but i really dont know how to learn japanese grammar anyways. So a good online page or something would be awesome. I think im really good at not having an accent, so i dont really need to practice that much.

Edit: okay i'll learn the lessons now, never really have been good at grammar :/
also i think it'd be easier to have that page in german tbh. but oh, well you can't have it all i guess.
thanks a lot that webside is cool. :D

ryu

Edit history:

ryu: 2014-02-11 01:27:02 pm

2014-02-11 01:26:14 pm

i don't think there's much point in starting with kanji. you might end up forgetting them before you're ever going to need them. if you can manage 6 hours a day, that's fine. i got major headaches when i tried that though.

i wouldn't recommend that wikipedia list for starting with kanji since it completely lacks all information on stroke order/direction.

for grammar my recommendation is the minna no hihongo textbook series (the non-japanese books are available in german as well). if you want to work purely with grammar you should take a look at these
http://www.amazon.de/A-Dictionary-Basic-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789004546/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392143126&sr=8-1&keywords=dictionary+of+japanese+grammar
http://www.amazon.de/Dictionary-Intermediate-Japanese-Grammar-Seiichi/dp/4789007758/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1392143126&sr=8-3&keywords=dictionary+of+japanese+grammar
http://www.amazon.de/Dictionary-Advanced-Japanese-Grammar-Seiichi/dp/4789012956/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1392143126&sr=8-2&keywords=dictionary+of+japanese+grammar

i don't think there's much point in starting with kanji. you might end up forgetting them before you're ever going to need them. if you can manage 6 hours a day, that's fine. i got major headaches when i tried that though.

i wouldn't recommend that wikipedia list for starting with kanji since it completely lacks all information on stroke order/direction.

for grammar my recommendation is the minna no hihongo textbook series (the non-japanese books are available in german as well). if you want to work purely with grammar you should take a look at these
http://www.amazon.de/A-Dictionary-Basic-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789004546/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392143126&sr=8-1&keywords=dictionary+of+japanese+grammar
http://www.amazon.de/Dictionary-Intermediate-Japanese-Grammar-Seiichi/dp/4789007758/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1392143126&sr=8-3&keywords=dictionary+of+japanese+grammar
http://www.amazon.de/Dictionary-Advanced-Japanese-Grammar-Seiichi/dp/4789012956/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1392143126&sr=8-2&keywords=dictionary+of+japanese+grammar

MrSpEeDrUn

Edit history:

MrSpEeDrUn: 2014-02-11 01:28:33 pm

2014-02-11 01:27:43 pm

MP2 also a bit MP1 speedrunning

thanks for the tip; though i'll learn with this now and see how it works. http://www.nihongoresources.com/language/lessons/lesson-01/lesson.html

Edit: i think english is okay, just harder but i guess i'll get there.

ryu

Edit history:

ryu: 2014-02-11 01:30:10 pm

2014-02-11 01:29:56 pm

Quote from MrSpEeDrUn:

thanks for the tip; though i'll learn with this now and see how it works. http://www.nihongoresources.com/language/lessons/lesson-01/lesson.html

those lessons are a nice introduction to the language, but won't teach you much more than the most basic things mind you. maybe you'll find your own way from there-on out. good luck!

MrSpEeDrUn

2014-02-11 01:31:48 pm

MP2 also a bit MP1 speedrunning

Quote from ryu:

maybe you'll find your own way from there-on out. good luck!

thanks a lot :)

MrSpEeDrUn

Edit history:

MrSpEeDrUn: 2014-02-11 01:46:04 pm

2014-02-11 01:41:59 pm

MP2 also a bit MP1 speedrunning

It's starting to make sence now, i just translated my first kanji into hiragana into romaji into english into german. kind of a cool feeling. lol
( 山-やま-yama-mountain-Berg, 森 - もり - mori - forest - Wald)

MrSpEeDrUn

Edit history:

MrSpEeDrUn: 2014-02-11 01:58:53 pm

2014-02-11 01:57:36 pm

MP2 also a bit MP1 speedrunning

Quote from ryu:

if you can manage 6 hours a day, that's fine. i got major headaches when i tried that though

if that happens, theres most likely a way to fix it, mostly drink enough, the brain indicates lack of liquid with pain in a learning process, get enough fresh air, the brain also indicates lack of oxygen with pain and most importantly, do breaks, learn for 30 mins, make a 10 min break ect.
Of course those things dont guarantee anything at all, its just a few things that might cause it, but theres plenty of other reasons why i get a headache, especially after 6 hours of exhausting your brain, but im pretty sure you could theoretically learn something like 10 hours a day, it'd just be really boring and you'd get burned out or sick of it after a while or something. (you just dont feel like doing it any more after a while)
The goal for me when learning something difficult/a lot of things is to try to get it into your subsconcious mind, meaning i try to be able to autopilot something and repeat it, unless i feel it doesnt work right or something. Kinda difficult to explain, but i think thats the best way to learn a lot of things at once and you can theoretically do that every day and learn at an incredible pace. (in theory)

[quote="ryu"]if you can manage 6 hours a day, that's fine. i got major headaches when i tried that though[/quote]
if that happens, theres most likely a way to fix it, mostly drink enough, the brain indicates lack of liquid with pain in a learning process, get enough fresh air, the brain also indicates lack of oxygen with pain and most importantly, do breaks, learn for 30 mins, make a 10 min break ect. 
Of course those things dont guarantee anything at all, its just a few things that might cause it, but theres plenty of other reasons why i get a headache, especially after 6 hours of exhausting your brain, but im pretty sure you could theoretically learn something like 10 hours a day, it'd just be really boring and you'd get burned out or sick of it after a while or something. (you just dont feel like doing it any more after a while)
The goal for me when learning something difficult/a lot of things is to try to get it into your subsconcious mind, meaning i try to be able to autopilot something and repeat it, unless i feel it doesnt work right or something. Kinda difficult to explain, but i think thats the best way to learn a lot of things at once and you can theoretically do that every day and learn at an incredible pace. (in theory)

ryu

Edit history:

ryu: 2014-02-11 02:15:13 pm

2014-02-11 02:14:54 pm

yeah i know about these possible causes of headaches, and mine back then were certainly not related to a lack of liquids and oxygen. doesn't matter anymore since i've become comfortable with taking my time and not rushing things.