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When should I start learning Japanese? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6130 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 9 of 15 12 October 2013 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you're planning a trip to Asia soon, getting Japanese to 'tourist level' -- isn't any more difficult.
And hang in there on the Chinese. For me, the first 500 Japanese words were so difficult to memorize. I was hammering on flash cards for months and months before I really got the first set of words memorized. Learning vocabulary did get easier after that. I did meet someone in sharedtalk chat rooms working on both Chinese and Japanese in their degree program. Every once in awhile they'd use an unusual Chinese word in their Japanese but otherwise they seemed to manage. If you have full time job, though. Chinese + Japanese + working full time? I don't see how this would be possible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Oheao Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4173 days ago 31 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Mandarin, Greek | Message 10 of 15 12 October 2013 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, I was progressing at an okay speed, then I slowed down for some reason. I think that I am getting back on track though, so it might speed up a little. I am a student, so I don't have a full time job yet, so I have quite a bit of free time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Oheao Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4173 days ago 31 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Mandarin, Greek | Message 11 of 15 12 October 2013 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't think that that will scare me out of learning Japanese. I am already expecting the grammar to be difficult. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4712 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 12 of 15 12 October 2013 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just learn them both. Screw grammar.
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| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4829 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 13 of 15 14 October 2013 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I also suggest waiting until you are at least early intermediate in mandarin and then starting to dabble only in
japanese (that means something light and breezy, an introduction, something audio oriented), while continuing to concentrate on mandarin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6055 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 14 of 15 24 October 2013 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would strongly advise against learning both at the same time from the beginning!
Japanese words and Chinese words can be easily confused, for example, Chinese; 大丈夫 da zhang fu = macho man Japanese 大丈夫 dai jou bu = it's ok, no problem Besides the fact that both of these languages are difficult, and diffusing your energy among them at the crucial beginning state would form bad habits and encourage wanderlust, starting to learn vocab from the beginning would mean you would have to keep track of all of the prunciations of the same character shared between the languages. So to answer your question, I would wait until an "solid intermediate level" before starting to learn Japanese. My view of this "magic point" is it's when you can use the language to learn the language, you are totally self sufficient in the language and don't really need to go back to English or German. For me in Chinese, it was around 1500 characters and 5000 words. Very rough and subjective definition! Feel it out for yourself. Good luck 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| russtache512 Newbie United States pandamanda.com Joined 4033 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 15 of 15 18 November 2013 at 9:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I would have to agree with irrationale. I don't speak or study Japanese but I'm beginning
my Mandarin studies and have heard from multiple people that have acquired Mandarin as a 2nd or third language that 1000 Characters is the magic number for intermediate fluency. Once you achieve 1000 Characters, you can decide whether learning Japanese makes sense or not. If you want to achieve upper intermediate or low level advanced Mandarin, I would set your goal at 3000 characters. I've just reached the 100 character mark so I've got quite a bit of work to do before reaching my magic number of intermediate fluency. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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