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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 1 of 1702 25 April 2011 at 12:58am | IP Logged |
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TAC 2015 starts on page 195
Well I am going to make a Japanese log. I have a Spanish/German log already but I've been really taken with Jap anime and it doesn't seem to be going away so I'm taking the plunge. Without really researching it I'll say that my initial impression is that this is one of the most difficult languages to learn as an English speaker. With Spanish/French/German that I've studied at some points in the past I got a -ton- of cognates for free and the alphabet minus 1 or 2 letters was already the same too. What makes Japanese a pain in the butt to learn? 3 alphabets and very few cognates. Hell 4 alphabets if you include using roman letters and i might as well include it since the course book I'm using uses them almost exclusively. So yesterday (saturday) I was watching a fantasy tv anime series on Netflix. Unlike a lot of the movies they have it wasn't dubbed and had subs. I really like this series and I got through like 20 of them before realizing that there's like 200 of them available for streaming on Netflix. Yes, anime is sort of for kids but I like it - great for relaxing at night before going to bed. So things I'm looking forward about learning Japanese: Cool alphabet. I love that like Chinese they have pictures that represent an entire word/concept (borrowed directly from Chinese I believe). That's really cool and I'm really curious to see how it works out in practice. The biggest reason is to watch anime in the original language. I don't anticipate ever speaking it to be honest. I hardly ever meet Japanese immigrants in the states, never mind ones that don't speak English. There is the occasional tourist however. Yes, I could probably seek out and talk to people online which I might do if I make any real progress. I really don't see why they have so many alphabets to be honest. I can see starting with a picture alphabet before upgrading to a phonetic one but why would you need two phonetic alphabets (and even a third one when you count the romanized one which frankly seems to work well to me). So I bought a Living Language coursebook for 29.95 at my local book store. It's got 4 audio cd's, a course book, and a learner dictionary. It uses the Hepburn system for romanization. Right now this along with the anime I am addicted to are my study tools. I might try dipping in fiction however. Every other language I've studied I felt I made the most progress by reading on a computer and using a pop up dictionary to quickly look up words I didn't know. This worked great for Spanish. I actually started in on German the old school method with a paper dictionary back in the day. I think they probably had pop up dictionaries around then but I wasn't savvy enough to know about them. So I'll probably update this weekly or more often. Seeing as how I'm hooked on anime I see myself maintaining my interest for a while to come. Edited by kraemder on 01 January 2015 at 7:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 2 of 1702 25 April 2011 at 1:47am | IP Logged |
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Well I'm sitting down trying to memorize the greetings and some simple phrases. It's hard! I haven't had to start from scratch on a language in a very long time. I think maybe since high school. I didn't really learn a language when I was in high school but I at least was exposed to it and learned stuff like the sounds, pronouns, numbers and a few other basics (over the course of several years!).
So I'm working on lesson 1 and I'm currently attempting to memorize the greetings - Hello, Good Morning, Good afternoon, Good evening, good night, how are you, nice to meet you... a few other misc ones. I already forgot how to say I in Japanese from yesterday =/. Watashi. Ugh. I'm thinking I could do a system of watching an hour of Anime and then studying for like half an hour. This is very much up in the air. I've got 15 more minutes till I'm allowed to watch cartoons again though heh. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 3 of 1702 26 April 2011 at 6:17am | IP Logged |
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Came home during lunch to get some flash cards I made to study on break. Watching anime, it's extremely rare that I understand any of the words but a few simple ones like sorry, hello, goodbye, and a few others are jumping out. Compared to watching tv in a european language that's no big deal but it being Japanese I think it's pretty cool. I'm awfully tired so I don't know how much actual studying I'll do tonight.
This log should be a lot more interesting for me than my Spanish/german one. Writing about learning a language from the start seems much more interesting than picking up halfway through the process (or further). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5803 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 1702 26 April 2011 at 2:08pm | IP Logged |
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Two sister sites you may know of are dramacrazy.net and animecrazy.net. Dramacrazy has
regular live action shows; but, the language is probably more standard then anime. Samurai High School is good. I have watched a few. Also, Nihonjin no Shiranai Nihongo is very funny about a class learning Japanese in Japan. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Just a Dreamer Groupie Egypt Joined 5009 days ago 59 posts - 62 votes Studies: English, French | Message 5 of 1702 26 April 2011 at 8:15pm | IP Logged |
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I found this thread to start Japanese (it has a plan through 8 stages)
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=10806&PN=38 (Remove any spaces) Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5049 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 6 of 1702 27 April 2011 at 10:18pm | IP Logged |
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Sorry to hijack your thread, but I think what I'm about to ask for might be of use to you and everyone else who's interested in Japanese. There was this American computer science student from Colorado (?) who learned Japanese very quickly, and is now living in Japan. He wrote a whole online guide on how to learn the language, or any language for that matter. Does anyone know whom I'm talking about? What's the website?
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 7 of 1702 28 April 2011 at 9:59am | IP Logged |
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Oh sure hijack my threat, I'm used to it. No problem =p. Unfortunately I have no idea what you're talking about although it does sound interesting. I appreciate the other comments and will definitely check out the suggested sites in a bit when I get some time. I'm not doing much studying tonight - just gonna read some grammar then watch a cartoon or 2. I've decided not to work on the Japanese alphabets until I've gotten a base vocabulary down and I'm ready to attempt to read stuff in actual Japanese. I picked up a new grammar for Japanese and while it explains the 3 alphabets it doesn't use them for the rest of the book - it sticks to the western alphabet. I don't see how I could use the new alphabets for some time which takes away a lot of the motivation to learn them.
Frankly I don't see how a westerner could really learn this language "fast". It's too different - different alphabet and not enough cognates. Lack of cognate words is a killer at least for me. There's a few to be sure. The word "door" is taken from English for some reason and in the anime i was watching "platonic" is another word they've borrowed. I was really shocked about that one. I guess they didn't have a good native adjective for the concept already maybe. Obviously I'm looking (and hoping) for English borrowings but any western language borrowed words would be helpful - Spanish, French, German whatever. Would be nice heh. I get the impression they have a lot of Chinese borrowings as in the grammar they talk about special spelling for Chinese borrowed words and obviously they borrow a whole alphabet from China too. I am very curious about the history of the country and its interaction with China - at least the basics. I'm not a history major or anything just curious. So I'm reading Barron's Grammar. It was like 6 bucks from the Kindle store. Love the instant downloads. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kaizen Groupie Canada Joined 4955 days ago 48 posts - 52 votes Studies: French | Message 8 of 1702 30 April 2011 at 9:54am | IP Logged |
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I think this is the website espejismo is talking about
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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