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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Keilan Senior Member Canada Joined 5086 days ago 125 posts - 241 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 22 13 April 2011 at 9:19am | IP Logged |
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Hey all,
So I am currently debating taking on Japanese just as a bit of a side project (Fluency in my L2 is still my primary goal). I was thinking of just dabbling a bit, and so I basically wanted to ask the question of Japanese learners. Is there anything you wish you knew before you started Japanese? I'm thinking things along the lines of "I should have learned X before Y" or "I should have focused more on Kanji" or something to that respect. And the related of question of what part of the language would you recommend tackling first? Should I focus on the writing? -Keilan 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5805 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 22 13 April 2011 at 3:29pm | IP Logged |
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Learn the writing system. Hiragana for Japanese words and katakana for foreign words and
some Japanese words for emphasis. Hiragana is more important. http://thejapanesepage.com/ has a great hiragana tutorial. If you are just dabbling, you may not have enough time for kanji. Start with online classes for basic phrases and vocab. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 22 13 April 2011 at 3:52pm | IP Logged |
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I agree that learning hiragana is important, BUT it shouldn't delay your study.
When I started Japanese, I used Teach Yourself. It uses romaji (everything is written in Latin alphabet). Later, I found that I continued to struggle with hiragana for a long time and thought that perhaps I should have started with hiragana instead. However, I now think that starting with romaji was a great way to get started earlier and faster, and it doesn't matter if hiragana takes time, as long as you learn it in parallel. Personally, I also wish I'd started caring about pitch accent right from the beginning, but many people don't bother to learn it even at an advanced stage, so you may not care either. Lastly, I'd just like to warn you that Japanese can easily take 3 times longer than German. If you concentrated on Japanese, and dabbled in German, you'd likely get a similar result in both languages. In other words, if Japanese is just a side project, I wouldn't expect great results anytime soon. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5034 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 4 of 22 13 April 2011 at 5:37pm | IP Logged |
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I am only a beginner, but this is also the 8th language (including my native language) that I have tried to learn.
I don't know much hiragana yet, and not at all how to type it, but I can definitely speak Japanese. That has been my main emphasis, and beginner phrases do come quickly. The Romaji helps, but if you can see both Romaji and hiragana, you'll start picking up patterns. I realized it when I was able to read the copula "desu." So... don't be intimidated by the writing. My advice is to listena nd learn how it sounds, where the breaks and pauses are, and so on. It has a completely different syntax than English or German, and I find I have to listen differently. It wasn't that hard to acclimate, though. Good luck, and I hope you enjoy it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| hjordis Senior Member United States snapshotsoftheworld. Joined 5186 days ago 209 posts - 264 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 5 of 22 13 April 2011 at 6:00pm | IP Logged |
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I used romaji for far too long. I think you should learn hiragana from the beginning, but I don't know if you have to memorize them by force. I learned them by using them when I wrote out sentences that I was going to write anyways, rather than endlessly writing the same character again and again. I don't know how that would work if you're just beginning. Maybe you could use a romaji grammar guide to start with, but write out your sentences in hiragana by referencing a chart.
Whatever works best for you really. I'm not good at memorizing things if I'm not going to use them. I still have to learn kanji in context, by reading or writing them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5982 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 6 of 22 13 April 2011 at 9:24pm | IP Logged |
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In answer to your specific question about whether you should focus on your writing, my answer would be that it depends what you want to achieve through your dabbling. I would recommend getting used to reading hiragana as soon as possible, as it allows access to a lot more materials. But beyond that, it depends on what skills are the most important to you and I don't know anyone who has taken a balanced approach. My friends envy my reading skills and I envy their conversational skills.
What I wish I had known: Don't feel that you have to learn 2,000 kanji before you can start reading. You can do rather a lot with just a few hundred, if you start with the more common ones. Japanese is a demanding language for a native English speaker. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security by the regular and logical grammar and the relatively simple phonology. Getting used to the word order and building vocabulary are still my two biggest challenges. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5178 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 7 of 22 13 April 2011 at 9:39pm | IP Logged |
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I think I should have started listening practice earlier.
But maybe if you don't have foundation, you cannot do it. But you should remember that you should learn not only from textbook (not that textbooks are useless! They are very good, it's just that they are not enough). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Keilan Senior Member Canada Joined 5086 days ago 125 posts - 241 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 8 of 22 14 April 2011 at 8:33am | IP Logged |
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Thanks everyone for all your help!
I am currently in that "Am I or am I not going to study it" phase, so I will take a look at the alphabet(s) and do some listening practice for awhile and see what I think. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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