Learning Japanese!

First of all: yes, there may be other threads, but this one here is mine...

Ok i'm really serious about learning japanese now...

What i need:
Info on how to learn japanese ( the language! )

I know nothing! Nothing about katakana, kanji whatever, nothing! How and where to start?

What are your experiences etc.? Since there seem to be many non-japanese people spoeaking japanese

just post something here (concerning the topic of course) and i'll be glad to read it

 

Go to an academy and start from the bottom.

 

True. This is also the way I started it. Forget all those D.I.Y. internet lessons, in my opinion that's not the way when you are serious about it.

If you want to learn it for real with all consequences, you have to invest a lot of time, patience, money and efforts. And there will be hard times without any motivation you have to go through.

 

You want to speak it properly? Move to Japan.

I'm sure you speak Dutch, and your English is good enough. Probably know another language. But, the asian languages (chicken footprint writing included) require a level of submersion you're not going to get in the west. That, or a REALLY gifted person.

 

Yes, forget DIY. Go to a decent school (not the ones with one hour per week), find a teacher for private lessons or just come to Japan for a year or two.

If you don't choose the last option, make sure to get yourself immersed in Japanese media as much as possible: read a manga or a website and try to make out some characters or expressions, watch movies, listen to radio shows online or watch the news online. A lot of media is available from outside of Japan. Just a few minutes a day are ok. And practice as much as you can.

 

thanks for the info so far. well yes, i can speak some western languages (english and german fluently, russian, dutch, french and swedish partly) but nothing compares to the asian stuff

well...moving to japan, thats my dream. going to school is a no-go at the moment since i'm in my apprenticeship

so what i can read from these 4 postings is, that it's not possible to learn japanese as a side project? like parallel to my apprenticeship?

 

Depending on your memory I think the basics can be learned in 50-100 hours, intermediate in 500-1000 hours, and you could probably be reasonably fluent in 1500-2000. If you don't have access to multiple Japanese people in real life though, you'll probably have problems speaking and listening.

 

Forget about doing anything in the west. It may give you a small cushion to land your arse on when you come over here but apart from that it won't do you any good.

Before I came to Japan I passed a "high" level Japanese course in Liverpool Uni. Came to Japan and shit myself. I couldn't understand a bloody thing.

The only way to learn Japanese is to live here. Apart from the course at Liverpool Uni 11 years ago I've done no Japanese study but I can speak Japanese. How? By hearing nothing but Japanese from 8:30 am to 5:30 PM EVERY DAY at work and then some more from the shite on TV when I get home. Needless to say I use mostly English in the house but outside Japanese is the way to go. At first it was really scary and not to mention quite lonely but after two years you'll be well on your way.

Just a bit of advice, don't bother with the kanji until you have a decent level of spoken Japanese. It will make things a whole lot clearer.

Yakumo

 

Well, the anglic-japanese here like GaijinPunch or Yakumo might want to kill me for saying this, but, I learnt English with forums and games. Not games like Final Fantasy, but with online games.

My point is, when I wanted to learn Japanese, I had no idea too about what to do. I first learned Katakana and Hiragana entirely, and then, well, I got a 10€ book with some grammar, vocabulary, and stuff, learnt something, how was the sentence structure in Japanese, etc... And then, well, I just practise it by myself, I was all the day with my dictionary learning words, it's pronunciation, learning kanji too (I find it quite easy, but a great aid for learning those was the DS game Bimoji Training, after writing hundreds of kanji, which I don't know the meaning or pronunciation or NOTHING, but just by writing them, I learnt quite some structures or radicals and then, learning them was quite easier (oh, this one, 好, the kanji for woman and the kanji for kid), I wrote em' for 5 minutes until I learnt it completely and I'd pass onto something else), well, I did write pointless stuff (like imaginarial conversations, etc), and well, when I had some incredibly minimal near to unexistant idea about the language I registered in the PSOBB Japanese server (21 day trial). Well, I think that this helped my quite since I saw how Japanese was out of the book, and well, after one week withouth understanding a single word, I somehow got into understanding some and even, wow!, being able to ask small questions or having three sentence conversations.

Now, I can for example understand somewhat a Yahoo Auctions auction, follow somehow the plot of a JRPG like FF6, or this kind of things.

By the way, my oppinion is that leaning kanji is quite useful before even having a good spoken japanese, because when you learn kanji, you learn it's meaning, how to pronounce it and in most books, there's a small vocabulary list related to that kanji.

But well, I hope that in one or two years I'm able to get into a japanese learning school and get some knowledge (going to japan? no way, I'd wish).

 

andoba, that's all fine and well but just wait until you come to Japan. Honestly you'll be shocked at how different real Japanese is to what games (online included) and books tell you.

Before I came to Japan I could read and write all 48 katakana and hiragana without breaking a sweat. It was second nature to me. I could also write a basic A4 page story in Japanese but all that did me no good once I cam,e here to live. Well, it was a nice cushion as mentioned before but really, the only way to really speak Japanese is to be submerged in it 24/7.

Yakumo

 

what is that btw?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system

 

a japanese syllabary, one of the 3 japanese writing systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana

edit: cez beat me to it.

 

Agreed. I have done about a year of lessons in Manchester; doing an A Level actually. missed the GCSE as the teacher said I was picking it up fast. To be honest, the only way to learn the language is to live there. I spent 7 weeks there this summer and all the stuff I "learnt" in my lessons at first, just didn't come out right. After 7 weeks, I was having basic conversations and making jokes (word play mostly) and stuff. Kanji also sticks more if you already know the word too (for me). check out "remembering the kanji" on amazon - I like that book.

 

aha, three writing systems...btw which one is used in public, on signs etc.?

is there some law to it or something?!

 

Al of them from what I understand, but Kanji+Hiranga is the most common and Katakana is only used for foreign words/names or something similar

 

is it normal that japanese seems to be a very difficult language for people from the west?

 

the pronunciation is actually quite easy. there are no sounds in japanese that we dont have in western languages.

but the writing system is what puts me off.

 

All three are used and mixed.

このコンピューターは大きいです。

Hiragana, katakana and kanji (kono konpyuutaa wa ookii desu, this computer is huge).

 

より小さい1つを買いなさい

Or something like that.