Learning Japanese?

[Guile]

Hey, I figured since I always had a strong interest on the Japanese language, how hard would it be to learn japanese? I already learned most Katakana and some Hiragana, but only about 10 kanji characters, I know that theres over 3k kanji. I figured the game will ease it up(since thats how I learned english, from games  ), my question is about how long will it take to learn to read japanese and how did you guys learned to read it?

[Seldane]

Is this really the place?

[Guile]

oops I meant to post it the general section, I could swear I did too, aw well >_>

[Seldane]

He he he, well that's what happens.

[SkyeWelse]

I'm sure this will eventually get moved where its supposed to go.

I'm a student of the Japanese language myself, however I'm not nearly good enough for translation work... yet. I would say that for me, the best way to learn Japanese would be to try and take a college course.

Of course, the easiest and probably most preferred way is to just go live in Japan for awhile and pick it up as you go, but not all of us have that capability unfortunately. I sure didn't.

You can always find textbooks that teach you a little Japanese a bit, but even text books only go so far as you will need to speak directly to a native Japanese speaking person to make sure you are getting particles and grammar correct as well as pronunciation, but its a start.

But most importantly try to stick with textbooks and books that are designed to help you with the langauge of Japanese rather then getting your education from sources like Anime and Games. If you do that you might start saying something that is far from "tenego" or polite form or just plain rude and end up offending someone or just plain sounding weird.

I mean it sounds cool when "Lord Darm" says "ware ware" as the equivalent of "I/We" or in the context of "We Demons", but if you introduced you or your friends as "ware ware" rather than something normal like "watashi" then people will just look at you funny. lol In other words, anime and game "kotoba" or words aren't really all that practical in the use of everyday use of Japanese.

The only other real advice I can give is that not all Japanese people out there like to be bothered with someone who is trying to learn the language. Regardless whether your intentions are well placed, or even that you have a great deal of respect and honest interest in learning the language, you will most likely come off as butchering their langauge and might end up annoying them unless you pretty much know that the person won't be bothered if you speak Japanese to them or you are pretty confident that what you are about to say is at least 75% correct. lol

Good luck though, it's a fun but fairly difficult language to pick up. But if you stick with it you'll find that it has a lot of practical applications in the gaming scene and industry as a whole.

-SkyeWelse

[Haven]

Guys if you wanna learn Japanese, just go to YesJapan.com

Probably the smartest thing I spent my money on (I can read hiragana and katakana now)

[Pingu]

If you really want to learn it the easy way, get a teacher, a real one. Fastest way, less silly quirks you have to unlearn and relearn and you actually speak it instead of just being able to read some and failing to understand how the grammar works.