Learning Japanese

[OtakuViking]

Check out http://www.ajatt.com


and

What about anime? "Hikaru no Go" is a good choice, killing two birds with one stone

Note that you shouldn't try to emulate any Japanese found in anime....

Bullshit.

[Redundant]

Check out http://www.ajatt.com


and

What about anime? "Hikaru no Go" is a good choice, killing two birds with one stone

Note that you shouldn't try to emulate any Japanese found in anime....

Bullshit.

If you're speaking with a Japanese person you don't know well, speaking like most anime characters will be quite rude.

[jts]

I think the issue that you're identifying is that the characters are mostly kids speaking to peers, no? Most people would be lucky just to speak a language fluently enough to be thought rude (or conversely, stiff and formal). Getting the social nuances of a language is step two. Phonemes first.

[Jedo]

Unfortunately in the case of Japanese it's more than social nuance. Dialogue in anime is almost all in what we call "direct style", something to only be used with people of equal or lower status with whom you are close.

Using this to a stranger or older person is considered very rude. This is why almost all classes will teach the more polite "distal" style first.

That being said, anime can still be very useful for picking up vocab in the beginning, and becomes more helpful once you are comfortable between switching between both styles.

[Josh Hatch]

I've watched Hikaru no Go and I have a few volumes of the manga in Japanese. I can pick out some words when I watch it and I recognize most if not all of the Go terms. My vocabulary isn't very good though so I have to look words up a lot. It's much easier to look up words when reading than when listening though.

[ACGalaga]

If you're speaking with a Japanese person you don't know well, speaking like most anime characters will be quite rude.

Yes and no. For the most part, Japanese people are blown away if a foreigner can say "Hello" in Japanese (unless they're Brazilian). However, I've often cringed at the sound of young otaku who quote expressions they've learned from anime. It's the exaggerated intonation, it think.

Trying to learn through "immersion" by using things such as anime and manga are certainly helpful, but you may still want to find a course book that works for you. Many people swear by those "Genki" books. I use Minna no Nihongo, but it's best used with a tutor and not for self study.

If you're a patient person, I would also recommend Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji." I unfortunately only made it halfway through this course, but the stuff I studied certainly helped. Thing is, though, it's difficult to study Japanese while studying from this book.

Also, Jack Halpern has released an iPhone app called "Japanese Sensei" which is pretty decent. I think it's about $16 so it's a little pricy as apps go, but certainly a good study aid.

P.S. I second ajatt as a good resource.

[jts]

Yes and no. For the most part, Japanese people are blown away if a foreigner can say "Hello" in Japanese (unless they're Brazilian).

This.

Learning to speak in different ways with different groups of people is very easy, once you're comfortable speaking a language. Unfortunately, being slavish about social niceties does not make it easier to become fluent.

Side point:

If you're a patient person, I would also recommend Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji." I unfortunately only made it halfway through this course, but the stuff I studied certainly helped. Thing is, though, it's difficult to study Japanese while studying from this book.

It's worth noting, though, that the mnemonics he assigns to the kanji (if I'm thinking of the right book) have absolutely nothing to do with the actual meaning of the radicals or the logic of their combination, which can make it confusing to learn kanji/hanzi that aren't in the book.

(For example, out of the kanji that he wants you to learn, all of the ones with the 月 radical he can tell some story that connects the kanji to meat/flesh - and, admittedly, it looks more like a cut of meat than a moon, if you've never seen the turtle script. So for example, 朋 recalls Adam's cry from Genesis, "flesh of my flesh!" That is, God made him a friend! Very clever, and clearly I remember it. But 月 has absolutely nothing to do with meat, so once you've learned all the kanji that he connects to this little mnemonic, you have a positively harmful heuristic rattling around in the back of your mind.)

[ACGalaga]

In regards to Remembering the Kanji: it maybe different for different people, but

I don't think the words are that far off from he actual meaning of the kanji.

Also, 月 is a pretty easy kanji to remember so I think it won't be too easily confused. I know you were just using "moon/meat" as an example (although, when it's used as a radical it almost always is a kanji that is a part of the body, thus the "meat" thing), but for a similar reason that I said it's difficult to study Japanese when studying this book. It's as if they took the Japanese context out of the kanji and are teaching you ways to recognize the elements of the kanji in order to identify meaning.

Because of this book I can read and understand combinations of kanji (although I don't always know how to say it), making it easier to remember vocabulary.
All and all, I guess I can understand why it may not work well for some people.

[jts]

Also, 月 is a pretty easy kanji to remember so I think it won't be too easily confused. I know you were just using "moon/meat" as an example (although, when it's used as a radical it almost always is a kanji that is a part of the body, thus the "meat" thing), but for a similar reason that I said it's difficult to study Japanese when studying this book. It's as if they took the Japanese context out of the kanji and are teaching you ways to recognize the elements of the kanji in order to identify meaning.

Yes, and that wasn't a perfect example anyway because a few of the characters which use 月 once upon a time had 肉, so it's not quite as fanciful as some of his other mnemonics.

[Bill Spight]

As far as the social aspects of Japanese go, Japanese has social dialects, and you need to learn them. I felt that there were three traps to avoid: 1) "Bed" Japanese. A lot of foreign men picked up Japanese from their girlfriends, learning women's informal speech. 2) "Manga" Japanese. Too crude. 3) "Embassy" Japanese. A lot of Japanese thought that proper Japanese for foreigners was formal and stilted, to the extent that they would tell you that regular speech was incorrect.

As for textbooks, I found that the best were books intended to teach English to Japanese. The English was sometimes funny, but the Japanese was impeccable.

[Marcus]

As for textbooks, I found that the best were books intended to teach English to Japanese. The English was sometimes funny, but the Japanese was impeccable.

This is an incredible thought. It blows my mind even! I think I'll take a look into this.

[Jedo]

An interesting idea, but a problem is that all the grammar explanations will be in japanese.

[Bill Spight]

An interesting idea, but a problem is that all the grammar explanations will be in japanese.

Oh, yes. Besides, they will be about English grammar.

[ACGalaga]

Hey, since you seem to be enjoying the Hikaru no Go manga, you should put the words you look up into an Anki deck (a free software for the PC: http://ankisrs.net/) and review them again later.

They also have an application for the iPhone but it cost money. It syncs with the decks you create on the computer, so I find it worth the price since it allows me to review my decks anywhere.

[Josh Hatch]

I used anki when I learned the kana a couple years ago. I don't have my own computer right now though so I can't install any software and I don't have a smart phone so phone apps are out.

Edit: About Bill's suggestion. I saw a similar suggestion on another forum. It's basically suggesting to read through a website about Japanese grammer that's written entirely in Japanese after getting past the basics of he language. I don't know how helpful it is but if you can do it I guess your Japanese would be pretty good (at least reading would be).