Anyone else learning Japanese ? (日本語/English)

[Geckoey Lurker]

Just as the title is asking, anyone else here is learning Japanese? Personally, I am still very inexperienced and unknowledgeable since I only began seriously studying in Last year's November and have been quite busy between December and until now. I've finished my Hiragana around middle of November and I'm only now beginning to learn my Katakana. I'm doing it the rough way though, by brute memorization, it works perfect with me, but in no way am I gonna be able to learn the grammar like this so I thought I might as well make this topic and hope to find some japanese speaking buddies

Beginners, Linguists, Advanced, etc. anyone is free to talk on here, though it would be awesome if people with advanced experience on it could try to help the less advanced ones, I think everyone would really like that ^^

「さ！日本語をはなします、皆さん！」 (Feel free to correct!)
I am clueless on grammar here, but I think that's right : "Come on! Let's speak Japanese everyone!"

Notes (Current context-sensitive):
日本語 is read as "にほんご", it means "Japanese Language" unless I'm wrong.
皆 is read　"みな", it means "Everyone", also might be wrong.

EDIT : I might've posted this in the wrong section, was that actually what the /jp/ section was for? Or actually 4chan?

[edgelessdiamond]

I've been learning it myself I have the hiragana down and I almost have katakana down, I did have it down gotta go back and study up on it
おはいおみな
that might be tottaly wrong what I just said.
I don't know still got a lot to learn

[Geckoey Lurker]

おはいおみな

I think what you meant to write was :
おはようみな (ohayoumina)（皆）kanji for mina.

Unless you didn't mean Good Morning Everyone.
I can't help grammar-wise though, I'm only trying to go with my gut feelings.
Anyway.

こんばんは！ここは昼過ぎす。 (昼過ぎ reads as ひるすぎand means "Just past noon / Afternoon")
(Good Evening ! It's just past noon here.) I got a feeling this is wrong though.

[Mana]

EDIT : I might've posted this in the wrong section, was that actually what the /jp/ section was for? Or actually 4chan?

If they are in a good mood, they will give resources and the thread won't have more than 20 posts. If not, they will tell you that they hate Japan and that they don't spoon feed anyone with dozens of baby spoon feeding pictures.

As for me, I have to pick it up again, but it's demotivating when I don't have anyone to talk about it and to cross reference my study with.

I was going through Namasensei's lessons by Anon's advice.

EDIT: Now that I reread your post, I misunderstood what you were talking about with /jp/. It was a section of the board for 4chan's /jp/ to guest post without registering an account. But their answer would be the same, since it would be the same people replying to you.

[edgelessdiamond]

I've been using this
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/
along with rosetta stone
and ja sensei on my galaxy s2 for learning the hiragana and katakana, its been about a couple months though for me since I last studied because I got busy and lazy . Thats why I usually try to study before I do anything that isn't learning wise....

but if you havent learned of that guide I would check it out. Its the reason why I started learning the hiragana and such.
I just came across one of the forums I can't remember if it was this one or hongfire which gave me another really good resource.
Its called remembering the kanji heisig which I plan to take a look at real soon.

[Geckoey Lurker]

@Mana, yeah, I can understand why you misunderstood, but in the end it's the same result so I guess meh.

I'm watching Nama-sensei's videos as well, they're pretty good actually. 
I'm also helping myself of Ixrec's Guide to Japanese, a few dictionnaries and by trying to read anything in Japanese when I can, I have no problem listening at the moment and I can understand most of what is said, but when it come to reading, writing and speaking it. Completely different matter.

I didn't begin using any flashcards yet, but I might have to soon once I begin learning the Kanji.

The only kanji I know by heart is forest at the moment (reading and writing) 森(mori), but there is some kanji I can recognize just by reading (日本語 is the only one that come to mind), no idea how to write it though.

[Green_Tea]

I did 1 year of lessons, so I have basics down, and can hold simplest conversation, but other than that I'm looking to take another year this year as well I have many IRL people who are learning Japanese around me. I could never work with Rosetta Stone, but I would suggest there's this little Red Book, which I can't remember the name of. I'll go to that bookshop again and see if I can find it.

Of course there's always addons for easy browsing of Japanese websites. Meanings and stuff I draw from watching anime/reading TL notes etc

For writing I would suggest a tablet PC or something similar to practise on. The DS come to mind on this one, albiet you should also obviously practise with a pen and paper.

Reading I can only suggest a very time consuming method of downloading raws and translated materials, and going through that. Hopefully your raws have furigana in them, rather than Light Novels with Kanji only readings D=

Speaking I could suggest Karaoke, singing along, especially since being faggots I doubt many of us have friends on the same level of Japanese as each other.

And you have no problems with listening =D. People who do, I mainly say to listen to all types of Japanese music, from pop, RnB, Jazz, Trance, Anime. It gives you a feel for what and how things can be said. Of course there's always anime.

Vocab I tend to learn while reading VN's and such.

Grammar is the most difficult, and the main reason I took lessons. There are many ways to conjugate, many joiners and specific ways to put sentences together. I found that Japanese was actually a very repetitive language surprisingly.

[Geckoey Lurker]

I actually got a tablet, and I tend to write a kanji or katakana I learn over 100 times each, this is fine for hiragana-katakana, but once I reach the 1000th Kanji+, ohgod.. I'll probably do it anyway, flashcards should help remembering how to read most of them though.

As for reading, it depends, sometimes I read some light novels, mangas, news, etc. I simply try to read anything, furigana or not. Main advantage is if the kanji is typed in a document or say a page, I can just copy-paste into a dictionary. (There is also Rikaichan that is useful for that)

Karaoke.. I.. that's actually a good idea while being fun, I doubt anyone would want to come with me there though, going alone is oddish. (without forgetting my horrible singing voice)

And yep, I actually do all of that, which is probably why I can listen just fine. ^^ Same goes for vocab here as reading.

As for the grammar, maybe it's because I only studied a bit of it, I find it quite more easier than English's and French's so far, only thing would be the varations as you said.

[Kureha]

Learning japanese to me is a dream. I seem to be very bad with learning languages.

[Fiske]

I really want to learn japanese myself. I tried the rosetta stone some time ago, but had a hard time pronouncing the words, i blame my microphone for sucking though!

Ive learned english and german(to a certain extent) so another one shouldnt be a problem i thought... But it really is tough learning a new alphabet. At least with the english and german i could use my own

[Mana]

Monkey Island taught me English when I was 6, but it's no longer that simple.

[Geckoey Lurker]

I learned English from the internet from scratch in 3 years, so I'm pretty sure it's still that simple.. then again I seem to be lucky when it come to learning Languages, the only thing I have trouble with is speaking but that's because I barely speak. Ever. (FR-Canadian Accent is putting Hs everywhere too) I still have a big path to cover for vocabulary and grammar in both my mother language and English though.

This is missing japanese by the way.. 「ただいま！」I'm being overloaded with RL lately.

[Mana]

Somehow, I can easily get another language's pronunciation, even ones that I only know 2/3 words like German and French. That gave me some speaking problems after I spent a weekend with a friend from northern Portugal.

[Green_Tea]

I have great enunciation apparently, with all languages. Makes people think I'm good with them, but I'm only really pronouncing what I hear.

Wish there was some way to learn a language on a forum

[Geckoey Lurker]

If there at least was someone whose said language was their native or they are really advanced in it, they could help the beginners and such. Discussing in Japanese would also greatly benefit the beginners where other people could point out their mistakes or give them a better way to say it, I don't have the knowledge to actually lead a conversation though. Thinking about it, if anyone here is learning French, I can help for it since it's my native tongue.. far from being a good teacher though.

がんばって皆！

By the way, if anyone is interested, I highly recommend Ixrec's Guide to Japanese.