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[Valkerionseven]

Definitely, my buddy here who introduced me to the medical school students also does a small private english lesson for them every week, specializing in medicine (thats what he studied in university, so its beneficial both ways) He's got an amazing grasp of medical terms, kanji, and procedures in Japanese just from doing this, even if they are not common use terms you will see everywhere/most places.

A lot of the "random" kanji I know are for silly things like relationships and like... random cooking terms. Have not really doubled down on learning kanji though, but I get taught random ones by my students for about 20 minutes a day lol. Usually ones they just learned too haha. But I've only been here a few months so -fingerscrossed-

 

[san00ake]

Started studying Japanese in 2004, when I was 15, and moved to Japan in 2009, when I was 20, and I've been living here ever since, for better or worse.
I have very fond memories of this guy and his lame attempts at getting a date. I wonder how many people would recognize him.

 

[Kurita]

Just some quick and probably obvious advice.

.

You're definitely right to some extent.
Maybe all those economy texts I had to translate during Interpreting classes will wind up helping me down the road... lol

 

[I'm an expert]

Just some quick and probably obvious advice.

If you're learning kanji, practice reading things that are in physical print. I fucked that aspect up (I can only read and write at like a fifth grade level without furigana), and have been coasting through college/jobs relying on that "insert furigana" shit to translate documents....but now it's severely limiting my job prospects. Got an offer to translate a book written in like 1920 or some shit, which would've made me pretty legit. However, it was a physical copy, and I could barely read the first page lol. I can speak and understand most things at a native level, but that doesn't help me at all with books from the 1920s. Man I felt like a fraud when that shit was presented to me. Had to turn the offer down. Way above my level.

Also, you've probably heard this before, but find some sort of specialization (medical, law, finance, chemistry, etc). I've had jobs where I had to translate documents for periodontists (various gum diseases and dental implant procedures), or human resource offices (bunch of technical legal babble), and had to denshi jisho like half the vocab words because I had no idea wtf they were in Japanese (or English actually....haha). Took forever.

One time I got rejected from a $40 an hour interpreting gig, because I didn't know how to interpret the technical processes behind manufacturing plastic car parts. Another time I mildly pissed off some execs from a Japanese insurance company, because I didn't know how to interpret various insurance/financial terms in Japanese. My dumbass had to keep looking shit up on my phone during the meeting lol. Like damn, I barely knew wtf the American execs were talking about in English. I don't know jack shit about the inner workings of insurance companies. That wasn't really my fault though, as the guy who hired me initially said it was only going to be a tour of the building (which I got through just fine).

So yeah, if you want the dope gigs, it's best to specialize in something and get hired at a high paying company, instead of doing what I did, which was mostly translate random shit that came my way while never being an expert in any one subject.

But you guys probably know that already lol.

Wtf

 

[urfe]

I'd see learning Japanese and learning to be a translator or interpreter as very different things. Translation and interpreting as well seem very different. The most important for both I would say it one's English writing/speaking ability, and that's what language the finished product is in.

I don't think the reason to learn pronunciation of at least joyo kanji is for translation situations, but just for real life: reading a newspaper or novel, etc.

Lastly, I've only interpreted for in-house stuff, but 4000 yen/hour seems low for how incredibly hard interpretation is? It's a legitimate hard skill to master in my opinion.

---

In my own studies, I'm focusing on writing 漢字検定6級 characters now, as well as struggling with 訓読み stuff that I've never come across in a business context before. It's good to feel like I'm filling in a lot of gaps in my abilities.

 

[TickleMeElbow]

Lastly, I've only interpreted for in-house stuff, but 4000 yen/hour seems low for how incredibly hard interpretation is? It's a legitimate hard skill to master in my opinion.

It was in the US. And nah, that's one of the high paying ones. I live in an area with quite a few Japanese businesses. I think most full-time in house translators/interpreters make around 50 - 60k a year.

What companies around here are doing now though, is they're going to universities and even high schools, and telling Japanese majors or people who have an interest in Japanese to either double major in something like engineering, chemistry, or accounting, along with Japanese. That way they can hire an engineer or an accountant who also understands Japanese. Saves them money.

 

[Hypron]

I have been wanting to learn a third language for a very long time, and I've finally decided to take the jump and start learning Japanese. I ordered the Genki textbook/workbook from amazon.jp and I'll use online versions until they get here.

It's taken me a while to decide between German (which I studied for 5/6 years at school) and Japanese. Both languages interest me and could be useful from a career standpoint since I'm studying mechatronics engineering. But lately, I've been leaning more and more towards Japanese because I consume a lot more Japanese media, and that it's a completely different type of language compared to French and English. It should be a lot more exciting to learn.

So, it'll be lots of hard work but I'm really excited to start learning a new language again.

Thanks for the awesome thread which I'll probably be lurking around in the future

 

[Nakho]

I'm analysing my options to go to Japan in the medium term (~2-3 years) and I found a scholarship to do a Master's degree. I don't know which city would I be living in, but let's highball it: is 143,000 yen enough to live comfortably in Tokyo? I'm a rather frugal person (except for books and comics :/), and I can cook well enough not to starve. If it helps, I lived comfortably in Toronto with less money than that.

 

[Darksol]

is 143,000 yen enough to live comfortably in Tokyo? I'm a rather frugal person (except for books and comics :/), and I can cook well enough not to starve. If it helps, I lived comfortably in Toronto with less money than that.

143,000 yen per month in Tokyo? Frugal or not, it's unlikely. Rent alone would likely demolish most of that.

I don't think I could manage 143,000 yen per month in Saitama prefecture where the rent is much cheaper, and I consider myself frugal as well.

 

[Aizo]

I don't know about comfortable, but you could definitely survive on it easily. That much every month? Yeah, definitely possible.

 

[Nakho]

Alright, thanks for the replies. Yeah, that amount a month.

Is the sentence Xはあそこにあります ungrammatical or just weird to you? I know I shouldn't translate things literally, but it looks like it would hold up using "as for" in place of は.

 

[Kilrogg]

Alright, thanks for the replies. Yeah, that amount a month.

Is the sentence Xはあそこにあります ungrammatical or just weird to you? I know I shouldn't translate things literally, but it looks like it would hold up using "as for" in the place of は.

Doesn't sound weird to me in a vacuum, but could you give us some context?

 

[marimorimo]

I have very fond memories of this guy and his lame attempts at getting a date. I wonder how many people would recognize him.

He looks very familiar to me--is he from Minna no Nihongo?? (I never used official textbooks myself until after Level 3 of the old JLPT so I'm not that good with identifying Japanese textbooks...but I'm sure I've seen the guy before!)

It's eating me up... @_@

 

[Nakho]

Doesn't sound weird to me in a vacuum, but could you give us some context?

For when you want to say that there is something at a certain location, Genki says you would usually say something like:

あそこにマクドナルドがあります。

But I was wondering if this sentence would say the same thing:

マクドナルドはあそこにあります。

Maybe my sentence would be the answer to "Where is the McDonalds?" instead of "What is over there?" ?

tl;dr
Ha/ga difference is kicking my ass a little.


Edit: there was a typo in the second sentence.

 

[Kilrogg]

For when you want to say that there is something at a certain location, Genki says you would usually say something like:

あそこにマクドナルドがあります。

But I was wondering if this sentence would say the same thing:

マクドナルドはあそこにあります。

Maybe my sentence would be the answer to "Where is the McDonalds?" instead of "What is over there?" ?

tl;dr
Ha/ga difference is kicking my ass a little.


Edit: there was a typo in the second sentence.

Ah, gotcha.

Let me preface this by saying you should absolutely not take this as a 1:1 equivalence between English and Japanese. Ha/ga is a Japanese linguistic concept that simply does not exist in English. And in fact, Japanese is so different overall that you should never try to shoehorn it into your English mindset. Easier said than done, but keep that in mind. Yeah? Yeah.

With that said, you've pretty much nailed it, and in this kind of instances, you can kinda sorta think of "ha" as "the", and "ga" as "a".

But as you correctly pointed out in your previous message, it's best to generally think of "ha" as the topic of the sentence, i.e. "What are you talking about? Oh, right, McDonald's. Well, as far as McDonald's is concerned, it's over there".

Jay Rubin, in his book Making Sense of Japanese (highly recommended if you're still fairly new to Japanese), has an interesting example to explain what "ha" is about. Take the sentence わたしはウナギです。If you read it with the false understanding that "ha" is like the subject in the sentence, you would always translate it as "I am an eel." Which is possible, mind you. "Oh, as for me? I'm an eel."

But it could also simply be that you're at the restaurant, and your friend asks you what you'll be ordering: "Me? The eel." or "I'll have the eel". In other words, わたしは is not the subject of the sentence, it's the topic, it's what we're talking about. And the difference between a topic and a subject is that the subject always does the action but is not necessarily the topic of conversation.

So the, "ga" is closer to what we would think of as the grammatical subject. If there's a "ga", you can bet your ass it's doing the action of whatever verb that follows, no matter what. It can be used for emphasis, as a result. If you say　僕は払う　（ぼくはらう）, it simply means "I'll pay", as in "I don't know about you guys, but I'll pay". If, instead, you wanna say "It's on me" or "It's my treat", you have to say 僕が払う: "I will pay. Not you, guys, me. I'm definitely the one doing the paying. Don't worry about it."

Hope it makes sense. It can be a bitch sometimes.

 

[RangerBAD]

You can use very few words to say a lot in Japanese.

 

[Kurita]

And then you discover you can just not bother with particles
Whenever I speak/write casually (on Twitter/Instagram) you can bet your ass particles are almost nowhere to be found and it's not a problem at all

 

[Nakho]

Ah, gotcha.

Let me preface this by saying you should absolutely not take this as a 1:1 equivalence between English and Japanese. Ha/ga is a Japanese linguistic concept that simply does not exist in English. And in fact, Japanese is so different overall that you should never try to shoehorn it into your English mindset. Easier said than done, but keep that in mind. Yeah? Yeah.

With that said, you've pretty much nailed it, and in this kind of instances, you can kinda sorta think of "ha" as "the", and "ga" as "a".

But as you correctly pointed out in your previous message, it's best to generally think of "ha" as the topic of the sentence, i.e. "What are you talking about? Oh, right, McDonald's. Well, as far as McDonald's is concerned, it's over there".

Jay Rubin, in his book Making Sense of Japanese (highly recommended if you're still fairly new to Japanese), has an interesting example to explain what "ha" is about. Take the sentence わたしはウナギです。If you read it with the false understanding that "ha" is like the subject in the sentence, you would always translate it as "I am an eel." Which is possible, mind you. "Oh, as for me? I'm an eel."

But it could also simply be that you're at the restaurant, and your friend asks you what you'll be ordering: "Me? The eel." or "I'll have the eel". In other words, わたしは is not the subject of the sentence, it's the topic, it's what we're talking about. And the difference between a topic and a subject is that the subject always does the action but is not necessarily the topic of conversation.

So the, "ga" is closer to what we would think of as the grammatical subject. If there's a "ga", you can bet your ass it's doing the action of whatever verb that follows, no matter what. It can be used for emphasis, as a result. If you say　僕は払う　（ぼくはらう）, it simply means "I'll pay", as in "I don't know about you guys, but I'll pay". If, instead, you wanna say "It's on me" or "It's my treat", you have to say 僕が払う: "I will pay. Not you, guys, me. I'm definitely the one doing the paying. Don't worry about it."

Hope it makes sense. It can be a bitch sometimes.

Thanks for your in-depth answer!

Yeah, I had understood the ha thing from Tae Kim's guide. Like: "watashi ha inu desu" can be something like "if you ask me, I prefer dogs" instead of "I'm a dog" depending on the context. It's ga that is confusing me like crazy, since I've come to rely on using ha for a lot of situations already. I'm always trying to shoehorn it into every sentence instead of using a more natural particle.

I'll check out Making Sense of Japanese soon, thanks for recommending it!

 

[PreyingShark]

How would you say X calls Y "Z"? XさんはYさんがZといいます？

 

[JimPanzer]

My take, but wait for the input of someone with more knowledge of japanse than me

YさんはXさんにZと呼ばれる。

Y is called Z by X.

 

[Resilient]

ピーターはサミュエルをサミーと呼ぶ。
or
ピーターはサミュエルをサミーと言う。
or
サミュエルはピーターにサミーと呼ばれる。

source: ate sashimi one time

note: that's saying he will do it or usually does it. if you're saying that he already did it just change it to past form.

 

[Resilient]

did everybody give up on the dream? thread has completely died. Community is gone. What happened fam?!

 

[Rutger]

I haven't given up.

I haven't had anything to say, but I'm still keeping up my studies.

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

did everybody give up on the dream? thread has completely died. Community is gone. What happened fam?!

Still keeping up my studies. Feeling pretty proud today because I understood a full episode of a TV show without subs or captions.

 

[PreyingShark]

ポケモンエメラルドやってるから、とても忙しいですよ

 

[Alanae]

The summer effect in action, I guess.
Currently reading things as usual

 

[LiveFromKyoto]

Started studying Japanese in 2004, when I was 15, and moved to Japan in 2009, when I was 20, and I've been living here ever since, for better or worse.
I have very fond memories of this guy and his lame attempts at getting a date. I wonder how many people would recognize him.

His blank serial killer stare from the videos is forever burned into my mind.

I'm analysing my options to go to Japan in the medium term (~2-3 years) and I found a scholarship to do a Master's degree. I don't know which city would I be living in, but let's highball it: is 143,000 yen enough to live comfortably in Tokyo? I'm a rather frugal person (except for books and comics :/), and I can cook well enough not to starve. If it helps, I lived comfortably in Toronto with less money than that.

Don't believe everything anime tells you. Living in Tokyo can pretty tough as is (overcrowded, cramped, smelly, expensive, people can be cold), and without money it would suck. My advice is go somewhere, anywhere else. There's a uniformity among Japanese cities that means that in terms of modern culture and living you can get the same experiences just about anywhere, except that money will go two or three times as far. And the country's small enough that it's not like it's hard to get to Tokyo for a week if you want to go and be underwhelmed by Akiba.

 

[ikuze]

I have a quick question and I hope all you Senpais (or at least one) can help me.
I'm filling out my application for the JLPT in December right now and I'm not sure about the Number 9 "Institution where you are studying (or studied) Japanese-Language".
I only study at home with various (Online-)Textbooks, so what should I say here? It doesn't say leave it blank if you study at home or something like that, so I'm not sure and I don't want to do it wrong.

 

[Resilient]

You can just say whatever really. I think they just use it to collect data on the demographic.

 

[JimPanzer]

I'm looking for recommendations for reading material. I'm between N4 and N3 an level 39 on WaniKani (I guess around 1000 Kanji learned and a lot more vocab).
I'm not interested in any super weird stuff (for that I can watch Anime).
I heard キッチン is fairly easy to read?

 

[Nakho]

Don't believe everything anime tells you. Living in Tokyo can pretty tough as is (overcrowded, cramped, smelly, expensive, people can be cold), and without money it would suck. My advice is go somewhere, anywhere else. There's a uniformity among Japanese cities that means that in terms of modern culture and living you can get the same experiences just about anywhere, except that money will go two or three times as far. And the country's small enough that it's not like it's hard to get to Tokyo for a week if you want to go and be underwhelmed by Akiba.

Not really an anime guy, heh, but I see your point. I would prefer to go to some place cheaper for the reasons you said, but I'm trying to prepare for worst case scenario money-wise, since I have limited say on which university and city I would have to go.

 

[also]

Is there any program for PC that allows for kanji recognition from images?
I tried KanjiTomo and it's more or less okay for individual characters but I want to extract the whole text from images.
Basically I want the equivalent of the Google translate app for PC.

 

[flatearthpandas]

I'm analysing my options to go to Japan in the medium term (~2-3 years) and I found a scholarship to do a Master's degree. I don't know which city would I be living in, but let's highball it: is 143,000 yen enough to live comfortably in Tokyo? I'm a rather frugal person (except for books and comics :/), and I can cook well enough not to starve. If it helps, I lived comfortably in Toronto with less money than that.

You could manage, but it will probably be rough. I try and work with 150,000 each month for necessities+pocket money (saving the rest) and it can be done reasonably comfortably but it's easy to go through as well. There were several times I would have been in trouble if that was really all the money I had available. The good news is that books and comics are cheap. Book off can get you most things for ¥100 per volume. If you're going to have tax and health coming out of that 143,000 I would definitely look into other places to live.

 

[Resilient]

You have to ask yourself, would you be happy spending 2-3 years in another country with lots of fun shit to do, living frugally? I wouldn't want to live anywhere with only 1500 to spare. Not saying you would need to blow through all that to have fun but why limit yourself. I presume you're young?

 

[Nakho]

You could manage, but it will probably be rough. I try and work with 150,000 each month for necessities+pocket money (saving the rest) and it can be done reasonably comfortably but it's easy to go through as well. There were several times I would have been in trouble if that was really all the money I had available. The good news is that books and comics are cheap. Book off can get you most things for ¥100 per volume. If you're going to have tax and health coming out of that 143,000 I would definitely look into other places to live.

I believe health is covered already, but I'm not sure.

I spoke to a guy who got this scholarship and went for a Master's at Yokohama. He said it was rough, but not having-to-starve rough.

A very important thing I learned is that I can choose 3 universities of my preference to be picked by one of them, so I can just choose 3 universities in smaller, cheaper cities.

If it helps, it's the Research Student option in the Monbukagakusho scholarship (http://www.studyjapan.go.jp/en/toj/toj0302e-10.html ). Does anyone know someone who did it?

You have to ask yourself, would you be happy spending 2-3 years in another country with lots of fun shit to do, living frugally? I wouldn't want to live anywhere with only 1500 to spare. Not saying you would need to blow through all that to have fun but why limit yourself. I presume you're young?

I'm 24, so.. young-ish? Of course I would love to be able to enjoy the country as much as possible, but sometimes you gotta be realistic and work with what you have.

 

[#sorrynotsorry]

Hi. This is a translating request relating to gaming. I don't know Japanese so I can't read it and google translate has utterly failed me. I saw in the OT that translation requests are allowed, so I'm hoping you guys can help. It's just a short blog post!

http://blog.5pb.jp/gdiv2/2016/08/05/backward-compatibility/

Thanks for allow your help if any of you can give it!

 

[Resilient]

Hi. This is a translating request relating to gaming. I don't know Japanese so I can't read it and google translate has utterly failed me. I saw in the OT that translation requests are allowed, so I'm hoping you guys can help. It's just a short blog post!

http://blog.5pb.jp/gdiv2/2016/08/05/backward-compatibility/

Thanks for allow your help if any of you can give it!

Basically Bullet Soul is getting an NA 360/Xbox One (through BC) release with the plan being to have it as a GOTY edition with whatever DLC is in it. No release date. Did the game keep getting cancelled/delayed sometime before? Guessing it's a small indie team? I'm gonna check this out now lol.

 

[#sorrynotsorry]

Thanks a lot! That's good to hear. I appreciate the translation.

 

[Sölf]

Subscribed, maybe I will try this again sometime in the future. I actually tried learning japanese before, with a small course of ~15 people. But I think the course itself wasn't that great. On one hand, it was more for business people, which I simply didn't really like. The much bigger problem was that for the love of god, I just couldn't remember all those Hiragana and Katakana. The learning of words wasn't the problem, but writing and reading them in anything else than romaji... yeah~ And we didn't even get to the Kanji.
I still really would like to learn this language at some point. Aside from the usual "I can read and understand japanese manga/anime/game!" I just think the language itself sounds beautiful.

 

[Kaneda Shotaro]

did everybody give up on the dream? thread has completely died. Community is gone. What happened fam?!

I gave up. Work and life killed the whiteboard method. Putting it another way, lack of willpower did that. Now I'm nervous about going back because of the massive disappointment I'll feel realizing how much kanji I've forgotten.

 

[Rutger]

Subscribed, maybe I will try this again sometime in the future. I actually tried learning japanese before, with a small course of ~15 people. But I think the course itself wasn't that great. On one hand, it was more for business people, which I simply didn't really like. The much bigger problem was that for the love of god, I just couldn't remember all those Hiragana and Katakana. The learning of words wasn't the problem, but writing and reading them in anything else than romaji... yeah~ And we didn't even get to the Kanji.
I still really would like to learn this language at some point. Aside from the usual "I can read and understand japanese manga/anime/game!" I just think the language itself sounds beautiful.

Hiragana and Katakana are not as big of a wall as you are thinking, you just need to make sure to work on it every day and you will get them down fast. Try to write them from memory once every day. You can also find many web pages to work on your reading, you can go to places like NHK easy or any wikipedia page where you can find 日本語 in the language section, your goal is simply to be able to recognize the Hiragana and Katakana characters.

If you see the characters often, you will get them down quickly, you just have to put in some effort every day. The same approach will work for Kanji, there's just a lot more.

 

[Sölf]

Hiragana and Katakana are not as big of a wall as you are thinking, you just need to make sure to work on it every day and you will get them down fast. Try to write them from memory once every day. You can also find many web pages to work on your reading, you can go to places like NHK easy or any wikipedia page where you can find 日本語 in the language section, your goal is simply to be able to recognize the Hiragana and Katakana characters.

If you see the characters often, you will get them down quickly, you just have to put in some effort every day. The same approach will work for Kanji, there's just a lot more.

Yeah, I know I should do that. I just don't know when I find the time to actually do that on a regular basis again. So actually getting a starting point in the near future would be a good thing... xD

But yeah, I definitly didn't do that everyday back then (was probably 6-7 years ago).

 

[Rutger]

Yeah, I know I should do that. I just don't know when I find the time to actually do that on a regular basis again. So actually getting a starting point in the near future would be a good thing... xD

But yeah, I definitly didn't do that everyday back then (was probably 6-7 years ago).

Well, obviously there's no advice I can give if you are super busy. However even if you only spend a couple minutes a day working on a small group of characters, you will eventually find that you can get through all Hiragana and Katakana in that time. It doesn't take long at all to review them once you get them down, and eventually the things you read will be your review.

Getting Hiragana and Katakana down will probably also be a great motivator, since it opens up so many resources.

 

[Mononoaware]

Hey guys, I'm new to the site, and I've lurked for a while and saw this thread before I became a member and was hoping to eventually post here.

I'm looking for advice when it comes to studying. I've been taking Japanese classes while I've been going to college, and I really enjoyed my first two semesters. Sadly this summer I've been crazy busy, and I've been slacking on studying it...only thing is, without classmates to practice with, or anyone else to talk to, I'm feeling REALLY stumped on how to practice Japanese on my own.

If anyone else has taken classes, or using Genki textbooks to learn Japanese before, we basically covered the first 10 chapters during last year, and the first sets of Kanji. Any tips or useful ways to study on my own I can cram into the next month before the school year starts?

 

[Li Kao]

Ok Gaf, need a little orientation here. I think I learned my Hiragana and Katakana syllabaries. Still some polishing up to do and re-learn the ten-ten and combinations, but hey.
So... now what ?

What should be the focus of my learning now ? I guess some vocabulary to use those shiny new moon runes on ? Already some Kanjis ? The language itself ?
I'm a little lost on what my learning sessions should be comprised of. I have learned the basic "bricks" of the language, but now what ?

 

[Hypron]

So after my first post in this thread a couple weeks ago I started learning hiragana and katakana - got them down in a couple days (now I need to write and recognise them faster, I'm trying to write things down as much as possible to try to improve on that aspect). I went through chapters 1 to 4 in Genki, doing the exercises and learning to write the associated Kanji (only 30 so far).

About three weeks ago, I also started using Anki for vocabulary (I've got one pre-made deck for Genki stuff and my own for other words I come across) and wanikani for Kanji (about to get to level 4 tomorrow), which I've been keeping up to date with every single day.

I also got some pronunciation and conversational help from another neogaffer, and I helped them practice their French in return. It was very helpful and we will probably do it again.

I feel like I'm making some fairly quick progress so far. I should have finished Genki 1 by the end of September (if not earlier) and I'm thinking of going straight for the whiteboard method to learn the Kanji seriously (I remember things way better by writing them down and I'm not sure I can be arsed sticking with wanikani for 2 whole years just to learn the jōyō kanji. I'd rather spend tons of hours in a relatively short amount of time than a few hours here and there over a very long period).

I think I should probably start reading some native material fairly soonish (books and manga for young children first I guess). I've been looking at tablets and e-readers to do that (buying digital's cheaper, plus I don't have much space to store physical books...). Getting a Kindle for reading books seems like a no-brainer and I'll definitely get one once I get to that level of pro-efficiency, but the screen's a bit too small for reading manga/comics... a 9" Kindle would be perfect imo but sadly doesn't exist...

Do you guys have any suggestions for a good tablet to read manga? And also, where would you get manga legally from? Amazon.jp or is there some other website that's even better?

 

[Rutger]

Hey guys, I'm new to the site, and I've lurked for a while and saw this thread before I became a member and was hoping to eventually post here.

I'm looking for advice when it comes to studying. I've been taking Japanese classes while I've been going to college, and I really enjoyed my first two semesters. Sadly this summer I've been crazy busy, and I've been slacking on studying it...only thing is, without classmates to practice with, or anyone else to talk to, I'm feeling REALLY stumped on how to practice Japanese on my own.

If anyone else has taken classes, or using Genki textbooks to learn Japanese before, we basically covered the first 10 chapters during last year, and the first sets of Kanji. Any tips or useful ways to study on my own I can cram into the next month before the school year starts?

Look around for things to read or listen to on the internet. I've been working on other areas at the moment so I don't have any examples to give other than simple stuff like NHK easy.

Ok Gaf, need a little orientation here. I think I learned my Hiragana and Katakana syllabaries. Still some polishing up to do and re-learn the ten-ten and combinations, but hey.
So... now what ?

What should be the focus of my learning now ? I guess some vocabulary to use those shiny new moon runes on ? Already some Kanjis ? The language itself ?
I'm a little lost on what my learning sessions should be comprised of. I have learned the basic "bricks" of the language, but now what ?

Grammar and vocab. You can start working on some Kanji too, but you'll want to be able to understand the things you are reading.

 

[The12thGripper]

I've been wanting to learn Japanese for a few years now but I had to take French for 2 years in High School and I didn't think learning 2 languages at once was a good idea so I decided I would start after I got the credits I wanted and drop the course, which was a couple months ago.

I read some of the OP and Reddit's starter guide and I decided to purchase GENKI I: 2nd Edition to start but then I read a review on Amazon that said it was cheaper to import the books from Amazon.co.jp. I found a listing that looked like the one on the US Amazon store but I have no idea if they're actually the same book. Also, should I pick up the GENKI workbook? I'm leaning towards yes but I have no idea what it is.

Thanks.

 

[Resilient]

Few responses below but here are my cliff notes for people at the beginner to intermediate level.

1. NHK is your friend. Every article is the same minus the changes in details. Someone stabbed? Same format, different place and day. Shares gone up or down? Same explanation, different numbers. So good for seeing the same sentences used. And they have a whole section called 動画 where somebody reads the article to you so you can practice LISTENING.

2. Buy a grammar text book. I recommend 日本語チャレンジ. 2 reasons. First it covers n4-n1 grammar. Second is it gives just enough info to explain stuff but also not really enough, so it forces you to google it. Google plus those books is greatness. チャレンジ plus Jgram plus Renshuu equals win. Get on it.

3. Watch dramas. Fuck your anime. Dramas will level up your ears. Get Japanese subs and force your ass to understand it. Whatever it takes. Then you can go back to Anime. Would you rather learn new words or hear いったいなに 10 times an EP?

4. All 3 of those will help with your vocab too.

I mentioned NHK easy below but fuck that. Just go to normal NHK and use jisho.org.

Hey guys, I'm new to the site, and I've lurked for a while and saw this thread before I became a member and was hoping to eventually post here.

I'm looking for advice when it comes to studying. I've been taking Japanese classes while I've been going to college, and I really enjoyed my first two semesters. Sadly this summer I've been crazy busy, and I've been slacking on studying it...only thing is, without classmates to practice with, or anyone else to talk to, I'm feeling REALLY stumped on how to practice Japanese on my own.

If anyone else has taken classes, or using Genki textbooks to learn Japanese before, we basically covered the first 10 chapters during last year, and the first sets of Kanji. Any tips or useful ways to study on my own I can cram into the next month before the school year starts?

I haven't taken classes, and never used Genki. if you've been using Genki and had some classes you should already have a decent enough foundation to start playing with some other text books. I'd say you probably aren't at a level where going straight to Whiteboard will help you, but you also can't practice reading stuff online cos you don't know enough yet for it to be worthwhile.

If you've only got a month, buy the N3 and N4 books for にほんごチャレンジ (GRAMMAR) and smash through them by spending like, 6-8 hours on them per day (if you're on holidays), go through each grammar point, write it down in english, make a list, and once you've finished the books, start memorising those rote style. i think if you do that, you'll go into whatever classes you have with a decent edge, you'll be fairly sharp so everything you learn after that should stick easier. from there, you can just follow your coursework. it's tough, because a month isn't a lot of time to do anything at your level, but i'd say that's a pretty decent way to use it..heck, throw in the first 300-400 kanji as revision doing whiteboard style while you're at it..couldn't hurt, just depends how much time you want to commit to it!

Ok Gaf, need a little orientation here. I think I learned my Hiragana and Katakana syllabaries. Still some polishing up to do and re-learn the ten-ten and combinations, but hey.
So... now what ?

What should be the focus of my learning now ? I guess some vocabulary to use those shiny new moon runes on ? Already some Kanjis ? The language itself ?
I'm a little lost on what my learning sessions should be comprised of. I have learned the basic "bricks" of the language, but now what ?

sounds like you don't know a whole lot except for the kanas, so..not a whole lot of anything. are you self-studying or do you have classes? do you want to study with a text book or do you wanna do rote memorisation? if you want a textbook, again, for your level, buy the N3 and N4 books for にほんごチャレンジ (GRAMMAR) and start learning some basic sentence structures (N4 book will be good for this). you want exposure at this point. heck, buy the yellow Grammar dictionary in the OP and start flicking through it.

I've never used Genki, so I can't suggest it. but, you want to learn about verbs, their forms, and then some basic grammar. from there you can probably start trying your hand at NHK Easy, random peoples twitters, and then dig into some Kanji study using whiteboard? again, depends on how you like to study really. the N4 book is a good starting point for where you are at though.

So after my first post in this thread a couple weeks ago I started learning hiragana and katakana - got them down in a couple days (now I need to write and recognise them faster, I'm trying to write things down as much as possible to try to improve on that aspect). I went through chapters 1 to 4 in Genki, doing the exercises and learning to write the associated Kanji (only 30 so far).

About three weeks ago, I also started using Anki for vocabulary (I've got one pre-made deck for Genki stuff and my own for other words I come across) and wanikani for Kanji (about to get to level 4 tomorrow), which I've been keeping up to date with every single day.

I also got some pronunciation and conversational help from another neogaffer, and I helped them practice their French in return. It was very helpful and we will probably do it again.

I feel like I'm making some fairly quick progress so far. I should have finished Genki 1 by the end of September (if not earlier) and I'm thinking of going straight for the whiteboard method to learn the Kanji seriously (I remember things way better by writing them down and I'm not sure I can be arsed sticking with wanikani for 2 whole years just to learn the jōyō kanji. I'd rather spend tons of hours in a relatively short amount of time than a few hours here and there over a very long period).

I think I should probably start reading some native material fairly soonish (books and manga for young children first I guess). I've been looking at tablets and e-readers to do that (buying digital's cheaper, plus I don't have much space to store physical books...). Getting a Kindle for reading books seems like a no-brainer and I'll definitely get one once I get to that level of pro-efficiency, but the screen's a bit too small for reading manga/comics... a 9" Kindle would be perfect imo but sadly doesn't exist...

Do you guys have any suggestions for a good tablet to read manga? And also, where would you get manga legally from? Amazon.jp or is there some other website that's even better?

TheSporkWithin uses a Kindle and I presume buys books off amazon.jp. With Kindle Unlimited out in Japan now you could probably do that. Manga, no idea, that stuff exists online raw though? Spork mentioned that the Kindle has a dictionary feature. very handy for learning new words, but if you start digging into high school level ぶんこ you're gonna have a tough time, and have to stop a lot.

may i suggest you follow your heart with whiteboard, using the grammar section also, for maybe 2-3 weeks, and once you get to that point start reading...anything? NHK, yahoo.co.jp, NHK Easy, twitter, there are heaps of sites out there. but, you'll want to know...most of the grammar in the N4 日本語チャレンジ book. heck, even N3 would be good too.

can't preach those books enough. those books + the grammar dictionary + google = win for grammar, and you'll be able to read anything online with the help of a dictionary in no time.

I've been wanting to learn Japanese for a few years now but I had to take French for 2 years in High School and I didn't think learning 2 languages at once was a good idea so I decided I would start after I got the credits I wanted and drop the course, which was a couple months ago.

I read some of the OP and Reddit's starter guide and I decided to purchase GENKI I: 2nd Edition to start but then I read a review on Amazon that said it was cheaper to import the books from Amazon.co.jp. I found a listing that looked like the one on the US Amazon store but I have no idea if they're actually the same book. Also, should I pick up the GENKI workbook? I'm leaning towards yes but I have no idea what it is.

Thanks.

paging a Genki 先生 to help this dude out. all i know is there are 2 versions and that once you finish them, you're ready to become a real J master.

I gave up. Work and life killed the whiteboard method. Putting it another way, lack of willpower did that. Now I'm nervous about going back because of the massive disappointment I'll feel realizing how much kanji I've forgotten.

sorry to hear dude. don't feel like a pussy for going back. you should only feel like that for giving up on it completely. work and life will always be around, so find a way to make it work if you legit want to learn it. also, Kanji are gonna fall out of your head every day regardless, cause there are a lot of them, so dispel that notion right away. heck, just come back dude. you'll always be busy with life no matter what. part of the game.

 

[thiscoldblack]

I read some of the OP and Reddit's starter guide and I decided to purchase GENKI I: 2nd Edition to start but then I read a review on Amazon that said it was cheaper to import the books from Amazon.co.jp. I found a listing that looked like the one on the US Amazon store but I have no idea if they're actually the same book. Also, should I pick up the GENKI workbook? I'm leaning towards yes but I have no idea what it is.

Thanks.

Yes, it's cheaper to get the books from the Japanese store even with the high import shipping costs. Back when I bought the first volume, it was just $32 in the JP store instead of the $52 in US store. You'll save more in the end if you buy the whole series off the Japanese store. As far as the shipping time goes, the delivery took only 2 days from Japan (to New York city area).

Definitely get the workbook. It has tons of practice exercises to help you "cement" that knowledge you have learned in each chapter of the textbook. The textbook doesn't have enough practice to be honest, so that's what the workbook comes in handy. At least I had found it highly valuable during my time using Genki.


EDIT: Non-affiliated links to the books:

Textbook #1: http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4789014401/
Workbook #1: http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/478901441X/

Textbook #2: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4789014436/
Workbook #2: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4789014444/