Forum - View topicDo you want to learn Japanese?
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mgreller87
Posts: 10 |
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Have you ever thought about learning Japanese for the sake of getting a better understanding of anime? Maybe you'd only like to have a basic knowledge of Japanese just to appreciate some of the cultural things that go on when you're watching a series. Or maybe continue learning in order for you to forget reading subtitles all together.
It would be fun for me to try taking a first semester college course on the subject. While I understand it's a fairly difficult language to grasp, I do know that working hard at it would also get me familiar with the culture itself, even if I am only able to get a basic understanding of words and grammar. |
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Xenofan 29A
 Posts: 378 |
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I've thought about this before, and I even have a language program and a book to help. Unfortunately, I haven't put enough work into it (as it is a lot of work learning a new language), so I can't do much, but I can read pretty much any Kana. The main thing I'd want to do though is read all those liner notes that come with the video game soundtracks I buy. That, and Xenogears Perfect Works, my most treasured foreign language possession.
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DFBTG
Posts: 385 Location: Hell |
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Quite frequently. In fact I not only have one of those 'self-taught' things, but I'm planning on asking my school to see if they could foot the bill for me taking an online Japanese class. Of course, admittedly I haven't put much time in the self-taught thing (flew through the first 20 lessons quickly though, but that was about 9 months ago), and I'm not entirely sure if I want to spend $250 for an online class (that is, if my school doesn't pay for it). And honestly, aside from possibly not having to read subtitles, I don't see much of a reason for me to learn it. Yeah, it'd be cool and all. Also, I suppose some of the cultural things would be nice knowing, but I think that and learning the actual language are a bit different (albeit closely intertwined in any foreign language class).
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7991 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Aside from the bits and pieces I've picked up just from watching it subed (about 60-70 words give or take) it would be cool but too much work to put into something based on a simple hobby of mine. Maybe if had more disposable cash to sink into it.
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ANBUx3
 Posts: 187 |
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I'll be taking a Japanese class next semester. I've already gone through a CD program, and of course all the odd words and phrases picked up here and there. I like to think that's a small base I can build on. I've been burned out with school lately, so maybe this'll make it more interesting.
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Enjeru
 Posts: 221 |
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I just finished my 2nd year of Japanese. It is a wonderful language to learn, however it really does take a lot of time and studying.
I had used some of the audio cds prior to taking my first class. During the first semester, I was well ahead of the class, however when it started to become more advanced; I realized that I would have to step up my studying. Also Japanese is one of those languages that reading books, writing in Japanese, and listening to Japanese in television shows is not enough. It is really one of those languages that requires some submersion. Fortunatly, I have been selected to study abroad next year in Tokyo at Jochi University 上智大学。 Now I will have the chance to apply what I have learned thus far as well as learn a whole lot more. Anyways, I am getting off track. More to the point, I do recommend to anyone with the desire and the respect for the difficulty of the language to try learning it. So go for it. But do be careful which method you use to learn it. Many of the self-help programs and audio programs are designed for business men and women who are only going overseas for business. Therefore, it a) does not teach real practical things for someone learn except "asking where the station is or where is the hotel. b) There are many, many different ways to say things. The program I was using used very formal (almost rude) Japanese. c) find a good book on learning hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Only speaking it is not really enough. |
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Keonyn
 Subscriber Posts: 5567 Location: Coon Rapids, MN |
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No, I can't say that I do honestly. Anime is really the only reason that it would be worth my while to do so. Frankly, it's a lot of work and time to put in to something just so I can watch anime without dubs or subtitles. I'm not really a Japanophile so I don't have that driving force towards all things Japanese like some people do.
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Enjeru
Posts: 221 |
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Keonyn brings up a good point. If one plans on taking a Japanese college class, make sure you know what you are getting into. Colleges are full of 1st semster students that don't make it to the final. At my university for example; the first day of the first semester; there were 30+ students in the class. By the time finals week came about, over 1/2 of the students dropped the class. The very first day, my sensei went around the room asking why students were taking Japanese. Well let's just say, many of the students had an otakuish answer. I was really embarassed for them.
Each semester I have taken, the starting roll has gone down and down. My 4th semester for example, there were only 7 students in the class, myself included. There are many reasons for this, however I assume that one of the reasons is that many of these kids did not want to put in the work needed to succeed in the study of the Japanese language. My best advice I can give is: if you plan on taking this road, know what you are really getting into. It makes no sense to waste yours or your parent's money on a class that you will get little to nothing out of. |
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p3rseus
Posts: 72 |
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I actually took a first semester course of Japanese at college because I needed another language anyways, and it was pretty fun and all until kanji. Those kanji symbols are a damn pain to learn, it doesn't help that one of them can have many different meanings and there are thousands of them. I didn't take another Japanese course after that in fear of lowering my GPA, I finished with an A- in the class but it was a tough class and requires a lot of time (something I'd rather focused on my major for now). If you have free time then it can be done though.
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Skylark
 Posts: 827 Location: ORE NO TSHIRT |
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I learned a significant amount of Japanese (and I consider this the best way to memorize Kanji and get a good grasp of the grammar) by playing visual novels in Japanese, and using the following reference sites:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/ - The best grammar site on the internet http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1R - A really good reference for looking up Kanji; use the multi-radical search to pinpoint the kanji you're looking for. Basically when I started, I would write out the sentence in japanese, then one by one replace the kanji with its english translation (EDIT: I would also look up the reading for it, usually only the major ONyomi and KUNyomi readings). Often with compound kanji for a little while you'll have to either guess or use something like babelfish to figure them out (like majutsu (魔術) means magic but the kanji is "evil" and "art"), and the readings are often incorrect but if you just learn the reading every time you have to look up a kanji and then watched some unsubbed anime you'll probably get the drift. Then, (if by that point I didn't know the grammar being used throughout the sentence) I would look for it on the grammar site. At that point you can generally get what is inferred by the sentence. After a while (about a month or so) I was using the grammar reference VERY infrequently, and not translating it into english rather than just reading it as japanese, and I was looking up a lot less of the Kanji. Now, I think I pretty much know all of JLPT levels 4 and 3. And at the same time I get to read visual novels, which I enjoy doing anyway. That grammar site is good in general anyways. You can follow it through like a textbook as it slowly introduces you to more kanji, and even gives you exercises after each section for you to practice on. All you have to do is devote a bit of time every day (I mean come on, who can seriously say they can't find one hour; you probably spent a good portion of an hour just looking through posts on this forum) and study consistently. I would recommend visual novels over manga though; far more substantial text and less casual grammar confusion. NOTE: If it's against the rules to post these links let me know via private message please and I'll get rid of them and ask permission from an administrator; it should be ok though since they are both to educational sites. |
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Isikari
 Posts: 118 |
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Yeah, I've wanted to learn Japanese for a while (Since before I got into Anime actually, I've been a history buff since I was little and I always thought Japanese history was fascinating), but I'm not sure I'd be willing to put in the work.
The core of my doubts comes from an accelerated Mandarin course I took. In 9 weeks it covered the first 3 quarters of Mandarin. The first three weeks I did well, the second three weeks I just barely squeaked by, and the last three owned me. Learning all those new words, the tones, the characters, it was all too much too fast. Since Japanese is similar to Chinese (Like French is similar to English, and incidentally MASSIVELY easier to learn then Chinese), I'm wary of taking the plunge, but figure I might give it a shot next Fall. For those who have studied Japanese and are familiar with Mandarin, will a lot of the characters / grammatical structure I learned carry over? Oh, and are there...there...*shudder*...Tones? |
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Enjeru
Posts: 221 |
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Having an understanding of the Chinese writing system will help you some. Most kanji have several pronunciations. There is the Chinese pronunciation; which is mostly used for kanji compounds (the linking of 2 or more kanji to make a new word), and there are at least one Japanese pronunciation. The Japanese pronunciation are a lot of the time used when making it a verb, or a single kanji is used for a word.
However, an understanding of chinese is mostly limited to helping you in the areas of reading and writing. You might be able to see the kanji in a sentence and get the basic jist of it. But how it is said is different. Also, with hiragana, katakana, and kanji ususally all finding there way into a sentence, you would have to learn those too. Though, since you already have an experience in learning a language with a different writing system, I believe you can avoid the shock and degree of difficulty that ususally overwhelms other students. |
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HitokiriShadow
 Posts: 6251 |
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I've thought about it and I started doing it earlier this year when I found out that one of the community colleges in my college district was offering it this past semester. I'm transferring to a University this year and will continue it there, though I'll start by repeating the same level course. They don't offer Elementary Japanese II (only Elementary I and Intermediate I) this semester and I haven't done a lick of studying since the semester ended anyway. While I managed well enough with minimal studying this past semester, that clearly will not work in the future.
The hiragana wasn't that hard to learn, though there were a few that were not used much that I never really got down. Since katakana wasn't used as much, I never got those down very well. And the kanji... that's the part of Japanese that always scared me more than anything else. I never really learned even the 15-20 that we were supposed to know aside from a few of the numbers. I was fortunate in that the final exam was written in a way that knowing them was completely unnecessary. They were on the test, but the nature of the questions meant that I didn't actually have to be able to read the kanji. 
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Aikoh
Posts: 96 Location: United States |
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I think that there should be a much, much stronger motivation to learn a difficult language like Japanese than watching raw anime and reading raw manga because learning a foreign language is something that requires a lot of patience and dedication. Being able to tie it in with your hobby is certainly a reward, but as Keonyn has pointed out, that's a lot more work than most people are willing to do.
Me? I am an independent Japanese student and I am also an avid German student. I started learning Japanese when I first started watching Evangelion because my friend would always play it in Japanese unless it was one of the VHS rental tapes from the video store. I found myself really, really liking the sound of the language and I wanted to be able to understand and speak it too. I think that being exposed to a language like that so often is what makes me interested in it, too, because I also became interested in German thanks to my music studies (I have always wanted to learn the language of the great composers!  ) and having had a lot of German friends.
I do, however, wish that my high school offered Japanese classes. I very much prefer learning a language in a classroom setting because I can practice actually speaking the language and ask a teacher questions and have a teacher correct my grammatical mistakes - not to mention it would keep me from trying to tackle too much at once. I did find out that my college offers Japanese, though, so I am hoping that I can take at least some classes before I attempt to go for my post-graduate degree in it (I want to combine my language skills in German and Japanese with my Computer Science major). I just use websites like Japanese Verbs, The Japanese Page, and Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar in the meantime.
I am only vaguely familiar with Mandarin, but I have been able to somewhat understand the written language from time to time because I recognized several characters from Japanese, though I can't speak on grammatical structure. Unfortunately, yes, in addition to the three writing systems there are tones. I'm studying Kansai-ben at the moment (Kyouto-ben, for those who want specifics, and I am possibly considering picking up Oosaka-ben) and one of the prime differences between Kansai-ben and Toukyou-ben besides words is intonation. And it's not just a trait in regional accents, but because Japanese has so many homophones (like Mandarin), intonation is how you can tell what a word means without the kanji (such as hashi [chopsticks] and hashi [bridge]). |
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DemonEyesLeo
 Posts: 844 Location: Japan |
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I've taken 3 years of Japanese in College. And even though I've graduated I don't intend on stopping.
But it's not for anime, it's because I like learning new languages. I wanted to learn Japanese long before I was ever into anime. I'm hoping to go to Japan this year or next year to really get a grasp on the language. |
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