First of all, I'll make it clear now that this thread is not my thread alone, it's for everyone who wishes to learn japanese.
I'd assume that all of us here are anime fans, and that most have watched or even prefer watching the anime with the original japanese dubs. Don't you ever wish that you understand some of what the characters are saying without looking at the subs? Well, that is what this thread is for. :special5:

Here on this thread, people who have are planning to learn or currently learning japanese can share what they know on certain topics regarding the japanese language, and hopefully those who already know japanese will be kind enough to share some of their knowledge too. :)

this is a very very very VERY nice thread :reallygood:

i want to learn japanese now xD!!! well or i planed it or whatever but i join in this thread because i want to udnerstand what some character etc are saying (well actually i can understand some word...but only like these: ohayou,ohyasumi,matte,konnichiwa...

but i want to read it too

i know that it is not the easiest language but i think i can do it :powered:

"Learning to read japanese is a lot harder than learning to speak it", that's what my japanese instructor told us in class 2 years ago. Unfortunately I was unable to finish the lessons. In the self-study that I'm doing now, I'm finding out that what he said is very true.

I'll share some basic things to get us started. :)
A sentence written in japanese can be composed of a mixture of hiragana, katakana and kanji. It can be all Hiragana or all Katana sometimes but it's usually a mitxure of the three.

Kanji = Chinese characters
Hiragana = is used in writing japanese when chinese characters are not available
Katakana = is used for foreign words, if you are studying for awhile it's easy to distinguish between Katakana and Hiragana since they are written in a different way from each other.

What's the thing that makes it difficult to learn?
Based on what I'm experiencing now, kanji is my problem. Most japanese language guide books which can be bought on book stores have a table of katakana and hiragana, and how to convert them to romaji (romaji is japanese language written using the roman alphabet, example: Wakarimasu ka?). However, I've not yet found a guide book that converts hiragana to kanji. So when I encounter kanji on sentences, I have difficulty in translating them.

wow that sounds very difficult but i still want to learn it because i like the japanese language :powered:


and btw you'll explain it very well =)

Here are some examples of Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji. :)
Japanese language veterans please correçt if I'm wrong.

桂 = this is an example of kanji

Katakana = the symbols are usually composed of straight lines

Examples:

ヒナギク Hinagiku
ヒ = hi
ナ = na
ギ = gi
ク = ku

シャナ=Shana
シャ = sha
ナ = na

Hiragana = the symbols are usually curvilinear in style

Examples:

こどものじかん = Kodomo no Jikan
こ = ko
ど = do
も = mo
の = no
じ = ji
か = ka
ん = n

きねん = kinen (anniversary)
き= ki
ね= ne
ん = n

It's an interesting thread. :ilikeit:

I ever studied 2 courses of Japanese lessons. I can read Hirakana&Katakana and remember some easy Kanji. (Most of them are noun like mountain,water,tree,river,sun,moon, etc.) Know a little bit of grammar. (for example introduce myself and say 'this is.../that is...') My Japanese is still very limit.

I have one but if has a few Kanji only 150-200. I think it's useless sometime because it doesn't have enough Kanji that I want to know...' If I need more, my guide book must be a lot thicker than now. :meh:

Anyway, I just know a good site that can convert Kanji to Hirakana already. No problems with a thick book or even don't have it anymore. :lol: (all thanks to my dear brother who find it.)

http://nihongo.j-talk.com/parser/


Kanji is really difficult when you study Japanese because there're about 1000 kanji that are used in life. (My friend who studies direct Japanese said.)
So you must remember which you just study and always don't forget to review which you've ever known. That's why it's harder than speaking. (To tell the truth my Japanese improves because of watching anime and listening Japanese music, they're better than reading a grammar book only. :tongue: )

My Japanese is really limit but if it has some Japanese questions I know, I will answer them as best as I can.

And よろしくおねがいします = Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu :special3:

my mom got me a book showing me how the japanese word are

they represent picture (i don't remember where i put the book) but it work really well to remember what the symbol *if i find it i'll scan one page to show an example)


i wish i could use the japanese keybored language setting but i don't know where all the letters are...

there's a thread that was created a while back that should be useful for you guys. I went ahead and necrobumped it for you guys, and so far, still looks clean.

@hikari

You finished 2 courses of japanese lessons? That's so nice. :) :

I was not able to finish my course 2 years ago because of work, my vocabulary is even more limited than yours. I can recognize some hiragana used on sentences though (without looking at the textbook) . Have been re-studying my old notes continously for the past week. :special5:

Learning japanese is not a simple thing, it takes a lot of time and dedication.
I think it will take at least 6 more months of continous studying before I could construct simple japanese sentences.

Thanks for posting the link. Kanji can be a big problem sometimes. :=_=;:
I wonder why they still use kanji even if there's hiragana or katakana available for a certain syllable?

Kanji won't be a big problem, if there's furigana with. :P

Furigana is a Kanji reading aid. Sometimes when read Kanji, you may see a little Hiragana with Kanji. It is called Furigana. It helps us to know how this Kanji read.



In red circles are Furigana. (sorry if they're too small.) Usually be found in manga or OP&ED of anime. :tongue: So let's study Kanji from manga. Yeah! :yeah:


Someone might want to know why they still use Kanji because there're many homophone in Japanese. If they write Hiragana only, they could misunderstand.

For example
Hiragana : し = Shi There're many Kanji that have this homophone.
死 read 'Shi' means death
四 read 'Shi' means four (Edited : This is a reason why 4 is an unlucky number in Japan and China.)
市 read 'Shi' means town
and more ..'

That's why Kanji must be there. Anyone who learn Japanese must know Kanji even if it's difficult to remember and makes we crazy sometimes. :meh:

sounds really difficult ..'

Thanks for that Hikari, I understand now why we need to have some kanji included on japanese words.
Haven't tried translating manga before so I don't know about furigana.

On the manga image, the furigana on the right reads "haji", while the rest of the hiragana reads as "mashite", so it means hajimemashite (it's the first time). Having some difficulty translating the other one though...

The other furigana reads as "danshaku" :) According to my dictionary, it means "baron". This is a new word for me as well. XD

@Chiibi

thankyou Your help is appreciated.

The last 3 characters there made it hard for me to translate it properly.
Rechecked with two of my books and it is indeed "DAnshaku" (accent is placed on the capital letters).

I decided to learn too. I started out all motivated with a plan, but now I've kinda slowed down.

My plan was
Remembering the Kanji: Learn to recognize the writing, stroke order, and meaning of some 2000 kanji
Use a memorization technique to memorize the readings that have 4 or more kanji assigned to them
Learn Hiragana, Katakana
Read Tae Kim's guide, and All About Particles
Use as much of the AJATT method as I can with manga and whatever Japanese subtitled shows I can find.

Ooooohhhh that reminds me! XD I forgot to tell everyone about a really cool site!!

https://www.msu.edu/~lakejess/kanjigame.html

It's so nice when there are a lot of people sharing what they know. :special5:

The Kanji game posted by Chiibi looks fun, I'd be playing around with it on my next day-off for sure.. :yeah:

Double post. :P

I wanted to clarify this days ago, just didn't have time to post about it.
For more than 1 week now I've been concentrating effort to learn hiragana perfectly, but I'm having problem because 2 of my books have different symbols for the vowel "i" and the syllable "da".

I've taken pictures of the diffrences between the two books, the hiragana on the left side is from an older book and the one on the right is from a newer book. Sorry for the poor picture quality, I've used my cellphone to take the pictures and the shadow of the cellphone is making the pictures look dark eventhough I've written on clean white paper.

"i"



"da"



Which one is correct, or which one is more frequently used?

@ Liddo-kun

Both is correct. The right side is scribbly hand-writing and the left side is more frequency used (and looks easier than the right side.). I suggest you to write as the left. ;)

Yap, it's just a different font. XD

@Hikari and Chiibi.

thankyou

My studying became a whole lot easier after knowing that. :lol:

Double post.

Used lots of yellowpaper from the office, writing 30 ro 60 words per day along with some practice sentences,
Finally know how to write hiragana, katakana, and the basic rules associated with both after a few months.

Moving on to learning kanji, and it's quite hard (I respect scanlators more after realizing how hard it is to translate kanji)...
It's impossible to translate manga properly without learning some kanji though, so I'm hoping to learn 20-30 a month.


EDIT:

Have a minor question, this is the only thing thing still unclear to me. :meh:
Is the "tsu" symbol simply written in a more straight manner on this one?

i use to write a character 30 time a day and say out-loud what it mean or in your head. (i think i had 6 words done a day)

i also made flash card of the main symbols that are use for the sounds.

That little "tsu" is called "ten-ten". It changes the letter sound :
k -> g
s -> z
t -> d
h -> b

Write it straight same your example is correct too or look at my hand-writing.



On "ta" there is a "ten-ten". You can write it askew. From my own observe many people usually write it like this. :special4:

@hikari

Thanks, already know about the "ten-ten" though.
Actually, I made a mistake in looking at the symbols, I thought it was a katakana of "ka" and got confused on why there's a letter "i" beside it, but it's actually a hiragana of "ga". I realized it's hiragana because the other symbols below it are also hiragana. :special5:

Source image:

@ Liddo-kun

I see. They're all hiragana. :)

It's been a long time.

Have a question regarding the writing in this image.
[spoiler][/spoiler]

The very first symbol looks like a kanji, or maybe it's a katakana written in a way that I don't understand. Help is appreciated. thankyou

I haven't been around here so long. I'm really busy. :meh:

The first letter is Kanji. It reads as watashi = I,me.
The sentence means "It's not me".

Thanks again for the help. And sorry for bothering your schedule.

Can read the rest, it's just the kanji that's unreadable to me.

You're welcome. It isn't bother me at all. :)