Emuparadise group Project ;)

[AKUMA™]

I'm surprised pkt-zero hasn't posted here, I'm pretty sure he can read japanese.

"I'm turnin Japanese! I'm turnin Japanese!"

[Gare]

I'm surprised pkt-zero hasn't posted here, I'm pretty sure he can read japanese.

I'm turnin Japanese! I'm turnin Japanese!"

That's because it's 7am here and he's still sleeping. Should wake him up soon. Ahem. Anyway, I think he'll post ASAP. He can read some Japanese, yes, but not that much.

And yeah, learning Japanese is not an easy task.

[Soeru]

I used to be reeeallly into learning the language. I'd always watched subtitled anime and I'd read a lot of lessons and stuff online, also downloaded a few books and audio books. I picked up a lot in very little time but still not even close to understanding everything. No written Jap for me, but my pronounciation is real good as I understand the Japanese phonetics quite well, and I can make out all the words someone sais but I don't fully understand the grammar. I still amaze myself when I undestand an entire sentence. I kind of drifted away from learning Japanese, along with my interest in anime and stuff, I just don't watch it anymore.

Learning any language through interaction or simply listening to it constantly helps sooooo much, you only learn a small fraction of what you need in a classroom. I spoke English since I was very young, but If I hadn't gone to the U.S. and lived here for some time I would have never developed such fluency in the language(and be familiarized with the culture). My friends back in Spain have a solid grasp on the language, but they still suffer from a thick accent and they can't speak nearly as fluently or as fast as me despite having known and practiced the language for as long. (it's a bi-lingual school, so most of our classes are in English(except for Spanish literature and Spanish history)). Since they don't use the language in everyday situations, they're missing out on a lot of expressions. Ie: they wouldn't understand what it means to "put down a dog because it is diseased" or something, they would think it's nonsense, but it's actually referring to killing the animal.

I also beleive I speak and write better English than a high percentage of the the people in my (US) high school, but that's a lot of nimrods, so I'm not exactly sure that's something to be proud of.

It's better to be able to speak a language correctly enough that people will understand you first, worry about reading/writing and stuff later, especially if you're going to the country or something, and totally if it's a language with a completely different alphabet!

Take this advice from someone who picks up languages inhumanly fast.

Edit: A good friend of mine is Korean, but he speaks Japanese, decent English, and decent Spanish. He tells me that Japanese is really a simple language, it's just... different. It's just a very different approach to communication, especially for people that only speak European(or Native American or African )-based languages. Frankly I think Spanish -my native tongue- is one of the hardest I've ever come by. Sure you might think it's simple if you've had 2 or 3 years of it in school, but if you were to read a passage from "El Quijote" or read a legal document of some sort, you would shit your pants.

The Spanish language is just so twisted and elaborate and elegant, not as straight-forward as you'd think a language should be, at least in my opinion. Verb conjugations will KILL you, unless you speak the language every day with people who speak it properly(you'll never learn 100% proper Spanish in the US, sorry fellow yankees. ). French is equally as hard with even more fucked up verb cojugations, writing is a bit of challenge too...

German and other Germanic-based tongues are also difficult, but honestly I think they're not too complicated, it's just very different grammar and sentence construction, but at least you still have the same alphabet.

English is very straight-forward for me, the only thing that makes it challenging is the insane amount of expressions you have to be familiar with to get by(I can't imagine not ever knowing them).

As for Japanese, if you really want to learn it badly, I can only say that subtitled anime and music did a LOT for me. Not to mention it's a way more fun way to learn. Here's a fun way to start, watch subtitled anime for a long time then some day in the future sit down to actually learn the language and vocabulary. You'll quickly realize how much Japanese you already know!

[pkt-zer0]

I'm surprised pkt-zero hasn't posted here, I'm pretty sure he can read japanese.

"I'm turnin Japanese! I'm turnin Japanese!"

Keh. Just woke up.
Still don't see the point of this thread.
I think the only way to efficiently learn Japanese is to live in such an environment. Tons of words have different meanings, using the wrong synonym can be seen as offensive in some situation. It's too easy to show disrespect just with the way you're talking.
Even so, learning to understand speech is a lot easier than learning to write. Too many kanji. The rest are easy, though, just give me a kanji dictionary, and I'll read any sentence in a few days time.
Anyway, it would be quite useful for me to be able to understand japanese, because a) dubbed anime suxx. b) a lot of decent Japanese games don't get translated. c) practicing martial arts means you'll be learning it from someone of Japanese origin. Who probably has a terrible accent, and is incomprehensible otherwise.

[TobyNY]

What is the main difference between katakana, hiragana and kanji? Is there one thats spoken more then the other among natives? Of all the Japanese animes/movies I've seen I could have sworn they were all speaking the same type of Japanese.

[Winged 2.0]

Don't quote me on this but I think that they all are combined into the same language.

[pkt-zer0]

What is the main difference between katakana, hiragana and kanji? Is there one thats spoken more then the other among natives? Of all the Japanese animes/movies I've seen I could have sworn they were all speaking the same type of Japanese.

They're just different methods of writing the exact same language. It can be used to convey different styles, though, for example using katakana in place of a kanji can make that particular word stand out, it's also indicates slang. Hiragana is used for the attached particles, they signify the relation between words (that are usually expressed with kanji)

[AKUMA™]

This thread ought to be called "Japanese 101: All your n00bs are belong to us!!!" Learning this language sounds like it's gonna be a bear.

[ADW]

What is the main difference between katakana, hiragana and kanji?

Kanji are ideograms. It means each symbol represents a word, like most hieroglyphs do.
Kana symbols are phonetics. It means each symbol represents a sound (a syllable to exact), like in western alphabets.
Hiragana and katakana are two sets of symbols used for writing kana.

Mentioning hiragana, katakana and kanji together like milestones for learning japanese written language is significantly misleading for newbees. There are 46 basic, 71 total symbols per each set of kana. It's 142 symbols used for kana versus 2000 basic symbols, and total may be well above mentioned number of 17000, used for kanji. Saying that you know kanas but can't read kanji is like, when learning western language, to say: "I know letters but I can't make out the words"

[Cookie Monster]

The only EP member I know of that knows japanese is nihonjintaylor, he has been living there for some time and he has a link with japanese lessons for begginers in his sig.
edit: he removed the link from his sig :/

Oh, and Soeru, why would you say a legal document in spanish is hard to read/understand?

[Norgus]

Another good site for learning a bit of japanese is http://www.japanese-online.com/ and I would say they have a clearer path to follow to do the lessons (instead of providing a long list of categories you go through the lessons in a linear way.)

Perhaps we should follow one set of lessons and apply them in the thread with the romaji, then kana then english version? (I would like to avoid using kanji and put the used hiragana in its place for simplicitys sake)

I wonder how my surname translates into japanese..? I can guess I suppose.

hello, my name is Neil Gordon. Pleased to meet you.
konnichiwa, watashi wa gorudon niru desu. Hajimemashite.
こんいちわわたしわごルドン二ルですはじめまして

Can someone who knows better correct my use of kana? For one I often see konnichiwa with the 'wa' as the 'ha' symbol. Same for watashi wa. Can somebody explain the reason to me?

[pkt-zer0]

hello, my name is Neil Gordon. Pleased to meet you.
konnichiwa, watashi wa gorudon niru desu. Hajimemashite.
こんいちわわたしわごルドン二ルですはじめまして

Can someone who knows better correct my use of kana? For one I often see konnichiwa with the 'wa' as the 'ha' symbol. Same for watashi wa. Can somebody explain the reason to me?

The 'wa' particle that indicates that the previous noun is the subject of the sentence is written as 'ha'. Same for the particle indicating the object, 'o', is written as 'wo'. Don't ask me why, it just is. And you mixed hiragana into katakana in 'Gordon' - that's not good. And konnichi is written as こんにち, kon meaning 'good', nichi meaning 'day'.
今日は、私はゴルドン・ニールです。はじめまして。
I believe I used the correct kanji for konnichi and and watashi. Don't know what hajimemashite should be written like.

[Norgus]

Thanks for that I didn't mean to mix hiragana and katakana in my name, but it serves me right for not double checking (same sort of thing with konnichi, as pressing 'n' twice for me just produces a single 'n' so I should have pressed the key 3 times to get 'n''ni')

[Malikman]

Keh. Just woke up.
Still don't see the point of this thread.
I think the only way to efficiently learn Japanese is to live in such an environment. Tons of words have different meanings, using the wrong synonym can be seen as offensive in some situation. It's too easy to show disrespect just with the way you're talking.
Even so, learning to understand speech is a lot easier than learning to write. Too many kanji. The rest are easy, though, just give me a kanji dictionary, and I'll read any sentence in a few days time.
Anyway, it would be quite useful for me to be able to understand japanese, because a) dubbed anime suxx. b) a lot of decent Japanese games don't get translated. c) practicing martial arts means you'll be learning it from someone of Japanese origin. Who probably has a terrible accent, and is incomprehensible otherwise.

I agrere with the fact that to best learn is to live in there envireoment but if we all wanted to learn Japanese and went into there enviroment they'd have tons of people running around like idiots. I think before you go to a place to learn there enviroment you need to learn there language and culture... just to be familar with it and to know what your getting yourself into.

[Shadow X]

Konnichiwa bitches.