I Want To Learn Japanese

[joshdudeha]

The language kinda fascinates me.
I was wandering (I'm only 14 and we don't have classes for Japanese) where I could learn it?

(:

[original_jamingrit]

Best way to learn it: do an exchange program. maybe summer exchange, this would be a good time to start planning for doing something like that next summer.

A female friend of mine did that, but now she hates Japanese.

[RiceMonster]

Yeah, the best way to learn a new language is if you speak it with other people. Being in Japan for a while would force you to learn it. I tried learning German from a book before and needless to say, I didn't get very far because I have one friend who speaks it, but he speaks English better.

[Icehuck]

A nice article about learning Japanese and has a few tips.

Clicky (http://www.dannychoo.com/adp/eng/668/Learn+Japanese.html)

[chucky chuckaluck]

i only know one phrase - tofu no kado ni atama o butsukete shine. i think it means "welcome to my home" or something.

[spupy]

i only know one phrase - tofu no kado ni atama o butsukete shine. i think it means "welcome to my home" or something.

Hm, I have only the first level (A1) in Japanese, but I'm very certain that the last word in that phrase means "Die!". :)

[Masoris]

i only know one phrase - tofu no kado ni atama o butsukete shine. i think it means "welcome to my home" or something.

"豆腐の角に頭をぶつけて死ね。"
I have no idea how can I translate this funny and silly sentence to English. :lolflag:

[iption]

I used Google translate with "豆腐の角に頭をぶつけて死ね。"

It translated: Tofu head to hit the corner of the corpse.

:lolflag:

[Masoris]

I used Google translate with "豆腐の角に頭をぶつけて死ね。"

It translated: Tofu head to hit the corner of the corpse.

:lolflag:

DON'T BELIEVE GOOGLE TRANSLATION! :lolflag:
That really means "Hit your head toward edge of Tofu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu), and die."

Tofu is one of East Asian food, which made from bean. It's very soft, you never die with this.
It might be one of silly sentence on Japanese Manga.

I have no idea how 'chucky chuckaluck' remember this sentense as "welcome to my home".

[Masoris]

The language kinda fascinates me.
I was wandering (I'm only 14 and we don't have classes for Japanese) where I could learn it?

(:

This website is good for learning a language: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/index.html
I also use it when I have question about a language. Although most time I ask about English.

If you cannot speak any East Asian language, and if you are not in Japan. The difficultly will be like this:
Japanese > Franch+Spanish+Italian

[chucky chuckaluck]

I have no idea how 'chucky chuckaluck' remember this sentense as "welcome to my home".

i can't believe one of my friends would tell me something like that. i'm too gullible.

[Catharina]

On our website you can find a free Japanese grammar course and also a link to a list of other recources. Hope it helps.

http://www.open-of-course.org/courses/course/view.php?id=62

[Choad]

i want to learn Japanese at some point, or maybe Chinese

seeing as this is a thread about language i may as well point out a few mistakes so you can learn :)


I have no idea how can I translate this funny and silly sentence to English. :lolflag:
I have no idea how I can translate this funny and silly sentence in to English. :lolflag:

Tofu is one of East Asian food, which made from bean. It's very soft, you never die with this.
Tofu is an East Asian food, which is made from beans. It's very soft, you would never die from this.

It might be one of silly sentence on Japanese Manga.
It might be a silly sentence from a Japanese Manga.

I have no idea how 'chucky chuckaluck' remember this sentense as "welcome to my home".
I have no idea why 'chucky chuckaluck' thinks this sentense means "welcome to my home".

I also use it when I have question about a language. Although most time I ask about English.
I also use it when I have a question about a language. Although most of the time I ask about English.


your English is good enough to make yourself understood :D i wish i was as good at Japanese as you are at English

[LaRoza]

I know a little Japanese (All your base are belong to us. Somebody set us up the bomb, etc)

I am learning a language right now. I do not have access to native speakers (at the moment).

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=855040

Hindi is not like Japanese, but there are some things that will be similiar:


Learn the culture! The culture influences not only the language, but the use of the language. For the importance of culture, see http://matthewhelmke.com/node/305 Even if you don't get a good grasp of the language, the knowledge and understanding of the culture can benefit you greatly (and you can always work on the language later)
Learn the writing system. Devanagari (writing system used by Sanskrit and many Indian languages) is not at all like Latin letters (it is better in many ways I think). Japan has a more complicated writing system with four different systems (all with a history).
Learning how to use the language can be tricky. Do you want to read it? Listen to it? Speak it? I am not expert on this. I found this site though. http://japanese.about.com/od/japaneselessons/u/StartLearning.htm I recommend getting a book on the subject later if you feel you want to continue.
Being able to hear the language is important. Japanese movies will be helpful (I have an Indian movie, and it really helps)

[walkman79]

Is there any good software to learn japanese on Ubuntu ?
I couldn't find any good application to learn japanese. I have some programs which run on Windows but they don't work on any linux distro with wine.

That's why I don't use Linux at home :(. I love Japanese Language. I lived in Japan 1 year and I learnt a lot of japanese there but my main source for learning the language were my friends and my books :P. I hadn't used any software there, I started using applications after I came back to my country, and I found some good applications for Windows but nothing for Linux.

Books:
Minna no Nihongo
Genki
Remembering the Kanji
Kodansha books
Japanese Times books

Applications:
Declan Japanese software (Dictionary and ReadWrite programs)
Kotoba (for spanish speakers like me)
NJstar Japanese WP
NextUp Neospeech Japanese voices
Babylon (very useful program)
KanjiGold
KingKanji

Some useful Websites:
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/M.Rowley/resources.html
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/japanese.html

As LaRoza said it's important to learn the culture and the writing system, but it could also take a lot of time. First of all, you must learn the 2 simple writing system Hiragana and katakana. In any newspaper or japanese literature you will find that at least 40% is written in these two syllabaries, even some kanji is written with hiragana on top to aid people who don't know the kanji (kanji with hiragana on top is called furigana). Furthermore, hiragana and katakana are the phonemes upon the japanese language is based, that is, if you are able to associate the phoneme with their respective sound you will be learning truly japanese and not only the romanized system which is not japanese (Romaji is just a representation of the kana in Latin alphabet).

[clinux]

i want to learn Japanese at some point, or maybe Chinese

seeing as this is a thread about language i may as well point out a few mistakes so you can learn :)


I have no idea how I can translate this funny and silly sentence in to English. :lolflag:

Tofu is an East Asian food, which is made from beans. It's very soft, you would never die from this.

It might be a silly sentence from a Japanese Manga.

I have no idea why 'chucky chuckaluck' thinks this sentense means "welcome to my home".

I also use it when I have a question about a language. Although most of the time I ask about English.


your English is good enough to make yourself understood :D i wish i was as good at Japanese as you are at English

ubuntu dictionary, can i download you from synaptic?

[hvac3901]

Just remember if you can say the name of the state "Ohio" then you already know how to say hello in japanese :)

[freebeer]

I don't speak the language, but I believe "Ohio" is the equivelent of "good morning"... I've never heard it used past noon.

[kernelhaxor]

Check out Livemocha.com - the social way to learn a language ..

lots of course content, practise with native speakers, text, audio & video with native speakers and lots more!
and its all FREE!!

[GrandpaLeaman]

Take a look at Mango Languages. They have courses in 12 languages, including Japanese, and the beginner courses are free. You would have to pay for any advanced courses.

http://www.mangolanguages.com/

Still, as good as Mango looks, total immersion is still the best way to learn a new language.

[hvac3901]

I don't speak the language, but I believe "Ohio" is the equivelent of "good morning"... I've never heard it used past noon.

OK, so nobody should recommend the foreign language on phonics than. It was a radio commercial for years, and yes you are right it is Good Morning.

[zmjjmz]

My dad gave me something called "Let's Learn Japanese".
Supposedly it's a television course, so you could prolly find some torrents, but I have it in the book form, which has taught me a lot (of which I remember　すこし)

EDIT: Just so you know, it's like 20 years old, so good luck.

[Igniteflow]

There's a cool game called Slime Forest which you can get free at http://lrnj.com/ which will help you with reading. It's a RPG and is a lot more fun than leafing your way through dry books. Rosetta Stone is a very thorough and good language course used by US diplomats and military, so is also worth a look at. Spend a few weeks learning the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets before you head onto Kanji and watch plenty of Japanese movies and anime to remind yourself the language has a culture behind it, helps to maintain the interest.

[Northsider]

I don't speak the language, but I believe "Ohio" is the equivelent of "good morning"... I've never heard it used past noon.

Correct. And the polite way to say it would be ohayou gozaimasu. Konnichiwa and konbanwa are both "hello" (good afternoon and good evening respectively)

I found Rosetta Stone to be helpful, but only to a point. With the more complex sentences and ideas that method is just useless.

[migge]

Books:
Minna no Nihongo
Genki
Remembering the Kanji
Kodansha books
Japanese Times books



I love Genki 1 & 2. Those are the best beginner level books out there. The audio CDs are pretty good too (when I was using the books there were "free" MP3s available on some university homepage I don't remember now). Unfortunately AFAIK there are no intermediate level books that even come close (please message me if you know about any). If you can afford it it's probably better to spend some time in Japan after you learned the beginner level vocabulary and grammar.

If you can't afford it, your local university might have a club for learners of Japanese and Japanese overseas students to get some speaking practice. If not there will probably still be individual Japanese students who are learning your language and are looking for language partners to practise with. I don't know much about the university infrastructure in other countries. But I imagine here in Germany if you are serious enough it would even be possible to find someone to practice with even if you are not a university student yourself.

For Vocabulary I like the software Anki. It does a great job - especially for Asian languages. It's flexible enough to even handle something like Heisig's method to learn Kanji.

P.S.: As an exercise. If you can analyse the grammar of "Ohayou gozaimasu." you will probably know...
1) ...most beginner level grammar already.
2) ...that Japanese Grammar is horrible ;).

[Metallion]

I can speak Japanese actually... 豆腐の角に頭をぶつけて死ね would mean "Die by banging your head on a tofu's edge." Good day indeed :lolflag:

As for learning... My learning started by watching A LOT of anime and listening to the language while reading the English subtitles. Then later I met Japanese people and talked to them... Now I have a Japanese girlfriend and before I knew it I was near fluent. :)

I started learning hiragana and katakana by studying them by myself a little bit and then use them in im chats with friends... Also reading dragonball in the original language helped a lot. :) Now recently I'm learning kanji in the same way... By using them in im chats.

[sanjit]

The grammar, vocabulary, hiragana, and katakana are relatively easy. The kanji are a different story.