Learning Japanese.... Who is into it?

[dragonloverx]

I am trying to learn Japanese. I like the music the video games and the visual novels, but most seem to be in their language. I am studying the language and learning it… very slowly. My lab partner in one of my classes is from Japan and she says my pronunciation is very good, but the real problem is remembering what the words mean; also learning how to read in Japanese, since so many games and visual novels use that text. Who else is trying to learn Japanese and if so how is it going?

[EternalLurker]

Yeah, perfect pronunciation isn't particularly promotive of improved......um.....comprehension....of the written language. Crap. Was on a semi-accidental roll there.

[whiteflags]

I tried to do it by myself since I can't really find a class to take at college. Didn't work for obvious reasons.

Yeah, perfect pronunciation isn't particularly promotive of improved......um.....comprehension....of the written language.

proficiency in

[dragonloverx]

Well I have tried different books and audio lessons but none of them worked. I am using that Rosetta Stone program now. It seems to work pretty good and I was doing rather well, but I slacked off a bit and now it is hard to get back into, I have decided to start over again. It seems to be working but as you go it gets harder. Of course my Japanese friend told me she thought is would be easier to learn English than Japanese…. well at least she was honest.

[Captain Niggawatts]

Of course my Japanese friend told me she thought is would be easier to learn English than Japanese…. well at least she was honest.

No, they are both like the hardest languages to learn. Japanese is one of the hardest for people who speak a European language to learn, and English was invented by masochists on drugs.

[The Commissar]

Not really. English isn't easy to learn unless you already spoke a Germanic language. Japanese is easy for people who speak a Romance language because their pronunciation is similar, and super easy for Sicilians because the Sicilian double l is pronounced exactly like the r in Japanese.

Also Arabic was here, learning everything else is a cinch.

[Silentcook]

Japanese is easy for people who speak a Romance language because their pronunciation is similar

Okay.

and super easy for Sicilians because the Sicilian double l is pronounced exactly like the r in Japanese

Wat.

[The Commissar]

and super easy for Sicilians because the Sicilian double l is pronounced exactly like the r in Japanese

Wat.

The -ll- sound (in words of Latin origin, for example) manifests itself in Sicilian as a voiced retroflex plosive with the tip of the tongue curled up and back, a sound which is not part of standard (Tuscan) Italian. In standard literary Sicilian, this sound is written simply as -dd- (but can also be found written ḍḍ, ddh or ddr). The sound itself is not [d] but rather [ɖ]. For example, the Italian word bello [ˈbɛllo] is beddu [ˈbɛɖɖu] in Sicilian. For comparison, this sound is somewhat like the 'r' sound in Japanese.

[PRZ]

I'm actually doing good, I have perfect pronunciation since Japanese has same pronunciation as Spanish.

[Silentcook]

...you just made me want to facepalmvandalize that Wikipedia page into oblivion. Shame it would do nothing. LolWikipedia indeed.
Anyway, Sicilian is in a half-assed bastard position, a limbo inbetween dialect and minority language, and not even natives necessarily speak it, though they might well pick up the "accent" and use it when they speak Italian.
Therefore, going back to my original "wat", that's a bit like saying that SOME of the citizens of a capital - say, those of a particular quarter - MIGHT have an easy time learning Japanese because ONE of their phonemes is close to a Japanese phoneme.

No.

[Deimos]

Not really. English isn't easy to learn unless you already spoke a Germanic language. Japanese is easy for people who speak a Romance language because their pronunciation is similar, and super easy for Sicilians because the Sicilian double l is pronounced exactly like the r in Japanese.

Also Arabic was here, learning everything else is a cinch.

Agreed, Semitic languages are a class of their own but at least they do have a relatively tame "alphabeth" in contrast to the Japanese language since they have two massive ones. Also, it's the syntax and semantics that make a language hard to learn, especially languages that possess a great deal of homonyms.

[Guest]

Well I have tried different books and audio lessons but none of them worked. I am using that Rosetta Stone program now. It seems to work pretty good and I was doing rather well, but I slacked off a bit and now it is hard to get back into, I have decided to start over again. It seems to be working but as you go it gets harder. Of course my Japanese friend told me she thought is would be easier to learn English than Japanese…. well at least she was honest.

MOD EDIT: do not ask for links to pirated or other illegal software on these forums.

[dragonloverx]

Not too worry I paid the $400 dollars for the real program.

[G3n0c1de]

I've heard that Japanese classes will only teach you the formal way to say and write things. When one actually goes to Japan or watches an anime, the way they actually speak is different. Real life Japanese has a lot of it's own slang, and more common ways of saying things than what is taught in class.

[The Commissar]

I've heard that Japanese classes will only teach you the formal way to say and write things. When one actually goes to Japan or watches an anime, the way they actually speak is different. Real life Japanese has a lot of it's own slang, and more common ways of saying things than what is taught in class.

All language classes do that.