I wanna learn Japanese

Okay I know quite a few people on here understand Japanese, so I thought I'd ask.
What do you recommend? I found a few internet sites, is this a good approach? Do any have sound files so I can learn spoken?

On a similar note, as I haven't started are there any other languages that people think I might benefit more from?

It depends what your goals are. Why do you want to learn a foreign language? One of the languages I think you benefit most from is Latin, because it helps you undersand English (and any Romance language in general) in ways you probably never imagined. I don't know where you live, but in the US a lot of people speak Spanish, so Spanish would be good to use. If you live in Europe, then maybe a European languae would be better to learn, unless you plan to visit Japan.

So far as learning Japanese, it's hard. You will never learn to speak it without a person to talk to who is fluent; the pronunciation is fundamentally different than English, and no sentence describing it will ever do it justice. If you just want to learn to write it, and learn the grammar, then good luck; that's hard too. There are three alphabets: katakana is good to learn first because it's what you use to write words borrowed from other languages (like English); hiragana is what's used for regular Japanese words and such. And then there's kanji. There are thousands upon thousands of kanji, and you need to know at least a thousand or two in order to read Japanese at any level of fluency. Japanese children don't even learn kanji until they're a bit older; childrens' books have kanji with little hiragana above them. So yeah, even kids who are fluent in Japanese already and completely immersed in it take a long time to learn kanji. And there's hardly any way to learn other than rote memorization. There is a bit of a pattern in kanji, but hardly any at all, and there's almost no way to associate a kanji you've never seen before with a word. Apart from learning the grammar and the alphabet, you also have to learn the social customs of the Japanese people which dictate WHEN they use certain words, not just HOW. Learning the language without learning the rules of politeness and in-group/out-group is worse than useless.

I took Japanese in college for two years, in a school with a really good Japanese program, seven hours of class a week plus at least seven hours of study time at home, and I never even reached the level of a toddler. There is a good proportion of adults who are mentally, pretty much physically unable to learn a foreign language no matter how much they study; that's how the human brain works. If you pick a HARD language like Japanese to learn, I imagine that that percentage drops way down. Absent a qualified group of teachers and the motivation of keeping up good grades, I would say that learning Japanese on your own is all but impossible. But good luck.

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Originally Posted by PhoenixAsh

I found a few internet sites, is this a good approach?

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Different people learn differently, and want to learn different aspects of the language, so that depends on if you like that approach or not :p

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Do any have sound files so I can learn spoken?

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Watch lots and lots of subbed anime :D Well, that's good for practice with understanding others speaking anyway - no idea about speaking myself, since I don't need to nor intend to speak it anyway, reading japanese and listening is good enough for me :p

I like learning random words and phrases.

Chuu troute kudasai? (Can I please have a kiss?)

That comes in useful xD

Here's a few good sites for learning random things anyway.

http://www.geocities.com/malla_tobuc...nese_List.html

http://www.thejapanesepage.com/love.htm

http://www.cnfj.navy.mil/phrases.html

You pick up random stuff from watching films and anime a lot too. But I would imagine it would be very hard to learn the whole language and how to speak it.

Definitly watch Japanese programming when you can. Most of what I know, I've learned from there.

I recommend going to a bookstore and picking up a book/tape combo. I've found those to work best. Like Unne said though, Japanese is quite difficult.

Good luck.

Ya I'm currently working on mastering Japanese (although I don't plan to be fluent for at least 4+ years) so far I found websites best to work on, and just memorizing different vocabulary and then using it quite a bit and get to the point where you asscoiate that word with what you mean (like baka for idiot, nasu for eggplant, etc) although that's true to any language I guess.

As for learning the alphabet. I just started, but I have memorized about 14 charcters from hiragana. The second site that Xander gave you is good for learning some hiragana, because they have a button/answer thing to help get you memorizing the different sound to charcter combos and such. Although I find just writing out the charcter over and over and over while saying it helps me to memorize what sound comes from what character. And then quizing yourself and going through pointing to different charcters and saying what sound they produce.

If you basiclaly work on it for a while everyday you'll just become used to it all and eventually you can start doing it without as much thinking. A big thing is to find a good way to work, and keep working. And like many people said, watching anime or TV shows done in japanese helps you to understand it or pick up new words.

I learned what I know through subbed anime >.< my favourite line being 'Inuyasha no baka! Osuwari!' xD

Okay thanks a lot everyone, well I'll try at least, not sure what I'll do about the spoken side, but we'll see.

So who's going to spearhead the weekly "Cid Teaches Japanese" block on the frontsite?

I dare you to learn to read Chinese. Speaking Chinese is rediculously easy compared to reading it (like Dr Unne said about "Kanji").

If you want an easy language to learn go for German (it's very similar to english from what I think I know). It sounds cool and it's really easy if you can pick up the vocab.

Knowing German grammar sort of helps before starting on Japanese grammar, I think - that's what I found, well with the sticking the verb at the end of sentences and stuff anyway :p I did not like the fact nouns can be one of three genders in German though, too much extra stuff to memorise :p German is far easier to read than English though - you pronounce absolutely every letter you see (the German way, of course) unlike all the weird stuff in English :p