Quote:
Originally Posted by Nagoyankee
Here's how Japanese kids go:
Hiragana first. Katakana second. Master these completely and move on to kanji. DO NOT depend on romaji. Nothing important is ever written in romaji (books , magazines, websites, etc...)
Other tips ( Read some of my posts in the Language Help section and decide if you should listen to me. I want you to have that choice.):
Go get a book. Don't rely too much on websites because you will tend to be too lazy to even hold a pen. In the long run, you will learn much better by using paper and pen than by gazing at the PC screen.
Never use anime and J-rock lyrics as your study materials. We Japanese simply DO NOT speak or write like that in real life.
DO NOT learn from other kids your own age on JF. PM me if you want to know who the other real Japanese are on JF and who sadly pretends to be Japanese.
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I can back this up! I'm doing it the exact same way--I learned Hiragana first and progressed to Katakana thereafter. I bought a textbook (GENKI I) and started studying grammar from there. After finishing that textbook, I bought a kanji dictionary (Essential Kanji by P.G. O'Neill) and an English-Japanese dictionary (By Random House). The one thing I dislike about my dictionary is that it is all sorted by romaji in the Japanese section (but it DOES have the real Japanese next to it, though). I finished the second GENKI book (GENKI II) about 3 months later after working on it for about 2 hours every night. After that is learning from reading REAL Japanese text--colloquial and non-colloquial. This summer I will be living in Japan, so that will definitely be of great aid. I do plan to buy some higher level Japanese textbooks while I'm there. I've always heard that people's Japanese skill skyrockets after a long visit to Japan.
Though I am not fluent yet, I do believe that THIS is THE road to fluency.