Quote:
Originally Posted by jorge10
My learning experience for Japanese:
I took a half a year (school year) class last year in college and tried to learn the basics of Japanese. I had to drop out of the class a month before the class started b/c I was still in high school at the time and high school math was killing me. I went online not too long ago and stumbled on a vid of a dude translating for a Japanese guy. I checked out the guy's channel and was amazed at how many languages he knew and he was 28. He was a polyglot that knew like 10 languages, Japanese being one of them. I checked out his other videos and saw him speaking different languages in different videos. I was even more surprised that he learned the languages on his own. I was not open-minded enough to believe that one could not learn a language on their own and had to be through school. So I have taken it upon myself to learn Japanese on my own.  I learned hiragana at school, but I'm having a hard time with some symbols so I have decided to start from scratch and just barely started grinding. I bought the book called, "Japanese the Manga way," and am planning to buy two kodansha dictionaries. Idk if its proper to ask in this thread, but my eagerness is going to make me ask anyway: Any suggestions on learning Japanese right after I learn Hiragana and Katakana? |
Hi jorge san,
It is obviously possible to learn a foreign language and master it on your own! I already mastered 2 languages which I studied on my own and I am now on my way to master Japanese (Hopefully, I'll be able to do that soon) as well as the three mandatory languages which we learn in school.
Studying a language without a teacher or what you call "dokugaku (self-study)" actually has one main problem, which is the lack of guiding. In other words, a learner to a new language sometimes need to be guided in many fields of the language including grammar, vocab (and kanji in japanese) etc....
As for you question concerning the next step after learning the Japanese alphabet, personally, I would recommend you to reinforce and enrich your knowledge of the different Japanese terms and vocab. I mean, you should first make sure you know hiragana very well practicing reading new words in Japanese. Afterwards, you may move on to the next step, which may be studying some basic grammar and kanji.
I don't really know a lot about your purpose to study japanese, but whatever it may be, you can study that language ON YOUR OWN and practice with japanese native speakers (if possible, for instance, it is impossible for me to do that here where i live) and if you have any questions or if you face any trouble while studying, you may find someone to help you in the internet and maybe in this forum!
Good luck
