My Study
 

Well, I wanted to share what I do to study Japanese right now, and hopefully yall can help me on how to improve! Well, right now I'm trying AJATT, I'm learning Hiragana by writing a few down and then copying them without looking a ton and I then add a few letters. I've been doing that for a day or two and I've gotten through 25 of the Hiragana :) I'm also looking up random words, most objects that I see throughout the day and writing them down and when I see them again I repeat that word in Japanese. (I hope this is making sense) Also I'm always listening to Japanese music or listening to a Japanese radio station. I'm working on getting some anime in all Japanese right now. Is there anything else that I should be doing??

Oh also, I have everything on my computer that can be in Japanese, in Japanese

People say Genki is a good textbook. Pound for pound music and anime are not good tools for language learning. Your time is much better spent with your nose in a textbook than watching anime or translating lyrics.

eh I don't know, textbooks and me aren't very good friends.
I've been going with AJATT (I can't remember if I said that already or not) so, I was kind of talking about like increasing my Japanese "environment" and things like that. Also, could someone help me set up an srs with sentences like he talks about in AJATT?

I never really got AJATT, but yes different people learn differently. In order to pick up a language without studying, you will have to live in Japan, and communicate by trial and error and slowly, and I do mean sloooowly, you may be able to communicate, but you will still be illiterate.

Furhter to what MMN said, there is no a chance in hell you can learn Japanese just by watching Japanese anime and lyrics.

While I don't think that listening to Japanese music and watching anime is a bad thing (it can be fun to pick out words that you recognize and get a sense of the pace at which people talk) I agree with Kirakira and MMM that you should never use it as a learning tool. You should never use English subtitles to help you learn because they've often been changed and don't mean the same thing that they are saying in Japanese.

Kirakiraさん, better MMN than M'N'M...sorry I was just kidding...

Ok, I think you guys misunderstood me, when I said I'm watching anime(no subtitles btw) and listening to Japanese music or the radio, I don't mean that to be the way I'm going to "learn" Japanese. Because I know you can't learn Japanese by just listening to it. Right now, what I'm doing to learn Japanese is learning the syllabyries(sp?) by the method I said in my first post.

Please help, I feel like it's taking forever to learn just the Hiragana, and I would like to be able to read Hiragana and Katakana as soon as possible so I can stop using Romaji

Memorize five a day. If you can't do that...then something must be wrong. lol
And IMO, AJATT is a bunch of bologna.

Disagreed. I learn by doing and when i'm not in my japanese environment i feel im letting myself down. I've been out of the loop for the past 6 weeks now.. one more week of uni before we break off for a bit then i can study properly again. Everything i know is from AJATT, so it can't be so bad (yes yes i know I suck, but the point is - im getting there).

Well, I can learn them I just feel like I'm learning them very slowly. I've gotten through like 35 in a few days, well I guess that's better than I think it is?

There's no reason you shouldn't be able to learn all of the Hiragana and Katakana in a week or less. I made flash cards for all of them and started with Hiragana. Take three days to learn all of them front and back (be able to know how to say しゅ and be able to write kyo etc.) then do the same for Katakana. I took my flashcards literally everywhere with me and just reviewed them whenever I was waiting for something. On day seven you should mix them all up and go through all of them knowing each one and if it's Hiragana or Katakana.


That's how I learned, at least.


Oh. And it also helps if you come up with stupid sayings for the ones you can't remember very well (よ looks like a YO-yo, etc.)

Genki is a really good textbook.

Uriko recommends. (^-^)-b

35 out of the 46 hiragana? that's pretty good, don't you think?

how i learned it, i just sat down one night & memorized.
rewrote things 'til they stuck.
used the hiragana & wrote the names of characters or celebrities that i liked.

wasn't too shabby.

You can "learn" all the hiragana in a few days, but it takes weeks to "know" them. Find a pace that works for you (I recommend 5 a day) and stick with it.

Yeah~I guess you're right. And is there any untranslated online manga? Like onemanga.com except in Japanese that yall think would be good for practicing my reading? I've been looking all through my school library and I've yet to find any Japanese books, trying not to spend money lol

How about chatting with Japanese people at Yahoo Japan Chat?

Yahoo!メッセンジャー - チャット

And here is a link site for free Manga sites (for Japanese).

http://enchanting.cside.com/service/freecomic.html

Among those links, you can find some picture books for Japanese children with limitted Kanji.

Web

Unfortunately it's just memory work. You'll just have to remember it, use flash cards, whatever.

One thing you can try is listen to Japanese music while following the lyrics. Great for learning hiragana (bad for everything else). But give it a go.

Manga is a terribly flawed way to learn Japanese mainly because the Japanese written in those things are way too broken. They drop random particles, shorten some while not others.

To a native Japanese person with a solid foundation in Japanese, they know what the author is trying to say and their brains automatically fill in the gaps. But for Japanese learners with shaky foundations, it just looks like a random mess.

e.g. Japanese person hears "なにやってんの？", brain process it as なにをしているの？（怒られたかも）.

Thanks Radio!! And Kira, I see what you mean by what you said with the manga, but I'm not really looking to use manga to learn japanese, just to get used to seeing the Hiragana and Katakana and recognizing them quickly. If that makes more sense?

Well, I've come to another problem to bother yall with :(
I don't know if any of yall use an SRS(spaced repetition system) but if you do, I could use a little help. First of all, my Japanese keyboarding will only type in Katakana, I don't have a clue how you guys type with Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Secondly, when I'm looking for sentences, and I've found a sentence that I want to learn, how will I know what it is in english? Or what the "answer" is? I thought there was one more thing but I can't remember at the moment lol
Thanks in advance for the help and thank you very much for the help you guys have already given :)