How Long do you think it takes??

[darksyndrem]

Originally Posted by Tsuwabuki

The basic moral you should take away from my rather long diatribe is that immersion is the best way to learn a language, so you should maximise the possibility of Japanese language use.

If your area has a Japanese association, that might be a good place to start. Go to Japanese events, find Japanese restaurants actually run by Japanese families, go to Japanese supermarkets. Force yourself to engage in conversations where Japanese is a necessity. Reading functions the same way. To learn first grade kanji, I spent time with the art club at my junior high school and while the students drew or painted, I created kanji squares, and then posted them all over my bedroom walls. They were the first things I saw when I woke up, and the last things I saw when I went to sleep. I learned them pretty quickly.

Ahh, I see, and I do try my best to completely immerse in Japanese;however, living in the US it's a hard thing to do :\ I've been looking for somewhere like maybe a church or something that has a Japanese service and things like that. And doing my best to find Japanese people at school, I'm afraid the Japanese community is not very large where I live.

[abraincell]

euy, i need HELP. i am tryin to read japanese, but i'm having trouble to distinguish when the word ended, which one would be particle and so on. i can read kana just fine and if i really want to usually i can figure out the kanji, but gosh, just to figure out which is the word, particle ...... e.g with english (and other language that use alphabet) the space separate each word, so easy for me to learn english cuz i know what to plug into the dictionary. but with japanese not using space i just guess what to plug into the dictionary . HELLP.... any tips? i just wish i know someone who understand japanese to help me read...... any tips would be appreciated private message me or email me ......

[chryuop]

You can discuss as long as you want, but the fact remains: if you are ashamed of your mistakes you will get no where.
I studied French for 3 years and Spanish for 1, but due to the fact that Spanish is very similar to Italian (my native language) I can have a med-level conversation in Spanish.

If I were ashamed I would have had to use none of those languages (back then I knew English in a very low school level) in my 4 years at a hotel reception job. Instead I tried to speak the more I could and had people speak to me freely...good for the hotel's name having someone who can speak more lnaguages and very good for the customers. Back then I knew very few words of Japanese learnt from video games and grammar was way above my knowledge. Yet I even tried to speak to 2 Japanese girls who knew only Japanese. I still remember it...I see them coming towards me early in the morning and I thought they were coming down from the room (which I knew there was only one of them sleeping in it, thus paying for 1). I tried to ask them in English, Italian, French and Spanish if they both slept in the bedroom. I gathered my courage and uttered the following phrase talking to the hotel customer (my face alone was saying how sorry I was for what I was saying...not knowing if it was offensive or not): あなたの部屋一人。。。ここに二人. I felt so bad, but they must have understood because she showed me the entrance door and her friend saying in Japanese (I guess) she just got in from outside. I remember when a customer asked me where the restaurant was and I told him we didn't have an inside one and gave him direction to a very good one only 2-300 meters away. His look was unique, he couldn't believe I was making fun of him. Only after a little bit of talking (well, him asking me again and again) I figured out what he said was not restaurant, but rest room. Not to mention that poor Australian guy to whom I asked "pardom me, can you say it again" at his check-in, when he just told me "good day mate".

But my English and Spanish got much better by not being ashamed and trying. My last year there at the hotel a south Amrican customer asked me if I was Spanish coz mu grammar was so good As per English I have been living in the USA for 8 years now and it got much better. Still I make a ton of errors...but if I were ashamed the only result would be shutting up all the time

[DJnohara]

Originally Posted by darksyndrem

How long do you guys think it takes before someone can study Japanese in Japanese?? Like with monolingual dictionaries and stuff like that

The simple answer is after a lot of practice, determination and effort.

[Stibenz]

I don't talk japanese, but with only 2 years of english I could do It already.

[chryuop]

English is way easier to learn compared to other languages.

[Kayci]

Originally Posted by chryuop

English is way easier to learn compared to other languages.

To someone who grew up speaking the language, yes. But not in general

[chryuop]

Originally Posted by Kayci

To someone who grew up speaking the language, yes. But not in general

Sorry, but I do not agree. English has no conjugation, no agreement amongst nouns/adverbs/adjectives, not many different levels of polite speech...and so on. It creates much confusion to understand that a phrase in Italian like "she knows who I am" in English is translated as "you know who I am" and the same for Spanish where they use the third person for you. In French can be even more confusing since they might say "yous" as in the plural of you, but they mean you as in singular person. In Italian and Spanish the gender of nouns can be understood by the final vowel of the word (watch out, coz it is not that simple, way too many exceptions in the way), while in French either you know it or you don't (even here the final for the female is not always there). Spanish amongst the three languages I guess I can say is the one with the more regular conjugation, but in French and above all Italian you will face so many irregularity that will drive you crazy.
As a native speaker of a latin language I found English much easier to learn than French, Dutch, Turkish or Japanese itslef (Dutch and Turkish gave up almost immediately). One of the main problems in English can be the presence of phrasal verbs, which are not of immediate understanding for foreigners and of course the fact that reading/writing English is much more difficult than other languages (too many exceptions). I was told, I don't have personal experience with those, that German and Russian are even harder than latin originated languages.
On the contrary I see many American people who have big problems in trying to learn latin languages.

[Kayci]

Originally Posted by chryuop

Sorry, but I do not agree. English has no conjugation, no agreement amongst nouns/adverbs/adjectives, not many different levels of polite speech...and so on. It creates much confusion to understand that a phrase in Italian like "she knows who I am" in English is translated as "you know who I am" and the same for Spanish where they use the third person for you. In French can be even more confusing since they might say "yous" as in the plural of you, but they mean you as in singular person. In Italian and Spanish the gender of nouns can be understood by the final vowel of the word (watch out, coz it is not that simple, way too many exceptions in the way), while in French either you know it or you don't (even here the final for the female is not always there). Spanish amongst the three languages I guess I can say is the one with the more regular conjugation, but in French and above all Italian you will face so many irregularity that will drive you crazy.
As a native speaker of a latin language I found English much easier to learn than French, Dutch, Turkish or Japanese itslef (Dutch and Turkish gave up almost immediately). One of the main problems in English can be the presence of phrasal verbs, which are not of immediate understanding for foreigners and of course the fact that reading/writing English is much more difficult than other languages (too many exceptions). I was told, I don't have personal experience with those, that German and Russian are even harder than latin originated languages.
On the contrary I see many American people who have big problems in trying to learn latin languages.

Pfftttt. Latin natives learning english. Maybe. Not all think its easy.

And I've seen Japanese, Turkish, Chinese, Syrian, Lebanese, and other people from other countries complain about how English is more difficult than it seems. There is no EASIEST language for the general population, nor is there any HARDEST. Different people feel differently about different languages.

[kirakira]

Originally Posted by Kayci

Pfftttt. Latin natives learning english. Maybe. Not all think its easy.

And I've seen Japanese, Turkish, Chinese, Syrian, Lebanese, and other people from other countries complain about how English is more difficult than it seems. There is no EASIEST language for the general population, nor is there any HARDEST. Different people feel differently about different languages.

You are getting confused between perceived relative language conplexity and absolute language complexity. To say English's writing system is on the same level of complexity as Chinese/Japanese would be foolish, the reverse is true in terms of grammar.