learning the ropes
 

hi,

in to years from now I can study Japanese at school. But I want to begin now!
So can someone please tell me where to begin? I watch alot of anime, in the future I hope to go study in Japan.

im learning japanese as well and i started off by learning all of the hiragana and katakana symbols because if you know them you can then write in japanese (then learn the kanji later on) and i also have lots of japanese penpals who teach me words and slang etc plus when you exchange letters you get to know about japanese culture!

One of my penpals told me that anime's and that are ok at teaching you the language but she said you have to be really careful of the pronounciation because in anime's etc they tend to speak in high voices and its not always how its pronounced. but i recommend watching japanese movies that arent anime (because its how they talk! :P)

Hope that helps! its a hard language to learn! (^^)
Good luck with it! (*-*) :ywave:

A good place to start is Tae Kim's website here: Tae Kim's Japanese guide to Japanese grammar

He explains Japanese language from the writing systems and basics of grammar, all the way to some more "advanced" grammar structures.

Make sure you read through the Introduction page to find out exactly what his guide covers and what it does not cover.

You will need to learn how to read Hiragana and Katakana before you can really progress through his website, but they don't take very long to learn and he has a section covering the writing systems anyway.

Luckily once you get past the writing systems and the different way of thinking, Japanese (In my opinion) turns out to be quite an easy language to learn.

Good Luck :)

arigato goizamasu!!
After my school exams, Im going to learn this!
any good sites for kanji?
@ Lucas89: thx very good site!

edit: almost forgot: I read that we have to follow a sort of stroke order when writing Japanese?!

umm i dont know about any sites for kanji but i bought a series of books which are really helpful to me and pretty simple you can buy them off amazon relatively cheap;
*Kana de manga* helps you with the hiragana and katakana symbols,
then it goes on to a series of about 6 books i think called *kanji de manga* which have about 80 kanji symbols in each. They are about A5 books and have lots of pictures and the explanations are really simple to do with the stroke order! you get the hang of it easily! (^^)

guess ill get some books, but that'll probably be after my exams

@mxx: Yes, you must learn correct stroke order when learning the writing system.

why? why must it be in that stroke order?
they cant check it right?

Learning the stroke order is like learning culture; you can always question it, but what it is, is what it is. Learning the correct order is good to know, though you dont have to follow through all the time when you're writing.

Knowledge is power, right?

So have you read my PM or not yet?
If you did so, reply me plz... I'm waiting.......!!!:)