Japanese Options

[Lenyo]

Hey, I've been seriously considering it for a WHILE.

I've got tons of free time on my hand, I finish all my chores early in the morning, and I decided I want to start an intensive study on the Japanese language. And further delving into such matters later, I wish to learn to read Kanji.


I know we have a plethora of Japanese speaking people on this forum, and I don't know of any classes I can take in real life to help me learn Japanese, so could anybody here help give me tips, teach me the tricks and stuff, and help me out?

Thanks.

[Mizukithepanda]

I do agree somewhat, but you really need to know what each word in the phrase means/does or it's useless. Like, say you know what, "I want to go to the bathroom," is, but you don't actually know what each individual word in the phrase, "Toire ni ikitai yo," does. Just knowing that "I want to go to the bathroom" is "Toire ni ikitai yo" does you nothing. Really, you need to know that "Toire" means "toilet", "ikitai" means "want to go" (and further that the base verb for "go" is "iku" and that "tai" is a verb ending that changes the meaning to "want to - "), "ni" is a particle that generally means in/into/in the direction of/etc, and "yo" is an additive that indicates emotion and generally makes the sentence sound a little less bland. You also need to know that sentences are generally in subject-object-verb format. (Like, if I were to write out the full, proper sentence for "I want to go to the bathroom", I'd actually write "Ore/Boku/Watashi wa -subject- toire ni -object- ikitai desu -verb- yo." In the shortened form, 'I', the subject, is understood as is the rather unnecessarily polite copula, 'desu'.)

EDIT: Celia, there are a ton of shitty subs out there and even the really good subs don't follow the script to the letter because it wouldn't make sense and would sound horribly engrishy. When it comes to watching subtitled anime to better your Japanese, I suggest waiting until you have a decent grasp of Japanese grammar and can actually compare what you're hearing to what you're reading.

EDIT 2: Oh yeah, and I forgot... there's also this program, Wakan, which is a Japanese/Chinese translator, editor, and dictionary. It's an invaluable tool as it lets you type in hiragana, katakana, and kanji among other things. It definitely helps when you're learning on computer rather than paper.