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Hello everyone, I am just a few moments away from embarking on my journey to learn Japanese.

If anyone here has learned Japanese as a second language, how long did it take you?

What about me - the second language for me is English (because I'm Russian).

I've made two attempts to learn Japanese completely from scratch. By "from scratch" I mean that I didn't know anything at all about the language. Absolutely nothing, except that it uses hieroglyphs.

The first attempt:

Two years ago I've downloaded a book for learning the basics and learned the book overnight (hiragana+katakana+about 250 kanjis+basic structures). The language has teared the template apart, because it was completely different from everything I've seen up to date. Compared to European languages, it was something completely alien, as if it was from another planet. Also, I was getting disgussed seriously. That's irrational, but it was very unpleasant.

The next day due to being disgusted I've said "it isn't for me, fuck it", and I've given it up.

The second attempt:

This summer I've downloaded a university learning book in 4 volumes (about 500 pages each). In two days I've managed to deal with the first book (about 500 kanjis), but have given it up the next day again.

So, up to date I know kanas, about 750 kanjis, and basic structures. Still, I haven't got to a level of a 7 year old kid.

I think, I'll give it another shot next summer. Or this winter. Anyway, I'm no longer disgusted when learning it.

And Tunguska, remember that moooV has an eidetic memory....

I had a Russian Cryptography translator tell me that Japanese is the hardest to learn.
I started with a Program , POWER JAPANESE. An hour a day, for a year and you can
be somewhat competent in you're conversation.
You should definitely learn to read and write.
Otherwise you will be illiterate.
Use every little thing you can to aide in learning, and you will only get what you put into it.
It is worth the effort
-=:GIL:=-

Well, mooov, when you say the language is written in hieroglyphs you contradict yourself just after, saying the language is alien. Hieroglyphs are from this planet, thus are not related to Japanese.

By the way, where can I find the books you downloaded?


Meantime, I will declare war to the Japanese if they do not change their written system to Latin (or anything decently readable, in case they do want to preserve Latin to pretend they are speaking English, as they use to do). It seems Do you think it will work?

Sergio Nova wrote:By the way, where can I find the books you downloaded?

In torrents, obviously.
However, they won't be any use for you at all - they're in Russian. It's a course for linguistic universities.

Im also presented with kanji, hirigana and katakana, but I hear Kanji is more widely used.

Are these different ways to write the same characters like how English has cursive? Sorry if its a bad comparison.

No, these characters are used for different purposes.

Hiragana is used for suffixes, prefixes (o-, -sama, -san, -chan, -kun, and so forth) and kanji endings/cases.
Katakana is mostly used to write foreign words and foreign names.

And kanjis are used for everything - they are the main parts of words (words usually consist of kanji (single, or several) and ending/case written in hiragana). Also, japanese names are comprised of kanjis too.

Sergio Nova wrote: By the way, where can I find the books you downloaded?

About a year ago, some people made available a huge amount of learning material on torrent:
http://www.nyaa.eu/?page=torrentinfo&tid=210047
http://www.nyaa.eu/?page=torrentinfo&tid=211453
I've downloaded most of it. There are few seeds now, but I think you still can get the packs. You also can find more material in Tokyotosho http://www.tokyotosho.info/search.php?t ... &username=

It took me 4 years to learn enough to consider myself fluent. One piece of advice I can offer you is: DONT try to learn kanji individually. Study words, not kanji by themselves. You will eventually learn how to read all the kanji you need to know as well as increasing your vocabulary. Also, learning to write kanji is an epic waste of time. You only need to learn to write the most common 300-500 or so kanji to get a feel for the different radicals (parts that the kanji are made of), then you should focus on reading/speaking/listening.

Good advice. I have two printed kanji manuals, one with the "essentials" 500 kanjis and other with the whole bunch, 2000+. I was in doubt about which one was the better to use.

I've been learning Japanese for a while and I'd say it's a good thing you're asking people's opinion first.

Learning Japanese if you speak English is no small task ... even if some persons seem to like to say otherwise. Unless you're a language genius (if such a thing exists really.. Sometime I feel that people like that are just full of sh*t ...) I think that 4 years is not unreasonable at all. Something important I think when you start japanese is to know whether or not you want to learn to write Kanji. Because learning kanjis is a whole different adventure in my opinion and if you want to learn all of japanese you REALLY should start learning to write from the very beginning. Honestly, I wish I knew the things I can tell you now when I myself started. Because the more time passed the more I realised it was a huge mistake of mine to wait so long before beginning to learn them.

Let me explain that more clearly, you can learn to recognize kanjis so that you can read them. But learning them well enough to be able to write them is a whole different story. It's a bit like how you see and recognize things in everyday life but it doesn't mean you can draw them out of memory without practice.

Of course if you just learn to read them you'll learn basic ones like 行, 何, 私, etc but kanjis like 蹴、撮, etc are quite hard to memorize only by reading them in everyday life I think. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong by the way if I'm saying bs So, learning only to read them can save you A LOT of time. So, in the end, it's your choice whether or not you want to invest that much time.

Just to give you an idea, Japanese people have to memorize and learn to write what is called the jouyou kanji （常用漢字 - Jouyou kanji are the ~2000 kanji that are used and that you "must" know in order to be able to read pretty much anything） from elementary school to the very end of high school. That's slightly over 10 years I think. And they live in Japan, see japanese everyday, speak japanese natively, etc. I hope that shows you the amount of work learning sinograms/chinese characters is.

Anyway, my best advice if you start it is just.. no matter how long it takes you, never give up

I am already organizing an international movement, even including terrorism among our tools, in order to change Japanese writing system to romaji, simply. Ideography is explained in China, as they have different languages using the same written texts, but unnecessary in Japan, with a single language. That will solve the problem at once!

Sounds good, where do I sign up?

Tunguska wrote: Sat Sep 17, 2011 8:57 pm Im also presented with kanji, hirigana and katakana, but I hear Kanji is more widely used.

Are these different ways to write the same characters like how English has cursive? Sorry if its a bad comparison. https://phenq-reviews.com/australia/

These are not the valuable are not important with those widely