The 2008 (and 9) weaboos learning Japanese thread *chairs are thrown at miles*

I'm currently in my second year, second semester of studying Japanese. I know a little over 200 kanji, and most ways that they can be used.

I can hold a basic level conversation, beyond requests, and if someone were to say something beyond my level, I certainly could ask the to rephrase it.

I am pretty good at listening, as I'm pretty good at just picking out the words and grammatical expressions I do know, which for foreign languages is something I think you should master at the basic level. My speaking could a lot better, but I try to work on that.

For practice beyond the textbook (my university uses Nakama,) I usually just try to look at Japanese news articles and try and summarize them in English. I even surprise myself when I find an article that I can actually do a decent job at. People from the SomethingAwful Japanese megathread suggested it, along with other types of projects to do, and it is good advice.

Obviously, seconding Rollins' advice on learning Japanese from anime (and even manga.) It's not terrible, as you can use it as a way of picking out things you know, but just don't learn from it. It's usually filled with improper grammar and/or phrases. I watch anime, but only because I watch it like a TV show, not because I want to learn from it. I may go "Oh! I know what that means!" but that's about it.

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Originally Posted by Minoko

I completely do not agree as to how they teach foreign languages at most schools. Learning the grammar first is... uh..complete bull. No language speaks perfect grammar. If you stay in Japan, you'll hear totally different sentence structures.

True, there's no such thing as "perfect grammar" in a language, however, learning the prescriptive grammar is the only way you'll ever actually be able to form understandable sentences. You can't just combine everything you want any old way, they have to be used in the ways that they are supposed to. This is especially important in formal speaking and in writing (which tends to always be a bit more formal than spoken language.)

I'd love to see you teach any secondary language without first teaching the prescriptive grammar as a basis. We've all heard the "house" analogy a million times, but it works. At least with just the foundation, you can communicate with native speakers, since they all know the basic, formal grammar.

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Originally Posted by eriol33

Last but not least, try to have your own dictionary. I recommend you to purchase Kanji Dictionary by Mark Spahn and Wolfgang Hadamitzky, the dictionary is pretty thick and could grow you muscle with its gigantic 1750 pages, but you could virtually find all kanji, since it listed 47,000 character compounds.

Or, if you're not quite ready to jump into getting a real kanji dictionary, I would then recommend you at least get Kanji & Kana: A Handbook of the Japanese Writing System, by the same authors. It has all of the jouyou kanji and about 300 jinmeiyou kanji. While it is not a complete dictionary of kanji, like the other one, it is certainly a very good basic dictionary of kanji for learning purposes.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Shorty

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... I'm sticking to my standard response to this type of thread.
READ THIS.

You must have forgotten that this is a discussion board.

See, we were discussing something.

What is there to discuss about a link that's older than the internet?

How ya doing, buddy?