Japanese in 18 Months? No way!!!

[rpapo]

Or, taking a completely different direction from Poke, you have my case. I am no longer young, and rote memorization doesn't work as well as it once did. It feels like the stuff doesn't want to stick like it used to. So I've been learning by using . . . and by getting sick and tired of finding myself looking up the same Kanji over and over again. I do better with the grammar than with the vocabulary.

As for the discourse on how flexible the language can be in written form, I can only agree and add one more comment about it: in spoken form you don't have the Kanji to rely on, though you do get some help from intonation. You are relying almost 100% on context. Japanese is a language in which you can be wonderfully ambiguous.

[Poke2201]

Theres a reason I can read but not listen well yet.

[SkyFlames07]

Ok, first off you guys got to understand that I am not even close to any of your levels, I am just getting started, only 200 kanjis and the hiragana alphabet. But to me, I can get some texts if they casually got the kanjis that I know, but if you give me a RAW anime I can not know what they say. The reason is that the Kanji books trains you to read, but not to talk. They give you any kanji, the english meaning, a story and nothing else.
That is for what I say I can read but not get the meaning. Example

にもかかわらず, ~というものではない, ~わけではない, ~にもとづいて, ~やいなや, ~ずにはおかない

Nimokakawarazu , ~Toiumonodehatai, ~Wakedehatai, ~Nimotozuite, ~Yaitaya, Zunihaokatai.

I do not get one single meaning tho.

PS: Si, hablo español :p

[rpapo]

Yo también hablo, entiendo, leo y escribo español. Facilísimo es . . . ahora, después de hablarlo casi treinta años.

[For the Spanish-impaired: I also speak, understand, read and write Spanish. It's super easy . . . now, after speaking it nearly thirty years.]

If you would like to improve your verbal understanding of Japanese (which is where I started this trek), I can recommend one thing that is somewhat free, and another that is not: http://www.japanesepod101.com is free to some extent, and is a fun way to learn spoken Japanese . . . or at least listening to it. Their podcasts (MP3s) are generally 12-20 minutes long, just fine for playing in the car. If you don't mind giving them $60.00 per year, you can download almost everything that matters from their website. I have hundreds of hours of their stuff, and it covers real spoken Japanese quite well. To gain the most benefit from these lessons, you need to be able to sit down and listen with their printed materials before you. Since I do all my listening in the car to and from work, that doesn't work for me. But they're fun, and cover a lot more material than what's next in the list: Pimsleur.

Not free, but downloadable from the net if you search hard enough, are the Pimsleur CDs. They will sell you the first ten lessons, a half-hour apiece, for about $25.00, but if you want their entire series (90 lessons or so), you could easily shell out many hundreds of dollars, even at a "discount". That may be fine for a business user (which is their orientation), but not for somebody trying to learn the language on the cheap (like me). Furthermore, their pace is glacial. Over the course of those 90 lessons, they don't really get past the material that I would consider Japanese I. They barely touch the 'te' form of verbs, for instance. On the other hand, for pronunciation and for full-speed verbal comprehension, they are excellent. The idea is: hear, then repeat, ad infinitum. They gradually give you more and more complicated stuff, with more and more vocabulary. Be forewarned, though: they hardly touch casual speech at all, so you still have a long way to go before you can understand the dialog in an anime.

For people who don't live in Japan, and don't have Japanese relatives or friends, probably the best (but hardest and most expensive) route is to actually take classes in the language with a teacher and other students you can interact with. But this route is serious hard, expensive and takes a long time.

Of course, the true fanatic would simply give up his current life, move to Japan and learn by total immersion.

[kuroi_shinigami]

Ok, first off you guys got to understand that I am not even close to any of your levels, I am just getting started, only 200 kanjis and the hiragana alphabet. But to me, I can get some texts if they casually got the kanjis that I know, but if you give me a RAW anime I can not know what they say. The reason is that the Kanji books trains you to read, but not to talk. They give you any kanji, the english meaning, a story and nothing else.
That is for what I say I can read but not get the meaning. Example

にもかかわらず, ~というものではない, ~わけではない, ~にもとづいて, ~やいなや, ~ずにはおかない

Nimokakawarazu , ~Toiumonodehatai, ~Wakedehatai, ~Nimotozuite, ~Yaitaya, Zunihaokatai.

I do not get one single meaning tho.

PS: Si, hablo español :p

They are all a suffix use in Japanese, some to make negative sentence, some other just to show the subject relation to the verb. For example

...にもかかわらず = The dotted line should be filled with nouns. The meaning will be something like "also not related to ...."

~というものではない= means something like "not something called..."

~ずにはおかない=is negating the verb in front. Basically the ず is a substitute of ない, so 出きない could be substituted with 出きず. The にはおかない is negating the ず part even further, so this is a double negation form. So all in all, the crude meaning will be something like "You cannot not ......" where the dotted line will be filled with a verb.

These are all grammar problem, and probably on the intermediate level on top of that(not sure about the level since I never took a formal lesson that long) so if you cannot understand these part, it's not because of lack of vocabulary, just that you're not familiar with these grammars in Japanese yet.

The translation above is just a crude translation from someone who's not good at English(read : me )though, so you have to look on the context when translating something grammatical like that.

[Zell_ff8]

Yes, those where grammar examples. Those are hard not because of the vocabulary or the structure, but the meaning and usage.
For examples ~やいなや, ~とたんに, ~とすぐに are all similiar in meaning but have rules for usage and construction.
Or ~せいで, ~おかげで, ~ため are all interchangeable and similar meaning, but have a sight difference (negative/positive meaning).

Spoken is another world. I still can't understand japanese lyrics. Its like having a text 100% in hiragana, you only get sounds and no meanings, so you have to be very used to the vocabulary to understand. So don't worry and let it for when you're more advanced.
First try to improve in written form and then pass to spoken. And start gradually, for example try raw slice of life manga with easy vocabulary and colloquial speech. Then pass to raw anime but same genre, and for kids (don't be ashamed I started with 絵本 xD)
Anime and spoken japanese have several tricks that you need to know very well beforehand (like omitting or contracting particles).

[larethian]

@Skyflames, like what Kuroi and Zell said.

These are grammatical constructs, many of them are considered academically to be advanced particles, or combination particles made up of many particles and/or verb(s) in fact. Some might call them fixed expressions (especially in jpn->eng dictionaries). It was what I suspected when you made your post. And you got them from Shana I suppose, eh? Though they are only a subset of grammar, there are still conjugate forms and other stuff to be explored.

I'm not going to repeat Kuroi's explanations, but I might be able to supplement some of them. well, explaining in detail may be too much for you, since I think you should start with the basic grammar (and I'm lazy)

にもかかわらず is a combination particle with verb かかわる which standalone means "to relate", so as what kuroi said. eg: expectation にもかかわらず actual situation (which is opposite to expectation or what's supposed to happen)

という + もの + ではない: ではない is merely negation. the former two should be in tae kim's, well even for the negation, since it's basic.

ずにはおかない: you can find ず negation in tae kim's as well, おかない is the negative plain form of おく, which means "to place". whenever you have おく used as a conjugate part of some other verb or grammar construct, it implies a persistent state carried on into the future.

わけ + ではない: well, look at oreimo's title hahaha

にもとづいて: eg: something にもとづいてaction. action performed based on something (like information for example)

やいなや: I only know this is made up of や+いな+や, but I cannot explain the meaning of this properly; it's used to indicate something happening immediately after something. somewhat equivalent to "as soon as". eg: (before state)やいなや(after state)

You can try to copy and paste into tangorin.com website to find examples. examples from tangorin site are compiled from students and they can be mistake prone, so be careful of that. Though I used to find it useful in learning new words, to get a rough idea on usage context and patterns.


I always believe that grammar is the key to mastering Japanese. Maybe because I've always found it tough. Even now, I'm still working on it, especially in conversation and writing. But I don't advocate this since I don't have the right, given that I 'cheated' in kanji, having studied Chinese since young, having read the 4 great literature works of China, and martial arts novels by Jin Yong. So yeah, can't really empathize the difficulties in recognition and stuff like that, though I still believe that grammar is the key.

As promised, I'm now going to give you a classic example of why particles (an important subset of grammar) are important:
1. 私は魚を食べる。
2. 私を魚が食べる。
3. 私も魚を食べる。
4. 私と魚が食べる。
5. 私は魚も食べる。
6. 私も魚は食べる。

note that while some of these sentences won't really exist in real life, they are all grammatically correct however. without particles, the sentence will look like "私魚食べる" = "I fish eat" which is senseless unless, you can somehow infer it from the conversation when people get lazy colloquially.

translations:
1. I eat fish.
2. The fish eats me.
3. I, too, eat fish.
4. The fish and I eat (something).
5. I eat fish (among other things).
6. Even I eat (if it's) fish. [well, (6) always make more sense to me when it's written as 魚は私も食べる though both mean the same, haha]

just sharing something on particles, though other grammar constructs/sets are important as well, but start from the basic, check out tae kim's guide when you get bored in kanji/vocab memorization

[Zell_ff8]

@SkyFlames07: I see you are confusing な with た. Check them
If you want I can give you via PM some good grammar dictionaries in english really useful (the series I mentioned earlier)


@larethian: I prefer to take them as fixed expressions, because not all (in fact, just a few) have the same meaning as taking the words and conjugations. And for almost each of them you have to know how to construct them.

For example, ~とたんに, ~や(いなや), ~なり and ~がはやいか have all the same meaning, but ~とたんに is obligatorily after a verb in た form, while ~やいなや and ~なり only after a dictionary form.
So 「ベルが鳴るとたんに、教室に入ってくる」 and 「サイレンが聞こえたや、立ち上がった」 are grammatically wrong. The correct would be inverting the particles or changing the verbs: 「ベルが鳴るや、教室に入ってくる」 and 「サイレンが聞こえたとたんに、立ち上がった」 / 「ベルが鳴ったとたんに、教室に入ってくる」 and 「サイレンが聞こえるや、立ち上がった」
-> and ~がはやいか works in both forms, after た forms and dictionary forms.
Now, if ~なり and ~やいなや means the same and are constructed the same way, which one to use? Well most of times are the same (like synonymous) but others they have very, VERY slight differences. Else, in the use. Those both for example means the same, but ~やいなや is used more on written japanese.


Indeed grammar expressions are usually more difficult, because you don't only remember the meaning and context (like with vocabulary), but also need to remember rules of usage.

[SkyFlames07]

Thanks to all for the help. I guess that I will have to read the gramatical rules, the expressions and try to somehow force the memorization on my mind
But since my main focus for learning japanese is the Shana novels, I got no doubt that I got a looong way ahead before being abble to read it.

[Zell_ff8]

By the contrary, better than sit and memorize, using it in practice is way better (you learn, and you keep motivated).
If its reading a light novel much better, you'll learn and acquire kanji/structures by use and repetition (that's how it works). I first started with manga (shorter sentences and dialogues ^^) but now use LN to "study".

It may be tedious at start (spending 10 minutes for each sentence looking new vocabulary and searching grammar patterns) but as you find them more and more times you memorize them and the reading speeds up.
Obviously is better to go gradually. Like kids or shonen manga of easy themes (don't grab an Edo period historical manga or a SF seinen or you'll go nuts), and then advance for longer and difficult texts like light novels.

I haven't read SnS but I've seen the anime. It seems a bit complicated (some characters speaks weird or old, own terminology and supernatural) but if it motivates you enough you can go slowly with it.

[rpapo]

And you have some weirdos around, like me, that do something altogether different. As a computer programmer, I keep looking for ways to cast the language into code. Writing a program to parse the text into words, and then do the dictionary lookups for me, taught me a ton of grammar, and burnt it into my brain in ways that studying textbooks just wasn't doing for me.

That said, I haven't been spending too much time on the program for a while now, mainly because I have a self-imposed goal of reaching a translation rate of two or more pages per day. Once I reach that rate, then I might know enough to make my program smarter.

In general, I agree with the notion of reading something interesting as a way of learning the language better. It helps to not be bored stiff by what one is doing.

[Poke2201]

I don't like textbook reading/ memorization. I make everything into a game. The reason I use SRS to memorize stuff like this is because its more like a game for me and keeps me interested in how to do better to remember stuff.

[Mystes]

Just started learning the basic Japanese from self-study. Can someone tell me what is the difference between katakana and hiragana? And which is used the most? Sorry if someone already asked this question.

[rpapo]

Both hiragana and katakana are phonetic alphabets, or perhaps more precisely, syllabaries. Hiragana is generally used for native words, particularly for particles and verb conjugations. It also gets used for text intended to be read by younger readers that are not yet fully up to speed with the Kanji.

Katakana tends to be used for foreign words and for sound effects. The Japanese tend to use Katakana in a way very similar to how we use italics in English, to emphasize a word.

[Mystes]

Should I start with Hiragana or katakana, then? Or both?