I want to learn Japanese

[SkyVenger]

Domo minna-san! I want to learn more japanese but I don't know what to do... Does anyone know any website, programs, or software teaching Japanese that I could access/download? (Better if it's for free ) Thanks

[kirite]

Sorry this is useless but I'll recommend taking a class outside of school ^^;  ....

*goes back into dark corner*

[avidfan]

lerning in skul is best but if u lyk free, den
lern words & sentence struc in daily conv., e.g. anime, movies
lang. in jap hist. (feudal era, etc) = naruto, inuyasha
food = yakitate japan
police terms = of corse u kno wat anime fols in here
school conv. = anime rel8d 2 skul (lots of em)
juz kno d main idea of d anime & most terms & sentences used wil revolve in dat idea

dat is if ur a audio visual lerner... if u lern mor by reading, serch wiki
bt i doubt it tho coz u wil rily nid exp in speaking jap to fuly master jap
i'm no master either

[Zane]

Domo minna-san! I want to learn more japanese but I don't know what to do... Does anyone know any website, programs, or software teaching Japanese that I could access/download? (Better if it's for free ) Thanks

Well, your best bet is to start with writing the language and understanding the differences between Hiragana , Katakana, and Kanji. A good site for learning these for Free would be....

http://www.freejapaneselessons.com/lesson01.cfm

Trust me, its quite a good resource!

Also , search Japanese Language or something along the lines of that at about.com to find some other real good lessons for free.

[kirite]

A note of advice, don't learn your speaking from most animes it's very annoying : )!  Thank you ^^.

[SkyVenger]

Yeah... well I know anime language sounds casual but the common conversation in Japan sounds respectful/formal . I know that, but I was used to settings (either English or Filipino) where you get to speak to a person casually after some dialogues and knowing a bit of each other.

I think that even friends and relatives speak to each other formally (only really close people speak casually to each other), but I'm not used to that because I believe that the formality really fades slowly when one starts to make true friends (even Sai in Naruto learns to slowly "remove" the formality in his speech to have friends)

So I guess it's nice to learn both ways of speaking Japanese. And as for writing, well, I guess I'll save that for later. I'm still contemplating on how I understood the English alphabet so easily, so after that maybe I can introduce another set of "alphabets" to my brain, hehe...

No offense to Japan, but why did they have to make a symbol for every syllable, not per letter? Whew, I'm like reading our old symbolic alibata language... damn. Not to mention the existence of another writing system called Kanji

[kat1214young]

Why not ask the same thing to all East Asians/ South East Asians (Except Philippines, obviously  ). They all have weird characters which is so hard to remember and understand at the same time, no wonder my grades in Chinese are low  . Well at least I know that Kanji is the same as Chinese words but have different pronunciations but I'm guessing they have the same meaning. Like "風", in Chinese it's read as "feng," in Japanese it's read as "kaze," which means wind, right XD

[SkyVenger]

I remember Javanese (Indonesia) and Malaysian language usually use the alphabet like Philippines (saw it in the sides of cereal boxes, lol) and most European countries use the alphabet but add accents or something... so the alphabet must be quite familiar to the world before modern civilization, I guess

[rajhaziel]

Okay someone ban this stupid ass idiot. Dont ever tell anyone to learn Japanese from watching anime. You may pick up words, and those words could be wrong depending on your editor. People like to Americanize shit. So, online classes at http://www.yesjapan.com <-- One of the easiest ways to learn the writing language. After that pick up a book called Genki I once you finish that book move on to Genki II if by then you still don't know Japanese please stop all efforts, cause, you PHAIL!!! But if you really want to learn study for about 4 months then move you ass to Japan for a couple of years and take college there. Thats how all the people I know did it, except me. And I phail.

But really if I was a moderator still I'd ban your ass.

[SkyVenger]

Raj seemed to have experienced very bad and/or err... very sad moments in learning Japanese... Did your ass get kicked in a Japanese school? lol puns intended

[kat1214young]

Aww Raj seems so heated up when members mention learning Anime language. The heck with it, it's just for fun. That's why it's Anime language not Japanese language XD

(This comment is just for fun. Pls don't hate me >< )

[rajhaziel]

He didnt ask how to speak anime. He said he wanted to learn Japanese. Just told em how to really do it. And alot of schools try to translate english to japanese not learn how to speak japanese. So be carefull when going to classes make sure they is what it is.

[kat1214young]

Yeah but the posts' flow led to anime language. Haha so anyway never mind. That answers that...
But still, yume, if you want to learn Japanese at this age, it'll be hard cause the best way to learn the language is having that language as a native tongue XD I read that from a TIME mag 

[SkyVenger]

Yeah but the posts' flow led to anime language. Haha so anyway never mind. That answers that...
But still, yume, if you want to learn Japanese at this age, it'll be hard cause the best way to learn the language is having that language as a native tongue XD I read that from a TIME mag 

Never underestimate the tongue of our race, which I believe was meant to be the tongue of polyglots, hehehe.
It's due to mix of races, I think. Rizal even managed to understand Japanese during his short stay in Japan; he didn't even take formal schooling (but why am I comparing myself to him anyway?  His intelligence is out of reach, just like Conan lol)

[kat1214young]

Well yeah, I noticed that too (how we learn different language fast haha)
Because Rizal had a Japanese girlfriend (or was that a wife... haha I forgot) and yes he does have a superior intellect. He liked everything about Japan except the rickshaw XD
Anyway if you want to learn you could but, like the other languages we learn, it's hard to get the right accent and all O.o