If you could give 'Just starting Japanese' you one piece of advice, what would it be

Japanese
#83

I’d tell my high-school self not to even take Japanese classes and just ask the teacher to help me learn on my own time. Japanese is best learned one-to-one, without picking up bad gaijin habits from classmates.

One connection I’ve been able to make with Japanese and Russian, at least, is sort of thinking of Japanese particles almost like Russian noun declensions. I know Polish has noun declensions similar to Russian. Is Polish loose with word order like Russian is? Figuring out each word’s function in a sentence has been a big part of the challenge for me in both Japanese and Russian.

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#84

Even more so. I got a few class at the uni

you may find my view point interesting. have a look at this post, please:

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#85

This is literally the best advice, because my god did I ever just assume that immersion would do its thing without me putting much effort in.

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#86

It is nice falsehood to believe in though! better this kind of start than no start :hugs:

I can’t find out author for this idea (too smart to be me xD) but I find it true unfortunately: “If learning would be pleasant and easy, everybody would be educated.”

(sounds a lot like Friedrich Nietzsche but I can’t find if it was him saying something similar…)

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#87

Hilarious isn’t it, Japan is littered with foreigners who thought that would work and 10 years later are still stuck struggling to hold a conversation. Immersion only works if you work yo’ ass off.

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#88

People forget the most important part of immersion: constant effort to make sense of what you hear and fighting for any chance to try to communicate. It is not passive learning.

For example: just looking at anime will not help. But stopping with every sentence and “unlocking” it meaning will big time.

Immersion in my opinion works, but is hard like hell. To make it easier it is better supplement oneself with some normal studying. In fact it is not possible for normal people to learn by studying and practising alone.

Making sure I get this was hard like hell and took forever but helped a lot:
プリベット通り四番地の住人ダーズリー夫妻は、「おかげさまで、私どもはどこから見てもまともな人間です」というのが自慢だった。不思議とか神秘とかそんな非常識はまるっきり認めない人種で、まか不思議な出来事が彼らの周辺で起こるなんて、とうてい考えられなかった。

But it was maybe to hard reading material for first week… Few sentence more a week worth of reading ended…

(I am not trying to imply I know Japanese. Just that immersion is the hard way not an easy way)

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#89

Harry Potter is actually quite a difficult read, there are also a huge mix of different dialects mixed in to. You’ll find a lot of major Japanese authors are actually easier to read than this. Banana Yoshimoto, Ryuu Murakami, and Haruki Murakami are all good writers that are easier to read than this.

If you like gritty dramas, scandi noirs and that kinda stuff, i’d recommend Hitomi Kanehara too. Definitely not for kids though, very heavy going stuff

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#90

That’s why I opted out for sanity sake and bought Clannad on Nintendo. It is of importance to me to make sure my first read will be of emotional significance. I learnt both polish and english with HP (funny thing: it took much longer to unlock first few sentences in English than Japanese since i had to understand how on earth there are so many meanings to “get” and you guys can make sense of it xD…), and Clannad is my first “proper” anime I like a lot. In my mind naruto and pokemon were just nicer cartoons xD.

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#91

I’m weird as a Japanese learner in that I don’t like any anime or manga whatsoever. My wife watches loads of anime and I just can’t stand it haha

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#92

I find them to be nice gateway xD But I don’t watch anime much anymore (most of the time when my siblings kids come to have some homemade pizza xD). But I am huge fan of manga One piece. I am ready to die proving it is one of the best executed stories in the history of literature :wink:. Those numbers are suggesting that maybe there is something to that claim:

47
Screenshot 2021-01-28 at 14.39.47.png1434×908 144 KB

higher than Tolstoy…

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#93

One piece is not better than Tolstoy. No.

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#94

On execution lvl for sure. Ideas wise? for sure not. Tolstoy had annoying gimmick to add foreign languages for pages with any note. Like letter in french left in french. Very hard to read if you are not focus and have translator assistance.

#95

I struggle to understand how any adult who isn’t interested in Japanese could watch or read One Piece. I don’t know any who do anyway

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#96

depends what you are interested in. I am interested in execution. Childlish story does not bother me.

the little prince for example. very simple (yet profound) ideas but delivery is masterwork.

#97

That’s why people like: https://www.youtube.com/user/xxraythompsonxx

find it best read in their life. He is 99% about storytelling technics (mainly in popular shounen. to check why they work).

Btw: have you consider possibility that some of your friends may be embarrassed to admit they like it? xD I would be in RL…

BTW (@ljoekelsoey ) if you are interested in storytelling you can have a look how the story works on a little bit more technical lvl than simple “i think it feels good” in OP here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCC8o89sA0M). There are thousands of videos out there breaking down different aspects of one piece. It is even not finish story… Oda claims best ideas he left for the end and I am inclined to believe him.

I don’t think though this is something that it is interesting to you. So you don’t have to bother. :hugs:

#98

In my country, there are communities of Japanese, Chinese, Thai, etc people that live in their own little areas, and don’t really socialize much with the greater community. They also don’t try to learn English, and it annoys lots of locals.

But to be honest… after living in Japan, I have realized that they are the reverse version of the ‘been here 10 years, can’t speak’ gaijin. It must be equally hard for asians to gain full proficiency in English, and not just stick to your own crowd where they feel safe. I do feel sorry for them though. What’s the point in deciding to make a life somewhere that you can’t take part in society on a meaningful level.

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#99

I got a workmate in Uk, Polish guy - very practical. When he come to UK after his lady he was not able to say more in English than [his name] while pointing at himself. I recommended to him what I did in past: grammar book, and start to read. But he did not like reading. So instead he spent all break time with me and some natives trying to have conversation (instead just being in “polish corner”). After 4 month he spoke good enough english to be able to speak over phone to costumers with some assistance. 2 month later got first promotion.

So for some people it clearly works according to my life experience (which is obviously no proof to other people but still… xD)

I bet he still have hard time to read english, though xD

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#100

This is a little bit of a dangerous outlook though, as Japanese is a completely different ball game in terms of difficulty. Had your Polish friend moved to Japan, instead of having a conversation in 4 months, he would more than likely have given up and secluded himself to other Polish speaking people.

His achievement is great, but respecting the difficulty of a language is also important, especially one that is rated as the most difficult in the world. To give a better example. If a personal trainer was giving a completely unfit person advice on how to do a pushup, sure, after a few months the person will do some pushups. However if the personal trainer gave someone advice on how to become an olympic athlete, the unfit person would probably say ‘What you are telling me is impossible’.

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#101

True. I would gave up even in English. It would be too annoying to me. That’s why I prefer to learn by reading and writing. In RL i can’t just double click and have the definition of the word. Or take time to analyse the grammar.

But this one person I don’t see giving up even after 5 years of failing. He found it hilarious he can’t express simple idea and first thing he did was learning how to joke about it. I am envious: how some people can be so easy-going? 0_o

Just to be clear: I do not advise anybody not crazy or desperate to do something like that xD

#102

Yeh I’ve been subjected to literally hundreds of different anime shows by my wife over the years, I’m pretty sure that after all this time the fact I’ve not found a single one I can watch more than one episode of just means it’s not for me.

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