Czarownica

理学 (りがく, science)

理学と地理学、どちらの方が好きですか。

You should start by learning hiragana and katakana, those are the absolute basics. You can find all the characters here http://www.kanachart.com/, for example, but there are many other resources available, if you don't like that site, just Google "learn hiragana and katakana"

After you're done with that, you can do everything else. I'd recommend getting some textbook.

I recommend checking out our Japanese resources list: http://linguaholic.com/japanese-links/study-japanese-links/

Im not planning to go into any Japanese course but I really do want to learn to learn Japanese. Everybody is saying that Japanese is probably the toughest language to to learn and it would probably take years to actually perfect the language.

There's no such thing as the toughest language to learn and every language takes years to perfect.

But all I really want is to read Japanese. Im really not interested on learning how to speak the language, so would that make it easier?

I'm not sure. I mean, it's an unusual approach to language learning. It'd mean some less work, but still, you'd have A LOT to do. But if you want it, you should try. The good thing about learning Japanese by oneself is that there are many, many resources available online, many of them for free.

I'm usually quite resistant to memes (I find the vast majority of them unfunny), but I find the doge meme hysterical and very contageous. Once a person uses it (even in real life, not just on the Internet) I just feel the urge to "speak doge", you know?

By the way, doge meme has its Polish version. I think it's interesting from the linguistics point of view, since it requires a specific sentence (well, it's not really a sentence, but I'm lacking a better word) structure to be created, and it's kinda different from the English version. Truly a proof that the languages are always evolving!

Wow, such meme. Much funny. = Mem taki zabawny, wow.

Well, some sites do expect its members to pay for the membership and still have many people using them. I've just registered (with a throwaway e-mail, in case they enjoy spamming) and I'm doing my first lesson. Honestly, it looks neat so far. I might edit my post later.

Edit: ok, the lesson itself is very nice, but it seem I can't add words to the list of known words? I don't know whether it's something wrong with my browser or because it's not a free feature? But I'm not getting any messages wanting me to pay for it...

I really don't like this current trend where people act as if introverts are some bizarre aliens who require careful special treatment. Everybody can learn a language. If somebody is so introverted that they are literally unable to learn a foreign language, they need psychiatric help, because that is not normal at all.

It seems like there are some languages where the native speakers speak faster in general than other languages. For example, Spanish. I've taken a few years of Spanish, but if you ask me to hold a conversation with a native speaker they are generally going to talk way faster than I can understand them. English is a bit of a slower language by comparison.

Yeah, Italian is really fast as well.

I'm a fast talker, both in English and Polish >.< Not all the time, but when I get too passionate about something or when I'm really stressed. It's a bit annoying because then people often go "Hahaha, you talk so fast" instead of caring about WHAT I'm saying. Oh well.

Ok, so am I blind or did you actually forgot to link the paper? :wacky: I'd love to read it. I consider writing my Bachelor's thesis on the loanwords in Japanese...

Anybody trying to convince you that they can teach you a foreign language in 10 days is a crook who tries to sell you something. If it was really possible, then everybody would be a polyglot and nobody would spend years on learning languages. But it is not possible, since mastering a language (or even learning solid basics of it) is a difficult, time-consuming process.

Excellent choice Kotro! I really like Christoph Waltz. His language skills are great and he really is one of the best actors at the moment! I loved his performance in Inglorious Bastards and in Django! Just superb.

And he's soooo handsome  :love: Speaking German is really attractive for me anyway  :angel:

I'm not this kind of person who cares a lot about celebrities, but I remember that Salma Hayek speaks something like four languages, including Arabic. It's pretty impressive...

In Chinese, on the other hand, the counting system is pretty different. The biggest difference in counting in the Chinese counting system is the fact, that you have a unit of 10'000 (万). So if you are going to say 40'000 you are basically saying 4 x 10'000 (40'000 in Chinese = 四万) and not as in German/English 40 x 1000 (40'000 in English being forty-thousand and "Vierzigtausend" in German).

It's the same in Japanese.

In Polish the counting system is pretty...normal, I think? Depends on what you consider normal.

But just like with everything in Polish, there's a lot of declination and different grammar forms.

So, for example, when I count, it goes: jeden, dwa, trzy, cztery, pięć, sześć, siedem, osiem, dziewięć, dziesięć... and so on.

But when I want to say: "Ala has one apple" it wouldn't be "Ala ma jeden jabłko", it has to be "Ala ma jedno jabłko".

I don't have enough discipline or self-confidence to study on my own, so I prefer having a tutor. I'm in the middle of searching for a German tutor right now, actually. I just like having somebody who tells me what to do 

Master pronunciation. English words have many mixtures of consonants, not really syllabic like Japanese.

Yeah, this. A lot of English native speakers talking in Japanese have a really weird way of pronuncing things. Japanese pronunciation is nothing like English pronunciation and often while listening to somebody speak Japanese it's easy to spot whether they are a native English speaker, since they pronunciation might be a bit..odd.

How do you say Happy New Year in Polish?

Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku

Cześć Eboran Fajnie spotkać na forum jakiegoś innego Polaka (czy może Polkę?)  :wacky: Mam nadzieję że Ci się tu spodoba i nie znikniesz po tym jednym poście. Jak już się zdecydujesz na jakiś konkretny język i do niego przysiądziesz to nie będzie aż tak strasznie trudno... Najgorzej jest zacząć

Polish is nice for that, especially compared to English. We have many swear words and they're just so expressive and possible to use in many forms.

Of course, maybe it's just my subjective feeling, since that's the language that I use most often for swearing...

Well, I'm not a fan. It's certainly not the best book for beginners: it doesn't give you the stroke order (which is very important at the beginning, when you don't really know it at all just yet) or the readings (VERY important as well), just the meaning and what the characters look like.

I'd recommend getting Basic Kanji Book, for example.

1. Start taking German classes.

2. Get my Japanese to the N3 level.

3. Finally get something done with Thai.

4. Get an A in my English courses.

Japanese is easier than it looks I, personally, think that Arabic and some Indian languages look difficult. But everything is just a matter of practice.

Obviously, the languages that use "our" alphabet are the easiest to write, but I think that without variety the world of languages would be rather boring

It's absolutely fake. Kanji is still used pretty much everywhere, even in kids' manga (it usually has furigana then, though not always) and there's no way to become fluent in Japanese without learning it.

In general, to be considered fluent in Japanese one should know roughly 2000 kanji, I think. At least that's the official version. Maybe we don't need that much to be more or less fluent, but I must say that at ~600 kanji that I know I'm nowhere near fluency.

It's also used for sound effects (onomatopeias) and sometimes when somebody wants to emphasise a particular word or phrase in a sentence, for example.

Don't think that it was a wasted time, since katakana really is essential to knowing Japanese.

Katakana has always amazed and interested me but let us just say that I never had the courage to learn it because of my friends. They always complain of how difficult it is, and that it takes a lot of time to practice this type of handwriting. Now, I am suddenly wondering how long it would take to learn Katakana. What would be the shortest amount of time possible to learn the basics of it, and would these sheets speed up the process?

Don't listen to your frieeeends! Katakana is in no way more difficult than hiragana. It has the same number of characters as hiragana and their shapes are not any more difficult, really. It's all in your mind It's possible to learn katakana in one afternoon.

Sheets are always useful, because you need to practice writing as well as reading, so you can either try writing all the characters on paper or help yourself with some sheets.

"Byki" means "bulls" in Polish, and in a slightly old-fashioned colloquial language it can mean "errors, mistakes", so it doesn't sound too encouraging for me

All jokes aside, this is surprisingly good. I've kinda expected it to be one of those free programs that do nothing but keep trying to make you buy the full version, and it's actually a really nice application. I just hope that it won't make any problems in the future.

Well, we don't really say that, since we don't celebrate Thanksgiving (well, why should we) but since

Thanksgiving is translated to Polish as "Święto Dziękczynienia", I suppose that the proper phrase for "Happy Thanksgiving" is "Szczęśliwego Święta Dziękczynienia!" or "Wesołego Święta Dziękczynienia!".

Well, they know they can ask for such a high price, because some people are ready to pay that much. In my opinion, learning a language will always cost money, sometimes a lot, but I don't think self-study language courses are worth that much. It's better to invest in a good textbook or a language course with a teacher, even.

Really? I hate it >.< I can never remember how to write it, for some bizarre reason. Well, I guess it's fitting that the kanji for "difficult" is difficult...