Amatenshi

I'm half Filipino. I've come back to quite a surprise here, haven't I? It's kinda funny how the word filter is interfering with the spelling of some of these greetings in romaji. Frankly, using kana would be advisable, because it's good to get in the habit of reading them if you aren't already, and I'm sure most of us know our hiragana and katakana already. This "Making Out in Japanese" book is good stuff. I'm noticing phrases I hear in anime when people speak in a conversational tone. While I'm not ready for such a thing just yet (I'm still trying to grasp grammar and more vocabulary), this book is good study material for listening. How hard is it to find a physical or digital copy of the whole thing?

Oh, we'll be getting some native Japanese students? This should be very interesting. For me, school isn't as busy this quarter, so I may get back to setting aside Japanese study time.

You people seem to be liking it. I'm glad Obenkyo is working for you. If you want to practice writing, it'll help to invest in a stylus, which is probably cheap. I have one that I use with my tablet, though I suppose it would also work just fine on my phone, despite the screen size.

I used to. Now I actively limit myself very heavily. When on IRC, I also occasionally use "w", the Japanese equivalent, not because I'm a weeaboo, but because a lot of people on my frequently visited channels use it, and it seems more practical, because it's just one key press, and I can just hold the key for emphasis.

I thought that was mostly Republican politicians who mispronounced "nuclear" as "nucular" on TV. As for what I think people mispronounce often, I can't think of anything other than "February", because it's a subconscious (and very common) thing. It also depends on where you are, because of dialect and accent. For example, you might go to New York, and hear someone say, "Can I ax (ask) you something?"

I live in the USA, and of course, English is taught in our schools. However, I never took a class on grammar after 10th grade. However, it never ceases to surprise me how many people don't have proper grammar figured out. Learning English as a second language and becoming fluent will already put you ahead of plenty of Americans.

Agreed. I see no reason not to learn. I understand handwriting isn't done as often, but I'm sure you'll need to do it in some cases in Japan. If you want the full experience of learning the language, you should become fully literate in it - reading, writing, and speaking.

In my experience studying Japanese, I'd have to say writing is the hardest part. Doing this by hand, with all those similar kanji, can get really difficult. Next comes speaking, but that's probably just me, since I have enough trouble speaking in my native language without stuttering. After that comes listening, which I don't find as hard in comparison, even though there's plenty of words that are pronounced the same way. I was able to translate a Kana Hanazawa song by ear with decent accuracy before the official lyrics came out, but I can't write many kanji without a visual reference in front of me, and I have trouble speaking.

You got mine there, "military intelligence". No disrespect to the respectable people who serve in the armed forces, but this is my favorite oxymoron, and it holds truth.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:1000_English_basic_words Here's some audio. There's a long list of words here, and I'm sure they were picked out for good reasons. I don't know much about ESL training, but Wiktionary has pronunciation keys for lots of words, if you know how to read them. If there's no audio for a word and you can't figure it out, you can request more here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Pronunciation_file_requests

Welcome to Linguaholic, justusforus! I hope you enjoy your stay here. Always where under where... That should be a corporate motto for a company in a comedic work of fiction. However, I'm sure the Latin geeks have used it enough on their own. Oh well~

I think I mentioned this somewhere in another topic, previously. It's rather amusing for unorthodox mnemonics. Irreverent humor and hilarity aside, it's actually very useful. If only I had a bit more spare time so I could make use of all this stuff instead of just talking about it.

I know there are medals for 10, 20, and 30, but what are the others worth? I think a list of medals would be useful. Another suggestion - medals for things other than posts.

If there was a fourth language I would be interested in learning, it would probably be Korean. However, I think French would attract a bigger crowd, since it's spoken in multiple countries. In addition, I know that a lot of high schools in my country have French available for study. I'm sure we'd be more likely to find French speakers than any of the other languages listed on the poll.

Cultural differences may be a problem when keeping the value of a sentence. Nuances of diction between languages can do a lot to mess with the preservation of meaning and value. I know several people who do translation from Japanese to English (and other languages), and see a lot of translated works. Japanese puns and wordplay can be hard to translate while still conveying the joke. Sometimes, it's workable, but in other cases, it's not so simple. This is probably why the anime Joshiraku will probably never see a licensed release. The release by gg Fansubs may have been enjoyable, but they copped out on some of the jokes. Some of them may have been legitimately difficult to translate, but others were just localized, because they have a reputation for sometimes overly westernizing things. In the end, the show was made for a Japanese audience, and I'm sure there's plenty that would go over my head. The only way to get the full effect is to learn the language.

A nail in a toe? How did that get there? I'm sure I'd probably say something other than simply "Ouch!" if that happened. These are pretty interesting. My personal experience is that kana aren't that hard at all to learn for reading. However, these mnemonics may very well help someone remember the differences between similar hiragana, because there are a few of those. They also look helpful for writing, to some degree.

Even in my native tongue, correct grammar is important to me. It's more important when learning another language, because learning how to formulate sentences is a big thing when speaking. Communicating with people requires some degree of coherence and correct grammar. The other problem with speaking improperly or unclearly in another language is the possibility of saying something that is either offensive or complete nonsense.

I have a volume of Dengeki G's Magazine lying around somewhere because of the nendoroid I bought a while back. I should go through it and see if I can find pages "dominated by katakana". I've wanted to be able to go back and read the whole thing, too, though that's probably far off right now.

Thanks for reminding me about this. I think I may have had it installed on one of my machines at one point in time, but I can't find it now. I've heard good things about Rikaichan from friends in the past. I'll get in the habit of using it again. It'll prove very useful to me, except for those pages where everything's an image. I notice that some Japanese web pages do that quite a bit.

I've been looking for a good Japanese dictionary app to use on my phone and tablet. I was given a few recommendations in the past, but I don't remember what they were. Right now, I just use Denshi Jisho ( http://jisho.org ) on my PC. I thought it was a godsend when I came across it.

I've never heard of Kanjibox. It sounds like it would help me out quite a bit. One problem though - I can't find it on Google Play. Is it incompatible with my Samsung Galaxy S3? I'd be surprised, if so. Is it an iOS exclusive app?

This seems a bit... too extreme. Throwing out Avril Lavigne sounds like a good idea, though. More than half the music I listen to is Japanese, and I can understand bits and pieces, as well as pick out individual words. Wait... Hold it right there. Japanese food only? Japanese floor and furniture only? Japanese brain and thoughts only? This guy must have gone off his rocker. Also, this doesn't seem like it'd be very reliable if you don't have much of a sense of direction.

Wow. This looks like it's practically a goldmine of information presented in the perfect form for studying. Thanks for sharing! I have a feeling that this is going to help me out a lot.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Obenkyo&hl=en This is the app I use occasionally for studying my kanji. Also included is hiragana, katakana, numbers, JLPT vocabulary, and a pocket-friendly version of Tae Kim's grammar guide. It's received some updates since I last used it to actively practice. I highly recommend you check it out. Personally, I think it works better on a tablet, though you should be just fine running it on a phone. The kana and kanji also have stroke orders, so you can practice writing. If you have a stylus, you can comfortably practice on the screen.

I really think it does have a lot to do with the creators of the software. What programs' spell checkers are marking the non-American versions as wrong? Depending on the program, you can change the dictionary to British English. However, it's perplexing that the programs aren't aware that you're using British English as your system language, unless it was set to American English when you first installed these programs.