Miya

I used to sing Jpop songs all the time. I joined fandub groups where different people from the internet would each sing a part of the song and then we would mix it all together and make it into one song. It was fun and it helped me recognize a lot of Japanese words. I don't have the time to do this any more, but it was great while it lasted, lol.

The problem with Japanese is there's a lot of words that are pronounced the same. So if you want to distinguish them, you have to use Kanji. Lots of people don't like Kanji, but it actually helps a lot with reading (assuming you know Kanji). Believe it or not, it's much harder to read all hiragana.

Fortunately, I don't have this problem. I've never liked romaji. Even when I was first learning Japanese and my professor said it was okay to use romaji, I used hiragana. Romaji just looks weird to me for some reason OTL If you want to break the habit of using romaji and you don't know all the kanas, then just look it up. It's tedious to look up everything, but it's necessary. Once you get a good grasp of hiragana, you will never go back to romaji. I promise.

Welcome to the forum I'm also learning Japanese so hope to see you around the Japanese forums soon.

If you're typing in Pinyin, then yes, the tone marks matter. If you're typing the characters, then you don't need to worry about the tone marks because the characters will pop up when you type it and you can just select the one you want.

Personally I think "yaru" is more casual/rude so you would use it with your friends. "Suru" is more formal/"appropriate" for talking with people like teachers, bosses, people from upper class, etc. I don't really use "yaru" much with nouns. I tend to say "やります” (yarimasu - I'll do it) or ”やってみます” (yattemimasu - I'll try it). Whereas for "suru" I will always use a noun like ”勉強します” (benkyoushimasu - I'll study) or "練習します" (renshuushimasu - I'll practice). If you want to use "yaru" with a noun, I think you always need a particle. But for "suru", sometimes you can leave the particle out.

Haha, that one is funny too. I always write shrimp as ebi (エビ) though. Don't want to bother with the Kanji and plus it's not common to use 海老 in speaking.

A pretty neat site. I love that it gives you the stroke orders because the book I currently use doesn't provide them. Also pretty interesting to see what grade the Kanji is taught in XD

I agree. Start with hiragana and then move on to katakana and then Kanji. Your life will be a lot easier if you follow this pattern XD

I think there are both benefits and inconvenience in having a native Japanese professor. The negative parts are, like you said, they learned their language as they were growing up so they might not be able to explain it well to their students. But looking at the other side of the coin, they are natives so they know A LOT more than those who are non-natives. They should be able to answer a lot of questions that non-natives (particularly those who haven't lived in Japan for a long period of time) can't answer.

I start sentences with 'but' and 'and' all the time. As long as it's actually a proper sentence, I don't really see a problem with it.

How much time you want to spend learning Chinese really depends on how quickly you want to get a good grasp of the language. If you're just learning for fun, then you can go at your own pace. If you're learning because you need to (for a class, for work, etc), then you should be prepare to spend some hours each week learning Chinese. Here are a few links to get you started: http://linguaholic.com/chinese-links/study-chinese-links/

I'm currently using GO Keyboard (Free) which offers both character writing and pinyin. It also has other language keyboards. It's not the best, but it'll do the job.

Where I live, Kumon is only for Math and Reading. They don't offer Japanese classes

I asked my sensei about しかし (shikashi) today. It turns out it can also be used in speaking as a more formal form of でも (demo). It's still more common in writing but when you want to speak formally, you can use しかし (shikashi) instead of でも (demo).

Well I don't have children now, but when I do, I want to teach them English, Chinese (preferably both dialects or at least Cantonese), and Japanese. Of course, it's up to them to decide if they want to learn. I won't force it on them but I would like my child to be bilingual

It's funny, but it's also interesting to study people who mimick accents. You can really see what stereotypical features are used and such.

Nope, I've never given up learning a language. Sometimes I learn a language and then I forget it and don't go back to it, but I've never given up after a few weeks.

We learned about this in class today! We watched a clip in Tagalog and the professor asked us how much of it we could understand. It's really interesting because the host kept saying "That's correct" in English. I also noticed some code-switching to Spanish to, like the host would say "Good luck señor".

I know more than 1000 Kanjis I can also recognize a lot of Chinese characters, but that's not necessary the same because of different meanings.

Are the tones neglected all the time or are you referring to a specific singer/song? I'm not good with tones, but when I listen to Chinese music I can still tell the words apart. Like 想 (Xiǎng) doesn't become 象 (Xiàng) for me. But maybe it's because my native is Cantonese so I have an advantage. @ kenthoang28 - You know what would help even more? If you follow along the lyrics while you listen to the music. That way, you'll also recognize the characters that show up in the song.

While this is a good idea, I don't know how we would implement it. Would we program our own games or...? But since this is mainly a discussion forum, I think we should stick to just posting and talking with each other to enchance our learning. I'm still up for a game section, just not a flash one. Up to the admin to decide though.

The most difficult for me is using Keigo. I also suck at using particles.... they confuse me because if you use an incorrect particle, the sentence will still be grammatically correct, but the meaning will be different. .___.

You're welcome! I'm glad I helped!

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