Miya

I've been studying for 2 years :] How about you?

Personally, I like traditional characters more. I think they're nicer to look at and where I'm from, they're more useful. I only use simplified when I don't remember how to write a character in traditional XD

^Just the first one. The other two are correct. Hajimemashite - Nice to meet you 初めまして

Voted for French It's a beautiful language itself, but I don't really know why it's the first language to pop up in my mind when I think "romantic language".

I'll put cecil15's in Japanese too Ohayou - Good morning. おはよう。 Konnichiwa - Good afternoon. こんにちは。 Konbanwa - Good evening. こんばは。 Naniga atta? - What's up? なにがあった？(it's naniga, not nanika) Dou sh iteru? - How's everything? どうしてる？ Kawatta koto aru? - What's new? かわったことある？ Tadaima. - I'm back (home). ただいま。 Ittekimasu. - I'm leaving. いってきます。 Here are some more useful basic phrases: Itadakimasu! - Let's eat! いただきます！ Okaeri (nasai) - Welcome home おかえり（なさい） Arigatou (gozaimasu) - Thank you very much! ありがとう（ございます）！ Sumimasen (formal), Gomennasai - I'm sorry. すみません(formal), ごめんなさい (casual) S h i tsureishimasu... - Sorry for intruding...しつれいします。 Ojamashimasu! - I'm coming in!　おじゃまします！ Genki desuka? - How are you?　げんきですか？ Daijoubu desuka? - Are you okay? だいじょうぶですか？ Ganbattekudasai! - Do your best! がんばってください！ Sayonara - Good bye!　さよなら！ Daisuki! - I like you! だいすき！ Ais h i teru! - I love you! あいしてる！ Suki na tabemono wa... - My favorite food is... すきなたべものは。。。 Hai! - Yes!　はい！ Iie - No 　いいえ。

哇, 原來你同我都很相似。我也很喜歡學不同的語言。我也以前學過法文，但已經幾年沒有用過。 :cry: 其實我的中文不太好。我小時候在香港上過幼兒園，但學過的東西已經全部忘記了。我是最近學返中文。真的很可惜...因為其他班太多功課和考試，我只上了半學期中文課就沒有上了。現在我是靠電視字幕來學中文。 你的中文都幾好。你在學校是學普通話，對不對？我是說廣東話。我的普通話不太好。;_;

For me, I really really suck at Pinyin so that's the hardest for me. I can never get the tone marks right on my exam :bored: But for most people, I think writing the characters correctly is the hardest. For Chinese, it's not only important to write the character correctly, but stroke order matters a lot too. I had a few classmates who could never get the stroke order correct and they really suffered from that during the exams.

I never really thought about it, but I guess you have a point. As long as you can understand and read the character, then is it really necessary to know how to write it? Especially with so many things being typed nowadays, hand-written work is becoming more and more rare. Personally, I'd still study it. Technology is great, but sometimes they break down. In cases like that, at least I'd still be able to get the job done by hand-writing.

I don't really have any technique on memorizing how to read and write Chinese characters, but I think it really helps to turn on Chinese subtitles when you're watching Chinese movies. You will slowly be able to remember those characters that keep popping up. As for writing, I strongly recommend getting one of those Chinese character notebooks with the squares. Those are really helpful in making my characters straight and with those notebooks, you will notice your mistakes faster because everything is so aligned.

我住在加州。現在我在我的屋企。再過幾天我就會回大學宿舍。我的暑假真過得很快 :cry: 你有什麼嗜好？為什麼你對中文有興趣？

Hi, Does anyone have any Japanese novels that they can recommend to me? I've studied Japanese for 2 years and I have a pretty good understanding of the language. I think reading Japanese novels will help me improve my Japanese. Any genre is okay, but I'm looking for something I can purchase on Amazon or some other online retailer. Thanks for the help

Sorry for bumping this topic back up, but does anyone have a site that can help me learn particles properly? I misuse them a lot and I get them wrong almost everytime on my tests. Any help would be appreciated

大家好。我是Miya。我是香港人但是我現在住在美國。我喜歡看TVB劇和聽日本音樂 xD。我現在在大學主修日文。希望可以同大家做個朋友。 (對不起，我的中文不是很好)

I'm okay with my friends using short-cuts when they're not overdoing it. I can understand using a few short-cuts, but i dnt wan them 2 b typing lik dis. I know grammar and spelling isn't important when texting, but it does get annoying when too many short-cuts are used.

Before I officially started studying Japanese, I listened to a lot of Jpop and watched a lot of Japanese shows and dramas. I didn't even realize it then, but it really gave me an advantage over my peers. I was able to read and understand a lot more of the language than the other people in my class. It helps even more if you follow the lyrics while you're listening.

I like to study alone, but studying with others is more helpful. Your friends will spot the mistakes that you fail to notice. Especially when you're learning a new language, interactions with others is very important.

Personally, I recommend getting an actual study book. I recommend GENKI I by Eri Banno. It is a bit pricey, but it's a good book to use if you want to start studying Japanese seriously. But if you don't want to get an actual book, you can try livemocha. This is also a good website to start: http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/ts/japanese/ Good luck!

Speaking is definitely the hardest for me. It's really hard to get all the sounds right. I always worry that the person I'm talking to can't understand me because of my pronunciation. I don't have a problem with writing, reading, or understanding. I can understand fine, but it's really difficult for me to speak in a foreign language.

I had to learn English when my family immigrated to America. It was tough at first, but I (more or less) got the hang of it and now it's the language I'm most fluent in. But I learned my first non-English language in high school. Foreign language study is required to graduate from high school and my school offered French and Spanish. I picked French and loved it!

I would like to learn Indonesian next. Right now I'm studying Japanese, but once I master that, I'll be self-studying Indonesian. Recently, I've been listening to some Indonesian music and the language sounds really good to me. It's completely different from what I currently speak so hopefully it won't be too hard.

I think katakana is harder than both hiragana and Kanji. Sure, Kanji characters are hard to write, but I don't have a problem reading them or figuring out what they mean. For katakana, I can never tell apart ツ(tsu) and シ(shi) and ソ(so) and ン(n). It's also hard for me to sound out and write the loan words in katakana. So for me, katakana is the hardest out of the three

I'm studying Japanese because I'm interested in Japanese culture. I love listening to Jpop, watching Jdramas, learning about Japanese traditions, and much more. Also, I think Japanese is a beautiful language. It just sounds really good to me