13vinylinfants

I went to a Japanese language school with a young (I think 17) girl who was a dedicated anime fan. Her pronunciation and rhythm of speech was really, really good for her actual language ability. But at the same time, it was pretty obvious that it came from anime. She had this really cutesy, drawn-out way of speaking, and she knew a lot of weird anime slang words and relatively few "proper" Japanese words. So anime can improve your Japanese ability, especially when it comes to casual conversation, but do not make the mistake that anime reflects the way people speak in real life.

"Onomatopoeia" is a bit of a misleading term for them since most don't actually stand for a sound. Like "muki muki", meaning big and hard muscles, or "giri giri", meaning "just barely". I think the Japanese term for them is 擬音語 (giongo), which obviously doesn't have an equivalent in English.

I'm actually a native speaker. But I'm going to chime in and say that my best friend in high school was Japanese with beginner-level English ability. He picked up slang from hanging out with me and my friends and everybody thought it was cool! You might never use it in the workplace, but I feel that using English slang is a good way to connect and make friends with native speakers.

Immersion, immersion, immersion. Make Japanese friends and speak as much Japanese as possible with them. I would say 80% of my Japanese ability, at least, didn't come out of a book. Obviously, you'll need to start by studying the writing system, grammar, and basic vocabulary. But once you've got a grasp on the basics you should start trying to practically apply your skills as early as possible.

Many Japanese even struggle with keigo. Some companies even formally train their new recruits in how to talk to their superiors and people from other companies. The rules regarding employees of other companies are even more complicated than rules regarding your superior. The good thing is that since keigo gives even Japanese people trouble, you'll be forgiven if you make a mistake. As long as you make an effort to speak politely - even just using desu/masu - you'll be fine in most situations.

I don't think listening to music helps much, no. And this is coming from someone who has listened to Japanese music religiously for years. Even if your Japanese is advanced enough that you can actually understand most of the lyrics, when an unfamiliar word or phrase comes up, you're not going to pause the song to look it up. What does potentially help is singing Japanese songs at karaoke. The lyrics show up on screen, usually in kanji with furigana, so you can actually pick up some new words and kanji that way. It also is good for natural-sounding pronunciation.

Wow. That sounds pretty ignorant. I think everyone would agree that you should be realistically informed about your characters' social situations, but you don't actually have to *be* say, a ninja to write a novel about ninjas. If we take that advice literally, I'm better qualified to write about a white guy living in Mauritania than an Asian guy living in Canada, even though I'm from Canada and I'm not even sure where Mauritius is. I think that vastly overstates the importance of race and gives too little credit to the ability of a good author.

Studying with native speaker friends is definitely best if possible. Some people have already recommended other social language learning sites here, but I don't think anybody mentioned Lang-8. Basically you write about whatever you want in your target language, and native speakers correct your grammar. You can make some online friends there if you try hard enough. lang-8.com I believe is the address. The only problem is you have to think about things to write about all the time...

I would say Esperanto, but I'm pretty sure calling it "fictional" would piss a lot of Esperantists off

I've been interested in Japanese culture for years and years - at least since I was 10 years old. Learning Japanese started out as a hobby without any real goals in mind, but in high school I made some Japanese friends and found that I loved connecting with another culture through its own language. After high school I studied in Japan for a few months, and not only did I find that I love living there, but I met a lovely Japanese woman (who doesn't speak English!). So even though I started basically just for fun, now I have a million reasons to keep pushing on.

皆さんこんにちは。13vinylinfantsです。最近日本で、ビニールの「ミニベビー」を売っている店が見つかって、おかしくて面白いと思った13個買ってしまいましたので１３vinylinfantsと言います。

一つ正したいんですが、敬語で話す時、「よろしくお願いします」は「よろしくお願いいたします」になります。 敬語はとても複雑で難しいですが、日本人も皆最初に間違えますのでご安心ください。丁寧に話したいと思っていけばその気持ちが伝わるとお思いします。