Jump to content
Linguaholic

Lasonax

Members
  • Posts

    123
  • Joined

  • Last visited

    Never

Everything posted by Lasonax

  1. Everyone says German, and I have to agree. While I do think that german has a way too bad reputation of being an "angry language", I really do think that with the right intoniation, nothing beats an angry german person swearing like crazy.
  2. I find romaji to be useful at times, when I'm uncertain if I read the hiragana/katakan right. But I do think it's bad to rely completely on the romaji. As soon as you know the hiragana and katakana, you should use/take use of the romaji as little as possible. Relying too much on romaji will probably slow down your learning, I mean, how quick you will be able to become fluent in reading the syllables that is.
  3. I'm not very open with studying japanese, because if I told some people I'm sure they would look at me like "You're one heck of a weaboo aren't ya?". I think it's really mixed, it's probably true that a lot of people who study japanese do it mostly because of japanese entertainment medias and such (Visual Novels, Anime, Manga, Light Novels, etc), and I'm certain that a lot of people consider it to be a waste of time to learn japanese just for that... But I also believe that a lot of people think it's all right. I would probably get weirder looks if I said I was studying some other asian language. But I guess it really depends on what kind of people you "hang out" with.
  4. I would be totally screwed if it was Japanese. If I would be lucky I might find someone who could help me out, but I would have a problem explaining my situation for sure... If I was dropped off in England however, it would be easy as pie, since I'm fluent in english and everything.
  5. It's very common for that to happen in Sweden actually, it's so common that some Swenglish (swedish and english combined) words has became real swedish words in the official dictionary. I find it to be quite silly, but since swedish is a language that has a lot of loan words, it's not something that suprises me.
  6. If you count basic knowledge, I guess I know 4 languages. Swedish (fluent, native), English (fluent), German (Studied it for 3 years), Japanese (basic knowledge). Not really fluent in german, although I know quite a lot of german.
  7. Finnish is extremely far away from Swedish, and you're very unlikely to understand much from it if you know Swedish. Danish can be somewhat understandable in some cases, but for the most part Danish is different enough that you won't understand most of what they are saying. Norwegian however, is very simlar. Atleast the more common "bokmål" is. Even if the meaning of the words is somewhat different from swedish, atleast I can almost always understand what they are talking about without any problems. Nynorsk (which is the older "version" of norwegian, still used to some extent) however is impossible to understand.
  8. Language mistakes like those are so common that I can't even be bothered to care about them anymore. I mean, as long as I get what they mean, I'm not going to bitch about it. I used to be really picky about language before, and I even used to point out all the flaws my classmates did (not out loud, but... still). And they always got insanely mad at me for pointing it out, and I actually got bullied for it, somewhat. So, after that, I suppose I've gotten quite careless about language problems. I've learned not to care, because I remember how annoying it was to care, tell people, and see people get mad at me for telling them of their mistakes. That being said, I still notice all the problems that occur in media, and all... But you can CHOOSE not to care about it, if you want to
  9. I'm generally a fairly fast reader, and as I am very fluent in english I don't find myself reading it out loud or anything. I do however read things out loud when it comes to Japanese, since I'm a beginner at that, and I am sure I read things out loud all the time when I was a beginner at english too. I wouldn't claim that I'm a very fast reader, and sometimes I even feel like I'm a very slow reader, but I think I'm pretty average.
  10. Yes, it's a major part of our education. Since Swedish is a language that has a lot of loan words, and English is so common here: it's an extreme handicap here if you don't know english. English is so common here, that some teenagers even mix Swedish with English, and it's likely that in the future, we will get some mixture between Swedish and English as the modern "swedish". I think I started learning english at the age of 7 or something, it was pretty early.
  11. Flashcards. Flashcars is the best method of learning anything new in a language if you ask me. Of course learning processes are very individual, and the best way for you is something you got to discover for yourself... But personally I learn insanely quickly by using flashcards, even from the first time seeing them I learn the quickest with flashcards.
  12. Oh yeah, I used to do this all the time when I was learning English. I still am learning english, but as I'm very fluent in it at the moment, the focus lies on very complex grammar. It's definately a great method for people who are starting out to learn english!
  13. 2 classess is a good start, but it's definately not going to make you fluent unless you spend a lot of your free time studying, outside of the regular class-schedule. I studied german for 3 years, and while I could have a lot of basic conversations, and I knew quite a lot of grammar and vocabulary, I wasn't really "fluent".
  14. Things like these can be quite good for Kanji/Katakana/more complex characters, but for simple stuff as the Hiragana I find it to be mostly wasted time. You're better off just "bashing it in" via Anki/Flashcards if you ask me
  15. I used the book "Remembering the Kana" aswell as Anki, it worked like a charm - and it didn't take very long! I could have gone through everything much faster than I did, but unfortunately I didn't have much spare time every day.
  16. I don't think the Katakana is that hard, but then again I didn't find the hiragana to be very hard either. It's true that the katakana has a lot of symbols that are very simlar to some other ones, but even so I didn't find it very hard to remember the small differances.
  17. This site is really good for learning to read Hiragana, even if you don't understand what is being said (if you're a complete beginner) it can be helpful just to read the hiragana out loud, to practice fluency. http://life.ou.edu/stories/
  18. Anki is definately amazing. I personally use both a manual flashcard-type of website to question myself on the new words/kanji/kana/etc and then I fixed an anki deck to use on my phone to use when I got some spare time. I have an android myself, and even though it's not an official app, I think it's wonderful. The fact that the Kana decks has sounds on them, really helped out when I was learning the Kana. Definately a great application for both the PC and the phone!
  19. I never watch dubbed, for the same reason that I prefer reading english novels in english, I prefer hearing the original language. Since I just started learning japanese a few months ago, I'm not even close to being able to watch anime without subtitles however. That being said, I would probably be able to understand a bit from some anime without the subtitles, but I wouldn't want to risk losing some of the content just because I wasn't usign subtitles. In a few years, maybe I can watch some anime without subs, but definately not now. So I'll have to go with subbed. As far as learning goes, I don't think watching anime contributes THAT much to your learning unless you're actively learning on the side. I mean, it's probably possible to learn japanese just by watching anime, but I wouldn't count on it... Neither would I consider watching anime as a "study period" or something like that. I love anime and all, and I'm certain it will help me pick up some language skills aswell, but it's not something I think will make a very huge differance in my learning.
  20. I started learning a few months ago, simply because I'm very interested in Anime/Visual Novels/Manga/Light Novels/Japanese Music, and japanese culture overall. I believe it started out with me wanting to read Visual Novels and Light Novels actually, since a lot of those aren't translated into English, and many of them never will be translated into English. Most/all anime and manga gets translated however, so that's not that big of a motivator, but I do want to read manga and watch anime without any translations too, of course. I'm a person who has always had a passion for languages however, so by now it's gotten more of a routine and "I want to learn more about this language" than that I'm constantly fighting for the carrot of being a "pro" in Japanese. That being said, I have chosen to focus everything on passive understanding, and nothing on speaking/writing myself. Some may say that this is not a good way to go, but personally I find it to be the best route for me to go. I will most likely travel to Japan in the future, but even then I don't think I will have that much use for being able to communicate in the language myself. My goal is all about being able to understand it, and I think that if I spent the time and energy needed to make myself able to speak/write it too, it would be a dozen times harder than it already is. It also gets much easier as far as grammar/vocab/everything goes, as I don't have to memorize/remember the ways to say this and that, I just need to recognize it.
  21. The katakana felt like it was more complex, but even if it was a bit more complex I felt like it was quite easy to remember it. A lot of the katakana are more simple than the hiragana, but then there are quite a few katakana that are so simlar to other ones that it sometimes takes quite a while before I can tell which one is written. Then again, I'm personally not even trying to learn it English to Japanese/writing/speaking, and only on the passive understanding. In other words, it doesn't become very confusing for me that they have the same sound and all.
  22. I'm currently going through "Japanese The Manga Way" myself, and it's actually a very useful resource for learning japanese grammar. It may sound like it is another one of those cheap "Learn Japanese Today!" things, but it's really not. It was the only grammar book my library had with Japanese, and I actually like it a lot, and I'd recommend it to any beginner. It's very basic however, so even if you go through the entire book you're going to need a lot more on top of that afterwards. Personally I'm going to go through Tae Kim's guide after this book, and after that I'll have to hunt down a more advanced resource, but for now this book is really great!
×
×
  • Create New...