petrushka

Isn't it more of a dialect difference rather than an inherently grammatical one? I mean, "na(n)-" is a prefix used to denote where someone/thing is located. It's used when questioning where someone is ("Nasaan sila?") and in the response expressing where they are ("Nasa mall sila.") Similarly, there is a rule regarding D and R usage that depends on what kind of letter precedes the word. - A word ending in vowels and vowel-sound (such as y and w) use the R form "raw/rin" - A word ending in consonants use the D form "daw/din" So it's a matter of whether the speaker is using the prefix "nan-" in which case the word is "nandito", or whether they're using the prefix "na-" in which case the word is "narito". They both mean the same though and is totally independent from whether the topic is a person or an inanimate subject (such as in the song, "Narito ako na lagi ng nakatingin...").

I'm not surprised your friend found it easy to learn the language! Apart from being close geographically and sharing historical culture, the languages themselves are very close to each other, both being of Austronesian (or Malayo-Polynesian) language family and sharing many similar words, or similar-sounding words. The phonetics tend to be similar too so it's easy for someone fluent in one language to learn the other. I also have a friend who was able to learn Indonesian in about three months! I was so surprised but she told me retention was very easy because of the inherent similarities between the languages.

Hi everyone. I was just wondering if there's an online tutorial out there that specifically teaches British (UK?) English or something similar? English is my second language but I've found that while more of my learned English falls on American English, there's bits and pieces which are more British English and I just became curious about it. I'm sure most people have both in their English too but it's just interesting to know things about the differences in the language, in/formal speech and maybe some slang. Which English are you fluent in and what differences have you found between your English and other English-speaking people?

One of my main reasons for learning Spanish - apart from my dream of wanting to be a polyglot - is specifically work-related since learning another language apart from English will raise the payrate extravagantly. It hasn't changed my work life yet since I'm still a beginner, but I'm hoping learning a new language will result in better work opportunities for me.

I tried this a long time ago but it didn't really work out for me. I don't know if it's because I picked a tutorial that didn't fit with my style of learning or if the tutorial itself was bad but I just ended up confused at the end, and then frustrated because I couldn't retain anything that was taught. I think it's the fact that there's a sense of not being able to control my learning pace in a video, unless I pause and rewind and repeat. A lot of mental faculties are focused on that and it gets in the way of retention. Might just be me though.

Tae Kim's guide was really specific in differentiating the two and states that the "wa" is a topic particle, meaning it denotes what the topic of the sentence is; whereas "ga" is the identifier particle, which denotes what the subject of the sentence is. The "ga" particle identifies a specific property of something, while the "wa" particle is used only to bring up a new topic of conversation. In their example, they translated these two sentences as: 私は学生 - As for me, I am a student. 私が学生 - I am the one that is the student. I still get confused about them a lot but I just remind myself that the "wa" particle disappears in continuous conversation as long as the topic is the same whereas the "ga" is always needed if there's a subject.

Include me in the list of people who watched anime growing up so I've been hearing the language for a big part of my life. When I was young, internet wasn't as accommodating as it is now, but often times, the TV networks left the opening and ending song in tact so even if the anime itself was dubbed in my native language, I still heard it everyday. I am more interested in learning Japanese for the manga though. In every season, there is usually a groups that subs an anime, but there are so much more manga available than there are groups willing to scanlate it. So I'd like to learn the language so even in its raw form, I can get an understanding of what's happening to a manga I follow. And I just really want to learn languages. My dream is to be a polyglot and since I've been hearing Japanese for so long, I figured it would be easier to learn it than a language I've hardly encountered and don't encounter on a regular basis.

This is perfect! Thank you so much for creating this and sharing this with us. I haven't tried it yet but I'm at the point where I'm trying to familiarize myself with listening to natives speak in their natural speed and I realize that it's so much harder than the tutorials I heard where the sound examples are purposely slowed down so that each word and syllable are perfectly stated. Seeing this site right now was perfect timing. Thanks again!

I learned it through... Wikipedia. Haha! I'm sure there are better, easier places to learn it from but that's where I learned to memorize the hiragana alphabet because it was complete and they even included the characters that are nearly obsolete these days. What I did was to save the character in my computer and it sort of became like a flashcard type thing where I would say out loud what I thought the character was and then I checked if I was right after. Paying for classes was too expensive and when I started, I had no smartphone to download apps to get that flashcard effect so that was what I did. I also practiced writing the characters on scratch paper to make sure I remembered what they looked like but I had to unlearn that because I wasn't following the correct stroke order, haha! Reminiscing about this is certainly nostalgic but I'm glad I worked so hard then since it did stick with me.

I haven't tried Pimsleur to learn Japanese either but I'm not sure Pimsleur is a good approach to learning this language. From my experience, Pimsleur is good in setting you up to learn certain languages because it helps your pronunciation a LOT in a fast and efficient manner and if you're a native English speaker, it helps you in learning European languages like Spanish and French because they have similar sentence construction and alphabet in writing so getting the pronunciation down goes a long way in understanding conversations with natives. But because Japanese uses a different writing style and has a completely different sentence construction to boot, wouldn't just listening to the language make comprehension difficult? Japanese words are "spelled as pronounced" more often than not so comprehension has more to do with context and knowing what words sound similar to each other and how a kanji is read during appropriate scenarios. Is it 良い as in yoi or 良い as in ii? That kind of stuff, I suppose it what I want to say. Again though I haven't tried the Pimsleur approach and they most likely know about how important the written part of learning a language like Japanese is, especially since it drops subject markers easily and relies heavily on context. Good luck with learning the language! Hope you can give a review here so we can see how effective it was for you.

Hello everyone~ Hope I can get to learn a lot here. I really need a pattern of study since I'm self-studying using free online tools and I can be sidetracked so easily. Also excited to look around and see the resources people have gathered through their own experience. It's awesome to see first hand accounts of what others have used and which worked and didn't work for them and why. I am fluent in English and am aiming to learn one European language (most likely Spanish) and one East Asian language (most likely Japanese). Since it has similar sentence structure to English, I'm hoping I can learn Spanish easier than Japanese but I am more interested in Japanese as a language so we'll see. Hello again to everyone and I hope I can get to discuss learning languages with y'all.