nataliedujour
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Posts posted by nataliedujour
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Learning Japanese by yourself is doable, but you have to be disciplined and motivated. I started when I was in high school and I've kept at it ever since. I learned with the Genki Japanese series of textbooks and they became essential for me. Burn out will happen, so be careful not to leave too much of a time gap between studying. Try to find a purpose for studying Japanese. For example, to read manga or to understand Japanese animation without subtitles, etc.
These days, I recommend an app called "Human Japanese" that will teach you the basics without you having to go to another app or book. It might save you time. I've been through so many resources, so just ask me if you have a question!
I've heard such wonderful things about the Genki series! I'm pretty sure I saw workbooks for them as well, right? I tend to learn best with things like that to accompany the text.
I saw some people online talking about Human Japanese before, too... I'll have to give that a shot if you recommend it!
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Anime and manga is a good place to start, but eventually you want to graduate up from that. It's important to keep on challenging yourself.
Anime will teach you some commonly used words and phrases, and learning to sing the theme songs can help you with the overall flow and stress of the language, but it's not as helpful if you want to speak to real Japanese people. Real Japanese people do not talk like anime characters!Great point on using the theme songs to learn the flow of the language! That's exactly what did it for me, and I feel like my pronunciation and pacing are better as a result.
On a related note... that's also where I first started to learn hiragana/katakana. I would find the romanized lyrics to my favorite themes, and then challenge myself to write them down in kana!
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Good evening (or morning, whatever your timezone may be)! I'm Natalie, and I've been attempting to self-study (primarily spoken) Japanese for around 5 years. I like to think my pronunciation is pretty good, and for a while I could write in hiragana/katakana with about as much skill as your average native Japanese-speaking preschooler.
I tend to get a little overwhelmed when attempting to study kanji, though. My significant other has studied French for around 3 years, and I've picked up a few words here and there as a result. Once I get the hang of one (or both!) of those, I hope to become as much of a polyglot as I've seen some of you are on this forum!On the non-language side of things, I currently study psychology in college (albeit very slowly...), and spend every other waking minute of my day watching hockey! I'm a little obsessed to say the least. Say... maybe I could learn Russian or Swedish and hang out with some pro hockey players!
I look forward to getting to know some new friends on this forum!
I tend to get a little overwhelmed when attempting to study kanji, though. My significant other has studied French for around 3 years, and I've picked up a few words here and there as a result. Once I get the hang of one (or both!) of those, I hope to become as much of a polyglot as I've seen some of you are on this forum!
Does music help you learn Japanese?
in Japanese Language | Discussion
Posted
Japanese music was a huge help when I started self-studying! One of my favorite ways to practice kana, in particular, was to look up the romanized lyrics to my favorite songs, and then write the lyrics down by hand in kana. I think I got pretty good at it for a while!
I'm out of practice now, though, but I can still recognize most kana when asked.
I think music also helped hugely with my pronunciation and learning the "flow" of the language. Things like knowing which syllables to stress and when.