The reason you started studying Japanese language

[Dmitry]

Hi everyone! Today I want to make a little quiz. People often ask me how to learn Japanese language. Well, the most successful way to become fluent in Japanese (and in any other language) is to just study it. There are no any tools that will help you to learn Japanese and become a pro in this language in couple of months or less. In fact, there are some suggestions that can make this process more interesting and maybe a little easier. It depends on your interesting in Japanese culture (for instance, you can watch anime and/or listen to j-music to learn language, read Japanese books). Moreover, I believe that it is possible to learn any language within very short period. But this period depends on your motivation. So, my question is: what is your motivation in learning Japanese language?

I`ve studied this language for more than 4 years in the university and I`m sure that you must clearly understand your motivation in mastering Japanese. My motivation was that I wanted to visit Japan and I wanted to meet new Japanese friends and I wanted to expand my languages skills. Now I have Japanese friends and etc. So, now I can say that my goal was partly achieved. Therefore, you have to realize what can make you spend your time to become a pro in Japanese. Once my sensei told me that if I wanted to learn how to speak Japanese in 1 year I had to spend 8-24 hours/day studying this language. So, I am going to ask you, are you going to spend so much time learning this language? And if you are, than what does make you so patient and motivated about this?

I want to realize how many of you understand the reason they study this language. The result of this quiz will help me to support this forum and become more usuful to all of you who really want to speak Japanese fluently. Thank you and hope you`ll give some specifics and answers on my questions.

[skywatcher]

Hello!

I'm not an expert speaker/reader/writer of Japanese, but I'm willing to learn. I haven't started yet, but I've been watching anime, reading manga, and watching tokusatsu (Kamen Rider and Super Sentai), and I believe I've been engulfed in a lot of Japanese several times a day.

The thing that motivates me to learn, I think, isn't simply because I want to visit Japan sometime in my life (which I really want to accomplish), but because I also want to have another language in my skill-set, and it's really my dream to be able to work in a Japanese gaming publishing company, or in a studio as a writer or a producer of anime/manga or Japanese movies

[Ebelle]

I've watched anime just about all my life, so I've been hearing Japanese since I was very young. I've also always wanted to have at least one language I could speak other than English. So, I suppose it came natural to me to try to take on Japanese as a second language. I still constantly hear it all the time through anime. I also find the characters to look very cute and attractive. The pronunciation of the words comes easier to me, more so than other languages.

[GingerSpice]

I've also watched anime since I was a kid, and read a lot of Japanese manga as well, so I started studying Japanese so I could know what they were saying without the subtitles! I am also very interested in Japanese culture, it is absolutely amazing and fascinating to me, so I'm also hoping to learn  even more about the culture while learning the language as well!

[Lasonax]

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.

[Miya]

I started studying Japanese because of my interest in Jpop and Jdramas. But the more I studied Japanese, the more I started to like it. Now I rarely listen to Jpop or watch Jdramas, but I'm still studying Japanese. I really love the language and the culture. I'm not fluent yet, but I'll be going to Japan in August so hopefully I'll manage.

[Sputnikops]

Yeah, I'm another one of the nerds, in case you couldn't tell by my avatar xD

I started learning Japanese because of anime/manga, but now, as a translator, I also look at it as a good working language, especially if I can find a job translating the stuff I love.

My Japanese is still not at that level, and I'm not sure if it will ever be, but one has to try

[ang.diwata]

I guess the reason why I started learning Japanese is because there's always been a part of me who like to know things, whatever it is. Then, there's my love for travelling, and my belief in the saying, 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do." So I decided to learn other languages from countries I'd like to visit, so when I go there, I'd be speaking their language.

Plus, there's also my exposure with Japanese animation as a kid. And my curiosity with Japanese culture and history.

[Serenity Fay]

As much as I love Japanese culture, I had never tried to learn Japanese as it seemed way too difficult and complex to learn by myself. However, I watch a lot of subbed anime and play a lot of Japanese games and I began to notice that I could isolate certain words that were used commonly. I released that it might not be such an impossible task as I initially thought it would be. I'm still learning as a very slow pace, as I'm self-taught, and my accent is terrible but it's still fun and I hope to be able to go to Japan one day and actually use what I've learned!

[Baburra]

I want to learn it because  I like watching some Japanese shows, particularly comedies, and I find that subtitles aren't always sufficient to convey the whole idea and I'd much rather get the experience at it's purest, seeing as comedic language doesn't always translate well.

[Trellum]

I must first clarify that I'm not trying to learn japanese and have never really tried, at least not seriously, but I did try a bit when I was 10, lol.  I do have a friend who is trying to learn the language, he has learned quite a bit, bu t he isn't good at reading or writing it, he can understand some japanese tho.  The reason he is learning it is because he loves the country and culture and would love to move in there one day.

Sadly I'm not very sure that wil ever happen, neither is he, but he keeps on learning anyway

[AExAVF]

I'm an avid listener of J-music artists as well as an anime and tokusatsu fan.  In addition, one of my favorite Japanese language films is Battle Royale II, as well as certain Western films which involve Japan, such as You Only Live Twice and The Last Samurai.  In the end, all I really wanted was just to learn another language.

[gegegeno]

Embarrassingly enough, I only started learning because it was a compulsory class for me in primary school, some 13 years ago now. At the beginning of grade eight I had to choose from Japanese or German, so I naturally chose the one I'd already been doing in primary school (and was doing pretty well in at the time). The next year rolled around and I had to choose my subjects - for whatever reason I decided to continue with Japanese. A couple of years later, with some encouragement from my teacher and the academic advisor, I decided to make it one of my senior subjects (I was doing pretty well at it and studying a language gives you extra points on your tertiary entrance scores).

I honestly couldn't even tell you why I continued into UNIVERSITY with it, but originally I was going to take it as a minor and it ended up as one of my two majors (in a dual degree program) because of the exchange studies opportunities it would bring. I got to really love studying languages - as much as I had a passion for the sciences - and made the choice to focus on that instead. I'll be finishing up the science study soon (I will hand in and present my thesis next week - hence why I'm procrastinating on here...) and will start a Masters program next year in Japanese translation and interpreting.

So my motivation now is to keep up with friends and, well, follow my (new) dream of becoming an interpreter. Not too bad when you consider where I started - I don't know of anyone I studied Japanese with in high school who continued learning it, let alone anyone I learned it with in primary school!

[Hydra]

Video games and manga would be the two main reasons. There are a ton of great video games made in Japan that are never translated, and I really wanted to be able to play ad understand them.

[ariana4]

I really like Japanese music, especially J-Rock. I really wished I could connect to it the same way I could connect to English music (as listening to music in a foreign language is a very different experience). So, I started to learn Japanese. I also had an interest in Japanese culture, so that helped too.

[petrushka]

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.