Studying Japanese Language/Literature/History

I was taking japanese language lessons two years ago but I had to stop because I didn't have enough money for another half year. I would like to study japanese culture at the university too so I'm going to apply for it this year :)

just dl'ed the kana tap and the hiragana and katakana apps. thanks :) some of the others are still too advanced for me or do the same things as the ones i've got but these 2 will be handy i'm sure.

oh and make sure u add the japanese keyboard on ur ipod. go into settings>general>keyboard>international keyboard>add new keyboard > then select japanese. now u will be able to type in hiragana, katakana and kanji and it is esp useful in some of the dictionary/translation /search apps.

cool. i was wondering what that would be like after i checked out the site. i was thinking of doing the beginner grammar and jlpt classes ...why not push myself right? looking forward to your review. based on that i'll know where to start. i think u're a bit more advanced than me cuz u've been studying kanji and i haven't even thought about tackling that monster yet. write back asap.

Olee wrote: oh and make sure u add the japanese keyboard on ur ipod. go into settings>general>keyboard>international keyboard>add new keyboard > then select japanese. now u will be able to type in hiragana, katakana and kanji and it is esp useful in some of the dictionary/translation /search apps.

yep i did that right away but i'm not sure how to switch from one to another?


i've been doing the katakana lessons with the hiragana and katakana app and then practicing what i learned with kanatap so that seems to be working well. i started playing a bit with kotoba, it's nice cause there are all different methods you can try, myself i think it makes most sense to study them in the same order that they teach in japanese schools so i've just been using that so far, havent gotten too far yet though. i really want to expand my vocabulary so i can watch raws so i get to learn new words at the same time that i'm learning the kanji so that should be helpful if it doesn't make my brain melt >.<

RoksanaStoynova wrote: my mother in law has started bugging me that i should be learning french instead, she doesn't understand why i have no interest in french. she needs to accept that her son married and anglo and move on ffs.

lol my dad was like that with me for a long time, but it was over Spanish instead of French. I wasn't studying Japanese at the time, but I just wasn't interested in really studying Spanish. I'm sure she'll get over it eventually, especially when your children are trilingual (i'm assuming your hubby speaks french because his mom seems to be really stressing it, hehe).

A comment on kanji order: For me, I started using the jouyou kajji order, which worked well, but whenever I hit a block in my ability to remember kanji, i switched to some other random order (i've tried the Remember the Kanji order, but never got far). It kinda gave my brain a jolt. Also, I started learning kanji compounds early on. I think that helped because it provided context and increased my literacy level so I was able to learn more kanji through reading instead of flashcards or whatever.

I also recommend writing kanji. It helps to really imprint it in your brain. You learn how to write it instead of just recognize it (which is what happens when you use IME). For me, it took time to train my hand to write the kanji correctly. Even if I remembered the stroke order, it still looked a little childish for a while (and probably still does). This isn't very different than english though. I remember writing pages and pages and pages when I was in middle school because I wanted to have perfect cursive, lol.

yeah kanji is definitely intimidating. i can recognize mountain fire and rain but don't remember the japanese word, i know hito, ichi, ni, san, and i think thats about it lol

i'll definitely practice writing them too once i'm pretty confident with katakana. i've noticed with my hiragana writing practice when i look at more recent notes versus older ones there's been some improvement in my writing.
the few kanji i have tried to write i found it so hard to get the spacing and proportions right. lots of people seem to stress about stroke order but i find it more difficult to not have half the character squashed because i ran out of space after i made the other half too big lol

then again it happens in other languages too but i think not quite as much.
for example i always bug my husband about the french word for raisin being the same as the word for grape. i'll say "how do you know which one someone's referring to" and he'll say by the context of course and i'll say "but what if there's a bowl of raisins next to a bowl of grapes and someone says 'pass me the ...'" at which point he rolls his eyes at me lol. at least they're similar though, sometimes japanese words can mean completely different things. like hashi

and yeah i dunno if the MIL will get over the french thing. she brought it up on the weekend when i was talking about learning japanese and right in front of her parents, my mom and brother and his girlfriend she starts with "why don't you learn french instead, i don't understand why you'll learn japanese but not french" etc. i said because no offense but japanese interests me more, i tried to learn french in school and it didn't work out so well because french immersion schools here are stupid. and i also told her the more she tries to bully me into it the less i'll want to do it. that shut her up but possibly offended her. i don't care. like i said she needs to accept that her son married an anglo. what will really be fun is if we have kids i want them to: be vegan, go to english school, and not be baptized. that's gonna be some drama right there.
and anyway MY family is german. if i "should" be learning any language it'd be german, she thinks her family is #1 over anyone else's and it drives me nuts at holidays. my mom always has to arrange her stuff around my inlaws schedule, stuff like that.