Learning Japanese

[DreamTactix]

150 kanji per day sounds like a lot more than most people would be able to feasibly do.  If I were learning 10-15 per day and retaining everything including on-yomi and kun-yomi I'd be content

It takes maybe 2 weeks to learn hiragana and katakana to the point of total recall to the point of feeling natural.  Kanji really becomes easier when you learn enough radicals to be able to piece them together.

While you can do self study like I did for almost 9 years, I have a feeling formalized classes would be a lot easier.  Now that I am in college and actually taking Japanese courses it's simply solidified some grammar rules that I was somewhat unclear on.  It's a lot easier to simply ask your instructor when you're unsure of how something works than to have to reverse engineer everything.  You can, however, learn a lot of vocabulary on your own, and this is the part that I think immersion really helps on.  The downside to taking classes so late into my studies is that the classes are mostly way below what I already know.  The plus side however is that they make for easy As.

And I do agree that you don't really know a kanji unless you can write it.  While there are a few that I can recognize that I can't remember all of the strokes, that number becomes less and less all the time.  If you truly understand kanji you'll piece them together from their original radicals rather than try to tackle them as one piece.

[Tatsujin]

150 kanji per day sounds like a lot more than most people would be able to feasibly do.  If I were learning 10-15 per day and retaining everything including on-yomi and kun-yomi I'd be content

It takes maybe 2 weeks to learn hiragana and katakana to the point of total recall to the point of feeling natural.  Kanji really becomes easier when you learn enough radicals to be able to piece them together.

While you can do self study like I did for almost 9 years, I have a feeling formalized classes would be a lot easier.  Now that I am in college and actually taking Japanese courses it's simply solidified some grammar rules that I was somewhat unclear on.  It's a lot easier to simply ask your instructor when you're unsure of how something works than to have to reverse engineer everything.  You can, however, learn a lot of vocabulary on your own, and this is the part that I think immersion really helps on.  The downside to taking classes so late into my studies is that the classes are mostly way below what I already know.  The plus side however is that they make for easy As.

And I do agree that you don't really know a kanji unless you can write it.  While there are a few that I can recognize that I can't remember all of the strokes, that number becomes less and less all the time.  If you truly understand kanji you'll piece them together from their original radicals rather than try to tackle them as one piece.

You can memorize Kanji by reading or writing or both. It really depends on the person. Some people learn stuff by looking at it, and others by writing/reading it, etc.

[geoffreak]

The great thing about college is you know a LOT of people with varying skill sets. My university in particular has a specialty in gaming and I am friends with a lot of people who are in this program. One in particular I promised to come up with a good game idea for him to make.
Should I have him start a kanji learning RPG or is what is already out there good enough?

[yellowtable]

You can memorize Kanji by reading or writing or both. It really depends on the person. Some people learn stuff by looking at it, and others by writing/reading it, etc.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but reading them is a heck of a lot easier than writing. For example, I learnt the kanji for dream (yume, 夢) a few weeks ago, and I hadn't reviewed it. Because of this, whenever I started to read it, I had no problems. However, when it actually got down to testing how to write it, I had a vague picture of what it looked like, but couldn't write it. So despite learning it, and being able to read it no worries, I couldn't write it. I obviously did a few reviews, and now I can remember it with no problems.

This is why if you know any Chinese people who lived their youth overseas (I'd say Japanese, but the only Japanese people I know can't read kanji), they can normally read books and web pages fine. But they can usually only write a few hundred characters at maximum (unless their parents have told them to write, while they were overseas). While you can say that learning to read is a heck of a lot more important than writing, which is true, I don't think most people can learn to write the kanji by reading them alone.

The great thing about college is you know a LOT of people with varying skill sets. My university in particular has a specialty in gaming and I am friends with a lot of people who are in this program. One in particular I promised to come up with a good game idea for him to make.
Should I have him start a kanji learning RPG or is what is already out there good enough?

While that sounds like an awesome idea, there already is a large amount of software out there already made for kanji learning. If you use the Heisig method, the reviewing system at a site called 'reviewing the kanji' is all you will need. There is also Anki, which some people use instead. And there are even games where you can actually learn the Kanji from, like Slime Forest. I personally don't think it's very good, but I don't want to rubbish something, that someone has spent a lot of time working on.

[psyren]

Can you tell the difference between 'dream' and 'step'?

[dankles]

A free gift from my home town:
GPB Education (Georgia Public Broadcasting)
Japanese I: http://www.gpb.org/irasshai/term/japaneseI
Japanese II: http://www.gpb.org/irasshai/term/japaneseII

156 videos * ~20 Mins each = 52 hours of free video

They are wmv's so you have to forgive that, plus it was done in the 90's so it can be a little cheesy sometimes, however it's still a huge free resource.

Anyways, another thing that helps me is to use post-it notes with the japanese names of objects then stick them to the corresponding objects in my house. It's a great way to visually remember things.

Note to linux users:

(click to show/hide)

The mms streams don't play very well with mplayer, so you might wanna use xine instead.

Slime Forest for reading Japanese

Whoa! It's actually working for me! nice!

[Aneroph]

Anyways, another thing that helps me is to use post-it notes with the japanese names of objects then stick them to the corresponding objects in my house. It's a great way to visually remember things.

That only goes so far. In fact, that was probably chapter 1 of my School textbook.

[dankles]

Anyways, another thing that helps me is to use post-it notes with the japanese names of objects then stick them to the corresponding objects in my house. It's a great way to visually remember things.

That only goes so far. In fact, that was probably chapter 1 of my School textbook.

Of course, I was just giving one simple easy tip. I  realize that self study and get you pretty far, but the only real way to completely learn a language is to practice with a lot native speakers or even better, to move to the native country for awhile. Then obviously there is the written part that requires both reading and writing.
That's how I learned Spanish. It wasn't easy, but it was a lot of fun.

EDIT:
Oh yeah, did I mention I was fluent in only 4 months with almost no previous training? My grammar wasn't the best and I didn't understand everything, but I could speak the language without pausing to think.
How ever, my secret was that I was living in a Spanish speaking country with people that only spoke spanish (I was the only english guy for like 10 square miles).

[dankles]

Anyone know of some good Japanese music to go to sleep to? (for learning while I sleep)

[psyren]

Forget Japanese music, just listen to Coldplay.

[dankles]

Forget Japanese music, just listen to Coldplay.

lol 

[psyren]

No, seriously, it's been voted as some of the best music to assist people in falling asleep.

That aside, it's doubtful whether people can actually learn while asleep.

[dankles]

I also don't think that people learn in their sleep, though it usually help's me to fall asleep when there is music.

Anyways, ATM I mostly focused on learning to read/write Kanji via Remembering the Kanji I and Slime Forest. I started about 4 days ago, I've learned ~200 kanji so far with like 1800+ to go.
My goal is to be done with that in less than 3 months. Then I'll start practicing with sentences and continue learning more kanji via "Remembering the Kanji III".
So wish me luck 

[zorena86]

I also don't think that people learn in their sleep, though it usually help's me to fall asleep when there is music.

Anyways, ATM I mostly focused on learning to read/write Kanji via Remembering the Kanji I and Slime Forest. I started about 4 days ago, I've learned ~200 kanji so far with like 1800+ to go.
My goal is to be done with that in less than 3 months. Then I'll start practicing with sentences and continue learning more kanji via "Remembering the Kanji III".
So wish me luck 

Wow nice, so far I've been learning Japanese through the language course my university offers. I've already taken JPN 1-2 and have registered for 3 this fall. We used the Genki textbook and IMO we've been going slow, did ch 1-4 in JPN1 and 5-8 in JPN2.

A lot of times I put on some anime music I like to fall asleep with, like the Chobits and True Tears OP theme. May not be so much in the department of learning in your sleep, but it's very relaxing.

Lol on a side note, I grabbed the School Days OST and had that playing one night before going to sleep, the song of the last ep that was so dramatic started to play (Kanako Itou - Kanashimi no Mukou he) and I wasn't able to get any sleep I was too busy watching over my sheets for fear of my life because of that moment we all know of.

[dankles]

Lol on a side note, I grabbed the School Days OST and had that playing one night before going to sleep, the song of the last ep that was so dramatic started to play (Kanako Itou - Kanashimi no Mukou he) and I wasn't able to get any sleep I was too busy watching over my sheets for fear of my life because of that moment we all know of.

Hehe! You're a funny guy 
I'm trying to do some of what this guy says combined with my knowledge from learning spanish.
Once I can read and write, my learning experience will go much faster and easier. My long term goal is to be (somewhat) fluent in under 18 months.
If only I lived in japan, then my learning would go sooo much faster.

[zorena86]

I'm trying to do some of what this guy says combined with my knowledge from learning spanish.
Once I can read and write, my learning experience will go much faster and easier. My long term goal is to be (somewhat) fluent in under 18 months.
If only I lived in japan, then my learning would go sooo much faster.

Wow! That's definitely useful! I will be working with that this summer til JPN3 starts and be ahead of the class big time. Yea knowing multiple languages really helps when learning another because you tend to incorporate many of the rules with similar concepts.

I started JPN1 with a friend of mine who only speaks English (I'm naturally bilingual with Spanish) and he complains to me all the time that it's easier for me to learn the concepts of Japanese because I was raised knowing 2 languages as opposed to him. In the beginning I just took his excuses as just that, but now I see that it can be truth rather then just lame excuses to cover his laziness (though he was pretty lazy...)

[dankles]

Hehe! Yeah, learning a language is mostly just willpower. So lazy people tend to have a hard time. In fact, I wasn't able to learn Spanish at all when I took some classes in high school because I was very lazy. It wasn't until I moved to Honduras that I was finally able to learn it.

[zorena86]

Haha! Wish I could've been lazy in high school... but being home schooled with moms as the teacher, that wasn't happening... 

Can't wait to get home tonight (on campus in comp lab now ) and try out that Slime Forest, looks interesting and fun.

[dankles]

Haha! Wish I could've been lazy in high school... but being home schooled with moms as the teacher, that wasn't happening... 

Can't wait to get home tonight (on campus in comp lab now ) and try out that Slime Forest, looks interesting and fun.

I like it because it tests you on kanji that look very similar. That way you can really understand the difference.
Also, its free(as in libre, not gratis) software, which is another thing I like.

[virionspiral]

A free gift from my home town:
GPB Education (Georgia Public Broadcasting)
Japanese I: http://www.gpb.org/irasshai/term/japaneseI
Japanese II: http://www.gpb.org/irasshai/term/japaneseII

156 videos * ~20 Mins each = 52 hours of free video

They are wmv's so you have to forgive that, plus it was done in the 90's so it can be a little cheesy sometimes, however it's still a huge free resource.

Anyways, another thing that helps me is to use post-it notes with the japanese names of objects then stick them to the corresponding objects in my house. It's a great way to visually remember things.

Note to linux users:

(click to show/hide)

The mms streams don't play very well with mplayer, so you might wanna use xine instead.

Slime Forest for reading Japanese

Whoa! It's actually working for me! nice!

i've been watching those irasshai episodes. they work really well, it is corny though. now i can write all the hiragana and i'm recognizing a lot while watching japanese movies and anime.