Let's Learn Japanese! Or try to, anyway.

One of the main problems with playing otome games (also known as otoge) a lot of us face is the damn language barrier.

I don't speak a lick of Japanese. Most people on the LP forum and on this site probably don't speak a lick of Japanese.

Words taken from the Pidgin Guide sort of count, I guess, but that's one word out of every ten chapters in a book (understatement), and most of us probably wouldn't recognize the kanji if it bit us in the ass. Unless you're taking Japanese lessons or, you know, are actually more observant than me.

So what do most of us do? We end up relying on individuals who are fluent in Japanese to create patches for us. But that's not always the best solution since people have lives, teams can break apart, technical problems come up, translations aren't always accurate, etc, etc.

Waiting around for big companies to officially translate games for us, too, is like waiting for rain in the desert. Otoge has an extremely niche fanbase (though this forum is trying to prove otherwise) and I'm amazed Aksys took on the project of translating Hakuoki at all, though here's to hoping the sales were good enough to open the way for more. The signs are good so far, right? Right? Does someone have an answer? This even stretches out to other games that simply don't get to see the light of day overseas for various reasons (generally licensing issues).

So what's left for us? Well, there are translating tools, for one, but the accuracy of those are... Far, far from the target, most of the time. And they're incredibly frustrating to work with, too.

Other than that, there's not much we can do short from learning the language itself. But that's far from easy. Not to mention expensive.

So! What I propose is that everyone come together and try to pool our resources here. Free sites that hold translations or explanations for Kanji, dictionaries, free online lessons, cheap lessons, the works.

Let me start off!

==

A directory for Japanese related lessons:

Free Japanese Lessons - A ten lesson course to help teach you the basics of Japanese. More courses are available but only if you get a membership. However, the ten courses already offered are a lot to start with.

Japanese Mnemonics: Higana | Katakana

==

Feel free to contribute more if you think you can add anything!

Yessssss I need this thread like burning.

Right now I'm trying to memorize hirigana and katakana, but it's slow going since I'm "supposed to be" learning Chinese right now. But hey, that's kind of like learning kanji! orz

Edit: About Hakuoki, I guess it sold well enough because they're localizing Hakuoki: Warriors of the Shinsengumi, but this game is not otome at all. And from what I've heard through the grapevine, it's not very good. Dunno. :/

Kanji is going to be a peace of cake after you're done with Chinese, I swear to God. I am probably wrong.

Edit: Also, if anyone could possibly provide links on how to write Kanji/Katakana/hiragana, that would be awesome.

I'll probably end up using my first post as a directory.

This page is a good resource for writing hiragana and katakana.

JapanesePod101 is also a nice website for beginners. You can sign up for the "a Japanese word everyday!" thing and they'll send you an email everyday with a new word. The podcasts are also especially useful if you want to learn how to speak.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I'll add more if I can think of them.

EDIT: I know Chinese and kanji actually helps me understand Japanese because the words and meanings can be similar or identical at times. It can also be confusing because sometimes the exact same words can mean completely different things!

This site isn't quite as helpful as some of the others, but if you need a quick reference it's not that bad.

jisho.org is a godsend. I've used it plenty of times when I forget my kanji(which is always).

On learning the kana, it helps to just jot down the entire alphabet when you have free time in the margins of you notes or on a piece of paper or something. My teacher made us write in hiragana for all sentences for an entire semester and she usually gave us about six or seven pages from the textbook to write too.

I'll add more to this post if i can remember anymore sites.

I agree. The search-by-radical function is especially useful when trying to identify a kanji you don't know. (This is why you should try and learn radicals. Makes looking kanji up easier.)

This translation site is one of my favourites. You can translate English to Japanese and vice versa, and based on that I can go look up dictionaries for whatever's left that I still don't understand. It's more accurate than Google Translate, or at least it seems that way to me.

www.yahoo.co.jp has a dictionary function too, above its search bar.

Denshi Jisho is about the most fantastic thing ever, whether you don't know a thing about Japanese or you've taken it for years and know enough to hold a conversation and puzzle through things like me or even if you are pretty much fluent and just run across a kanji you don't know from time-to-time. Like any normal dictionary, you can look up words in either English or Japanese. You don't even have to type them in hiragana or katakana because the site will put them in the correct alphabet for you. It also gives you both kanji (if used for the word) and kana for anything you look up and will give you words containing what you typed, as well as the word you typed, which is great if you heard a word somewhere but didn't hear it very clearly or completely. For example, if I type in "nihongo", not only will it give me the English meaning (Japanese language) and the hiragana and katana for the word, it will also give me information for "nihongogaku" (Japanese linguistics) and a bunch of other words and phrases that start with "nihongo." You can also search for computer, engineering, and scientific terms, as well as names of people and places, just by selecting a different category on a drop down menu.

However, their kanji resources are by far my favorite part of the site. You can look up kanji by reading, meaning, or stroke count and you'll get the expected information like how many strokes it has, its on and kun readings, how to write it, its meaning in English (as well as Spanish, Portuguese, and French!), and what parts and radicals it is made up of (all of which you can click to learn the meaning of.) There's lots more information as well, such as variants of the kanji, how commonly it is used, what grade it is taught in (if it is one of the kanji that you're required to learn in school), and even Chinese and Korean readings. You can also find words and phrases beginning with, ending with, or containing the kanji with the click of a button (each of these three is a separate category, so if you only want words starting with that kanji, it's no problem.) If you are reading and find a kanji you don't know, Denshi Jisho is also amazing because you can search for kanji by radicals. You just click on the radical you want and it will bring up a list of all the kanji that have that radical in it. If you want to narrow your search results, you can select more than one radical that's in the kanji you're looking for. Seriously, it's the best and I can honestly say that Denshi Jisho is the only reason that I've been able to do some (very amateur) doujinshi translations. (That I need to continue doing at some point, by the way.)

I'd also like to recommend Google transliteration. It isn't really a learning tool, but it's pretty neat. It lets you type in romaji and turns it into hiragana, which you can turn into katakana or romaji by pressing the space bar. It even gives you multiple options of how to do so, which is great since there are multiple kanji that share the same reading. You can do the same thing in a word processor by downloading a certain add-on, but I like Google transliteration for a few reasons. One of them is that I think it does a better job than the word processor does and is easier to use, but it's also helpful if you are working on a machine that's not your own or your parents don't like you downloading things on the family computer or if you can only install things when you enter the administrative password (as is the case with me) and you don't know the password. A few pro tips about Google transliteration (or pretty much anything that lets you type in Japanese without a special keyboard): you can get small characters by typing x first and to get づ type du (di will get you ぢ.) The rest of them were fairly self-explanitory for me, but if you have any questions about how to type a word, let me know and I'll do what I can to help.

Really, if you have any questions at all, I can try and lend a hand, though I'm far from fluent and there's still a lot I don't know.

Edit: Looks like I got beat to recommending Denshi Jisho. That's what I get for writing walls of text. I'll just keep mine here anyway though because it gives a lot of information about the site's features and in any case, Denshi Jisho is so fabulous that it needs to be recommended at least twice.

Hmmm...
WELL, I know that I have a Japanese textbook that's pretty darn rad. It's called "An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese". It teaches about 145 Kanji and is pretty thorough in teaching grammar. There's a second version that comes after this one, but since I stopped with Japanese 2 (they stopped offering courses because people kept dropping), this is all I've got. Lord mercy, let me tell you, learning the kata is one thing, but grammar is an incredibly complicated thing to learn. It's made a lot easier if English isn't your native tongue because it follows a lot of rules that other languages do. There are a bunch of rules and it can all be really overwhelming to remember.

So basically, being bilingual or over can be a plus, especially if it's not English? Tell me, do I get a bit of an edge because of French, because if so, I am going to weep tears of joy.

I tried opening the link and was informed the url wasn't valid for some reason. :T (Why, Firefox?)

Sorry, this should work now. www.yahoo.co.jp

Yep! Thank you!

Probably?
When you're describing things does it go "object > adjective"? ...I took French for half a semester in high school, but from what I remember, that's the case.
So it would be "ball blue" in English

i didn't intend to use those two words oh god no

Yes, that's right--

............................... *finally gets it, dying of laughter* Oh my God

Mizu, let me just say I love you.

OH CANDI RANDI BELLISSIMO~~ <3

Actually, Japanese generally has the adjective in front of the object, but I guess the other structure could apply to the use of 'no'? Like Legend of Zelda is Zelda no Densetsu (Densetsu means legend and no is possessive.) However Moonlight Densetsu is Moonlight Legend, so... (Why does everything always come back to Sailor Moon with me? Oh, right, because it's awesome. Carry on, brain.)

Moonlight Densetsu doesn't count because it's an Engrish song title where they just put the words together in whatever order for MAXIMUM COOLNESS.

MAXIMUM COOLNESS is always a good excuse to break grammar rules. No exception.

I was half thinking that was the case, but it seems like there are other examples that I just can't think of right now. It's possible that I'm just not thinking straight right now though.

And anyway, Sailor Moon. How could I resist making such an obvious Sailor Moon reference?

Japanese grammar is weird in that you could switch the word order around in a myriad of ways and the sentence will still be understandable so long as the verb is near the end and the phrase particles are moved with the right word. I mean there a times when the word order needs to be precise, like with multiple adjectives and the like, but the subject and direct object can be switched pretty easily and so on.

It's a bit weird for English speakers since English relies on word order pretty heavily to make sense.

I... I'd like to agree with this wholeheartedly, but I think if I pressed the like button the English major in me would do something drastic.

Shhh, don't fight it, that's what the Internet is for.

I kind of like how lazy Japanese allows you to be. I love that you can just drop the subject and throw together sentences with incredible freedom. It made learning plain form much easier for me because heck yes, shortening words? Where do I sign up? Actually, that might be because I'm an English major too? English is a really strange language that allows you a lot of freedom, while at the same time having a lot of rules. I don't know if it's because I actually like the idiosyncrasies of English that I can appreciate them in another language or if it's because I try to be so exact in my grammar and speech that I like the freedom of Japanese so much. I don't know, I keep making weird parallels and rambling. Anyway, as much as it frustrates me sometimes, I really like Japanese. I think it's a charming language. I think what I'm saying is that I kind of feel the same way about English, though of course my English is much better than my Japanese and I don't have nearly so much trouble with it.


(I also think that English is a slutty, slutty language. It's never met a word it didn't like.)

When it comes to dictionaries, I tend to go to JDIC.

And while I didn't use it to learn Japanese, I often go to Tae Kim's when I need to look up grammar.

Also, Rikaichan might be of interest to some of you, too. It's an addon that allows you to hover over Japanese (or whatever other language the addon has a dictionary for?) and displays relevant meanings and readings.

Outside of that, I'm afraid I don't have much. Most of my resources are books.

Sharing titles of said resources is always welcomed.

The dropping subject thing can get so frustrating when you try and drop into the middle of a conversation without knowing the context. And sometimes Japanese vocab can get so vague with their many many pronouns and roundabout way of talking that attempting to translate the words into English in my mind can get complicated pretty quick. Being casual in Japanese ruins my formal vocab and grammar so. much. I can't even remember all of the in-group and out-group verbs let alone use them.

I'm actually used to shortening words due to my birth language so I tend to shorten all words in English when I get tires of attempting to pronounce them. I get so many confused looks 'cause I'll drop articles, never use pronouns, and drop the endings of long words when ever possible. So, it's possible just. it sounds like I'm trying to speak in txt half the time. But all of my longwindedness comes out in my writing apparently.

English is my second language, though i'm more fluent in it than my birth language, and it still trips me up sometimes with the arbitrary rules. I think it's like, when speaking English can get very casual and rules sometimes get thrown out of the window with abandon, but writing English has so many things you're not allowed to do and it can be very hard to bend the rules. Sort of, writers can get very creative with words.

Sorry for the long rambling post. I like languages a little too much.

Haha, I don't mind the rambling. Maybe I just like languages too and I don't know it because I only know English and Japanese. But I think there are a lot of things about some other languages that would drive me nuts. I know I wouldn't like English half so much if it wasn't my first language. Despite being an English major, I still have trouble with spelling a lot of the time and one of the other things I really like about Japanese is that it's so phonetic. Having to learn English would drive me absolutely batty. I also don't think I'd be able to handle Chinese because my ears aren't always good at distinguishing similar sounds (I had the hardest time learning IPA), so I'd have a lot of trouble with the tonal nature of Chinese. French also seems like it would be difficult because I cannot understand why they don't pronounce the last letter of words and I know I'd constantly mess up trying to say stuff like beau because I'd always be thinking it should be said like the first part of beautiful. Plus gendered objects just seems weird. I don't mind speech being different based on the gender of the speaker like in Japanese, but having to decide whether an inanimate object was male or female seems like it would be really difficult.

These cost money, but I love them to pieces and highly recommend them:

• Textfugu
• Read the Kanji

Though I use Tae Kim's guide a whole lot and rely on Jisho.org, too. Honestly I think having diligence is more important than what site you use. You can go really far with some index cards and a printer. Also, DO NOT RELY ON TRANSLATORS WHEN PLAYING PC GAMES. It's too easy to just read the garbled English text without ever learning what you're actually reading.

People say Rosetta Stone is really good.
I personally think it's an absolute waste of money, considering what resources the Internet gives nowadays.

This isn't so much a suggestion as a don't get suckered into buying this it's not great at all just use the internet.

Yes, this. It's worth looking at different things like flashcard programs (I like Anki, which is free and pretty good at not showing you cards that you already know), but mostly just to try to find some kind of routine you can get into and stay in.Consider also taking classes, if you're the kind of person who (like me) won't actually stick to something without the looming embarrassment of having to turn up to a weekly class without having done the homework :-)

Book suggestions: the three volume Basic/Intermediate/Advance Dictionary of Japanese Grammar is very good as a reference work for explaining the details/nuances of various grammar points. Jay Rubin's Making Sense of Japanese is a great little book with the author's personal perspective and suggestions for getting to grips with some of the issues that tend to trip up early intermediate learners; best read when you've already run aground on the shoals of causatives, passives and verbs-of-giving-and-receiving. Webforum: http://forum.koohii.com/ has some helpful people on it and a lot of references to suggested methods/tactics/resources too (though it does have some odd forum-culture-and-attitude quirks, which mostly derive from it having been initially a forum focused on Heisig's slightly-controversial method for remembering kanji).

For some reason i'm really really bad at dealing with IPA, like my ears just plain won't distinguish between the sounds even though my original language, Thai, is a very tonal language and I can distinguish between tones easily enough. But, I mean, once you get past the tones the language itself is pretty easy. Word order is used a lot and there are no particles whatsoever. No verb changing, no gendered nouns, it's also why Thai messes up my grammar in other languages too.

I took French way back when and, while I do miss actually knowing it, I really don't miss those verb conjugations not one bit. My French teacher was an Irish French speaker and his accent was all kinds of I don't even. I gave up trying to imitate him when my mouth just would not make those sounds and just went around merrily butchering all the words.

I'm grateful my mother tongue is French because it helps me tune in on tonal stuff. This is why people with accents tend to trip me up because they pronounce certains words differently than how I was raised to hear it, which can be a problem, I admit.

However, overall, I'm generally pretty good at distinguishing tones, but I definitely need to familiarize myself with the language first, else I don't clue in quickly. This is kind of why I'm grateful for music videos where they have the English subs and the romaji: I tend to try to match up the sounds with the romaji, and then I try to find key words I recognize and match them up with the English sub and figure out the sentence structure like that.

It's not all that effective, considering the fact I have zero knowledge of Japanese outside of a word here and there, but hey, if I can continuously do that, once I have a greater vocabulary for it, I do think it'll actually help me out.

I'm another one that loves using Denshi Jisho~

Some other sites I've found interesting:
http://thejapanesepage.com/ - Has a whole bunch of different stuff. Lessons for hiragana and katakana, a page on kanji, and even random articles like learning some kansai-ben words and Japanese traditional songs with translation notes next to the songs.

http://www.aeriagloris.com/LearnJapanese/index.html - Kind of like flash cards? It's basically picking a character on the bottom and trying to match the one on top. You can click on the words to the side to change what you want to study. Like figuring out which hiragana is 'ri'. You have a chose between either hiragana, katakana, and romanji. Also comes in basic set, marks, doubles, vowels, and full set. Plus, you can change the choices to only show three characters if you want to go easy or up to five for more of a challenge.

http://anime-manga.jp/ - A fun site. Contains Kanji Game, which seems to be where you guess the kanji that appears meaning or how to read it? (I haven't really tried those. x.x;; ) Word Quiz, which gives you a word and you have to pick which of the choices it means. You can change the word that you are guessing to appear as it's kanji, hiragana/katakana, or romanji. And Expressions by Scene, which shows a manga in Japanese and when you hover over a bubble, it says what it means. Also has a sound fx quiz where you drag which of the two hiragana/katakana choices that is the one that was translated on the picture it gives you. (Also gives an explanation on the right words.) Each game/quiz are broken into different topics like love, school, samurai, and ninja. And you can also pick what difficulty you want. (Kanji Games has a beginner and advance option. While Word Quiz has Basic 200, Intermediate 500, and Advanced 1000.)

(I'm sorry if the descriptions don't make sense. I'm not good at doing summaries, lllorz)

You know if any of you have a NDS, you could try picking up a copy of My Japanese Coach. It's aimed at beginners and it has helped me learn a little. Between this and other free sources I remember all the kana now. My kanji reading is whole different story.

Considering that DS and DS Lites are region-free... If you have one and are interested in getting an electronic Japanese dictionary... You're better off importing something like this. It's probably the cheapest way to get handwriting input.

Note that it's only the DS and DS Lite that are region-free. Anything newer will be region-locked, I believe.

Also, be careful with the My *insertlanguagehere* Coach series. While I've never used them, I haven't heard any glowing praise about them from the few language studying groups I've frequented. It also doesn't help that Japanese Coach, according to the reviews, has a few errors in it. The fact that it has stroke order errors is a little worrying. As minor as it may seem, if you don't get stroke order down, it will become a big pain later.

Believe me, getting frustrated because the IME won't recognize a character because you made a slight mistake in the stroke order? It's not fun.

It gets worse when you're stuck using a physical kanji dictionary.

in terms of actually learning how to speak Japanese, I would highly recommend the Genki Japanese textbooks. There's two of them and I found them very helpful and good for those learning on their own. For listening, as someone has already mentioned, JapanesePod101 is a great resource. Sign up and they give you access to everything for 2 weeks. Download all of the podcasts while you have access to them.

here's a link. I think someone else mentioned it but left *Genki* out of the title.
http://www.amazon.com/GENKI-Integra...?ie=UTF8&qid=1354523903&sr=8-1&keywords=genki

It seems like spoken Japanese would be much easier to learn than written Japanese, seeing as kanji is so difficult that even kids in high school are still constantly learning new vocab words. Knowing how to pronounce all the kana sounds is incredibly handy.

I'm no expert but it's far easier to read and recognize kanji than it is to write it.