Khoma

[Pegasus]

I'm by no means any kind of expert in learning other languages, as the ones I can claim I can legitimately speak (English, French and German) I learned in the standard, school or private-tutor-based manner, but, after branching out from there through a peculiar interest in etymology and also slowly learning some Dutch and Russian on the side (reading the cyrillic alphabet is a bit easier if you're greek), there is one practice I've stumbled upon and have repeatedly found to work that I can share as advice for a more casual and leisurely approach to learning new languages: foreign subtitles in english speaking movies & TV shows. I'm not kidding, it works!
Seriously, just pick a multi-season show's DVD/BR pack and enable the subs in the language you're slowly trying to learn. Even if you're not following any other, more rigid learning course (and, btw, there's no way you can properly learn a language without studying its grammar, even by way of a single, flimsy school book you found, at some point), you'll start to absorb all kinds of bits, like associate the various oft-used nouns and verbs between speech and text, start picking up on how the conjugation and tense suffixes work and, later on, what entire phrases can be translated into without losing their meaning. There's all kinds of helpful sites offering subs, too, for both TV broadcast formats if the content you got is deficient in that department (say, maybe it doesn't have Hungarian, Portuguese or Mandarin), so you can always check those out, grab the subs you want and combine the two using any number of existing DVD/BR (re)authoring tools. The biggest advantage of this method is that you get to do two things at once and the entertainment derived from the content might even help you absorb that knowledge slightly easier than rote studying of stuffy, white books - it definitely isn't as fast or targeted an approach as the established one though. Soooo, yeah.

Oh, and welcome aboard, Daly.

[Dalyup]

Ah, I figured it would be German but I hoped there may be an English version by the same author and it seems not. That's alright, I imagine they'll be something of similar quality I can find. I've only decided on earnestly trying to learn lately so any advice or resources you can provide Eman - however detailed or scarce - would be very helpful.

Indeed, Xac. Although I wasn't even taught about the Romans: all I taught was some Scottish history, the Industrial Revolution and then a lot about WWI and WWII on the Western front. It makes sense, I guess, to know about your country's historical place and that with its neighbours, and the world wars were worldwide watersheds, but everywhere else was just ignored (until my final year where we got the American Civil War). Oh, and good idea, I'll search for such apps and keep silly mnemonics in mind. I do like me some silliness.

I never even contemplated that, Pegasus, but that does sound useful now that I do. I've been watching Breaking Bad recently, through entirely legal means, and would consider watching it again so perhaps enabling it with Japanese subtitles would help me. I imagine it may be a tad difficult to find Japanese subtitles for English-speaking TV shows but they'll probably be plenty for movies. Naturally, I'll do this after I have a grip on the characters and a good understanding of the grammar.

Thanks for the welcome, btw. Should probably clear up that I made an account a month ago as Dalyup! but for whatever reason I cannot get back into it. No more exclamation point for me.

[Dalyup!]

Thanks for the welcome, btw. Should probably clear up that I made an account a month ago as Dalyup! but for whatever reason I cannot get back into it. No more exclamation point for me.

Scratch that, got it back thanks to laboR.

[Xac]

Thanks for the welcome, btw. Should probably clear up that I made an account a month ago as Dalyup! but for whatever reason I cannot get back into it. No more exclamation point for me.

Scratch that, got it back thanks to laboR.

Yey! Welcome back Dalyup with a !



Is it the history you're after or just learning the language, or both?

Don't know how you'd find the time to learn a language from watching loads of dubbed DVD boxsets! I certainly wouldn't. I did try learning languages from CDs while driving, as I used to spend a lot of time on the road. It's ok for learning phrases, but a bit hopeless once the grammar gets complicated and you have to give your full attention to it!

I tried quite a few times to learn Japanese when I was there, but never got very far with it. I found the problem was the way it was taught. The Japanese don't have a clue how to teach westerners how to speak Japanese. They try to teach you as if you are a Japanese child, which just doesn't work. I found there was far too much insistence on learning Katakana and Hiragana so that you could write them down as fluently as if you were writing in English. By all means you should learn them, but they should not become an obstacle to learning the language. In the lessons I attended, they expected you by the second week to be taking all your notes in Hiragana and Katakana, but when you’ve got a day job to go to, there isn’t time to learn them that fluently, then when you’re trying to learn a new Japanese word, or piece of grammar, you’ve got this added layer of difficulty to deal with.

Another thing the teachers would do would be to jump around all over the place from one bit of vocab to another random bit of grammar in a completely illogical way. It drove me mad! I also found that a lot of the teaching materials were (and probably still are) terrible. Whatever you do, don’t buy the “Japanese for Busy People” series, it’s CRAP and a waste of money.

I did find a good textbook that taught in Romaji (the English alphabet), but I leant it to someone and I never got it back. It was written by someone who used to work at IBM and had to teach Japanese to colleagues going to work in Japan. I'll have to do a search and see if I can find the title again.

For Kanji I have a few books. There's: "Essential Kanji" by PG O'Neill, ISBN 0-8348-0222-8 Covers the first couple of thousand most common Kanji

And another one which gives several example usages for each Kanji and a stroke by stroke guide to write each character is:
"Elementary Kanji Dictionary" Kodansha series ISBN 4-7700-2752-4

Hope that's useful...

[Pegasus]

[...]Don't know how you'd find the time to learn a language from watching loads of dubbed DVD boxsets! I certainly wouldn't.[...]

Not dubbed, man, subbed, as in subtitled. Watching new video content in a foreign language wouldn't contribute to either getting the most fun out of it or slowly gleaning tidbits of that lang's vocabulary obviously; it'd just be frustrating.

[EmanReleipS]

Pegasus had a good idea. Essentially if you're self-teaching yourself a language, making the fun is important.
So find the things you are passionate about and try to transfer them into the language you are learning. You like playing the guitar/singing? Sing Japanese songs. You like writing stories? Write them in German (I learned English that way!). You like anime? Watch them in Japanese with English subs.

Dally:

I'm really impressed that you want to learn the writing system as well. Hiragana and Katakana are easy enough, but Kanji (Chinese Characters) are rather nasty. Most of them have several different pronunciations and you just need to learn when to use which one.... But knowing another language is a valuable skill to have and it will broaden your horizon. So keep working on it!

If you are looking for resources, I can recommend Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar. It starts with the basic grammar and will take you from there. Lots of examples and you can ask questions, too.
Furthermore, you can look for learning material for the "Japanese Language Proficiency Test" (JLPT). It goes from level 5 (beginner) to level 1 (better than native....). If you look for level 5 (or also called "N5"), you should be able to find resources aimed at beginners.
You can also download decks of flashcards for a computer flashcard program called "Anki". If you need to memorize Kanji or expressions, that program is for free and easy to use.

Once you know some of the basic grammar, you can install the browser add-on "Rikai-chan". Once you turn it on, it will show you the meaning of words, individual kanji or even kanji composita when you hover over it with your mouse. Useful if you want to read texts online.

A good online dictionary that I can recommend is Tangorin. It also has example sentences so you can check in which contexts you can use a word. If you have a smartphone, I recommend the dictionary "JED" and the "Kanji Recognizer" (which lets you draw kanji on the screen and will then look them up on its database). Both are for Android.

If you need to look a kanji up on your computer and can't use Rikai-chan, I'd suggest that you install the Japanese keyboard and then use the "IME Pad" (button in your taskbar) to draw the kanji to the best of your ability, with tangorin open in your browser. You will be given a selection of kanji based on what you have drawn. If you click on one, it will be pasted into whatever you have open in the background (in your case that would be tangorin). Then you can look it up there. If your unknown word consists of several kanji, you can just draw and paste them into the online dictionary that way, then look up the meaning of them composita.

I hope this will help you a bit.

Now....because I feel like I should mention it since I recommended using Anime to learn: You should know that the Japanese you learn in Anime and Manga is very colloquial. Especially if you pick up the "guy talk" frequently used in anime, you will have a hard time in Real Japan. Essentially, you will be way too impolite. Picking up some words from anime is fine, but be careful using the grammatical forms....(in anime the imperative form is used very often by guys, but it would be extremely impolite to actually use it when you speak to Japanese people).

If you have any questions while learning Japanese, feel free to ask me. Ganbatte!

Xac:

I'm not sure about your level of German, but you seem to be intermediate at least. To you, I can recommend using lang-8. It's a website where you can write texts in the language you are learning and then receive corrections by native-speakers. Very useful for improving your writing skills.
Also, you could try parallel-reading: Reading an English and German version of a novel side by side.

For your speaking skills....well, there is always Skype...

[Dalyup!]

I aim to learn both, Xac. It's the history that got me interested in learning the language(s) though.

Thanks for the resources both of you; they'll be good starting blocks for when I begin. Also, I wasn't aware the language in anime was impolite - I figured it was just like a normal conversation. I'll keep that in mind, and I'll be sure to ask you endless questions, Eman.

[Xac]

I wasn't aware the language in anime was impolite - I figured it was just like a normal conversation.

I can just imagine the looks you'd get speaking anime Japanese to people in Japan!

Can you imagine learning Japanese only from anime...one minute you'd speaking Japanese like the male characters, rude and brash, then like the female characters all feminine and girly!

The way you speak Japanese depends on whether you are talking not only as a man or a woman, but also whether you are talking for example, to a child or someone older than you, or your relative social status to the person you are talking to. So it can be quite complicated, but there is a sort of "standard" Japanese you can learn to start with. Eman will be able to explain this better than me.

Don't worry, you'd probably get away with it as you'd be a "gaijin" an "outside person" ie a barbarian and they would be impressed that you could say anything at all in Japanese.

[EmanReleipS]

Xac has pretty much nailed it.

In general, if you don't look Japanese no one in Japan will expect you to speak Japanese or know the local customs, so you don't have to worry too much if you accidentally use an (in that context) impolite verb form. But being polite is always a good idea.

Learning Japanese can be really cool because (through the different verb forms and variants of "I" and "you" in Japanese) you can understand so much more about a character or characters' relationships to each other. Most of that is simply lost in translation.

The way you speak Japanese depends on whether you are talking not only as a man or a woman, but also whether you are talking for example, to a child or someone older than you, or your relative social status to the person you are talking to.

If you know some German or Spanish, it will be a bit easier. In German you have two forms of "you", a formal and an informal one. Verb tenses are also slightly adjusted (the formal "you" requires the plural). In Japanese, apart from the many different versions of you (the best one would be the name with the suffix "san" -> Watanabe-san), you have two different verb forms. One is informal (also called the dictionary form, because that's the form of the verb you will find in the dictionary) and the other one is formal/polite (called the "desu/masu form").

Here is an example for you:

The word "tabemasu" is the polite (masu form) of "taberu" (the dictionary form) and both mean "to eat".

How you form the negation form and the past tense (and the negation of the past tense) is different for both forms.

Polite Form
Affirmative tabemasu (eat)
Negation tabemasen (not eat)
Past Tense tabemashita (ate)
Negation in Past Tense tabemasendeshita (didn't eat)

Informal Form
Affirmative taberu
Negation tabenai
Past Tense tabekatta
Negation in Past Tense tabenakatta

So basically you have to be very careful while talking if all of your verbs (including negative forms and past tense) are in the appropriate verb tense (based on who you are talking to and if you are being polite).