Okay, this forum is for bishoujo games, but I figure the thought of learning Japanese is familiar to at least some of you. I figured to try out a few ‘learning japanese’ programs, but I have trouble finding out what is actually good.
Also, I have to admit I named many of the letters some curseword when I was reading it. As in ‘damn, how am I ever going to memorize this!’. An alphabet of more than 100 letters is excessive no matter how you look at it! (Or three separate alphabets, actually).
Any suggestions?
Oh - while it wouldn’t be bad to learn how to read japanese VN’s, I mainly would like to go to Japan for a vacation soon and it would be useful to know japanese.
Quick answer: You aren’t going to really pick up enough Japanese in a short period of time to be that useful in Japan.
Long answer: Learning the language requires a lot of work. Most important of all, like learning any language, it requires you to stick with it. There is no “easy way out”. You want to sit down and learn the hiragana and katakana (to read them at least), learn their pronunciation and then start picking up basic vocabulary and grammar. If you can stick with a textbook or two at this, then you probably will be able to last long enough to learn enough Japanese to have it be of actual use in real life. People I know in college who took Japanese didn’t get to a comfortable level of conversing (whether written or spoken) in Japanese until after two years of courses.
If you are willing to take the plunge after reading the long answer zalas gave, then I highly suggest trying to find instruction from a real person instead of a program. Programs have their place (in fact, I’m planning on getting something myself), but can in no way replace being able to ask a fluent speaker questions. Besides that, if you want to do more than just read Japanese, you really need to speak with someone who knows the language. In fact, some of the prominent members of the board who play games in Japanese can’t actually speak the language; they can only read it. Places you might check and consider are community colleges in your area and the Japanese community if you live near a city with a decent sized Japanese population. Sometimes you can get lucky and find someone reputable offering instruction on a billboard at an anime store. (On a personal note, all of these apply where I am. I started learning at a community college, I saw private instruction offers on the billboard at the anime store I visited before they went to online and convention sales only, and starting in September I’m planning on continuing my education at the Buddhist temple I attend.) To give you an idea of how long it takes to truly get anywhere in learning the language, I’m in my third year of learning and I still have a really hard time.
Actually, the problems of learning Jpn are further compounded by:
There is standard Japanese(Tokyo-ben, I believe) and there is also dialetic Japanese(Osaka-ben, Nagoya-ben, Kansai-ben and so on…). Standard Japanese and dialetic Japanese have their own manners of pronunciations, tones and so on. The problem arises in that it’s no easy task for a non-speaker to find someone who can teach standard Japanese since you can’t really tell, can you? It’s incredibly expensive in some states/countries to find someone who can speak/teach good mainstream Jpn as it is(no slangs or dialetic words)… somewhat around US$1k to $5k per no. of classes and the price increases as the level increases.
And not being able to speak “standard Jpn when in Japan = invitation of derision from many Japanese themselves”.
Well, here are some advices from my personal experience.
First, you need to learn hiragana and katakana. Katakana aren’t really that necessary, but try and learn them anyway, you’ll be happier later on. Take your time and make sure you can correctly write and read all of them.
After that, you may want to start with some grammar. This website is absolutely amazing: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar Not only is free, it’s also pretty well done.
A couple of other links you may find useful. http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/ (I bought their kanji flashcards) http://www.japanesepod101.com/ (you’ll need some speaked japanese and those guys are really funny, besides if you wanna go to Japan you’ll find the ‘Survival Phrases’ section really useful) http://jisho.org/ (simply a must)
As far as dictionaries go, I currently own this one and I’m pretty satisfied with it. Eventually, you’ll want to own a more complete one, but this is pretty good for starting.
Note: you should be able to use what you’ve learned in combination with agth and atlas to start reading simple (and I mean, really simple) visual novels in about a month or so. It will probably be too early to really understand everything that you’re reading, but I would still suggest trying it out. It’s another good way of learning, and it will make you feel like you’re actually improving, and that’s really important.
Lancer-X: You serious?! I was under the impression that many “j dialects” are looked down upon. Perhaps times have changed.
Man, I’ve got soo many Jpn learning materials but I didn’t use any of them. If I’d only known about eroge like 8 yrs ago… then again, the “me” at that time would’ve been too prudish to think of touching eroge.
NEVER taken formal courses, or even encountered someone fluent in the language, but I CAN read it very well (jwpce remains a big help at all levels of study, however ), and I CAN grasp spoken dialogue with some effort (unlike spoken english, which still eludes me after 20+ years of self study …).
That said, you do NOT need fluency in japanese if playing erogames is your only reason to learn their language, will and determination are the keywords here (well, those and a few textbooks too ).
In my case, I’ve learned to fluently read the language only after 3 or 4 years of intensive (90% of my free time) self study AND I (currently) do not have/feel the need to improve further, but I’m also pretty sure that the number of students/people who have learned to fluently read the language far exceeds the number who have become truly fluent in the spoken language.
Thus…
Me too, pretty much. I can read Japanese to a decent level and understand a good bit of spoken - but I can’t speak Japanese. I have tried. I cannot. While I know in my mind how everything is pronounced my mouth can’t make the sounds required to speak the language in anything other than a monotone. It’s very tragic
Oh, and I can’t write Japanese either. A lot of people think learning how to write the language is necessary in learning how to read it-- this may be true. I know the basic stroke orders of things but I don’t have characters in that level of detail inside my head - except Katakana. I can write all Katakana fine wwwww
So yeah, my own approach for learning the language isn’t necessarily for other people simply because I learned it in this way for a particular reason
I learned Japanese so that I could read eroge. Nothing else. No other reason whatsoever. I have attention problems with anime (can’t watch it for more than about ten minutes without getting distracted), I don’t read manga, light novels are nice but never as anything more than a momentary diversion, it’s all about the eroge!
Pretty much this as well - I learnt Japanese to play eroges, and light novels are kind of an option when I don’t have eroges, plus quite a few eroge scenario writers I like also have tried their hand at light novels. I did have a few classes in highschool, but by the time I started to learn Japanese I’d forgotten almost everything, bar a few very basic hiragana/katakana/kanji and a handful of words that I’d remembered or picked up along the way. I don’t speak Japanese (haven’t really tried, as I don’t have any need to), but I figure it’s also far far easier to move from reading to the other areas than vice versa.
Anyway, how I learnt was, 1. Hiragana/Katakana, 2. Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji Vol. 1 + Vol. 3 (for eroges you need to know at least those 3007 plus a couple of hundred others on top of that, 1000+ more to manage everything you might conceivably encounter in an eroge. Heisig’s method is one of many ways of going about it, but I found it worked very well for me. Thanks to the method, I think I can write just about every character I’ve learnt as well.), 3. After learning a bit of basic grammar (the first parts of Tae Kim’s guide that Overlord87 linked) eroges, combined with dictionaries - I also use anki when I feel motivated enough to enter things into it. I try and use Japanese → Japanese dictionaries as much as possible. I guess an example of why, might be the word ??? (dairiseki) - it’s easy to look it up in a J-some other language dictionary, find out that it means ‘marble’ and move on, but a J-J definition such as ??? is clearly far more helpful. If you don’t know the words in the definition, it’s also good vocabulary practice! (Of course, this is an ideal - often I get lazy, or want to play something without the distraction of looking up every single unknown word.)
Beyond those two Heisig books, the only other useful reference book I own is ??? (a Japanese elementary school dictionary, with furigana on all of the kanji, and a lot of example sentences). It’s a good way of starting out before switching over to web dictionaries like ??? and others.
Just to emphasize on this: my old command called it a “Free Pussy Pass” if you could speak Kansai-ben, wasn’t of obvious Asian heritage, and wasn’t hideously ugly or had a repulsive personality.
You became the ultimate gaijin boyfriend accessory.
Thanks for various advice, and Overlord, thanks for the links. They look quite decent, that first one is better than what my google-fu dug up.
Found a program called ‘Power Japanese’ that seems rather decent, despite being dated as heck… still, I’ve noticed that the hiragana letters are quite well structured, so they are not so hard to learn once you get the squiggles sorted.
), and I CAN grasp spoken dialogue with some effort (unlike spoken english, which still eludes me after 20+ years of self study 
…).
).