2/6

Do a quick wikipedia search for SRS (spaced repition system). You will be using a program that utilizes this theory. It's just a flashcard program that uses spaced (time-wise) repitions to maximize efficiency. It's a shame more students don't know about it. It's very effective.

First things first. Learn hiragana and katakana. I won't explain what they are for exactly, but there's thousands of sites out there that do that. You don't really have to use an SRS to do it. Just brute force it. It's easy enough. Learn hiragana like the back of your hand. Shouldn't take long at all. Learn katakana. It's okay if that's a little iffy for you, by the time you do a little reading material and see them come up in animes and online and shit it'll fill itself in eventually and it'll be fine. Learn まる (maru) and てんてん (ten ten), which changes pronunciation of kana. It'll become natural in no time, trust me. GET AWAY FROM ROMAJI (e.g. Tokyo instead of とうきょう/東京) ASAP. Don't even be tempted. It's not work it, as it's not uniform, and associates japanese with english.

>>5410037
Supposed to be 2/9, sorry

3/9
Download the 'Remembering the Kanji: Part One' ebook. Or buy it. Buying it's better. Go to kanj.koohii.com and bookmark it. This site has a very helpful forum and a built in SRS program for registered members with shared stories. I'll explain in this post, bear with me...

RtK is a way to learn the kanji. You don't learn it like 日 being hi, bi, ni, etc. You learn 日 as 'day' (or maybe it's sun, I don't remember). This is a controvertial method, but do it. It works. Basically what you're going to do is learn ~2000 kanji with keywords and mnemonics. For example, 日 can be learned with "I look out my window and see the SUN of the new DAY." Just made that up. It looks like a window. You'll remember every story eventually, then they'll fade out and it'll be just the keyword. On it's own, it's pretty much meaniningless, but it's part of the bigger plan. Don't bother starting if you're not dedicated enough to stick with it.

In order to learn RtK, you can use a standalone SRS program. I used to use Mnemosyne, which in my opinion is the most user-friendly and straight forwards. However Anki is probably what the best choice is. It's not user friendly at all but it's much more powerful and there are shared decks. Someone already went thru the trouble of getting all those keywords in stories in there!

4/9
If I had to do it again, I would probably use the program on the Koohii site. It's amazing. There's shared stories, etc. It's not portable though, whereas Anki has Ipad/Iphone/droid apps, can be put on a flash drive, synced from anywhere. Koohii RTK can be logged into and used wherever though.

The only thing is, is that Koohii cannot be modified much at all. Go to the forums and you can read about it. At some point you will need to make the switch to Anki (or whatever) to do sentence packs. There's also modifications on RtK such as RtK Lite, RtK Lite with Kanjo Oddysey 2001 order. These are alternatives and have benefits. RtK Lite w/ KO2001 is meant to learn a few hundred of the most necessary kanji, do sentences with those kanji, do more, and repeat. It's quite nice, and a very valid alternative. Search out Nukemarine's guide on Koohii forums if you'd like to learn more. I'd take a look at least.

If you choose to use Anki, you are going to have to do a little research on the technical and practical use of it. I'm not going to get into it here as it's way too much to write and I'm not an expert. You can find it easily on its homepage and on Koohii.

Once you finish that, and it will take months, you can start on SRSing native sentences. I wouldn't do it at the same time. Focus on the RtK. Continued...

5/9

This is a big jump, but once RtK is done, you need to jump into learning vocabulary and grammar. Unlike traditional methods though, in my (not taking credit, I didn't invent it) method, you learn it in context from native sentences or textbooks/grammar resources (see my last post for more info on that).

This is how it works: You have a card that says:

FRONT:
木漏れ日は木に神様のギフト。

Back
Komorebi wa ki ni kamisama no gifuto [ONLY USING ROMAJI FOR EXAMPLE! DON'T DO THIS]
[Light shining through tree leaves] [topic particle] [tree] [movement particle] [God] [possessive particle] [gift]
Komorebi [no english equivalent; beautiful word] is God's gift to the trees.

This is how RtK comes in handy. You learn compounds and reading from real sentences. And it will be fast. This sentence is one I just made up, It's not really that natural or common.

6/9

All the while, you should be watching native Japanese dramas/anime WITHOUT english subtitles (or better yet with Japanese subtitles). You can use a program called subs2srs to mine examples from it. Check koohii for more info.

Buy japanese manga. Buy a Japanese grammar textbook for reference. I recommend Beginner's/Intermediate/Advanced Dictionary of Japanese Grammar. And remember: grammar is meant to explain why language is the way it is. Don't form sentences off of grammar rules. It'll sound strange.

Basically, use all materials meant for Japanese natives (of any age/level). You'll learn all kinds of speech, some honorifics (hopefully). You should do a couple thousand example sentences. At that point you'll have good skill and know where you have to go, what your weaknesses are, etc.

At this point you should be trying to take in as much Japanese as you can. If you are devoted, you can minimize English intake. Music, movies, anime, drama, variety shows, news on repeat, sentence mining. Doesn't matter.

Get a speaking partner.... A japanese one. There are a couple of sites out there. Never used one, but I think lang-8 is good if it's still up.

7/9

RESOURCE LIST:
1/?

Sites:

kanji.koohii.com
Dedicated to SRS of kanji. Forums and browser based program. Good resource

jisho.org
Best dictionary, kanji handwriting dictionary, example sentences. Excellent.

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar
Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar. You will love it. The most beginner friendly grammar guide. And it's free. Use this. Worship it. Sentence mine it. This is the most easy way to explain some of these concepts and you can even learn it while doing RTK. Man I love this site and the mysterioys Tae Kim

alljapaneseallthetime.com
Good articles. Some bad advice. Sensationalized, but good intentions by Khats. Great for motivation and fun read.

http://www.yamasa.cc/members/ocjs/kanjidic.nsf/SearchKanji3?OpenForm
Animated kanji stroke orders, handwritten-style dictionary, general kanji info. Really cool and worth checking out

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/default.asp
General linguistics forums. Probably the best on the english net

http://forum.gaijinpot.com/
Life in japan forums. Motivating to me

http://nicovideo.jp/
Japanese videos. Good resources on here. Better than youtube for our purpose.

https://www.erin.ne.jp/en/
Free Japanese lessons from Japan Foundation. Worth checking out.

http://sos-dan.ru/novel/
Haruhi LNs in Japanese. Not really beginner friendly, but it's a nice site.

http://eng.nihongodecarenavi.jp/
Japanese for nursing/care workers. Never really looked at it. Heard it was good though.


conglish taken

8/9

Textbooks:

The ones I have and love

Remembering the Kana
Good way to learn kana, although kind of unnecessary for most. The e-book is hard to use because the pages don't match up and you'll see why that's a problem when you try to use it.

Remembering the Kanji
You already know about this. Get the latest edition in print or in ebook. If you don't have it for reference, some of the points of RtK SRS may go over your head.

Dictionary of Japanese Grammar Series
Often abbreviated to DOJG, DOBJG, etc., referring to the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar, and Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar. These three volumes comprise a very popular and often referenced series. The books are arranged in dictionary format, with alphabetized entries for various grammar points, extensive notes, and multiple example sentences for each point.

Japanese the Manga Way: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar and Structure
Uses authentic manga examples to explain Japanese in the style made popular by Mangajin, a discontinued English-language magazine for learners of Japanese. This style includes explaining the context of the examples, indicating politeness levels such as colloquial and formal, breaking sentences up into individually explained words, and providing multiple translations, both literal and natural. MY NOTE: Worth it. Packed with info for how small it is.

Tae Kim's Guide to Grammar (see above)

Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar

Kodansha Dictionary of Japanese Particles
Amazing. Particles, for most, are the hardest part of spoken Japanese. This book is just invaluable. Worth the $25 to get it in print.

9/9

Final note:

These posts are just to get you started in on your Japanese journey and to help you realize that moonspeak isn't magic. You will have to do research to get set up fully, and it's a dynamic journey. If you can't adjust and branch off from very rudimentary instruction, you probably don't have the resourcefulness to learn a language by yourself. If it seems like too much, rethink why you want to learn it. You may not even want to learn it, you may just think you do (I had a friend like this). Anyway, good luck. Let me know if anyone plans on trying this. It's worth it just by it's own merit.


Forgot to add on sites: Check out Tofugu blog. It's helpful too.

>>>/jp/

bump for epicness

>>5410092
I'm sure there are a few seagulls who want to learn. No need.

I don't want to learn Japanese, actually. I'm not missing out on much great literature by not knowing Japanese. It seems like too much effort for no reward. There is literally only one great book in all of Japanese history. I'm not going to devote god knows how many hours just to read one book in the original.

I would rather learn Russian. And if I was forced to learn a non-Middle Eastern Asian language, I would choose Chinese. Their civilization is more important than Japan's.

>>5410124
You can use this method to learn any language. Chinese especially. There is a lot of stuff on koohii about Chinese too, as well as a book for Remembering the Hanzi, both simplified and traditional.

Anyway...
>I don't want to learn Japanese, actually
Didn't say you did. But like I said, the only thing that would change for Chinese is the resources and book. You could probably learn Russian pretty easy doing it too. Just use rote memorization for the cyrillic alphabet and plug sentences in from native material.

By the way, in 6 months of plugging sentences and using native materials, you could be very conversational in any language. Even fluent in some of the easier ones.

Hanzi would take a lot longer to do though, I would imagine. If you didn't care about reading it though, you could be speaking it quite a bit faster than Japanese. Chinese grammar is pretty similar to english. There's a certain order for the phrase, and it's non-isolating, meaning verbs don't really conjugate.

Hope that helps

Bump before bed. Don't die on me. It will. Oh well.

Whoa whoa whoa op

This is /cgl/ you're in. THE board with women. Do you really think any of them want to learn anything? The answer is no in case you couldnt figure it out. Besides, why would they need to learn Japanese when all they need to know is how to suck cock-which most of them don't even know that properly.

>>5410146
Well, thanks for the info.

>>5410287
Ha! I am male. Good guess. That's pretty funny, but I hope it's not true. I originally typed this all out for someone who made a thread asking how to learn Japanese. I posted "I'm typing something long check back in 15," and I posted it all. OP never came back. I guess you may be right. lol

A lot of this looks like repost from ajatt.com.
Not exaclty new, but a nice effort.

Thanks, I guess...?

>/a/'s doing daily kanji threads, this might be more useful over there.

>>5410425
Ahh! Ginko! He's my husbando....