Let me just start with, I'm no troll. I won't get your references if you make any, and I won't lurk moar to learn them.
I'm interested in learning to atleast understand japanese. I'm 20 and it's not available in my college. If you know of a great tool or way to learn japanese, please share.
You should learn Hirigana and Katakana first. You can use Wikipedia for those, there are quite a bit of characters for them though I don't think they're all that hard. Japanese is going to be pretty hard to learn by yourself.
I mostly want to be able to watch RAWs of things.
learning by wikipedia? excuse if i seem skeptical. Can you blame me?
Well if you just want to watch raws then learning the writing might not really be all that helpful but I'd suggest it anyway. And yeah, Wikipedia is very good, I've looked through it and all of the Hirigana and Katakana are correct. I don't understand why people bash Wikipedia so much it's almost always correct, at least for me.
I'm not wiki bashing, but you have to skim the fat, so to speak, to get the facts from wiki.
I'm not just looking for some free do-it-yourself links btw. If it's reasonable and trusted, I'll pay. I would buy Rosetta stone if I had that much money.
Thx for the advice tho. I will check it out.
I wouldn't suggest Rosetta Stone. I… tried it and it's not really all that helpful. Most of the stuff they teach you is "The boy is under the airplane" or "The horse is jumping". I suggest Pimsleur, though you do have to pay for it. You can probably find it on a torrent though if you want to do it like that.
Pimsleur is similar to Rosetta in that it uses the whole "immersion" thing right? How would you say Pimsleur is better?
Pimsleur teaches you more practical things not "The girl is under the bench" 
. They start with saying hello, where are you from, how are you, stuff like that. It'll then move onto how much does this cost, can I have a beer (seriously), how many kids do you have, etc. I didn't get all the way through the Japanese lessons because I think my files were kind of messed up. I'm not sure how well it'll help understand anime but I think it'd still be more useful in that respect than Rosetta Stone. It also has you repeat things you've learned in earlier lessons to help you remember them.
Pimsleur starts you out learning phrases, greetings, etc. Rosetta Stone basically teaches you in the whole, growing up learning a language type of thing. But to watch Raws, you'll probably need to learn a bit of slang, depending on the show, and how old it is. Some of it may seem a bit weird, if you were just starting out learning the language, some sentences would seem shorter, and strange to you.
But to actually learn it, to be able to watch Raws and stuff, I'd suggest getting help from a Japanese person, in exchange for English help. You can learn via tapes and stuff, but it's a lot better to just communicate the language, and pick up on stuff as you go along.
You can get through all the Pimsleur tapes easily, but if you don't have a way to practice it(with someone) you'll forget a good chunk of it easily.
If you want to learn Kana/Kanji, get some paper, the kana part is easy, but you'll go through a good amount of paper, if you don't have a digital language thingy, or any of the DS Kanji games.
Yeah, there's not way you're going to become 100% fluent without immersion and stuff like that. And Daniel… is there more than one person on this forum with that avatar?
Someone else took my avatar, yes.
Sweet, thx for the find. Im dl'ing the torrent now. I'll prolly do all of lvl 1 and decide whether or not it's been helpful.
I'm currently in school in Game Programming at Full Sail University and have been wanting to seriously learn japanese as a 2nd speaking language for years
There's a bunch of Asian Language programs in Florida, and even a few near Full Sail, not sure the price of them.
Well saying FSU is expensive is an understatement. I'm very poor atm, and I can't work because of school. It's not only impossible with the schedule, but actually NOT allowed. Seriously. So that's not really an option.
I just thought of what I would think would be a cash cow of an idea, but due to the internets trustworthiness, I shant be posting it lol
here is alink for japanese lessons : http://www.freejapaneselessons.com/
If you want to be able to fluently understand a language (necessary for watching raws) you need to regularly speak it with people who know the language.
I used it a little today and its rough. I can see where this would be a good program though. Pro-tip, never try to learn a foreign language high.
Yes… yes thats a good idea.
There is a DS game thats supposed to help you translate japanese, however you have to know the correct way to write as it figures out what the word is based on brush (er stylus XD) strokes.
Reading and writing go hand in hand, learning how to write it out and read the language might help you better to remember how to speak it, though of course you have to practice and practice often or you'll forget fast. Personally writing it down helps me retain it easier.
Hmm I might try Pimsleur out, that sounds like it might work good. I've got a full immersion set but I forget where its at or what its called. I've learned a bit more from watching raws, however XD The set I got teaches counting, weather terms, useful phrases, and a lot of small talk stuff, however it starts you out immediately with some phrases and stuff and it was kind of frustrating to keep up with the pace until it went to the numbers and started from there.
But yeah, as many have mentioned a japanese speaker is probably the most valuable tool. Especially when it comes to leaning slang and formal/informal speech and when to use what (at least I think so, because honestly its hard for me to remember ALL formal/informal stuff).
Really now :shocked: ?
The DS game? It exists, I forget what its called (will try to find it again) but I didn't have the $70 or whatever it was to get it at the time. It's japanese, but it does translate hira/kat/kanji to english (I can't remember if it was vice versa) I was going to get it to translate a novel.
Edit: Its this: http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-9g-49-en-70-198v.html
There's a whole series of games like that, all are great when you get to that level of vocabulary. I can second that it's a good thing to check out, if you don't want to buy it, get an R4 for a DS.
Sumimasem. nihongo ga skoshi wakarimasu. hai watashi amerikajin desu.
ago ga wakarimasu ka?
By ago ga I'm gonna assume you mean eigo for English and eigo ga for the English language.
Just remember that ago would probably be pronounced ah-go, when eigo would be pronounced eh-ee-go.
Also, another thing about Rosetta Stone, if you can get ahold of it, go right ahead and use it along side whatever form of learning you're doing. It starts you out learning basic phrases like a child normally would, stuff like ball, dog, etc. But then you'll build up to simple phrases, then learning to describe what someone is doing. If you can find the time to download it, you should check it out, because it shouldn't be ignored all together.
I'm using Pimsleur right now, and it's working well for me so far. It doesn't teach you how to read or write anything, but how to speak and understand the language in question. So that's why I butchered the spelling in that sentence. I'm only on lesson 3 of level 1, which there are 3 levels all consisting of 30 lessons.
Yea I've used it before, pretty good for the neater conversations like, hows the weather, or ordering shit at a restaurant.
Do you by any chance have a microphone for your computer/laptop?
If you learn the phonetics of the Japanese language it's easy to spell things out from the pronunciation since everything is pronounced exactly as it's spelt. Like "a" is never pronounced "ey" but always "ah".
Yea, pretty much the phonetics and the kana part of learning Japanese is whored out the most with little songs and videos and what not. a-i-u-e-o, ka-ki-ku-ke-ko, etc
Yes i have a pc headset, also Skype. So pimsleur's full 3 lvl program teaches you neat shit, but not how to have random conversations about stuff I would actually talk about with people?
Pimsleur is basically for business approach. Not for actual hanging out and what not. For that you need to talk to someone Japanese, and pick up on it yourself. No better way to learn than to actually listen.
You'd be surprised on how many people ask you how the weather is, or they want to practice their English with you.
I know, i'm on a site that is pretty much all of japenese people wanting to meet english speaking friends to practice english and to teach japanese. Thus, the reason I have skype.
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