Allright, im only taking half a year of japanese, which is extremly fun and rather easy (realitivly easy) but when im done with this year i wish to progress, so far we are at quarter, and we've learned the basics of Hiragana, weve brushed a bit on kanji charecters, and ive studied them a bit on my own time (i plan on taking japanese in college, so next fall =/ Anywhos, would the lessons on about.com work well? they seem to follow the order of learning simple stuff then applying the simple stuff to harder sentances and such.
The thing that I find hard is translation part, I can remeber simple phrases and such, "Kon-nichiwa, hajime mashite?" But how do they translate over to english, like notebook = NOOTO, but how would you go around translating the japenese charecters to make sence in english...seems like a daunting task =/
also my teacher is a faggot and wont let me get an A in the class, its stayed at a B+ 89% for this entire year T___T
oh, almost forgot, my teacher just says, THATS HOW IT WORKS IN JAPANESE, without any explanation on why it works that way or how it got that way
I like to think of different languages, especially Japanese and English, in terms of races in Starcraft. The overall purpose is the same (in this case, communication), but the more you try to break it down into individual units, the less similar they are. There's really not a one-to-one conversion for every word, since some things cover more than one word (or fractions of one) when translated. You just sort of have to work with what's there. Expose yourself to the language as much as you can...that's how you learned your first language, with all its inconsistencies.
And get both hiragana and katakana deeply engraved into your brain as soon as you can. The more they're reflexes to you, the better off you'll be. Do not, under any circumstances, put it off. Trust me.
Also, see if you can find some good japanese learning books and other resources on the internets. About.com is okay, but there's a lot of better stuff. In any case, having the same thing explained a few different ways will help you learn it from a more round perspective.
Find people to practice with. Preferably including at least one native speaker.
allright, thanks for responding, ive got a few sources, and i figure i can just use skype or some shit to find a actual native speaker...i do know a girl who goes to japan every now and then (shes got grand-parents down that way) and she can speak it rather well....also that Starcraft simile works great, that cleared up some confusion, thanks!
I learn Japanese with a friend from Japan, he constantly corrected me that I even thought that I could not learn the language. Hiroghama is a easy in comparison with many spelling words. Once he was so indignant that he gave me a laser engraved with hirogam !!! It's in my head that he settles that he ordered the engraving of these guys https://polarengraving.com/ just because he's sick of my disgusting reading and pronunciation.
Watch anime with subtitres it helps
watch arime* wirrf* subtitres it herrps*
Watch Arniemay. Get to the chopper ahhahaahahahhahahahahahahaha