Learning Japanese, recommend some anime/shows

[Silenka]

I started with Sailor Moon music/lyrics booklets lol. But honestly, probably any anime music/jpop will be fine (to an extent). Sakamoto Maaya has a lot of great songs and her pronunciation is usually very clear. Okitegami is one song I would recommend for learning as it's basically a letter being sung.

Bottle Fairy is a good show (kid's show, sort of). It goes through every month and highlights the major things that those months mean to Japan - holidays, superstitions, other cultural points. It's quite funny too. Definitely watch it.

[ikariiiii]

While I will admit you should have a basic understanding of the written phonetic languages (hiragana/katakana) before delving far into Japanese, you should just get involved with as much of the language as you can. When we're children most of us learned English by talking with adult family members who were essentially pros relative to children. You're prone to make tons of errors and whatnot but the reality is you have to surround yourself with professionals or professional material to achieve a greater understanding. Take a Japanese novel, manga, game, whatever, grab a dictionary, use google translate, and chip your way through it.

In my opinion starting with children's material is hardly rewarding and just teaches you to speak and understand Japanese like a child would, not make you more comfortable speaking with an adult. If anything this should help you understand what your strengths are and for you to develop a training regiment that actually works for you. Good luck!

[Cyprias]

Once you get comfortable with the vocabulary/grammar, I'd advise dramas personally. I think this is a good one to learn from and get used to the way things are said (and it's entertaining):
日本人の知らない日本語

you can probably just copy/pasta that into youtube and find episodes np.
I disagree with using Google translate, as the meanings can get really messed up sometimes, but I agree with most of the other suggestions here. Take classes, practice your ass off, and what I highly suggest is MAKE JAPANESE FRIENDS. I can't stress that enough. Usually if they're from Japan and visiting through a school program, they're here to learn English. So for you to help them out while they help you out is a great exchange. It's also an awesome way to make connections and have fun. If you continue to speak with them and practice the language, most definitely it'll be better.

This site is also good for learning Japanese conversation stuff:
https://www.erin.ne.jp/en/

They're videos that show a girl being an international student. It's not bad, and I have to admit they're actually cute <_<;
Anyway, hope that helps. I'd suggest more but I'm extremely exhausted at the moment, so bare with me.

[ikariiiii]

Just as a note: I meant use google translate for single vocabulary word translations, I'm pretty sure everyone knows by now translating full sentences with it usually results in a garbled mess. The google translate app on iphone at least is super nice too as you can draw the characters (super helpful for kanji) and get an immediate translation.

[Totien]

What about a Japanese social networking site? Any good ones? A quick Google search only showed up a few popular messaging apps in Japan.

[Silenka]

Nope, google translate often even screws up single words. You have to know the context the word is being used in. For example, Japanese like to use abbreviations of katakana words and google translate often doesn't realize there's a full word being implied there. I do translations of Google+ posts and sometimes I run them through google translate just to see what it comes up with for laughs - and sometimes I'll put in single words too if I'm having trouble - but in my experience, it just can't be trusted XD

Immersion works great when we're children because of the way the brain sponges up things like language while it's still forming neural connections. When you're an adult however, immersion is often much less useful. Adults simply don't learn language like children can. You have to have a grounding in grammar and vocabulary before immersion can be useful, imo. When you listen to someone talk and they speak unfamiliar words, you have to be able to recognize what part of speech those words belong to for it to have any use whatsoever. Only then you can go "oh, that's a verb but I don't know what it means". Also the more you familiarize yourself with the language, the easier it will be to remember unfamiliar words you hear to look up later.

A good networking site might be Lang-8. Check it out

[Hyan]

Now that you know where I'm coming from, I cannot tell you how important it is to take actual classes to learn the language properly. GOOD classes, not the crap I first took (though you're not likely to find a class quite as bad as those were). What I learned at Ohio State - which runs a difficult program taught by native speakers - not only cemented what I learned before, but also taught me new things as well as where I'd been going wrong previously. For example, it was the first time I learned that Japanese really DOES have an "accent" and that different words (such as ame [rain] and ame [candy]) can have a different intonation - and that their intonations are switched in Kansaiben. Until then I believed the common myth that Japanese has no accent or specific intonation despite listening to the language for years, also very few textbooks even go into that, much less highlight it or even mention it at all.

I need to disagree as our methods differ a fair bit. There's awesome communities and solid self-learning material for Japanese today that didn't exist less than 10 years ago. Sites like forum.koohii.com and japanese.stackexchange.com offer valuable help and information as well as concrete advice for shit like tackling the kanji and vocabulary memorization. Electronic flashcard softwares (Anki) make old learning tools such as Remembering the Kanji book exponentially more useful and easy to use. When it comes to Anki the amount of time some people have spent paving the way for anyone to learn JP from scratch with less effort than ever is astounding. There is more knowledge out there than any single teacher could ever hope to pass down to his or her students, simply said.

Well, I agree with the rest of your post. It's just that you can take a shitty class and don't really know the difference because you're new to the language. My classes have consisted of being taught that the topic marker "wa" is "pretty much the "to be" verb of Japanese" and memorizing set expressions to be able to go to Japan and be a not-so-clueless weeaboo.

You can't really go "wrong" by listening to what the people who learned the language are telling you. No rocket science, just dedication and patience.

[Seha]

Rather than use google translate you should go to a library and buy one of those portable electronic dictionaries. A friend of mine has one, but I think it was a bit expensive..though a very good resource if you're serious about the language.

[Yugl]

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/c...wwwjdic.cgi?1C

[Kerberoz]

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...id=com.Obenkyo

Free Android app, ridiculously useful for learning vocabulary and kanji.

[Silenka]

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/c...wwwjdic.cgi?1C

Heh I will 2nd this as a resource, I use almost nothing but this when I'm translating.

I do also use http://tatoeba.org/eng once in a while, but their example list contains all of what the above link uses (they share an example repertoire) plus a few more.

But...umm...

My classes have consisted of being taught that the topic marker "wa" is "pretty much the "to be" verb of Japanese"

...What?

[Sho]

This ironically turned into a good forum for BG when it comes to learning Japanese.

[Hyan]

But...umm...

...What?

Yes, that's what they taught me there. Probably because they thought it's too difficult a concept for the students. I don't know.

Obviously, sources like Tae Kim grammar guide (free) and the dictionaries of japanese grammar don't fuck around and you might actually learn something about the japanese grammar.

[Yugl]

I need to disagree as our methods differ a fair bit. There's awesome communities and solid self-learning material for Japanese today that didn't exist less than 10 years ago. Sites like forum.koohii.com and japanese.stackexchange.com offer valuable help and information as well as concrete advice for shit like tackling the kanji and vocabulary memorization. Electronic flashcard softwares (Anki) make old learning tools such as Remembering the Kanji book exponentially more useful and easy to use. When it comes to Anki the amount of time some people have spent paving the way for anyone to learn JP from scratch with less effort than ever is astounding. There is more knowledge out there than any single teacher could ever hope to pass down to his or her students, simply said.

Well, I agree with the rest of your post. It's just that you can take a shitty class and don't really know the difference because you're new to the language. My classes have consisted of being taught that the topic marker "wa" is "pretty much the "to be" verb of Japanese" and memorizing set expressions to be able to go to Japan and be a not-so-clueless weeaboo.

Missed this, but agreed with a few points:

1. Anki is great and I definitely recommend pairing that with a class and using Anki as fucking instructed
2. Tae Kim's guide is great.

[Deadgye]

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...id=com.Obenkyo

Free Android app, ridiculously useful for learning vocabulary and kanji.

I'll second this, since I use it to study up on my kanji and vocab. The best thing about it imo is that it lists every compound kanji word and/or verb that a kanji is used in when viewing a kanji.

[Totien]

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...id=com.Obenkyo

Free Android app, ridiculously useful for learning vocabulary and kanji.

any recommendations for iPhone users?