Japanese Wordstuffs
 

I've started teaching myself Japanese, and I am enjoying the process of learning it, but I was just wondering if anyone had tips for learning it or books or other things they'd recommend to help. Also, are there any nifty tricks that I can do to stop sucking at drawing the symbols or am I just going to have to be patient and practice?

On the calligraphy, I'd recommend practice.

On the actual subject, I strongly recommend getting at least a semi-formal education on the language. While it is possible to self-learn a language, it's much easier when you have someone to kick your ass when you make mistakes.

I'm self-teaching myself for now, so that I learn the basics. I'm gonna take a course in college, and I'm moving in with my Aunt and Uncle in a month. Why bring up the Aunt and Uncle? My Aunt's Japanese so I'll get a chance to practice what I learn, I just want to have as much learned as I can until I move, and then until college.

Listen to the language. Preferably in some sort of spoken, rather than sung, format. The sounds are formed differently than they are in English, so you want to hear it in its natural form.

I have only the greatest piece of advice for learning the language...
The most important thing to remember is that Chinese sounds simply like you are speaking backwards...
While Japanese sounds like you are speaking backwards.. while trying to lift a house! :D
lol
I always wanted to say that...

Okay Torque that's enough of the national stereotype humor, you were already called out on it in another thread. If it keeps happening we will have to re-evaluate the length of your relationship with Nuklear Power Forums. This is an official warning.

Re: Japanese, something of note is that each separate vowel is almost always pronounced in the same way. A is almost always ah, e is almost always ei (like in weigh), i is like ee, o is quite fortuitously oh and u is like ooh. This is at least one of the lessons I retained from when I took a few japanese courses in highschool. There's also a lack of stress on any particular syllable, usually the differences in words are made using higher or lower tones of voice.

I think! If I am dead wrong, japan, strike me down with all of your super-deformed fury.

In some form of Irony...
 

Japanese is one of the easiest languages in the world to speak and read, unlike torque says, however, one of the hardest to write.

Its easy to read and speak because they dont have all the funky grammar "exceptions" that we have, so you read how it looks, and easier than chinese because many things are available in Romanji (japanese with english lettering)

It's hard to write for obvious reasons.

And as far as recommendations, Rosetta Stone is supposedly amazing (though I havent had a chance to check out my copy yet). Also, just go to your nearby bookstore! You would be amazed at how many things you find on the language!

First of all, learn hiragana and katakana really well. Practice a lot, write each character over and over. Google some Japanese word lists that contain only kana to practice with, and buy a good workbook that will show you the proper stroke order and direction in regular handwriting as opposed to a printed font with serifs or whatever. This is important for when you start learning kanji, and if you wuss out and don't learn kanji like some people do, you will essentially be illiterate. Also, if you can write hiragana and katakana properly, kanji will be much more natural for you to figure out. In any case, definately buy a workbook. Something like this is exactly what you need... in fact, I recommend using the practice pages full of squares in a book like this over writing in a notebook, because that will train you to not write really big or really fat characters. Make a few copies of the practice pages and go nuts.

It's just like learning to write in English, you just keep doing it until it's a no-brainer. Make yourself some flashcards if you're a flashcard kind of guy... again, flashcards are very handy for learning kanji, so maybe now is the time to become a flashcard guy if you aren't one already. Speaking of that, a lot of people piss and moan about how hard kanji is. Don't worry about this, it isn't hard at all once you become familiar with the patterns. It's a system, you just learn the rules of how they're written and put together, and you're set for most common kanji.

There are a zillion websites out there with simple grammar rules and vocabulary lists that you can pick up now, too. Just take it easy for now and don't try to take in too much at once or you might get overwhelmed.

Also, once you get to college, you'll be ahead of the other students for a semester while they struggle to learn how to write properly and you make your sensei happy by not mixing up ス and ヌ or は and ほ for instance.

EDIT: ah, do yourself a favor and never ever use romaji or buy any dictionaries or other reference books that rely on it. It will just form bad habits and hold you back later on.

Square and square and square and square! Important things to not mess up.

(I don't think this server has a fully functional multi-lingual charset currently.)