日本語クラブ

[Crystal]

ようこそ！　＜３

(To the Japanese Language Club!)

Also, I think my subject has bad grammar... but Proboards put it's foot down, so it can't be helped.

[Deleted]

グッド！

私は学校で日本語を学びました。私は長い間それを使用していない。

Hence the bad grammar and sentence formation. xD I'm remembering things I learned over 4 years ago.

[PFA]

やった！ 私は日本語を学んでいるよ。

I have no idea how accurate my grammar and such is due to not having many people to speak Japanese to, though, so... XD;

[Crystal]

I'm just learning too! :3 I like reading it, but to tell the truth I'm a terrible speaker. xD I can't seem to get stuff down into a sentence. You'll have to teach me.

P.S. I'm not sure what '学ん' is. Doesn't 学 just have the readings まなぶ and がく?

[Deleted]

Uh... I'm going to take a wild guess and say that this is... the Japanese speakers club? XD;

Just a suggestion that you could feel free to ignore, but maybe putting a translation in the title would help explain what this is, plus people who were thinking about learning Japanese (such as myself) would be interested in joining.

Also, remember that Proboards has a rule about having posts mainly in English, so.

... *raining on a parade I don't even understand* Sorry. ^_^;;;

[Omni]

Sept 29, 2011 20:19:00 GMT -5 Holly said:

Uh... I'm going to take a wild guess and say that this is... the Japanese speakers club? XD;

Just a suggestion that you could feel free to ignore, but maybe putting a translation in the title would help explain what this is, plus people who were thinking about learning Japanese (such as myself) would be interested in joining.

Also, remember that Proboards has a rule about having posts mainly in English, so.

... *raining on a parade I don't even understand* Sorry. ^_^;;;

Actually, for one, the title actually takes a lot more symbols than it looks like it does, due to how the internet handles non-roman symbols. To clarify, here's what's in the subject line before the code is translated:

日本語クラブ

That said, there's no room for English alongside the Japanese. Even the Japanese had to be mangled in order to get it to fit. About the next best thing we could do whilst keeping the title fun would be putting a translation in the first post. (Though for those reading and wondering, it says "Japanese [language] Club.")

Also, ProBoards got rid of the 'English only' rule some time ago (thankfully).

Anyway, にほんご は たのしい です。 (I have a couple different ways to input Japanese, but generally, it'll be tricky for me to do kanji.) I'm guessing what sources we use to learn Japanese will be an open and welcome topic?

[PFA]

Sept 29, 2011 19:37:58 GMT -5 Crystal said:

I'm just learning too! :3 I like reading it, but to tell the truth I'm a terrible speaker. xD I can't seem to get stuff down into a sentence. You'll have to teach me.

P.S. I'm not sure what '学ん' is. Doesn't 学 just have the readings まなぶ and がく?

Well, I mostly know grammar and not vocab so much. XD; As such, 学んでいる is a conjugation of 学ぶ so far as I know.

Though on that note, this handy guide is where I learned most of my Japanese grammar. :3

[Mel ♪]

日本語のクラブだ！　やった！

I live in Japan, so I obviously know some Japanese. I've been learning for six years now xD And I'm still terrible at it.

Sept 29, 2011 20:31:53 GMT -5 Omni said:

Anyway, にほんご は たのしい です。 (I have a couple different ways to input Japanese, but generally, it'll be tricky for me to do kanji.) I'm guessing what sources we use to learn Japanese will be an open and welcome topic?

You're just typing in Japanese, right? If you're just typing, then the spacebar gets you all the kanji you need :3

[Draco]

My only experience with Japanese would be from Google Translate XD; And it's not always the greatest. I would have taken a Japanese language class back when I was in school, but the last semester I was there they got rid of the class (except for the Advanced class).

I've visited Japan XD

[Deleted]

I was lucky enough to be chosen to go on a two week exchange to Hamasaka Junior High School in Onsen. I stayed with a host family, lived the culture and attended the classes for those two weeks and it was amazing. ^_^ We did a couple of touristy things, too, and boy do the Japanese know how to make a theme park! =D Expoland in Osaka was the most fun and sickness inducing time of my life.

[Dream]

Nihongo o naraimasu... very slowly.

At the moment, I'm pretty haphazard -- noting down any vocabulary that jumps out at me from anime and entering it into Anki in romaji or kana, and learning a handful of kanji at a time from Heisig's Remembering the Kanji without any real knowledge of whether they're useful. (Seriously, I can't see myself having a pressing need to write "gall bladder" or "divining rod" if I ever visit Japan.)

My SO has actually taken a university course in Japanese, and occasionally helps me by suggesting completely ridiculous mnemonics. ("Ikikaeru is "to return to consciousness" or "to be revived". You know kaeru is "frog", right? Imagine someone has fainted and the ancient remedy to bring him round is to place on his face the most icky kaeru you can find...")

Because I'm an anime viewer, I suspect my vocabulary is a bit eclectic compared to that of your average Japanese learner. Still, I find it more interesting that way. Grammar is a problem, though. Beloved has tried to teach me some, but it goes out of my head fairly swiftly. I'm a bit surprised, to be honest -- throughout school, I took to language-learning like a duck takes to water, and I expected Japanese to be the same way. I'm somewhat disappointed.

[Crystal]

Sept 29, 2011 20:31:53 GMT -5 Omni said:

Sept 29, 2011 20:19:00 GMT -5 Holly said:

Uh... I'm going to take a wild guess and say that this is... the Japanese speakers club? XD;

Just a suggestion that you could feel free to ignore, but maybe putting a translation in the title would help explain what this is, plus people who were thinking about learning Japanese (such as myself) would be interested in joining.

Also, remember that Proboards has a rule about having posts mainly in English, so.

... *raining on a parade I don't even understand* Sorry. ^_^;;;

Actually, for one, the title actually takes a lot more symbols than it looks like it does, due to how the internet handles non-roman symbols. To clarify, here's what's in the subject line before the code is translated:

日本語クラブ

That said, there's no room for English alongside the Japanese. Even the Japanese had to be mangled in order to get it to fit. About the next best thing we could do whilst keeping the title fun would be putting a translation in the first post. (Though for those reading and wondering, it says "Japanese [language] Club.")

Also, ProBoards got rid of the 'English only' rule some time ago (thankfully).

Anyway, にほんご は たのしい です。 (I have a couple different ways to input Japanese, but generally, it'll be tricky for me to do kanji.) I'm guessing what sources we use to learn Japanese will be an open and welcome topic?

Yeah, I'd rather have had a の in there. I've edited the first post to add a translation, though.

Sources, advice, tips and funny stories, all welcome. :3 Personally, I've never taken an official class. xD I just read a lot and learn kanji off Wiki's 教育漢字 page. I think I'm currently in second grade, but I've been slacking.

What IME are you using, Omni? =)

Sept 30, 2011 0:43:07 GMT -5 PFA said:

Sept 29, 2011 19:37:58 GMT -5 Crystal said:

I'm just learning too! :3 I like reading it, but to tell the truth I'm a terrible speaker. xD I can't seem to get stuff down into a sentence. You'll have to teach me.

P.S. I'm not sure what '学ん' is. Doesn't 学 just have the readings まなぶ and がく?

Well, I mostly know grammar and not vocab so much. XD; As such, 学んでいる is a conjugation of 学ぶ so far as I know.

Though on that note, this handy guide is where I learned most of my Japanese grammar. :3

What's the kana for it? I don't think I've ever run across まなぶん before.

[M is for Morphine]

学んで would be 学ぶ conjugated into the te form so you can put in into Present Progressive tense by tacking on the いる. It's like, 'I am in the act of currently doing this thing'. I think you're right in that manan by itself isn't anything, but the de is part of the conjugation.

There's a handy chart where you can see all the forms that 学ぶ can show up in. I like "The Handbook of Japanese Verbs" by Taeko Kamiya for laying out the how and why.

Verb conjugation is annoying because there are soooo many ways you have to change the verb ending to do certain things, but kinda cool in how regular it is. Though half of the tenses I don't even know how to use properly. XD And it would be way more useful if I actually knew more than like, a dozen verbs.

[PFA]

Sept 30, 2011 9:02:13 GMT -5 Crystal said:

Well, I mostly know grammar and not vocab so much. XD; As such, 学んでいる is a conjugation of 学ぶ so far as I know.

Though on that note, this handy guide is where I learned most of my Japanese grammar. :3

What's the kana for it? I don't think I've ever run across まなぶん before.

まなんでいる, actually. As Teow said, it's conjugated to te-form (which in this case means converting the ぶ into んで, conjugations are a bit confusing) and then has いる tacked on the end for a present progressive state. :3

[Omni]

Sept 30, 2011 1:51:38 GMT -5 Mel ♪ said:

日本語のクラブだ！　やった！

I live in Japan, so I obviously know some Japanese. I've been learning for six years now xD And I'm still terrible at it.

Sept 29, 2011 20:31:53 GMT -5 Omni said:

Anyway, にほんご は たのしい です。 (I have a couple different ways to input Japanese, but generally, it'll be tricky for me to do kanji.) I'm guessing what sources we use to learn Japanese will be an open and welcome topic?

You're just typing in Japanese, right? If you're just typing, then the spacebar gets you all the kanji you need :3

Sept 30, 2011 9:02:13 GMT -5 Crystal said:

What IME are you using, Omni? =)

Actually, most of the time, I use Mac OS X's kana palette: ひらがな カタカナ (there's also a palette with an option for full-width romajii). Mac also has an option to plain old type in Japanese, but: 1. it doesn't support my preferred keyboard, Dvorak (which wouldn't be as much of a problem if I hadn't rearranged the physical keys on my keyboard) and 2. I think it still doesn't support Kanji. I'm on a Mac with a QWERTY board at the moment, though, so let me give it a try...

私は日本語が少ししか話せませ ん。 (I don't know why, but the ' ん' gets messed up when there's no space, so pardon.)

Okay, so it supports Kanji, but it still confuses me to not be able to use Dvorak. I also like using the kana palette because I have to consciously pick out the kana, so hopefully it'll help me learn the kana that I'm not so good at, as well as learn the kana order even better.

Anyway, I first started learning Japanese with this cute little site here. There's not a lot on it, but it is by a Japanese person and did still help me grasp the basic principles behind the phonology and such. More lately though, I've been listening to Vocaloid and using it's cousin UTAU...

I know the opinions of synthesized voices vary, but hey, easy-ish-to-use synthesizers, plus big-ish, Japanese-based-fanbase, plus free-to-do-pretty-much-anything-with-the-voice-and-characters-as-long-as-you-don't-make-money-off-of-it equals lots of Japanese songs that you can listen to for free. For example, here's a video of Miku singing a Japanese version of Still Alive. Or if you want an original song, here's 1/6 (Out of the Gravity), also sung by Miku, or Kaito's Thousand Year Solo. And hey, I discovered that I kind of like Japanese rap. (I'm not so fond of the type of rap that's popular in America.)

Anyway... *stops plugging for now* Aside from songs and such, I've also been (on-and-off) reading my scriptures in Japanese online (next to an English version, with help from a dictionary a lot of the time). So I'm pretty sure about half of my vocabulary is church-related, and that a fair bit of my grammar may be archaic.