Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'm in my second year of college Japanese, and it's great. I wanna know if anybody else is learning Kanji too. I have about 100 or so memorized at this point, but some of them are just starting to blend together lol.

How are you guys doing with them? (I'm not just talking about the kanji for numbers 1-10 here.. I'm talking on a somewhat more intermediate level).


Also, I noticed that from here on grammar is getting MUCH easier. It seems to make very complex meanings for statements, all you have to do is add phrases to the end of -te forms of verbs. Like to get a 'must' form, all you have to do is make the sentence, have the verb short and negative, and stick on a -nakucha ikemasen. Or to get a 'might' phrase, just put 'kamochiremasen'. I'm having the easiest time with Japanese right now, and it somehow just seems too good to be true. I've been through learning all of the potential forms and short and -te and all that, and I'm just thinking.. is this really what people think is so difficult? =P Everyone always freaked out saying how 2nd year of Japanese is soooo insane and all this stuff.
But I'm noticing that all it really is is adding stuff onto -te forms and stuff like that.

I really like Japanese.. and I'm sorry, but German was a hell of a lot more difficult than this.

japanese will get harder.

言わずもがな。

this is generally true. as the shadowplay stated, they already learned German at least a little... that means they've taught their brain how to think in a non-native language once already. The second language is the hardest to learn. After that, you learn how to learn.


there's kind of a curve, a bell curve... a language starts out a little confusing, just the sheer mass of information... then you start getting a handle on it, it gets easier and fun.... and then omg you get into the nitpicky grammar rules and then it gets haaaaaaaaaaard again.

enjoy the easiness while it lasts. take advantage of it and learn as much vocab as you can. don't ride the coattails.

yay that it's fun!

agreed. if Japanese were English, it wouldn't be Japanese. I seriously suspect that there are some languages that are "too far apart" for most people to learn them as their "first second language," you know? Like, you learned German... "Ich studiere Deutsch, weil meine Familie Deutsch ist." German taught me how to construct a sentence with the verb at the end sometimes.... so I get to Japanese, oh, verb at the end? No big deal.

Meanwhile, a native English speaker who up and tries to learn Japanese has to face the idea that you don't always need a nominative in the sentence, the verb goes at the end, pluralization does NOT function at all like English, verbs are conjugated according to tense and NOT according to the nominative at all, furthermore, what the hell does it mean to conjugate a verb anyway.... prepositions, adjectives, all the verb-endings in Japanese....

Maybe it's frustrating to constantly hear that "omg Japanese is so hard," but honestly... it's a little true. Japanese is just not the easiest first-second-language to learn.

Hell, I didn't even know what a predicate nominative was in English until I learned German.





next time he does this, start quoting Shakespeare at him. When he goes, "what?" tell him, "I'm sorry, you weren't speaking Japanese, so I figured you didn't want to learn."

... I'm sorry, that's bitter of me. Don't do that, actually.





WOW. I am SO glad to know that other teachers are like this. I thought mine was just strange.

Very few people can input a language into their heads. When you learned English as a child, there were colors and shapes and objects and direct associations made. You saw a picture of an apple and saw the word "apple"... how much better would it be to learn Japanese as though we were children. Not try to directly associate words with their English counterparts, but learn the word itself for what it is.

... did that make sense? I wish I had the time in my life to try that. oh well.

40 HR/WEEK JOBS SUCK ALL YOUR FREE TIME. Enjoy college while you're there!

anyway. yes. that is not a good way to learn Japanese at all. if you got other people in the class together and said, "hey look, this just isn't working well," surely he'd listen. and if not... do you guys get teacher evaluations at the end? ream him for his teaching style if he doesn't change.

Think of it like this: you're writing his paycheck. If you think you aren't being taught well, you owe /yourself/ to talk him into teaching you what you want to know.


wird mir lustig sein, wenn wir mitten in dieser Japanisch ploetzlich auf Deutsch typen. X D *fliegen weg!*

Hi, I'm new here. smile I'm a first year Japanese student at my college, and I have to say I must be really lucky with my sensee. She's Japanese, but she's so nice and thinks of really interesting class activities to help us learn, and she thinks we're hilarious because of all the stupid questions we ask. Like the other day we were learning the 'arimasu' and 'imasu' endings and I asked her what you would say if it was a zombie. lol, she lost it. biggrin

I'm a college student, but I'm not a language college student, I'm afraid. I do know several languages with varying levels of fluency, though.

I'm fluent in Dutch (hah, native speaker, big surprise there XD) and English. I'm almost fluent in German because local dialects 'borrow' a lot from that language, can read and (mostly) comprehend and pronounce exquisitely in French, Spanish and Italian, figure out most Portuguese, fail at producing more than the most basic sentences in those languages, know a smattering of Japanese, a few words in Korean, one or two in Chinese and several phrases in Arabic and Hebrew (as well as the letter for 'd**k' XD).