
How I learned Japanese: Interview about habits and learning Japanese in Japan - tatsuhirosatou
https://www.koipun.com/blog/how-i-learned-japanese-bryan-from-kuro-pixel
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chrischen
I'm currently learning Japanese and what I've found is most apps designed
around helping you learn focus around memorization of words out of context,
and often the definitions provided are wrong, or the words antiquated.

I haven't found an app that revolves around reading words in the context of
example sentences, or a narrative. I find this to be the best way to learn a
language.

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franciscop
Ah, I learned first going to normal classes and for me the experience was the
exact opposite. Now I'm doing a lot of memorization, since it's one of the
pillars for learning a language that I was lacking. I recommend trying to do
both at the same time, but the good thing about learning a lot of vocabulary
and some grammar is that you can start reading on your own and then learn
while having fun. I am reading Yotsubato for example, which is widely
recommended for beginners.

~~~
chrischen
I think if you already know to read/know the basics, learning vocab is fine.
That's why SAT prep is a lot of vocab memorization, but even then you'd have
to know how the word is used in a sentence.

Learning from scratch, I think vocab is better memorized in context.

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franciscop
I made a small tinder-like website to help me memorize the Kanji since it is
my personal bottleneck now and it's working quite better than I expected:

[https://core.cards/](https://core.cards/)

It is based on spaced repetition and frequency lists to optimize what you
learn (see the About page).

It has to be complemented with other learning methods of course. The required
login is with github for sync with different devices.

~~~
dahoramanodoceu
Nice!

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dahoramanodoceu
Tip: grab a movie with slow-to-moderately paced dialogue and varied speaking
styles like ghost in the shell innocence from 00:09:30 to 00:20:00 ish. read
the subtitle first. Open the srt file and read it. Watch the episode with or
without the subtitle so you know what's going on, and cuz the movie is
beautiful. Next rip the mp3 or aac of that section of the movie with some
added volume, i used 10db.

Now listen to this every night right before bed, and try to parrot off
whatever they are saying verbatim. comprehension has no relevance. Just repeat
it. Rewind if you want. Make a game out of it. 'Im gonna do my best to make
this exact combination of noises with my mouth. dont try to do too much at
once. 5-30minute spurts are a good range. It should not be the center of your
day, at first, now matter how bad you want to learn. a good rule of thumb is u
should spend about as much time as it takes for you to do your morning bathing
and hygene ritual.

Add it to your music playlists so it catches you off guard. hunt down some
more pieces of films you like and grab the audio of those. alternate between a
few audios. adding them incrementally 1 3 5 5 5 5 5 5 10 20

If you find any good japanese audios, let me know!

Source: i work with language learning

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rootsudo
I posted this before,

The best app I used to learn Hiragana, Katakana and JLPT N5/N4 Kanji was
"Kanji Study"

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Chase+Colbur...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Chase+Colburn)

Though I do agree with the other threaded replies about being out of context.
You don't learn the grammar, you just learn the immediate meaning/subject of
the sentence and then kinda guess what it really means.

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sparkzilla
The easiest way to learn Japanese, at least spoken Japanese, is to find a
Japanese boyfriend or girlfriend. And to live away from other gaijin.

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johngruber
That is how I learned English and I totally agree! However in Japanese he way
women and men speak is quite different, so I've been told several times that
some expressions were "wrong" for me to use.

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77pt77
This is very important.

Men should at least have some interaction with other native male speaker
otherwise they'll talk like women and that will hurt them socially.

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adrianlmm
And what is the real value of learning japanese? (apart from being an english
teacher in japan) sure is fine as a hoby, but for a professional, I believe
the japanese are the ones that should learn english, and don't take me wrong,
my native tong is spanish and english my second one, but I see english as the
universal language to learn.

~~~
richthegeek
Does everything need to have monetary value? Learning a language can be done
for many reasons.

I know a bit of Spanish because I holiday in Spain occasionally, although
lately it has become valuable as we are working in LatAm a bit.

I know passable Italian purely because it was enjoyable to learn. It has since
been useful on two vacations across Italy.

And finally I'm learning Polish due to my partner being Polish. It's hard as
hell compared to Romance languages, but it'll be worth it when I can have a
conversation with her parents beyond courtesies.

~~~
carlmungz
How did your knowledge of Spanish help with learning Italian?

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richthegeek
It helped a bit, in that the breaking the habit of English sentence structure
exhibited in "I want it" to "(yo) lo quiero" rather than "yo quiero lo" had
already happened somewhat.

On the flipside, it made my Spanish vocab quite a bit worse as I keep
recalling the Italian word in place. Happily this doesn't lead to many
problems in reality, most Spaniards I have interacted with have either
understood the word anyway or I could recall the correct word quickly.

