Learning Japanese through online

Yah!

 

Could you endeavour to put a little more content in your posts? This kind of thing is annoying, to check for new messages and only find posts of a single word(or less). Forum is not irc or shoutbox.

 

These are fantastic books you listed Libertine, I was reading customer reviews on them and it sounds promising. There's none in stock currently in my local book stores so I'm going to have to do a little digging, but I think these books will really help.

As for websites there was this one like I said I used to go to and it was so user-friendly and easy it was just awesome, but like I said I don't remember the webpage haha.

Manji@ Cut him some slack man, he's working on my Jeffry picture right now so it makes up for the one-liners.

 

I'm just trying to be 'not' annoying.

I thought it would be effective if I won't put too much or more words on my posts...

 

124: If you've got nothing to say, there's no point in posting.

Anyways, back on topic. I think mastering Hiragana and Katakana is a good foundation to have especially for self-study.

Here's a site that helped me: http://www.realkana.com/

 

Can anyone give me some background on whether I should be learning Hiragana or Katakana first? Or does the order not matter? Also, which is the harder of the two?

 

Here is my recommendation on books for learning japanese.
There are 2 sets, Shin Nihongo no kiso 1 and shin nihongo no kiso 2 which are both divided up into 3 parts each.


Shin Nihongo no Kiso I Honsatsu Kanji-kana Majiri Ban
(Main Textbook : Kanji-kana version)
4-906224-51-2
Shin Nihongo no Kiso I Bunsatsu
(English Translation)
4-906224-52-0
Shin Nihongo no Kiso I Bunpo Kaisetsusho in English
(Grammatical Notes in English)
4-906224-69-



Shin Nihongo no Kiso II Honsatsu Kanji-kana Majiri Ban
(Main Textbook : Kanji-kana version)
4-906224-82-2
Shin Nihongo no Kiso II Bunsatsu
(English Translation)
4-906224-83-0
Shin Nihongo no Kiso II Bunpo Kaisetsusho in English
(Grammatical Notes in English)
4-88319-006-4


Gramatical notes, english translation and the workbook. In my opinion, these books are the fastest way to learn the language without actually living there. I was already fluent in japanese before I moved over there and I give credit to these books and forcing myself to use what I learned in these books through conversation.

The books are a no BS approach focusing mainly on the learning fundamentals of the language (grammar, sentence structure) and cementing what you've learned with the workbook. Ive seen many other books and most of them are not setup this way. Rather, they force you to repeat countless sentences without explaining the breakdown enough. The breakdown is what's important to let you take the rules that you've learned and create your own sentences out of them.

Anyways, in the long run, learning a language comes down to alot of dedication and when I decided I wanted to become fluent, I stopped playing games and focused solely on that for the first year. Roughly about 3-4 hours a day, every day. If you don't care about becoming fluent and just want to be able to say a few words here and there, then 20 mins a few times a week with some internet tutorials.

 

Either one is fine. Which is more difficult depends on the person.

 

Alright man, thanks for the suggestions, I hope I too can be fluent in a reasonable amount of time like a year or two just like you.

Trust L_A

 

I'd recommend learning hiragana first, particularly if you'll be learning the spoken and written language simultaneously. In most instances (but not always) katakana is predominantly used for 'foreign' or foreign-derived words.

Excluding kanji, most of your written vocabulary will be in hiragana as opposed to katakana. Both, in my opinion, are equivalent in terms of learning difficulty.

 

Ok, I guess I will go with Hiragana first then, thank you for the explanation.

Also, now I remember the website I was talking about, it's called thejapanesepage.com. To me it seems like you can learn a few things off of it and get a good start before diving into the books and classes.

Edit: The place I got that website from is here and it also shows many other websites and resources that can potentially help in your pursuit in learning Japanese.