Japanese Learners’ Thread

[guster-animations]

i’ve started learning japanese a few months ago for the purpose of learning more about comp splatoon in japan, and i know plenty of people are doing the same thing.
i’ve made this thread so we can share resources on learning japanese and help each other!
to start, here are some resources i’ve found (i’ll edit the post if people share more)
terminology sheet created by a JP player named herori
weapon + gear + stage name dictionary by yours truly

 

[EnigmaZV]

I've been doing Duolingo for some time now, but I haven't done any Splatoon specific learning

 

[guster-animations]

i’ve been using wanikani and duolingo for japanese learning— duolingo isn’t really enough by itself
i also do translation practice with japanese splatoon videos (specifically from rentana since i play sloshers)— i read the captioned parts when there are some and identify what they say. it helps with learning different kanji and grammar

 

[guster-animations]

i’ve been using wanikani and duolingo for japanese learning— duolingo isn’t really enough by itself
i also do translation practice with japanese splatoon videos (specifically from rentana since i play sloshers)— i read the captioned parts when there are some and identify what they say. it helps with learning different kanji and grammar

specifically i use jisho.org for translation since it has many features that make it easier without you just using google translate or deepl

 

[freshsquiffer]

Oh I use Jisho too, I know quite a bit of japanese but lack specifically with some (a lot) words and splatoon specific lingo, so the resources you provided are really helpful, thanks! :D

 

[guster-animations]

i’ve been thinking about adding gear abilities too since sometimes i forget the abbreviations and stuff (“start dash/stada = opening gambit” is the big one) … i haven’t looked heavily at jp gear builds but i probably should bc there are definitely people interested in that specific area

 

[freshsquiffer]

I think a lot, lot, lot of people are obsessed with gear building in this game so I think it would be a great resource! :D

 

[guster-animations]

me: yeah i should definitely do that it would help a lot and not tkae much time!
me: *forgets*

 

[ShinyTogetic]

I've been studying it for awhile (been slacking as of late...); for splatoon related stuff you openrec is a nice place to find some folks who stream with a specific weapon
though most be on either youtube or even twitch nowdays
wanikani is a website that helps with learning kanji/vocab

 

[guster-animations]

dude i’m still mad that i haven’t made a rentana stream in like 4 months because his schedule is ridiculously inconsistent and i can’t get email notifs or anything for openrec …

 

[ShinyTogetic]

dude i’m still mad that i haven’t made a rentana stream in like 4 months because his schedule is ridiculously inconsistent and i can’t get email notifs or anything for openrec …

yeah I haven't seen a stream from them for a hot minute
at least theres other sloshers like grandroll to watch now

 

[sevenleaf]

i've long been unhappy with duolingo's japanese course (and... recent news about duolingo has turned me off from using the app at all), but a friend recommended lingodeer to me about a year ago and i've found it helpful! it isn't free past the first lesson or two, but it does have a lifetime subscription option. it's a bit pricey upfront if you go that route though, so your choice whether you think it's worth it or not, lol

a resource i'd like to try more often is tadoku, which is a (free!) site full of books in japanese to read, starting at like, really basic, children's level stuff. with accompanying audio, too. been meaning to try coscom news - that site that has actual news from japan written in a way that's easy for language learners to digest - more often, too. i also bought a notebook ages ago which i've meant to use to practice writing in japanese & keep track of vocab, but it's, uh, still sitting empty

i haven't tried looking at splatoon-specific resources (thank you for the ones mentioned in this thread!), though i have considered looking for japanese players who play my weapon to watch. i'm learning for a couple different reasons (one thing motivating me recently is that i find translation and localization decisions to be really interesting, and i'd love to be able to dig into the original japanese versions of some of the games i like, yknow?), but understanding the japanese competitive scene is definitely part of it right now

 

[guster-animations]

i've long been unhappy with duolingo's japanese course (and... recent news about duolingo has turned me off from using the app at all), but a friend recommended lingodeer to me about a year ago and i've found it helpful! it isn't free past the first lesson or two, but it does have a lifetime subscription option. it's a bit pricey upfront if you go that route though, so your choice whether you think it's worth it or not, lol

a resource i'd like to try more often is tadoku, which is a (free!) site full of books in japanese to read, starting at like, really basic, children's level stuff. with accompanying audio, too. been meaning to try coscom news - that site that has actual news from japan written in a way that's easy for language learners to digest - more often, too. i also bought a notebook ages ago which i've meant to use to practice writing in japanese & keep track of vocab, but it's, uh, still sitting empty

i haven't tried looking at splatoon-specific resources (thank you for the ones mentioned in this thread!), though i have considered looking for japanese players who play my weapon to watch. i'm learning for a couple different reasons (one thing motivating me recently is that i find translation and localization decisions to be really interesting, and i'd love to be able to dig into the original japanese versions of some of the games i like, yknow?), but understanding the japanese competitive scene is definitely part of it right now

yeah i started learning japanese to understand more about jp competitive and now it’s leaning more towards my interest in kamen rider but i really should focus more on competitive, especially since it‘ll help me as a player too
i’ve used yomu.jp as a similar thing to tadoku
(also what did duolingo do i just use it bc why not even though it’s obviously money over teaching)

 

[sevenleaf]

(also what did duolingo do i just use it bc why not even though it’s obviously money over teaching)

from what i've heard they laid off a bunch of their human staff and pivoted towards using AI for their lessons, with just human employees checking the AI outputs. which is bad enough, but i guess the official language (no pun intended) is that the job of these people is just to make sure translations are "acceptable"... which does not bring confidence that what i'm learning through duolingo is even accurate, lol. maybe there's still enough human-written content for my lessons to still be worthwhile, maybe "acceptable" was just a bad word choice, but they've lost my trust

(also thank you for the recommendation!! i'm like super not confident in my ability to read much japanese so the really easy stories yomu has are like, perfect for me rn)

 

[Sambews]

Yooo! I've been studying for around half a year now.
I've found duolingo to be very dissatisfying in its Japanese curriculum. I use wanikani to study kanji and a little vocab, and a combination of youtube (especially Misa from Japanese Ammo) and Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese to study grammar. I also use HelloTalk to find Japanese people to chat with. Given how many words they have, and how differently they approach things compared to English, I've found talking with people to be extremely beneficial as a way of seeing what actually gets used.

 

[Alphine_Agnitio]

Personally I use Duolingo mostly just to get my adhd brain and lazy *** into the habit of learning, I have a notebook I'm using to practice handwriting and a friend reccomended Genki 1 3rd ed to me which I probably should get off my bum and start eventually lol(it is pretty expensive so I'm trying to be careful with it, my copy was $58 skull emoji)

 

[guster-animations]

i added gear abilities to the spreadsheet but japan is asleep so no one’s helped me with abbreviations yet

 

[guster-animations]

bumping this— i realized i never mentioned this, but i’m part of a JP casual splatoon mastodon server (called ikatodon), which is why i said “no one’s helped me with abbreviations yet”
i was sent the link in squid school’s discord by a very nice person named herori, who was asking things about terminology in the help desk to collect stuff and write a medium article for a community advent calendar they had
the whole server is very nice, though i’ve been considering trying to find a similar place where comp players (i mean like general comp, not the top-level players) talk. idk if that’s a thing but it would be super cool to see

 

[Kuwata]

Throwing out a random tidbit in here, but I can suggest beginners to Japanese can read children’s manga - the Splatoon manga (コロイカ) comes to mind! I think it might be a decent way of learning some simple Splatoon-specific Japanese lingo without being too difficult to grasp for newer readers. Children’s manga is full of furigana for newer readers to get the grasp of how to pronounce certain kanji.

Of course, there are drawbacks to this - it is a children’s manga after all - but I think it could be a potentially interesting resource for new readers who also wanna brush up on Splatoon-specific vocab!

You can read some of the chapters for free on the official Corocoro e-reader website!

 

[guster-animations]

bumping this :p