Japanese Learners’ Thread

[Bluejay]

Wow great ressources! I've been casually learning japanese for a few years now (reasons unrelated to splatoon), and I'm able to understand 70-90% of what they say in splatoon videos (depending on the creator). I've found it helpful to use youtube's CC to get a rough idea of what they're saying, and then google specific terminologies (スプラ + “the term”) to learn more — since splatoon is so popular in Japan, you get a lot of results. Inkpedia is also good for looking up equivalent terms in different languages.

In terms of learning the language itself i think Duolingo isn't as helpful as just listening to how ppl talk and read what they write (simple stuff like anime with bilingual subtitles, or get on jp twitter and try to decipher what they're saying lol). It's hard at first but I've learned a big chunk of what I know by doing this. One splatuber I would recommend for this is またりんちゃんねる. They tend to speak in simple terms in their guides and often has subtitles.

Also I've been wanting to translate some japanese ressources (guide videos) to english because they've helped so much in my improvement and I want to share them with more ppl. If anyone has the same idea or need help for a similar project hmu : )

 

[guster-animations]

just discovered this yt channel (learn japanese with tanaka-san) and holy crab i will watch the hell out of it

 

[squid-lesbian]

It's a bit wild to me that no one has mentioned it yet, but if you are interested in learning Kanji/vocabulary, then Anki is goat!
It's a great app that allows you to customize your learning experience to your hearts content, and there are tons of plugins with fun features, most important for Japanese it's the "three sided cards" that always have the reading on the backside, depending if they are recall cards (language you know -> language you learn) or recognition cards (language you learn -> language you know).
A Sensei of mine is also developing a learning app that looks very promising to me, but it's still in pre-alpha, so it might not be of use to everyone yet.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

idk how I haven't seen this thread before, this is awesome

 

[Bennet]

just discovered this yt channel (learn japanese with tanaka-san) and holy crab i will watch the hell out of it

or just go to the website/app Duolingo and learn Japanese there

 

[sevenleaf]

gosh i’ve fallen off a bit with language learning since i was posting in this thread (the one thing i do miss about duolingo is that the sunk cost of having a long streak did keep me consistently learning at least a little most days… when i still trusted those lessons lol)

i found out that through my local library i can access mango languages for free, but i haven’t dug too deep into that. my library also apparently gives me access to some other language-learning tools that i haven’t tried yet at all… i’ll report back at some point with my findings

edit: okay admittedly there’s two main things i miss about duolingo. the way streaks kept me a little bit on track, and whatever lily and zari had going on

 

[Aiko.Octo]

gosh i’ve fallen off a bit with language learning since i was posting in this thread (the one thing i do miss about duolingo is that the sunk cost of having a long streak did keep me consistently learning at least a little most days… when i still trusted those lessons lol)

i found out that through my local library i can access mango languages for free, but i haven’t dug too deep into that. my library also apparently gives me access to some other language-learning tools that i haven’t tried yet at all… i’ll report back at some point with my findings

edit: okay admittedly there’s two main things i miss about duolingo. the way streaks kept me a little bit on track, and whatever lily and zari had going on

lol the streak compulsion is so real, I am at like 1380 days right now but I switch languages so often I'm not really retaining much and most days I (shamefully) just redo an easy lesson just to keep the streak alive. I don't even know why I do it but the high numbers are hard to let go >>

 

[Bennet]

lol the streak compulsion is so real, I am at like 1380 days right now but I switch languages so often I'm not really retaining much and most days I (shamefully) just redo an easy lesson just to keep the streak alive. I don't even know why I do it but the high numbers are hard to let go >>

heh

 

[Arigato!]

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

I only learned a few words lol. My name is literally ありがとう, or Arigato which means thank you. It's basically what I say to jp teamates that save my behind or paint a rainmaker way.

 

[Bennet]

I only learned a few words lol. My name is literally ありがとう, or Arigato which means thank you. It's basically what I say to jp teamates that save my behind or paint a rainmaker way.

I am learning on how to say some types of food

 

[Arigato!]

I am learning on how to say some types of food

I know that ocha means tea.

 

[Bennet]

I know that ocha means tea.

what about mizu desu? Do you know what that means?

 

[Arigato!]

I know mizu means water but desu im not so sure? Maybe something like water fountain or "this is water"?

 

[Bennet]

I know mizu means water but desu im not so sure? Maybe something like water fountain or "this is water"?

desu means it's, so mizu desu means "it's water" (note in Japanese the verbs go at the end for some reason)

 

[Arigato!]

desu means it's, so mizu desu means "it's water" (note in Japanese the verbs go at the end for some reason)

Ohhhhh. I was a little close tho.

 

[Bennet]

Ohhhhh. I was a little close tho.

yas you were, next one! kudisai.

 

[sevenleaf]

I know mizu means water but desu im not so sure? Maybe something like water fountain or "this is water"?

to my understanding です is more of like. a grammar thing than a word with a direct translation, marking the ends of certain sentences. it’s often translated as “to be”/“it is” for simplicity’s sake but it’s not quite the same thing. みずです without further context could be translated to “it is water,” though

aka what i say over comms when i roll off the edge of mahi-mahi

 

[Bennet]

to my understanding です is more of like. a grammar thing than a word with a direct translation, marking the ends of certain sentences. it’s often translated as “to be”/“it is” for simplicity’s sake but it’s not quite the same thing. みずです without further context could be translated to “it is water,” though

aka what i say over comms when i roll off the edge of mahi-mahi

did you learn how to speak Japanese through Duolingo?


(I am currently learning Japanese through duolingo and すし you probably already know "sushi")

 

[sevenleaf]

did you learn how to speak Japanese through Duolingo?


(I am currently learning Japanese through duolingo and すし you probably already know "sushi")

duolingo i can’t recommend anymore for reasons i already went over earlier in this thread -

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

but i use a variety of methods to learn japanese - a similar app called lingodeer, a pdf of the genki textbook, some sites that this thread’s already mentioned with reading material… i also bought a kanji/kana practice book from barnes & noble a while back but i still haven’t really dug into it. and i’m always looking for new methods to learn

i wouldn’t say i can speak japanese, i’m definitely not fluent or even conversational yet, i’m too inconsistent for that. but i’ve been learning for like 10 years on and off so i’ve picked up the kana scripts, assorted vocabulary, and bits of knowledge about how the language works over the years

 

[Deleted member]

Ooh! Ooh! I'm more active in the Japanese Splatoon community than any of the English ones. This is kinda' my first venture into English Splatoon, aside from when I tried out Splatoon NA for about a year out of curiosity. (I never really spoke to anyone though. I started playing with Japanese "Splatoon 2" years ago.) I might be able to help with some things if needed. I'll try my best if I'm asked anything!

And also, I'll try to answer as quick as possible. I promise, if I didn't say anything yet, I'm not ignoring you. I probably didn't see it yet, or I might be busy at the moment.

My first language is English, because I'm American. But my grasp of Japanese is pretty dang good and I usually play games in Japanese. And, of course, I gotta' write in Japanese every day on Twitter because almost all my mutuals live in Japan. I hope I can help you guys out!

Oh, and Duolingo is wrong sometimes, btw. I tried it out a long time ago for practice, and I noticed pronunciations were incorrect a few times when kanji was used in the text-to-speech that could be read multiple ways. Just a head's up on that! :O