Japanese Learners’ Thread

[Bennet]

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

ok, last year was when I learned about Duolingo from a fren from the bus, I am homeschooled now so I take every chance I get to practice Japanese

 

[Deleted member]

ok, last year was when I learned about Duolingo from a fren from the bus, I am homeschooled now so I take every chance I get to practice Japanese

I can't even remember when or how I learned about Duolingo. It was probably from some joke or meme or something haha. I will tell you this, if you know what's being said is pronounced incorrectly, it's sort of good for review and practice by reading. (People need to report the mistakes more often, I think, so it gets fixed.) Definitely not that great for actually learning from square one. It's way better to learn from books and especially native speakers in classes and stuff. (Which can be expensive, but awesome if you can go!) The Genki books mentioned earlier are actually really good iirc.

It's all about immersion if you want to amp up your studies. Try to put as much stuff in Japanese as possible so you're exposed to it like, all day. You know, labeling things around the house if you can, anything like that. Even if at first it's just in romaji or whatever level you can read kana or kanji at. That worked for me, anyway! Soon enough, I was able to read and write like a champ. Thinking in Japanese as much as possible is also important. When speaking in the language, it's best to think in it.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Bennet]

I can't even remember when or how I learned about Duolingo. It was probably from some joke or meme or something haha. I will tell you this, if you know what's being said is pronounced incorrectly, it's sort of good for review and practice by reading. (People need to report the mistakes more often, I think, so it gets fixed.) Definitely not that great for actually learning from square one. It's way better to learn from books and especially native speakers in classes and stuff. (Which can be expensive, but awesome if you can go!) The Genki books mentioned earlier are actually really good iirc.

It's all about immersion if you want to amp up your studies. Try to put as much stuff in Japanese as possible so you're exposed to it like, all day. You know, labeling things around the house if you can, anything like that. Even if at first it's just in romaji or whatever level you can read kana or kanji at. That worked for me, anyway! Soon enough, I was able to read and write like a champ. Thinking in Japanese as much as possible is also important. When speaking in the language, it's best to think in it.

Keep up the good work!

thx!

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

It's all about immersion if you want to amp up your studies. Try to put as much stuff in Japanese as possible so you're exposed to it like, all day. You know, labeling things around the house if you can, anything like that. Even if at first it's just in romaji or whatever level you can read kana or kanji at. That worked for me, anyway! Soon enough, I was able to read and write like a champ. Thinking in Japanese as much as possible is also important. When speaking in the language, it's best to think in it.

playing Splatoon in japanese is a really good idea for this too.
Partly because it's japanese and partly because it helps you learn the splatoon-specific vocabulary that you won't get most other places

 

[Bennet]

playing Splatoon in japanese is a really good idea for this too.
Partly because it's japanese and partly because it helps you learn the splatoon-specific vocabulary that you won't get most other places

whenever I try to get to Japanese servers I have to wait a few months before I can get to them

 

[Lumi]

I'm pretty amateur in the matter: I don't watch anime or have any particular interactions with the Japanese language outside of Nintendo games. But I've been dabbling in the stuff casually whenever I've been feeling like it.

Nice to see I am not alone here, though!!

 

[Bennet]

I'm pretty amateur in the matter: I don't watch anime or have any particular interactions with the Japanese language outside of Nintendo games. But I've been dabbling in the stuff casually whenever I've been feeling like it.

Nice to see I am not alone here, though!!

one question about Splatoon 3, what anarchy battle mode do you usually do?

 

[sevenleaf]

okay it's almost 3 am as i write this post but i've been vaguely remembering a resource i used a lot back when i first started trying to learn japanese and i was trying to learn the kana scripts - it was a space invaders-type browser game, where you typed out the romaji equivalents to shoot down kana spaceships as they spawned in

i finally decided to see if i could find it again and i did! kana invaders! looks different than what i remembered (it seems to have been recreated in unity, y'know, post-flash death) but plays more or less the same. i also found an archived version of the original flash game running through ruffle but at least for me, well, it runs perfectly except that... uh... the kana doesn't show up on the ships. :x

 

[Bennet]

... thx

 

[Lumi]

one question about Splatoon 3, what anarchy battle mode do you usually do?

Whatever is on at the time! I like all of them nearly equally with maybe a minor preference for Splat Zones so I don't have to worry whether a teammate is taking care of the objective or if I need to step up instead. Turf War is the only mode I cannot stand; It's too stressful for me. The fact that the enemy team can delete our score is so scary...

 

[Bennet]

Whatever is on at the time! I like all of them nearly equally with maybe a minor preference for Splat Zones so I don't have to worry whether a teammate is taking care of the objective or if I need to step up instead. Turf War is the only mode I cannot stand; It's too stressful for me. The fact that the enemy team can delete our score is so scary...

whenever you do Rainmaker open and see someone named Spamton or Peppino just know it's me, ok?

 

[sevenleaf]

so i was doing my ‘snooping at what the 200 guests are looking at’ thing again and i found an old japanese-learning thread from 2016! mentions some resources we haven’t brought up here. it lasted like 5 pages and i’d say it’s worth reading through. (also it kinda jumpscared me how the title of that thread is very close to this one’s title )

lots of folks introduced themselves in japanese for practice there which i think is fun. i talk too much so y’all know me already, but:
こんにちは！僕の名前はクローバーです。二十四歳です。十年間日本語を勉強しています。よろしくお願いします！

(i’m not sure how i wanna translate ‘sevenleaf’ - straight katakana transliteration like セヴェンリーフ? translate one or both words in there to japanese? just keep it as is?? that last one wouldn’t be good practice though - so i just used my ‘real’ name lol)

 

[Deleted member]

so i was doing my ‘snooping at what the 200 guests are looking at’ thing again and i found an old japanese-learning thread from 2016! mentions some resources we haven’t brought up here. it lasted like 5 pages and i’d say it’s worth reading through. (also it kinda jumpscared me how the title of that thread is very close to this one’s title )

lots of folks introduced themselves in japanese for practice there which i think is fun. i talk too much so y’all know me already, but:
こんにちは！僕の名前はクローバーです。二十四歳です。十年間日本語を勉強しています。よろしくお願いします！

(i’m not sure how i wanna translate ‘sevenleaf’ - straight katakana transliteration like セヴェンリーフ? translate one or both words in there to japanese? just keep it as is?? that last one wouldn’t be good practice though - so i just used my ‘real’ name lol)

I'd use "セブンリーフ" if it were me.

じゃ…私も行くよ〜
はじめまして。ミッシーりんですよ〜でもねミッシーだけで良い！
私の一番好きな武器はボールドマーカー！毎日日本語を話しているけどまだまだ下手くそだね♡ 笑
よろしく!

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

I'd use "セブンリーフ" if it were me.

What about mine? I can't figure out if it would be スクィブ or スクイブ. I'm guessing the second one but it makes the first part of the word weirdly long.

 

[Deleted member]

What about mine? I can't figure out if it would be スクィブ or スクイブ. I'm guessing the second one but it makes the first part of the word weirdly long.

"スクイッブ" would be my choice. When you say it, you don't really gotta say each individual sound. You just make it roll off your tongue in one go. I hope this makes sense. I'm so bad at explaining things haha.

You know, kinda like you're actually saying 'Skwibbu' (still an extremely slight pause in the middle that's hardly noticeable when speaking naturally). It would sound a lot like that.

Edit: スクイブ also works if you wanna keep it shorter, though. I meant to add that in there. ;)

 

[sevenleaf]

おはようございます！ long time no see, japanese learners’ thread :)

reviving this because we’ve done worse necroposting around here, and after a long while of only inconsistently reviewing old lingodeer lessons, i just started using renshuu and i’m liking it so far. it’s got a mix of different types of learning - multiple choice quizzing, kanji & kana writing practice, games, social features, a “question corner” feature where you’re prompted to answer a question in japanese… lots of good stuff. from what i’ve seen all the core features are free too, there’s paid options but it’s mostly cosmetic bonuses and extra goodies. honestly, if i stick with it i might consider supporting the site
(EDIT: okay i looked again and renshuu pro does come with more learning features. but there’s so much you can access with a free account i didn’t even realize there were paywalled features lol)

i was also pretty quickly reassured by the site owner’s stance on AI. hint: they’re not using it, not for translation, not for lesson content, not for art. i’ve talked quite a bit about my gripes with duolingo because of their adoption of AI translation, so it’s comforting to hop on a new service and immediately get confirmation that They Don’t Do That Here.

i found it through a list of japanese learning resources i wrote down from my twitter bookmarks, y’know, so i wouldn’t lose ‘em when i deleted my twitter. i’ll have to check out the other resources i wrote down and give my thoughts on those here, too. but if any of you decide to try out renshuu, let’s be friends :D i’m sevenleaf there too, i thought about changing my display name to クローバー or セベンリーフ but i haven’t decided yet

 

[Neko :D]

I moved to America when I was really young, so I never fully learned Japanese. So I tried learning through duolingo. It took a lot less time than I thought because at that point, what duolingo had "taught" me I had already known. So maybe I DID know a lot of Japanese...
Then I had to learn English... It was really hard. But now I forgot like, half of my Japanese and I only speak English as my main language.

I don't like duolingo

 

[sevenleaf]

I moved to America when I was really young, so I never fully learned Japanese. So I tried learning through duolingo. It took a lot less time than I thought because at that point, what duolingo had "taught" me I had already known. So maybe I DID know a lot of Japanese...
Then I had to learn English... It was really hard. But now I forgot like, half of my Japanese and I only speak English as my main language.

I don't like duolingo

early exposure to a language counts for a LOT. honestly i bet you’d still have an advantage trying to learn japanese now over all of us who didn’t get exposed to the language really young

if you’re interested in trying to (re)learn japanese i’d encourage you to try! using, like… anything but duolingo

 

[reelrollsweat]

i just started using renshuu and i’m liking it so far

i love renshuu!! my friend introduced me to it over the summer and its really really nice. im not taking japanese for school anymore but i still wanted a good way to self-study and renshuu has been super helpful. im learning kanji really fast lol. im リールロール on there if you want to add me :v

 

[sevenleaf]

i love renshuu!! my friend introduced me to it over the summer and its really really nice. im not taking japanese for school anymore but i still wanted a good way to self-study and renshuu has been super helpful. im learning kanji really fast lol. im リールロール on there if you want to add me :v

…so this is the first time i’ve tried to add friends and i didn’t realize the site had a friend code system instead of a user search (or if there’s a user search i can’t find it)

my friend code is つれちよ if you (or any others) want to add me! i wonder if my randomly-generated string of kana means anything. probably not. hopefully not?