We could just learn Japanese
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@Quof said in We could just learn Japanese:
If you feel like you're bad at language learning I will say with almost certain confidence that you're just not studying properly (e.g. using a trash site like Rosetta Stone) and/or giving up very quickly instead of doing daily study for multiple years.
This is always my problem. I don’t have the discipline to keep myself on track, and even before the whole COVID-19 mess, there weren’t any classroom courses around to help structure my habits.
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@EmpactWB A common problem with needing classroom courses to stay focused is that classroom courses tend to actually be very bad at teaching languages, so even if you do college courses for 4 years it's extremely likely you'll emerge barely passable at the language, if you have any strong grasp of it at all, and then you'll stop learning since you were relying on the structure to study at all.
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@Quof said in We could just learn Japanese:
There's some extreme cases like feral children not having the capacity for language, but in general anyone can learn a language and very few people actually have poor aptitude for language learning.
And, I mean, the thing with them not having aptitude for language is entirely because they didn't get people talking to them while they were infants. Most babies are learning a new language all through the critical period where language growth is biggest, and basically training their brains to be able to do language acquisition. Feral children don't have that. But you can pick up language at any age if you have that initial infantile experience — I'm good with German (I mean, I majored in the language), and I've picked up a few phrases in a handful of other languages (mostly "please" & "thank you", plus a few incredibly cliché Spanish phrases).
On topic, however, I've found that I can kind of muddle my way through understanding some Japanese from watching subbed anime, and I'm good at the kana (reading, at least; writing I've lost a little skill but that's because I don't get much practice)... but kanji just don't click for me. If anyone here has suggestions as to websites I could use to practice them, I'd be grateful.
Or websites where I could practice Japanese in general, because heilige Mutter der Gott is learning through anime subs inefficient.
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While Hiragana and Katakana are very easily learned, Kanji is the real killer. There are 5000+ characters and it is really difficult to learn. The other hard part about Kanji is that some have upwards of 4 different meanings or more depending on what comes either before or after then in a sentence. Then there is the grammar which isn't that difficult, but can be rather awkward depending on the context. I studied it for e years in college and to this day still find it difficult.
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We should learn Japanese, but learning any language is difficult. I've been trying for 5 years and I still don't understand anything more complicated than Doraemon, even with furigana.
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This book series is controversial - people either love it or hate it - but "Remembering the Kanji" by James Heisig is what I would recommend to start seriously studying kanji. I've worked with the first volume on and off, and when I was doing the exercises every day I could feel my grasp of kanji growing.
I know someone, a fellow American, who sat down and worked with Remembering the Kanji for six months straight, and now she can read almost anything in Japanese. I mean, she studied Japanese before that and knew the basics already, but RTK was what put her over the top for kanji comprehension.
