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Advice on Learning Japanese?
Piroca asks: "During the last years, a huge amount of (modern) Japanese culture has invaded the Occident, mostly in the form of anime, video games and TV shows. Part of that content can't be understood completely due to the complexity and subtleties of the Japanese language. Due to that, it seems the interest on learning Japanese is steadily growing, specially for anime addicts. Much of the problem stems from the fact that Japanese is not an easy language, being classified as very difficult by most standards (of course, this depends on one's native language). I'm searching for courses and material that can help me to learn Japanese without attending to classes or hiring people to teach me. I've found things like Pimsleur and japanesepod101 but I wonder if other people in the Slashdot crowd have not passed through this process before and have useful hints to share."
This is definitely my reccomended first reading. Beware ;-)
In the inmortal words of Dave Barry, the best way to learn japanese is to be born japanese and raised by japanese parents in Japan.
No sig
Do not try to learn anything from games or anime. You -will- pick up bad habits if you try and learn that way that will be both hard to drop and impede your progress.
The best way to learn is to take formal classes, preferrably as intense as possible. It helps if you can memorize the two basic character sets first, as any good class will start with rote memorization of those and drop romaji as quickly as possible. Beware the teacher that doesn't push or task you, as you can spend years in classes and learn nothing. Also, SPEAK. Speaking helps master the language faster than anything else and if you don't, oddly enough, even if you go to Japan no one will push you to speak. I learned first hand that they don't expect you to speak, and as such there's no push (or need) to do so unless you force yourself.
As for your interest I share many myself, however:
Anime - good for practicing listening, although technical/fantasy jargon will interfere. Live action shows are better, since they speak more naturally in those and are more difficult to understand, speech wise. Beware slang. Also, most shows drop keigo (polite speech,) which is ESSENTIAL to learn.
Games - good for reading, but suffers from the same problems as above.
Novels are better since you're forced to memorize kanji to move faster. Focus on things with furigana so you can get a handle on the readings of kanji and words, as they'll show them once for a kanji/word every few pages, which lets you pick it up faster. Also, consider browsing Amazon Japan for books on verbs and particles, since those will be the first problematic things you encounter, among amassing a vocabulary and kanji literacy.
And to promote a site that is -not- mine but is nonetheless excellent, http://www.nihongoresources.com/ -- be gentle on the site, but it's a great help.
Get Dragonball Z on DVD. Start watching in Japanese with English subtitles. About half-way through the battle with Freeza (episode #5259) turn off the subtitles.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I'm a second grade tutor in a Japanese Junior High School in Hokkaido, but I am originally from the UK. I am exactly the same as all the other Japanese teachers in the school except for the fact that I have a different nationality. All of my work, meetings, communications and everything I do daily is in Japanese (I'm the only non-Japanese staff in the school). 5 years ago, I barely knew a word. Now I work in an entirely Japanese environment.
Let's start with Kanji. I believe 5 year-olds in Japan average about 500 of these
Firstly, take it from me (as a professional educator), most 5 year olds do not know 500 kanji. In fact none do. I'd love to know where you got that figure from. Japanese children are taught approximately 80 kanji in 1st grade Elementary School (about 6 years old). At 5 years old they are still struggling to learn Kana.
You need to know A: the somewhat random symbol,
You really don't know anything about the language do you? Kanji are not "somewhat random symbol[s]". Common kanji generally contain 1 or more basic elements known in English as 'radicals' of which there are 214, which themselves have their own meanings. This also has the advantage of providing a basic method for sorting kanji (for example in a dictionary). If you don't believe me, take a closer look at a page of kanji and you'll start to notice that a lot of the characters contain similar looking parts.
B: the stroke order (Very important!)
Yes, there is a school of thought that says stroke order is important, and yes Japanese students are taught stroke order. But then there is also a popular TV quiz show in Japan where adult contestants have to identify the stroke order of (fairly common) kanji. At a rough guesstimate they get it wrong about 25% of the time. Stroke order is only VERY important in Japanese calligraphy, which is a different issue altogether.
How many years until you can chat with a kindergartener.
Study every day for an hour or more, and you'll be able to hold quite a decent little conversation with a kiddie within 6 months or so.
And forget reading newspapers
Oh, ok. Maybe I should cancel my daily delivery then.
don't be foolish and think one kanji equals one thing.
Go find yourself a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary and look up the word "set". You'll find it has 126 different definitions. Japanese is hardly unique in having its characters take on more than one meaning.
Ok, how about saying hello? Thankfully, there is only about a dozen ways of doing this, depending upon if the person you're talking to is high above you, above you, at your level, below you, or really below you. Of course, there are variants for if there is a big age gap, or you're related, or you're a girl. Or any of a million other variants.
There are basically main 3 speaking forms (or levels of respect if you like) in Japanese, not "millions of variants". Teineigo, sonkeigo and kenjo~go, as well as a basic plain form. As a non-native speaker, you won't be expected to use anything more than teineigo. While it's certainly more complex than English, it's attainable with a little study. As for a dozen ways of saying hello, 99.99% of the time you'll be using just 3 different words (the ubiquitous ohayo~(gozaimasu), konnichiwa and konbanwa) to anyone you meet, regardless of rank or status. Just think about English for a moment - Hey, Hello, Hi, What's Up?, How's It Going?, Yo! well... I could go on, but you can quickly see just how many different greeting forms we have, without even taking into account whether we're being polite or not.
You also have to accept the fact that you will never speak well, you will never read a newspaper correctly
That would be why I meet numerous foreigners every week who speak excellent Japanese then. Making a blanket statement like "y