/lounge/ - sushi social

I'd like to learn Japanese, like every good weeb would want.
But I have no time. I can hardly start learning a new language when I'm struggling in my normal classes as it is.

Soon though.

Learning Japanese currently. I want to be able to read Japanese novels without it being a shitty and boring translation. I've learned a bit from music and have a basic understanding of a lot of it but can't speak much. I can understand the general idea of a lot of things.

I just started seriously studying a few weeks ago. It'll be a long process.

I've been meaning to get back to learning Spanish but I've been too lazy lately. I want to be able to talk to people in South America and see what Sushi Rolls are like down there. Also to be able to know what are the Happenings in that part of the world without needing my parents or getting some shitty translation.

I'm learning nip because I'm a huge weeaboo Rainbow Roll. It's going really slow right now(though I can read virtually anything **with a dictionary**) because of school, I manage to do a bunch of shit during long vacation periods but I'm pretty much stuck with everything I want to learn right now.
I can kind of ready the cyrillic alphabet and I plan on learning russian once I get good enough at japanese. I also want to learn german, italian and a few other languages but it'll probably be a good time before then.
>>461
Focus on classes for now **so you won't get fucked like me** and once you have some free time use the /djt/ resources, they helped me a lot.
http://bitlasers.com/djt

>>461
>>466

Is a language not required for your guys's schools? It is for my uni, so taking Japanese just seemed like a reasonable thing to do.

>>466

I was learning Russian for a while to, but it's a lot harder (at least for me), than Japanese. I don't know why

>>468
>Is a language not required for your guys's schools?
I'm a hue, so we can only choose between english or spanish. I already know english(though my pronunciation is shit). I still have english classes but it's more fucking around with the teacher who knows less than half the class. Spic is hard as fuck and I don't have interest in learning it since I want to move to some other country.
>but it's a lot harder (at least for me), than Japanese.
I don't know shit about russian but I've heard it's pretty hard because of the grammar(verbs have a fuck ton of different conjugations and shit) so it's actually hard while japanese isn't actually hard. Nip can be pretty intimidating because of kanji and kana but everything else is relatively easy.

>>469
Ah, I see. Good luck!

Yeah, my experience with Russian was that there was so many little details to keep track of that I was always worried when speaking that I had messed something up. At least in Japanese, even though sometimes I don't know how to say something, when I do say it I'm pretty confident that it's correct.

Although there are still a couple of grammar details that are just really hard to get (in both languages, really. I'm pretty sure that there are things like this in every language.)

>>470
>Good luck!
T-thanks.
>Yeah, my experience with Russian was that there was so many little details to keep track of
I can see what you mean. The only thing I know about russian is that sometimes the o is pronounced as o and sometimes as another letter, can't remember if it was a or u, and it already sounds like a pain in the ass. Portuguese has a shit ton of things like that so I'm already somewhat used to itthough my grammar is completely shit despite it being my native language there's shit like 4 whys you shoulduse depending on the sentence and the fucking à which is only used in some very specific cases. That`s why I like japanese, it`s very hard to misspell something, most words are written exactly like they sound and the grammar is the simplest I know.
>Although there are still a couple of grammar details that are just really hard to get
That`s pretty normal. Unless you are some kind of omniscient fuck there will always be a thing or two you don`t know about languages, especially if it`s about one you don`t use often.

I'm taking a French class, picked it because it was one of the three options at my school. I've been to France twice, and some friends and I are thinking of renting an apartment in Quebec this summer.

I'm still not very good at speaking the language, especially when it comes to tenses and grammar, but I've made a lot of progress since I started learning.

>>468
not in school sadly. if i go to school it'd be a career college anyway.

Right now, I'm learning Russian and Japanese by myself. I use Duolingo and such for Russian, and memrise when it comes to vocabulary for both languages.

Also, there's this great textbook, Genki, you guys should check it out, the second edition. I'm not that much into anime tbh, I just like japan's aesthetics, and I know there are lots of business opportunities there.

Besides, it's not that hard:

>It's true that Japanese has a much different system of writing than English or any other European language. However, foreigners can get by with learning the 44 or so hiragana or katakana characters that represent sounds in much the same way as the English alphabet does.
In addition, the grammar of Japanese is in many ways simpler than that of European languages. Japanese nouns have no genders, plural forms, or accompanying articles to learn. The language also has only two verb tenses, present and past, and includes very few irregular verbs. Spoken Japanese has only 5 vowel sounds and spelling is phonetically consistent, making the language relatively easy to pronounce.

>>461
>>462
>>466
>>468
>>762
(and anyone else studying Japanese)

Perhaps some of these resources may prove useful?:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/31814436/Genki-1-An-Integrated-Course-in-Elementary-Japanese-1
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ynwmcFwy0ccT70cVRp-G97fYlcf-GYZ86T62SvQMDdY/pub?embedded=true
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/

I'm learning Ancient Greek and Latin in college right now and just picked up some Japanese books this break to learn in my free time. Ancient languages are pretty different from modern languages as far as I know. The endings of nouns will change depending on their usage in the sentence (not just the article as is the case with Romance languages). The ancient Greeks also love to use participles, the μεν . . . δε construction (which is kind of like 'on the one hand . . . on the other hand'), and γάρ (which functions like 'because' or 'for').

>>464
Venezuelan here, I'd be happy to help you with Spanish. I'm still learning English and I'm learning French too, but man, I wish I could learn Japanese TT-TT

>>765
That's interesting. How similar are Ancient and Modern Greek? It's a shame that not many people learn these languages anymore. I have a rudimentary Latin vocabulary and it has helped a lot with working out what words mean, or where they come from.

I'm also interested to know what kind of case system Greek uses. German is very interesting. Due to having cases, word order is a lot freer than in English.

Dem Mädchen habe ich das Buch gegeben
Das Buch habe ich dem Mädchen gegeben
Ich habe das Buch dem Mädchen gegeben
all mean 'I gave the book to the girl.'

However, this introduces ambiguity when the articles of the subject and object are the same, despite being different cases. My German teacher showed us this example:
Die schönen Frauen haben die leckeren Süßigkeiten gegessen.

Because of free word order, this could mean either:
The beautiful women ate the delicious sweets. OR:
The delicious sweets ate the beautiful women.

However, context is your friend here. Natürlich.

>>767
>>767
Ancient Greek doesn't have any set grammar rules and the language is quite flexible. I don't know anything about Modern Greek, but I imagine the modernization process would have included a standardized grammar. For example, this is lines 1078-1080 from Euripides' Medea:

καὶ μανθάνω μὲν οἷα τολμήσω κακά,
θυμὸς δὲ κρείσσων τῶν ἐμῶν βουλευμάτων,
ὅσπερ μεγίστων αἴτιος κακῶν βροτοῖς.

Basically this translates as:
And on the one hand I know what sort of evils I am about to do,
but on the other hand my spirit is stronger than my plans,
that thing (the spirit) which is a source of greatest evils for mortals.

Oftentimes in Ancient Greek they will leave out any verb in a clause so that 'is' is implied in the sentence. A word can be placed pretty much whereever you want to place it, though adjectives will usually be placed next to or near the noun they modify. Same with adverbs. There are of course some tendencies, namely to place the main verb at the end of the sentence or clause.

In terms of cases Greek uses the same cases as German: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, and Accusative. Latin has the additional Ablative case but I'm not sure where that originates from. The interesting thing about the cases in Greek is that each case will fulfill multiple roles outside of its normal one. So while Accusative will usually be just the direct object of the verb, it can also take on the meaning of the Accusative of Respect when used with a verb of pain. In that case it would tell in what respect something hurts, or what is hurting. Genitive and Dative have many many meanings besides showing possession or acting as the indirect object.

>>766
Then do it. Download Genki I second edition from torrents, search for stuff on youtube, use memrise.

Never give up!

Japanese, like everyone else.

I always thought about learning German. You see, I always wanted to see how people would react if they annoyed me somehow, and suddenly had some blond-haired-blue-eyed dude angrily shouting at them in German. I'll probably never go through with it, though, because I could get myself into a lot of trouble.

I'm not a native english speaker and right now I only want to improve my english, even though it's probably at least "okay" already. Any resources you'd recommend, besides englishpage.com and wikibooks?
I also tried learning a bit of german, japanese, latin and czech and I can read cyrillic, but nothing serious.

I always read the news in whatever language I'm trying to learn. It exposes you to proper grammar, and there's an infinite supply of reading material.

>>786
I had a similar thought, although I've never had the chance or will to do it: when someone stops me in the street to ask me to do a survey or something, I want to reply in German persistently and see their reaction. Ja, das werde ich tun, falls ich in der Lage bin.

By the way, German is a beautiful language. In general, I like the Germanic languages far more than the Romance ones. But good luck with your Japanese.

Also, greetings, my fellow blond-haired, blue-eyed sushi roll!

Learning French via Duolingo. I hope to be able to one day comment my source and read stuff online in it.

>>763
I also found Anki pretty useful for learning Hiragana. http://ankisrs.net/

>>793
I am American, and when I visited Paris in 2009 I found that the most effective way to get the peddlers and gypsies to stop bothering you was to reply in German.

So on that note, I took German in high school and Latin in college, and I plan on learning Japanese while improving the other two. I also teach an English class on a volunteer basis, but I'm starting to not enjoy that anymore.

I have a slightly related question: does krautchan ban foreigners? I got another proxy ban, even though I'm not using one.

I'm moroccan, so I've spoken French, Arabic, and Moroccan dialect for my entire life. I also consider myself quite fluent in English (almost exclusively thanks to the internet!).

I have a good grasp of Spanish, although I can't really write or speak it. I've got good reading comprehension, though.

I'm currently learning Japanese, and I'm planning to start Russian afterwards (although I can already read cyrillic).

Learning languages is fun!

I'm learning Jap for obvious reasons. I'm German, if you wanna you can shoot me a mail sometime, we can be penpals n shit

Currently taking a Latin class so I can learn more Romantic languages and learning Japanese on my own to play untranslated games. I just started studying like a week ago though, so I'm jist trying to memorize Harigana.

>>838
Would you want to be penpals with someone who butchers your language so horribly as I do?

English and in the future japanese.

You guys should start a penpal group of some sort since there's such a polyglot of different speakers here. It'd be fun.

I'm learning Japanese now. It's hard, but the feeling when you understand something is amazing. After Japanese I really want to jump into Mandarin. Just thinking of all the new people I will get to talk to make me excited.

Also japanese, as my first second language. I like the idea of hindi or russian or chinese after that. Maybe korean if im lazy, I hear korean students all take japanese cause it has a similar structure they find easy.
Thats a long way away though.

>>793
Being a native german speaker, I can't really understand what's beautiful about this language. I think in it's written form it's able to express more than for example english, but spoken it's a very hard language and doesn't feel as expressive as japanese.

>>767
>Die schönen Frauen haben die leckeren Süßigkeiten gegessen.

>Because of free word order, this could mean either:
>The beautiful women ate the delicious sweets. OR:
>The delicious sweets ate the beautiful women.

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure that this only means
The beautiful women ate the delicious sweets
I'd translate
The delicious sweets ate the beautiful women.
to
Die schönen Frauen wurden von den leckeren Süßigkeiten gegessen.
to keep the sentence structure similar.

>>875
Oh, well fair enough. I'm just going off what my German teacher told me. In any case, context is everything.