Japanese Learner's Thread

皆さん、こんにちは。「Hello, Everybody.」

Welcome to my Japanese Learner's thread. In this thread, I will be providing you all with some helpful tips and tricks on how to learn Japanese, along with some great resources that I have used myself. This is still a work in progress so please bear with me. I am JLPT N4 Certified.

Basics
Hiragana (ひらがな) is the syllabary used most commonly in Japanese. Hiragana are an (extremely) cursive form of the Manyogana. A character for the sound ‘ya’ in Manyogana, for example, is 也. The character for ‘ya’ in Hiragana is や, and is derived from 也.
The Hiragana actually came about later than the katakana. The Hiragana are said to be created by a group of noble women, and the Hiragana are generally used to write Japanese phonetically. 

Katakana (カタカナ) literally means “fragment kana”, and was formed by taking different parts of various kanji and using those elements to represent sound. For example, the katakana character for ‘ka’ is カ, and this usage is derived from the left-side of the kanji 加 whose reading is also ‘ka’. Katakana is used for the names of animals, certain onomatopoeia words, certain ‘new’ words like ‘karaoke’, certain slang words and new words introduced into the language from other foreign languages. Katakana is somewhat like upper-case letters for its specialized usage.

Kanji (漢字) are characters which originated from China and represent both ideas and pronunciations, though some domestic kanji, referred to as ‘Kokuji’ (国字 - “Country character”) exist. For a general outline of kanji, you might refer to this. For more in-depth information on the different types of kanji and so forth, you might refer to this. For information on the stroke order of kanji, you could use kakijun.jp, the Heisig books (kanji sub-section below), or the Kanji Stroke Order Font (Misc. sub-section), etc. You don’t have to learn stroke order, but understanding the stroke order of Kanji and Kanji radicals (The “building blocks” of Kanji) lends to being able to identify Kanji in handwritten scribbles and different fonts.

Resources
Genki Textbook
I have been using the Genki textbook for quite a while now, and it is a great source when combined with the audio CDs, which can be found online. It goes over the basics, and will then teach you the essential grammar along with the important characters. 
-download-

Japanese Online
Japanese Online works hand in hand with the Genki textbook, and has all of the audio resources online -- a must have for anyone using the textbook to study.

Memrise
Memrise is a great tool for learning the basic vocab and writing systems for Japanese. I used it to learn Hiragana (ひらがな) and Katakana (カタカナ) and I still use it to learn vocab. However, I felt that Memrise started to loose its effectiveness when used for the learning of Kanji (漢字.) However -- rest assured; I have a tool which is perfect for 漢字.

Anki Flashcards
Anki flashcards are great for learning the 漢字 which are essential for you to be able to properly read Japanese. You can change your flashcard decks yourself with anything that you might find while reading. 

More Kanji
Heisig  - A website/textbook that teaches kanji in an order based on the radicals of each character. It starts you off with the simple shapes and gradually goes into more complicated ones. It teaches stroke order and makes up pretty fancy mnemonic stories to help you memorize the kanji easier. Unfortunately, it does not teach the readings until the second volume nor does it tell you how the kanji are used in context. As such, this method expects you to learn all the common characters before even getting started on learning vocabulary. Of course, you can still start learning vocabulary while doing Heisig.

KanjiDamage - Another kanji resource that uses a radical-based order. Unlike Heisig’s method it also teaches the readings and gives you examples of common words that use those kanji (great for adding them to your Anki deck right away). Take the introduction on the site with a grain of salt, as it isn’t very accurate, or is just plain wrong, as is the case with some other areas on the site, but that in no way makes this a bad resource in regards to learning.

Great post man.

Vouch for the Memrise site, really useful.

AHZOOZOO wrote

From my experience learning how to read in japanese. Learn Hiragana and Katakana and learn kanji as you go along. Learning them all at once it a pain considering there are over 2,000 actively used in japan.

We all learn differently, I just do whatever works for me c:

Useful and cool thread!
I'm considering starting to learn japanese
Would make watching anime a lot more fun x)

Asuna wrote

Useful and cool thread!
I'm considering starting to learn japanese
Would make watching anime a lot more fun x)

I will help, I've just started so it would be cool to learn together c:

Yen wrote

Asuna wrote

Useful and cool thread!
I'm considering starting to learn japanese
Would make watching anime a lot more fun x)

I will help, I've just started so it would be cool to learn together c:

Lol sounds fun
I know nothing but arigatou and sumimasen xD

Asuna wrote

Yen wrote

Asuna wrote

Useful and cool thread!
I'm considering starting to learn japanese
Would make watching anime a lot more fun x)

I will help, I've just started so it would be cool to learn together c:

Lol sounds fun
I know nothing but arigatou and sumimasen xD

Start using Memrise it's good c:

Yen wrote

Asuna wrote

Yen wrote

Asuna wrote

Useful and cool thread!
I'm considering starting to learn japanese
Would make watching anime a lot more fun x)

I will help, I've just started so it would be cool to learn together c:

Lol sounds fun
I know nothing but arigatou and sumimasen xD

Start using Memrise it's good c:

c:

AHZOOZOO wrote

From my experience learning how to read in japanese. Learn Hiragana and Katakana and learn kanji as you go along. Learning them all at once it a pain considering there are over 2,000 actively used in japan.

You will struggle if you learn Hiragana and Katakana as you go along.
Learn it first.

Then learn Kanji as you go along

Asada wrote

AHZOOZOO wrote

From my experience learning how to read in japanese. Learn Hiragana and Katakana and learn kanji as you go along. Learning them all at once it a pain considering there are over 2,000 actively used in japan.

You will struggle if you learn Hiragana and Katakana as you go along.
Learn it first.

Then learn Kanji as you go along

"I'm gay" - @[deleted], 2015

AHZOOZOO wrote

Asada wrote

You will struggle if you learn Hiragana and Katakana as you go along.
Learn it first.

Then learn Kanji as you go along

Thats exactly what I said lol.

lol.
I guess I was tired xD

Asada wrote

AHZOOZOO wrote

Thats exactly what I said lol.

lol.
I guess I was tired xD

What a pussy Kappa

Yen wrote

Asada wrote

lol.
I guess I was tired xD

What a pussy Kappa

kinda like u : )))

Yen wrote

Lewd wrote

kinda like u : )))

So you fucking should c:

i don't get it  Kappa

Lewd wrote

Yen wrote

What a pussy Kappa

kinda like u : )))

So you fucking should c:

It seems to difficult for me :c

Shuuya wrote

It seems to difficult for me :c

It just takes time, start on Memrise Basic Hiragana 1.

Yen wrote

Shuuya wrote

It seems to difficult for me :c

It just takes time, start on Memrise Basic Hiragana 1.

Ok, I guess I can try, but now now.