(no subject)

[ysobel]

...there is a part of me that thinks I'm crazy -- and asking for disappointment -- in trying to learn Japanese. Because three writing systems, because very different language, because I have no real use for it and I could be spending my energy on languages that are useful (Spanish, Russian to a lesser extent) or languages that I'm more likely to succeed with (Spanish, German). That I came across a DW entry from a few years back where I was stopping doing German duolingo because the words weren't sticking, and *i used to be pretty close to fluent*. I don't have the same background with Japanese, and aside from the basics (konnichiwa, sayonara, arigato, hai, iie, 1-10) and English-adopted loanwords (sushi, samurai, haiku, etc) I have no prior knowledge, and the few words I've gotten so far aren't sticking. (I'm sort of remembering the alternate 4 and 7. Duo has also given me a few colors -- red white blue (aka shiro ao?) -- and the learn Japanese app has given me "half, half past" and "o'clock" both of which I'm blanking on -- but I just. I'm not really retaining, and I'm kind of worried about trying to get katakana as well as hiragana, and the voice in my head is going on about how stupid this all is and how I should just give up and stick with something easy or useful or sensible or whatever.

I know that some of this is brainweasels. The "you are going to mess up so why bother trying" non-logic is pretty signature. But I can't tell if it's also telling the truth...

Comments

[mathemagicalschema]

I've actually had a lot of success at learning Japanese vocabulary and grammar by... watching too much anime. It also helped a bit that my sister was studying Japanese at the same time I was in my major anime phase :P. I'm now learning Chinese using Duo and a few other apps and resources, and watching Chinese and Taiwanese dramas has been a very helpful adjunct. It's made it much easier for me to wrap my head around how tones sound in natural speech compared to the precise, stilted pronunciations in my lessons.

I think I wouldn't try to learn a language without using both. I need natural speech - subtitled TV being best - to passively pick up vocabulary and to get a more intuitive sense of grammar and pronunciation, and I need lessons to give me a structured, accurate understanding of the language and help me deduce more from natural speech. Plus, of course, with Japanese and Chinese learning to read and write is a different beast entirely.

I don't know if you'll feel the same way as you keep going, but I found Japanese grammar to not be too complicated. It's a highly synthetic language, much like German, and once you can identify the different components of a word and get a sense for how to build a valid word, it gets a lot easier. If Duo is mostly teaching you vocabulary as entire words and not as morphemes with some rules for how you can combine them, picking up on the grammar is going to be really difficult.

I hope some of this is helpful; it's possible that Duo doesn't teach Japanese in a way that makes much sense to you (or perhaps anyone...), but I would be very surprised if Japanese were just straight-up too hard for you to learn, with you being familiar with so many languages.

[ysobel]

I haven't gotten super far in duo's Japanese -- mostly it's been hiragana (which I deliberately learned before trying duo) -- but it tends not to explain things. But I'm also doing memrise, which is much better -- it doed break things down into components. (I dabbled in the Spanish lesson, and it has literal translation (e.g. "tu" is "you (singular, informal)" as well as regular translation ("you"). Or with Japanese, distinguishing "ni (hiragana)" from "two". Again I still haven't gotten far, but I suspect it will continue to be good.)

[mathemagicalschema]

Yeah, Duo Chinese has some shortcomings that sound similar - certain aspects of the grammar are really difficult to pick up on properly without being specifically instructed. And grammar instruction gets you a bit farther with Chinese than some languages (like our bastard native tongue), because for the most part it's pretty logical and consistent.

Good luck :D

[undomielregina]

Seconding using anime to help pick up vocabulary and pronunciation. It’s also great for helping with different accents, although a lot of characters don’t speak naturalistically.

The other good news is that a lot of manga is aimed at younger readers who typically don’t know too many kanji yet, so it can be possible to start reading stuff at a fairly low level and build comprehension that way. And even the stuff that’s intended for adults is usually easier reading than novels (but beware historical-set series, which can go all out on archaic and obscure vocabulary and end up notorious bears to read.) It doesn’t hurt that it has so much material readily available that’s appealing to people with fannish backgrounds (not that none exists in other languages, but the ease of online access and the number of people who can offer tailored recommendations are both higher.)