Sometimes school can teach you in the wrong direction.

Only taken 2x semesters in college, going on 3 and my mom gets irritated as much as I got irritated with her broken english. She now understands my pain when trying to talk to her.

*edit*

And there's a lot more to understanding Japanese, watching Anime and hearing the same damn phrase a lot doesn't make you sufficient in learning anything.

The worst part is remembering Kanji. That's the biggest nightmare.

This post was edited by Touhou on Feb 24 2013 01:58am

Fuck kanji, worst part of learning Japanese, also called "hanjah" in Korean. The Chinese get mad respect for having this and learning this

But yeah, fuck kanji

This post was edited by Seoreen on Feb 24 2013 02:02am

Remembering is one thing, but writing the damn thing down perfectly is another.

Hell, one mistake of the stroke and it could mean something else. So irritating.

Thats part of it too!

If I could just like, kill kanji that would be fantastic

While anime is useful when you are learning japanese (it has helped me a lot, in my listening, vocabulary, etc), it can't be your primary (let alone only) learning source. You need to understand the grammar to speak japanese properly, and also there are different ways of saying stuff in japanese depending on the level of formality used. This is very important in japanese, but in anime all these levels of formality are sometimes mixed around, so you have to watch out.

Also, this should be obvious but keep in mind voice acting and accents are exaggerated in anime. I knew a guy who spoke in a really weird way because of this. It's like speaking with the voices of western cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse, Dexter or Homer Simpson.

imho, you must either take japanese classes, or follow a proper self teaching method if you want to learn japanese, because of the whole grammar/formality part. It's difficult to correct this stuff as you delve deeper and deeper into the language. And learn how to write, completely ditch romaji and learn hiragana/katakana and start learning the 2k cumpolsary kanji (take it easy, at a rate you are ok with). It doesn't matter if it takes you 1 or 5 years, as long as you learn them properly, don't stress yourself with them or it will be a nightmare.

Is your teacher a native speaker ? The teacher I had said something similar to what you are saying about other schools programs lol

Kanji is hell , especially remembering the stroke order .

YES!!

Yeah, I understand japanese

like dai ski and komenesai and o haiyo and baka

I know Onii-chan means sex partner.

Yeah... having studied chinese before hand it seriosuly annoys me that some stroke orders are different for the same kanji in chinese and japanese. The good thing is that dictionaries are loosing it's position to apps, and any half decent app can recognize the kanji you've written even if you wrote it in the wrong order.

I don't know much about korean, but is hanja really that important? Whenever I come across a korean website all I see is hangul, aside from maybe a couple of hanja... but when I see a japanese website there's kanji everywhere. Also North Korea has gotten completely rid of them afaik.

This post was edited by zarkadon on Feb 25 2013 07:33am