Ye Olde Japan Thread

[manuel]

Romaji are our roman letters, and they aren't used for Japanese words.

Hiragana and katakana are, if you want to say so, alphabets. It's just not letters, but syllables. Both consist of 50 characters. You can easily learn them in a few days.

Kanji characters... well, there are a lot. But you don't need all of them.
You can get pretty far if you can recognize about 1000 of them and know how to read them.
With 2000 kanji you can already read almost everything. Newspapers, books, videogames should all be no problem.
If you want to know how much I know by now, I'd say somewhere between 2000 and 2500.
If you want to pass the kanji test called "kanken", you will have to be able to read AND write around 6000 kanji and know ALL their readings. Only about 100 people a year pass that test, though.

The biggest problem with Japanese and their style of writing is, that you can never be sure how to read stuff. There's the "chinese" and "japanese" reading. Some may have heard of it.

... I got a phone call... I will post more later. Stay tuned. 

[Rogles]

The smiley face one is "shi" or "tsu", depending on the location of the "eyes". But I was able to learn just enough to read and write simple sentences in like... 6 months(?), studying at my own leisure. It really helps when trying to identify Famicom games, if you know katakana.

[nintendodork]

Both consist of 50 characters. You can easily learn them in a few days.

Kanji characters... well, there are a lot. But you don't need all of them.
You can get pretty far if you can recognize about 1000 of them and know how to read them.
With 2000 kanji you can already read almost everything. Newspapers, books, videogames should all be no problem.
The biggest problem with Japanese and their style of writing is, that you can never be sure how to read stuff. There's the "chinese" and "japanese" reading. Some may have heard of it

The smiley face one is "shi" or "tsu", depending on the location of the "eyes". But I was able to learn just enough to read and write simple sentences in like... 6 months(?), studying at my own leisure. It really helps when trying to identify Famicom games, if you know katakana.

With 26 letters in the English alphabet, you can read everything..   I'd like to learn simple Japanese to identify Famicom games a little easier...and so I can understand Pokemon Green :S


EDIT: Why won't my reply come out of the quote...?

[Rogles]

There's no kanji in the RBYG Pokemon games, so you would only need to learn kana. But I can understand wanting to play and understand right away. you might want to read a book on it, like a Japanese learning book with exercises in it. It really helped me.

[nintendodork]

The good thing about Pokemon Green is that I already know the storyline, so it's a little easier to know what's going on.  If I know what levels they learn certain moves at, I won't have too many problems...the only trouble I would see myself having is navigating through the items list.

[LocalToast]

you might want to read a book on it, like a Japanese learning book with exercises in it. It really helped me.

I'm open to recommendations.

[Rogles]

(link)

This is the one I used. As for bookstores to get it at, sorry, I got it as a christmas present.

Edit- well, I already knew most if not all of the kana before starting on that book. It assumes you know all the kana, but the lessons also use romaji.

[LocalToast]

Wow, that has got to be one of the ugliest covers I have ever laid my eyes on.

Still, I'll take your word for it and keep it in mind if I ever decide to get a book on the language.

[Rogles]

Haha, yeah. But it is a great guide.