ばか！バカ！　馬鹿ー月！

First you have to learn the words and after that you have to learn how to write hiragana and katakana, though the 3 things are usually done at the same time, which I'm guessing really would be pretty hard... after you learn to read and write them, which doesn't take long, you have to get used to the logic of the language... That's one of the harder things to do, because the Japanese language is just TOO different from the European languages... After understanding the logic, you have to learn the kanji... now, there are two ways to do that in my opinion:

1. Cram it into your head by repeating them over and over and over and over and over(x30) again, which would be too annoying, slow and boring, so it would be better to go with 2. That being:

2. Start reading. Well, it does sound stupid to read when you don't know how to, but it isn't. Take a good dictionary, it would be better if it's a pc one, for example Wakan, and start reading manga with furigana... you'll read 2 weeks or so and meet some words that you don't know(if you have learned a lot from before) and learn them until at some point you'll be able to read everything as long as there's furigana... at that point you'll notice that you're learning some of the more simple kanjis for see, go, talk, my favorite "daijoubu"(can't get it wrong ), power/strength and so on... in 3 months you'll know about some... 100-150 kanji(no idea how many exactly ~_~ ), which isn't much, but enough to calmly read shounen manga without relying that much on the furigana. And at this point I decided that there's no point in reading shounen manga anymore, because I was seeing too few new kanjis. You could take some seinen and mature mangas and start reading them but that's too slow as you would have to look up new kanjis in the dictionary instead of simply typing the hiragana for them, so I decided it would be better if I get some .txt novels and read them instead and, yeah, I'm learning kanji every time I read right now If you're the type that likes supporting the author you could buy the books and still dl .txt variants of them(if it's a book you'll have to check every kanji you don't know in the dictionary, which will be even more annoying than reading raw seinin/mature mangas as there are more kanji xD )
I went to a course 2 times, 2 months and a half each, so far and planning to go on 1 more in October... all in all if you know words it will take you about 8-12 months to get a decent amount of knowledge in Japanese. If you don't know any words add a year to that, I guess... Sadly, I don't have any experience talking, except for in the classroom, so I'm pretty jealous of Krikit for having the chance to talk and listen to Japanese every day ><

Guest wrote:how did you start learning japanese? and how fluent are you now, at least in regards to reading?

ShadowZeroHeart wrote:i do translations from chinese=> eng, so i was thinking from time to time, if i get the jap raw, would it actually be useful? to compare and learn?

Juicifer wrote:how do you guys type in japanese characters with an english keyboard? or do you use a different keyboard?

ainsoph9 wrote:

ShadowZeroHeart wrote:i do translations from chinese=> eng, so i was thinking from time to time, if i get the jap raw, would it actually be useful? to compare and learn?

It might be, but I have my sincere doubts. The problem is that Japanese and Chinese grammar structures are completely different. While Japanese does use Chinese characters and borrows from Chinese fairly heavily, they are entirely different otherwise. I do not say this to discourage you. By all means, I hope that you can learn Japanese. Gambatte!

Juicifer wrote:how do you guys type in japanese characters with an english keyboard? or do you use a different keyboard?