I've been studying Japanese for over a year now and I can't

Kidnap Japanese children and force them to explain the books to you

>>8420173
Have you tried checking out one of the DJT threads on /a/?

>>8420173
>fell for the study a foreign language to read books meme

top kek we roped another one lads

>>8420173
How are you studying? It might be helpful to just find a class at a local community college.

I tried learning it by myself for a year too, nothing worked out.
Do you have a 'goal' for studying? I found that studying for a specific goal like a JLPT 5,4,3.. test made it easier. Joining a group class or even booking single sessions speeds up the learning process enormously, actually speaking any language is much faster than learning by yourself.

/int/の日本語スレに来てよ
本物の日本人と話せるから
でも一年間は随分長いよな
もしかして諦めた方がいいかも

>>8420609
I've finished two community college classes.

You need vocabulary, baka na kouhai

Sit down with a book and a good dictionary. I started reading a couple of chapters of manga a night like that six months ago, and I can read >>8420772 without issue.

>>8421540

Study yourself too. If you can't understand something basic like yotsubato after a year, you're studying incorrectly or you're an irreparable idiot. Do anki, genki, read textbooks, anything really.

>>8421559
Different guy here,

I tried to do this with Korean but even the first sentence of this children's comic was 100% words I didn't know. Did you really just sit there and look up every word? Not sure I can stand to look up 10K words for a single piece.

>>8421656
How else are you to learn new words except by looking up ones you don't know? Maybe start with trying to read song lyrics first before moving on to comics/books

>>8421656
10k words of vocab is the bare minimum to read anything of substance in any language. Getting there is the biggest hurdle.
At a beginner level, some sentences are going to be grammatically impenetrable no matter how much of the vocabulary you know, so you need to find a motivation beyond reading for pleasure. Songs, comics, and newspaper articles all offer something of value even if you don't understand every sentence.

>>8420214
>DJT threads
>Daily Japanese Threads threads.

>>8421760
kys yourself my man

>>8420173
Some people really struggle with languages. You probably don't respond well to the type of learning you're getting. You may be a hands-on learner and have to actually write out the characters to remember the meaning, or you might need to immerse and speak it a lot more than you have, or a number of other problems. There are "language learning crisis" tutors out there, if you find someone who is a professional at making sure struggling language learners do it you'll be able to figure it out.

If you aren't in a major city though it may be hard to find a Japanese teacher with that kind of training in the US. If you're in Europe not much easier. That type of training is usually reserved for necessity languages(people moving to a country and needing to speak the language, or people needing a second language to teach within their own country)

>>8420173
Watch more anime with japanese subtitles only

That's how I've learned English when I was still a kid

>>8420220
I thought it was more of an excuse for most people.

> Sure, sure I'll read War and Peace but first ... I have to learn Russian

>>8421667
It just seems impossibly difficult when I have to look up every single word in every single paragraph.

>>8421731
That was the reason I started with the comic. I assumed it would have easier language I could use to build a base. I don't particularly care for them otherwise. But thank you for the insight.

>>8420173
Study harder. Look up every kanji in the book. Learn all the kanji for basic nouns, verbs, and your favorite weeaboo shit. When you can remember about 100 kanji 70% of the time, learn the bushu and start making fucked up stories to remember more complicated characters.

If you aren't a lazy faggot with no follow through you can learn the language. Learning the actual culture is what takes a special type of autist.

>>8421872
Welcome to studying a new language or field you have no experience with.

>>8421731
>10k words of vocab is the bare minimum to read anything of substance in any language.
This is what you SHOULD be aiming for for most languages but it's also not true. Many people get by with way way less. They're philistines and pseuds p much but there you go.

Japanese probably has the hardest written language ever created. The time it would take just to learn to read and write you could probably get to a point where you could read novels in two romance languages, and that's not counting the spoken and heard elements. I think the problem OP is having is just the fact that Japanese is really hard, where by comparison French of something similar you can be reading novels in about 6-8 months.

>>8422207
It depends on one person capabilities.
For me trying to learn French was a horrendous experience. I got pulled into because of the pronounciation, but the grammar made me sick. Maybe it's not even that hard as I make it out to be, but it was really hard for me.
So after about 3 months of learning French I gave up, and after another half a year I picked up Japanese.
2.5 years in, and I still like it. Learning to write isn't that hard for me. What's somewhat hard is memorizing the ways of reading the characters, and learning which way of reading is correct in given situation. There are three ways of reading a character - Kun'yomi, which is the native japanese reading and on'yomi, which is the sino-japanese reading, and the nanori, which is there just to piss you off, though it is mostly used in names and surnames.
For example: The character for country - 国
The Kun'yomi reading for this character is "kuni", but the on'yomi reading is "koku". Nanori would be "kuna", or "ko", but fuck nanori. And depending on the position of the character, the reading of the word will be different, e.g.: 王国 (Oukoku - Monarchy, kingdom), or 国柄 (Kunigara - National character). Moreover there are a lot of exceptions in Japanese grammar.
It can get confusing as hell, especially when the character has like 10 different readings.

>>8420220
>>8421867
>monolinguals are so pleb they can't believe there are people who actually learn foreign languages

>>8422207
>French of something similar you can be reading novels in about 6-8 months
You wouldn't be able to learn enough vocabulary to read literary fiction in 8 months.

>>8421574
I've been doing Genki, Wanikani, and College classes. I don't think I can study much harder.

>>8422784
Have you actually tried hard to learn a language? I admittedly haven't learned French, but with a little immersion and a lot of work I was reading novels in Spanish after a winter break from teaching, so around 2 and a half months.

My immersion came from an invitation to help out at a local Mexican grocery store in exchange for a bit of half-tutoring from a young lady there. All of the people who visited spoke Spanish, and she helped me try it out with them for basic communication to learn grammar and some casual vocab. At night I spent about 3 hours on grammar.

Even if you presume the 2-3 hours of day work on immersion(even if just watching videos and pausing to respond) and cut the vocab down to an hour a night to be more realistic for a normal schedule, I think 8 months is a very generous amount of time to be able to read literary fiction in a language with hard work.

That isn't including something like Japanese, which of course has its own limitations. I just can't imagine French, German, etc. being any harder than Spanish, and Spanish came pretty naturally to me as an English speaker working hard at it.

>>8422731
I know, right?

>>8422883
I'm not the guy you're replying to, but I agree with your sentiments with one exception; don't lump German with the others! The grammar is significantly more difficult than Romance grammar. Spanish and Italian are probably the easiest for English speakers, though considering how poorly those people speak English, it doesn't seem to work the other way around.

>>8423200
Ok then, that's fair. My friend learned German in a year well enough to be hired by a company that needed him to be able to handle written communication in the language, so I sort of lumped it in my mind with "regular" languages due to that recent experience

>>8423233
Germans pretty hard for me

>>8420772
I can barely fucking read this

>>8420772
OP here, I can more or less understand this, but I had to consult a dictionary 4 times.

>>8423690
You're fucking gay

>>8422784
In French at least after you learn your pronouns and conjunctions and the rest of your really basic sorts of words that only really leaves verbs, adverbs and nouns. You can get away only knowing about 100 adverbs and verbs respectively. It's really only the nouns that you have to cram. And when you consider that you could learn most of your vocabulary from reading novels for years yet never know what the word for fork or chimney is. So even with the nouns you only need a relativity narrow assortment (probably a thousand or so). After all that you just look up words when you don't know them which should only happen once every couple of pages if you start off with easy novels.

>>8420176
This is the only answer you should pay attention to.

>>8423200
I don't know German, but I thought English was a germanic language with some romantic influence?

>>8424675
English is a Germanic language but it's still easier to learn most of the current Romance languages (especially french) than German. That's mostly because German is hard, most other modern Germanic languages are meant to be much easier.

>>8422810
> Genki, Wanikani, and College classes

Nice b8, I was actually on the verge of typing up a serious reply.

日本語を習わなくてもいいですよ (´・ω・｀)
自分のせいで失敗したわけじゃない
日本語の方こそが悪いんだから、無理だったのは当たり前だったんだろう
安心して

>>8420173
My chink friend teaches me chink every week. I can understand a bit of speech. Get rekt weebshit.

>>8420772
back to 2chan

>>8424675
>with half of it stolen from french*
I'm not a native english nor french speaker. But learned french later and was surprised how much english took from french.

>>8421867
>Watch more anime with japanese subtitles only

Actually, I should seriously try this more often, as my reading skill is way over my listening. Do you know good sources that include Jap subs?

>>8420173
Okay anon, I''m this faggot learning to ching chong.>>8425355

Do you use Flashcards? Anki is very good and helped me a lot. Do you have someone to talk to? Have you tried pirating pimsleur for japanese that shit really works. I still need to start reading fucking hanzi but that is another history.

なんだよこの悪い冗談?白豚がこの光栄かつ童貞溢れ日本国の言語を理解できるだと思ってるの?
笑わせるな外道、キミには十年早いぞ!出来ると思うならやって見ろ!「あれ」を使っていいY-Ow

I speak russian, German and English on a native level but when I tried learning Japanese I failed as well. It's mostly due to their fucked up alphabets.

What's the best way to learn languages online? I don't want to fall for Rosetta or Memrise if it literally is just a weebtastic meme.

>>8425400
Go to /int/ read the sticky. The board is shit but the stick has a lot of resources.

>>8425402
Wow, they have a sticky for that? Thanks, I'll give it a read.

>>8425372
When I was like you, studying a language with nobody to talk to, this is what helped me. If you are just starting you could practice talking by studying a grammar workbook. These have a set of exercises that don't concern you in your ambition to practice speaking, but the last exercise in an unit usually is something of the kind:
-Talk with your partner about stuff you like to do.
-Make a grocery list
-Write a letter describing your holiday.
These give you something to talk about, so whether you pronounce them or write them you practice the same thing.
If you are more advanced you could try writing an essay. Keep at it and you will very quickly find that you are getting more comfy at talking fluently.

I love Anki. Hate Pimsleur. Its definitely the last thing I would use. If ching chong refers to Japanese then you should check the Michel Thomas course from the pirate bay. I used it for french and recommended it to my friends studying german. We all loved that guy. I don't think he has a Chinese course tough.

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Hey /lit/
I want to dive into a language either Japanese or Korean. But I don't know which to choose. Some years ago I tried learning Danish but gave up because there's nothing I can get in Danish from the internet, since they have a policy to not stream TV outside of their country, and even children books were a pain to get for free.

I don't care which language is harder. Just tell me which country has greater choice of stuff I can get online. Looking for something like French. This was the easiest language for me to learn. They dub every show and even their hentai had french subtitles, I was amazed.

>>8420176
Topkek

>>8425449
Ching chong refers to mandarim, ping pong is japanese silly. My friend is from a taiwanese/cantoonese family and is teaching me for free. He is using some bi-weekly things the thai govmt sent his parents ages ago to alphabetize him. So I'm learning using zhuyin and traditional script. His material is like that. And we talk about other stuff too. It's fun to see his family members trying to translate their names into portuguese or english.

>>8425477
Where did you get a chink friend? No chinks in my country, sadly. No niggers though

>>8425492
Brazil. His mother is from taiwan, his father cantoonese both engineers. He was born in uruguay I think but grew up so here so he doesn't speak pig disgusting spanish thank god. We have the largest colony of japs outsite japland and something similar for chinese and arabs.

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>>8425498
You kept me on the edge of my seat with that post. Can't wait for people to start writing books in this manner.

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>>8425513
W-what?

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>>8425519
like you, with spoilers.

>>8425468
Japan
t. Korean

>>8425498
MEMORIES BROKEN

And so on.

Spanish is a very traditional Japónese language, though.

>>8425468
Japanese. More material, and also otherwise useful. Also, obscure hentai.

>>8425574
I find spanish silly, can't take any spanish speaking people seriosuly. Is like they are talking with helium voices. And it doesn't help that 1/2 of the sudacas that appear here don't brush their teeth or know what hygiene is.

>>8425599
Spaniards have deep, husky voices.

>>8425601
That smell like shit and sound silly. I meant the comic effect of someone speaking spanish to me=helium voice. It's like a retard version of portuguese.

>>8425603
Listening to Portuguese is like listening to a retard try to speak Spanish while violently snorting, and eating (mouth open), slightly drunk, and telling a long and rambling joke which no one wants to hear.

It's the Dutch of the Romance languages.

>>8425613
>t. sudaca

>>8425621
t. sudaca

>>8425468
As a Korean, go with Japanese. Unless you have some intense passion with some aspect of Korean culture or want to live there, it's simply not worth it.

Japanese gives you access to so much more fun and interesting media that you can practice with.

>>8422784

French is just a gay midway step between English and Latin, so you should already have enough vocabulary without studying

>>8425553
>>8425578
>>8425626
Its settled then.

>>8425578
>More material
This so much. There's so much shit to learn from, which everything regarding Chink is directed at buninessmen trying to be diligent slaves.

>>8425626
Really is a shame. The literary tradition of Korea is so shallow, it's just sad.

>>8425403
You could also go to 2chan and lurk their weird-ass boards.

>>8425724
Japanese is a long way off for me. I'm thinking French, then Spanish, then Russian, then Japanese.

>>8424832
This isn't bait

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>>8425803
This isn't bait

A kimono-wearing otaku social studies professor and hikikomori was teaching a class on Asian History.

"Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Emperor Akihito and accept that that the Japanese are the most highly-evolved human beings that the world has ever known."

At this moment, a sagacious, filial, scholar-gentleman who had scored ahead of 150,000 students in the Civil Service Exams and understood the full extent of the barbarity of those living outside the Middle Kingdom held up a copy of the Nihon Shoki.

"What are the characters written upon the pages of the Nihon Shoki?"

The arrogant professor smirked, tightened his hachimaki, and smugly replied, "Kanji, you baka."

"True, Kanji, which loosely translates into "Han characters." To be precise the Nihon Shoki is written in Guwen, which is the Classical Chinese script. If the Japanese are indeed perfect human beings then they would have come up with their own culture & civilization as opposed to just borrowing from the Chinese or from anyone else."

The Professor was visibly shaken and dropped his calligraphy brush and copy of CLAMP's Cardcaptor Sakura. He stormed out of the room and tried to commit seppuku like in his animes.

The students applauded with a big "wansui!" and all signed up with a peasant rebellion that day and declared that the scholar-gentleman had the Mandate of Heaven. A dragon named "All Under Heaven" flew into the room, coiled around the Chinese flag and magically turned it yellow. The Analects was read several times, and the Jade Emperor himself showed up and enacted territorial seizures of disputed territories around the country.

The professor lost his tenure and was fired the next day. He died of complications caused by an erroneous performance of the seppuku ritual and went to Diyu, where he was tried, found guilty, and punished by the Ten Yama Kings of Diyu.

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>>8426324
*tips 斗笠*

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>>8426324

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>>8420173
I'm sorry.

>>8425719

They have webtoons tho

>>8424692

>german
>hard

No modern centum language is hard. None.

>>8420772
I can't read this, but I think it has to do with getting more sun exposure, trees and the number five

>>8426584
K. Why?

>for over a year

kek

>>8426584
I feel like that image is from some in-joke I don't get.

>>8427108
It is.

It's from the Daily Japanese Threads in /a/.

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why would learning japanese affect your ability to understand children's books?

>>8427821
kek

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>>8420176

Well, you should seriously consider this OP

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>>8427821

>>8420173

One year is not a long time to be studying a language, unless you have been doing it very very intensely.

If nothing else, the sheer amount of vocab required to read a story should take quite a while to learn.

Keep working at it however you can. You will eventually be able to read.

Good luck friendly stranger.

>>8429543
Not really. Sure if you want to the sort of vocab that will let you have long, intense discussions about a variety of specialised topics but you really only need half a year. I knew someone who spent about six months learning a new language, went over there and was able to engage in conversations and he mostly used duolingo after he got the grammar down. Maybe a hard language you would need more than a year but not for all of them.

আপনারা কি নিয়ে কথা বলছেন?

>>8421760
How Borgesian

>>8426584

You absolute idiot, this only makes me want to try harder. I am going to learn this language or die trying.

I'm learning Polish.

>>8430499
That's how I feel about Polish.

>>8421559
oh man. I thought about doing that with the new CCS manga that came out.

>>8420772
I've been studying Japanese for like a month and understood much of this, step up your game senpai.

Also read Yotsuba, if you can't read that after one year of studying you have wasted your time.

>>8425468
Late reply but someone else might be lurking, Japanese (for most people) is the only worthwhile East Asian language. Korean grammar is an absolute bitch, while Japanese grammar is pretty much a breeze, there are also tons of more value in learning it form most people and it's easier to learn because of all the resources.

Unless you have actually been to China, I'd recommend seriously reconsidering learning Chinese. The Chinese culture is to westerners much stranger below the surface than most think. Unless you have some kind of obscure interest in China you are not going to find much enjoyable use of Chinese (also learning it for business is a complete meme, you'll get crushed by bilingual Chinese people anyway, and you should probably be thankful not to have to work with the Chinese).

I'd say Chinese is easier though, so I'll give it that.

>>8432781
Are you referring to mandarin?

>Unless you have some kind of obscure interest in China
I wouldn't call having an interest in one of the worlds oldest civilisations that acted as papa to all east Asia obscure. It's far less obscure than Korean or Japanese anyway.

>you are not going to find much enjoyable use of Chinese
Chinese is very well known for its poetry from a variety of ages as well as its collection of great prose works. There is also a pretty sizable contemporary literature scene. This is without mentioning the thousands of years of religious and philosophical writings as well.

Remember: no global language is "hard," ie, beyond the capabilities of the average person to learn. If any were, they wouldn't be spoken and wouldn't be languages. If you can't understand it after a year, you're just studying it wrong, as Japanese speakers are known to do.
I find that studying spoken languages before their written forms is far more efficient than tackling everything at once. After all, you could probably speak for years before you could read and write well—and remember that the only way that Japan is able to maintain its literacy rates is by nightmare schooling. And yet everyone there speaks it just fine.

>>8432858
I find the reverse to be easier where you focus just on reading rather than speaking.

>>8432894
That's only because of your awful social skills and your inability to put yourself out there and speak. I don't know of a single language that isn't easier when spoken, save for those with difficult sounds.

>>8434297
>Projecting this hard
I'm not socially awkward. I have a career with a future. I have an active social life, a mortage for a house and a wife. I'm pretty normie tier.

Seriously though the passive forms of language are easier than the active. To hear you only need to recognise, not to formulate. You could read and understand a sizeable amount of the news without a concrete understanding of the grammar for example. You can go from knowing nothing of a language and in a couple of weeks being able to make your way shakily through the news. Your ability to write, let alone speak is going to be probably at least 6 months behind what you did in 2 weeks.

My only experience in this is French which probably shapes this idea heavily. There are thousands of French words you will recognise that no one ever taught you. After you get the conjunctions, the pronouns and all that easy stuff, all you need is about five verbs, a dozen adjectives and you decipher most sentences of the news.

I've known people who focus only on reading in a language and become fluent enough to read novels in about 6 months. I know a classical Greek scholar who can read about five languages, most of them he can barely speak, but considering he is only about 26 and only started learning languages as a late teen shows the strength of this approach.
The only thing I can compare that to is full immersion, but it's unfair to compare living in a foreign language country to an hours study each day for reading.

I have been studying Japanese for years, I can read garbage like light novels and contemporary books, but I still can't read Genji Monogatari the way Lady Murasaki intended it to be read. Fuck I'm crying.

OP here guys, thanks a lot for your suggestions. Also thanks for over 100 replies. I've tried your methods, and they've already helped me alot. I've read a few chapters of manga and some tv shows. I thought I couldn't read it because I saw so many words I didn't know, but after a few episodes I have them committed to memory. Thanks, you glorious faggots.