I'm planning to minor in Japanese language and culture when I go to college. I just want to know what to expect. I know it's hard, but I've already started to learn some Hiragana and a few Kanji. And I guess I've been passively learning it by watching so much anime, but I'm still interested in learning the language. Any advice and thoughts are appreciated

Japanese is supposed to be one of the hardest languages for English-speakers to learn. Having taken two during community college, I agree. There's approximately zero similarities so you're starting from scratch, and kanji's a nightmare. You're gonna be in for a lot of studying and flexibility if you're gonna take Japanese.

Nightmare indeed. Some words seem vaguely similar to Latin-derived languages, but... Those letters... I can't take classes and I tried to use a computer program... I suppose actually learning more than ten Japanese words would take lots of studying, specially in those letters (kanji, is it?).

my school have japanishe club, but we dont learn kanji, just katakana, and hiragana.

SUGOOOOOOI!

YOOOOIIIII YASAAAAAA!!!!!!

YOOOOIIIII YASAAAAAA!!!!!!

BANZAAI!!!

Pimsleur Approach can teach you a language in 10 days.

I have been studying Japanese since I was Ten. Japanese has always made sense to me.

 

For an English person, it is hard if you are trying to compare it to English. Japanese has taught me that English is very redundant. Why do I have to say I over and over in a conversation? Obviously, I am talking about myself. I have always had trouble with pronounciation in English: too many rules and stuff. You know long vowels, short vowels, ck, ch, tion, ion just a mess. Japanese is pretty strait forward to me.

 

Kanji is a breeze for me. I think of them as pictures, and when you really understand what is the basis for Kanji it makes perfect sense. Maybe it is easy to me because I pay attention to detail a lot. Particles make life easier in translating, in my opinion

 

Advice to people:

Don't use Rosetta Stone.

Expose yourself to Japanese everyday: music, anime, reading, writing, etc...

 

Japanese is not my only language. I study Korean, Latin, French, Russian, and Greek all mostly to help myself in school.

 

i actually just saw an episode of Dragnet, where the case involved a murdered Japanese woman and after they caught the  bad guy her mother and the woman`s daughter asked to visit them and have tea i was able to pick-out some words that i knew and was able to basically transnlate it before the TV did.