Reading AND Writing??

[mandolin]

redfoxer wrote:
http://www.kicl.info/ <<< id suggest that over the slime game for numorous reasons.

You can play either Knuckles or Slime Forest. They each have strengths and weaknesses. I found SFA to be much better for hiragana than KiCL.

KiCL also requires you to install the .net framework, which is bulky and makes Windows into even more of a resource hog. That said, I did it anyway (despite the fact that I HATE the framework with a passion, KiCL was worth it).

SFA keeps better track of missed guesses as well as a way to adjust the learning speed which results in more/less repeats of the same characters, and also reviews what you learned in a previous day when you start up the next day, where KiCL does not.

On the whole, the biggest reason people support one game over the other is political and/or fanboyish. As for me, I play em both, SFA for the kana, KiCL for the kanji...

[jaela]

okay, i'll look them both up ..

[kempokatt]

Personally, I wasted time with these games, tried them both and it was just total frustration....not fun at all. Although, I am older than most people trying to learn so maybe that has something to do with it.

What worked for me was just plain old flash cards, either real cards or a web-based form that keeps track of your progress. It took me less than a week to learn all 104 Hiragana characters this way.

Well, whatever works for you is the best....Good luck!

[princem]

Take a look at some preschool writing tablets, and recall when you first started to write english if you can. Pages of those wide lines with dashes through the middle, often times an entire page devoted to each letter so you can trace and imitate a single letter repeatedly.

haha, that is the same thing I've been doing to learn Hiragana. I couldn't help but think back to childhood when we were learning the Roman alphabet in school, writing the same letters over and over on those dashed papers. The only difference is that Japanese characters seem to require a skilled artist, which I am far from. Suffice it to say, my writing looks pretty pathetic at this point.

Concerning memorization, it is a tremendous help to associate each character with some object or idea, however absurd, as this tends to aid in long-term memory storage. For instance, the letter "ni" has three distinct strokes, so I think of the three "knights of ni" from Monty Python when trying to remember how to write/draw it. Silly, perhaps, but it works.

Practice, practice, practice. I don't think there is a "quick and easy" way to learn a new language. Don't allow yourself to become overwhelmed with the plethora of details and nuances surrounding Japanese; focus on one thing at a time, and don't move on until it has been mastered (within reason, of course). Attempting to learn a little here and a little there will get you nowhere.

Granted, these are just some of the observations I've made in the few weeks I have studied the language. Please don't mistake it for the sagacious advice of a seasoned veteran, heh.

[mandolin]

kempokatt wrote:
Personally, I wasted time with these games, tried them both and it was just total frustration....not fun at all. Although, I am older than most people trying to learn so maybe that has something to do with it.

I'm 26.

princem wrote:

Attempting to learn a little here and a little there will get you nowhere.

Everyone's different. I pick a different method everyday because that's what does work best for me, else I feel like I am making no progress. I really need that sense of... accomplishment, and if I were just trying to get through a hundred kanji in a month or even two months, I wouldn't really -feel- like I was getting anywhere.

So, I study say, 7 kanji one day from my book. The next I will look up those kanji in my J-lookup program, and see what other compounds they're used in (even if I don't know the other kanji, I just like to read them as it helps cement it in my head). In the process, I will pick up several new words all together (my vocab is not very large yet). Then, I'll take a day to watch some anime, and see how many of the words I can pick out, and it makes me feel good when I can recognize some at the typical talking speed of a native speaker.

Watching Full Metal Alchemist yielded my first fully understood sentence, and god it felt great.

Ano hi, bokutachi wa ue o yaita.
That day, we burned our house.

I was so excited my heart nearly burst from my chest.

Then, sometimes I need a reminder that I still have a long way to go. So I pull out my extremely complex manga (I'm told it's a hard one to read because it's philsophical: Clamp's X) and attempt to read it. 20 kanji dictionary lookups and 3 hours later, I get through about 4 pages. Time to hit the books again... another 7 kanji! hehe

I guess the little-here little-there theory won't work for a lot of people, but since many people do struggle with japanese, it never hurts to try as many methods out there as possible until you find one that suits you. There's gotta be someone out there who will find some comfort in my method.... somewhere. :p

[princem]

Indeed, I should have stated that such a method gets me nowhere. I need to set a concrete goal (e.g. "learn all Hiragana") and complete it before moving on to the next. It is a personal preference, really, and I should have made that clear. Now, as far as using different means to accomplish each goal, that is not a problem.

I think I'll be equally excited when I can comprehend my first, naturally spoken sentence (without knowing beforehand what the person is going to say, obviously).

[jaela]

i can understand a few lines here and there when i watch anime .. as long as they're in the lines of "sumimasen, daijobu desu ka?" and "taskette kudasai!!, dareka onegai!!!" and "anata ga mamoritai ..." ... but that's just me ...

but because of my love for anime and the language .. i still watch unsubbed versions every weekend straight from tv tokyo and the other channels there ...

still haven't downloaded the games you mentioned by the way .. are they difficult? .. coz someone here was saying something about age (too old enough for games, i think) hey, i'm young, but my hand-eye coordination is bad, so i'm bad at sports AND computer games ... so i'm really not into that stuff really ... maybe i'll just stick to the flashcards then? .... hmm .. :)

[mandolin]

They're RPGs, basically flashcards in a game format.

SFA isn't quite as interesting as KiCL, story-wise. In fact, SFA lacks pretty much any story at all except for saving a princess from the one cave you can go into.

KiCL has lots of humor, but its the battles that teach you the kana/kanji, and they're all semi-flashcard style, more so in KiCL than SFA, but both work on the same basic principle.

[jaela]

do you know of any sites where they have printable versions of the flashcards?? coz i won't be able to find any of those here (or books for that matter), and i want hard copies that i can lug around ...