Why are you studying Japanese? What sparked your interest? What motivates you? What are your goals? Tell me your WHY
I fell in love with Japanese in high school while reading manga, and later through watching anime. I will confess, I thought my boyfriend (now husband) was such a nerd for anime and I thought anime was so weird Jokes on me, anime is so awesome.
I began studying Japanese in college and really wanted to study abroad. My school had a program to go to Kyoto or Tokyo, but sadly, the school got bought out and reformed and I ended up dropping out and getting married.
Now, I study with Genki and WK some 15 years later. My why is that I love the language, and it makes me happy. I donāt know what Iāll actually DO with it, like professionally, but I am looking forward to reading native literature and understanding anime and j-dramas subtitle free. I also would love to teach my 3 kids and then speak with them, but that feels really daunting. I have no idea how to teach this language to my little kiddos.
I first found out about Japanese through anime (specifically Soul Eater) and I was obsessed within an hour.
I guess Iāve always had weird interests, but something about the language is just so intricate and fascinating. I want to study in Japan someday and maybe even move there permanently
Iām reaching a point where I can watch media and understand ~95% of it and trust me itās worth every second of studying. ćć”ć¤ćļ¼ļ¼
Unfortunately its not a Wednesday so @jprspereira still wont be able to find out.
Ive always wanted to move to Beijing and I figured I should probably figure out how to speak the language first. Weeaboo culture also played a heavy part.
My brother brought me his laptop, sat it down in front of me and said āWatch this, I think youāll like itā
It was Naruto, and I saw ALL episodes in just a few days!!! Well, when I say all, this was when there was only 133 episodes yet
I was hooked, both on the show and the language. Thereās something magical about it, just, canāt explain it.
What will I use it for? Reading mostly. If I ever get to achieve my lĀ“dream of visiting Iāll probably be too shy to use it much (again, being able to read is a great help though ). My listening skills are still low enough so I have to use subtitles, but get a joy when I recognise specific words that I learned more recently =)
Iām currently in the book club here in the forums, and though itās a challenge by far I do love it, reading along and see just what I can understand of it =)
I think itās safe to say that like many people here, I also got introduced to Japanese through anime. That was roughly 1.5-2 years ago. But roughly about 3-6 months ago, I completely stopped doing both Japanese and stopped watching anime to be able to concentrate on university. (I didnāt know what to expect, so I thought I should just focus solely on uni for that time) Now that I know how university is, I picked it up again after reading Koichiās email we got a few days after new yearās. So now Iām going at it again, but now with 100% more enthusiasm, and a solid goal. Though I still donāt watch anime I started made in abyss though
I only watched the first episode, but so far it looks really good. My friends who were nagging me to start are saying itās probably anime of the year.
Oh, I also watched the first episode of pop team epic yesterday and even though itās not really my cup of tea, it wasnāt bad.
I learnt Japanese at high school for four years, but I really only came away with about five polite phrases and knowing the hiragana and katakana, and maybe a handful of kanji (numbers, colours and thatās about all).
I love Japan, have only visited once, but I really enjoy Ghibli movies. Iāve not been brave enough to read manga yet as my Japanese is not that good, but I will get there.
I also enjoy how my brain feels learning languages, I speak two fluently and another two more simply.
Japanese is one of these, but I got by politely in Japan and managed to get to where I wanted to be and got food and shelter
I watched the first 16 minutes of it and then I couldnāt take it anymore.
It was funny and all but waaaay too fast paced (I guess thatās part of the humor?) and some of the humor went right over my head.
I could see how people would like it though.
Butā¦ I only realised it by making the mistake. Apparently itās like: you can choose your own voice? So the first half of pop team epic is the same as the second half, but with a different voice. There were a lot of references in it, a few I didnāt understand, but those were funny. The ādefault 4-komaā parts were just too crazy for me
Iāve been meaning to learn Japanese for the past 10 or so years but never actually got around to it (mainly because of music / talk/idol shows). My recent interest in Keyakizaka46 made me serious about learning it to read their blogs and such.
Honestly started due to video games. Used to import lots of games (not anymore, damn adulthood and lack of money).
Now, while that would still be nice (as well as manga/movies/etc) its also just a challenge. Learning a second language is a nice life goal, self-improvement, self inflicted challenge, type deal.
A friend was gifted Rosetta stone for Japanese and I was gearing up to learn Spanish, and figured it would be easier to learn together than apart, so I joined him on Japanese. Plus, I was never going to be the best as Spanish in any room in Southern California. However, I can with Japanese. While studying, I have become more interested in language. I hope to know 3 or 4 foreign languages when all is said and done, but for now, I hope just to master this one.
If you substitute music/variety shows for anime in this quote, thatās exactly what I would say. (Iām still not into anime as much as my husband is.) And at 15 years out of college, it sounds like you and I must be about the same age, too.
How old are your kids? Mine are 11, 8, and almost 5. A while ago we had a thread about teaching your kids Japanese.
My daughter (who is 19 now) has been a fan of Japan and Japanese for ages. When she seriously started to learn the language, she told me many interesting things about it, so eventually I got interested. I started learning the Kana and some vocabulary here and there. Last July my daughter took the JLPT N4 test, and it was fairly easy for her. So right after that test, I suggested she should take N3 in December. She said sheād do N3 if Iād do N5 at the same time.
Well, I thought, how card can it be? I am fluent in German and English, I get along in French, I had Latin at school, I know some Spanish, a tiny bit of Danish and Dutch, and I always thought that learning languages was easy. For me, grammar always was a no-brainer thanks to Latin. And for vocabulary, I just mixed Latin, English and German, shook it a little bit, and I was able to build a connection to that new word in that other language. With these comforting thoughts, I accepted the challenge of doing N5.
Well. I had never expected it would be THAT hard. I couldnāt make any of these weird words stick. karai, kirai, kirei, kurai, kuroi - all sounded the same to me. I tried this and that but did not really get anywhere. Finally, I picked up WaniKani and thanks to its mnemonics I got a grip on memorizing Japanese sound patterns. I studied like crazy, and in December I actually sat the N5! (I donāt think I passed, though, but thatās not really important.)
So, now Iām officially addicted.
In the far future, Iād like to be able to read a Haruki Murakami book in Japanese. Sometimes I think that Iād like to live in Japan for a while, but I donāt have real plans about that so far.
To speak to my grandparents who I didnāt grow up with, mostly. I grew up speaking other languages from the paternal side of my family and Japanese was always something that had to be put on the back burner.
Edit: I also forgot to mention that I now live in Japan and want to stay here until the foreseeable future so having the ability to make friends and increase my employment options is necessary.
Jokes on me, anime is so awesome.
I started made in abyss though