Tell me your WHY!

But… I only realised it by making the mistake. Apparently it’s 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 didn’t understand, but those were funny. The “default 4-koma” parts were just too crazy for me

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I’ve 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. :slight_smile:

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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.

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Hey mate, I thought it was because you wanted me to come with you to find our lovely wives. Guess I’ll try to remember to ask on Wednesday.

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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.

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OMG, are you me?!

If you substitute music/variety shows for anime in this quote, that’s exactly what I would say. (I’m 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.

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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 she’d do N3 if I’d 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 couldn’t 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 don’t think I passed, though, but that’s not really important.)

So, now I’m officially addicted. :slight_smile:
In the far future, I’d like to be able to read a Haruki Murakami book in Japanese. Sometimes I think that I’d like to live in Japan for a while, but I don’t have real plans about that so far.

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To speak to my grandparents who I didn’t 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.

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I like learning languages and I enjoy Japanese culture (the country, the traditions, the media). I’m a native Korean speaker and I think it’d be awesome if I was (conversationally) fluent in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese in, say, five years or so. :slight_smile:

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I go to Japan twice a year (it’s just a very nice place, I probably don’t have to explain it to you guys) but I was always afraid of the time commitment of learning Japanese.

In May we had a reservation at a wonderful, tiny sushi restaurant and I was seated next to an American guy. I didn’t expect him to just start chatting with the sushi chef, asking him questions about the fish that he was using, complementing him about the sushi, all in what seemed to me to be fluent Japanese. That was the moment when I didn’t want to be this ignorant any longer. I thought: if Matt from Utah can do it, I want to do it too.

I’d like to go back to that place in a year or two and then tell that nice sushi chef how damn amazing his sushi is. Just stuff like that: being able to express my gratitude and amazement about some of the things I experience in Japan.

It also opened up new possibilities. Even after a few months I wasn’t afraid of renting a car anymore or going to less touristy places where fewer people speak English. Totally worth the time spent so far. :slight_smile:

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I’ve never learnt a language but I’ve always liked the idea of expanding my ability and being able to connect with more people. European languages never interested me that much as most European countries already teach English to a conversational level so I’ve never felt it’s restricted my interaction with people from those countries to the point where I would need more than a few phrases in their language. I knew I wanted to learn an Asian language, I considered Mandarin but I can’t see myself going to China as immediately as Japan and unlike Japan, most Chinese people I know already have a fantastic grasp of English.

This is why I thought Japanese! I’ve always loved the culture and of course anime and manga is a big love of mine! I also adore Japanese videogames, Nintendo (specifically Zelda, Shigeru Miyamoto is amazing!!) is my all time favourite but I also adore Bloodborne and the Dark Souls series as well and in terms of visiting it is a country I could see myself going to many times. I am a final year children’s nurse so in terms of working in Japan I think this would be a significant challenge but I would always love to visit for a few months between jobs in the future and having Japanese behind my belt would really help me secure a more part time job! Travelling to surrounding countries such as South Korea Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam would also be amazing and Japan would be a good base. Who knows I may even teach myself more languages depending on which countries I fall in love with during my travels! But I come from quite a poor family so a job would be essential to facilitate this as I certainly couldn’t save for a trip like this (Especially as a nurse in the NHS!)

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Awesome! Hey there :smiley: Ooo, I will check out that thread! My girls are 7, 4 and 2.5! My oldest wants to learn Japanese with me, and my youngest happily watches anime/j-dramas with me without complaint, so they’re getting mild exposure lol! I had my oldest work on hiragana worksheets a couple years ago, but she was still mastering english letters. I might try to teach her now that she’s reading :thinking:

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When I started university three years ago I had this crazy smart professor who taught a comparative literature course, and I just loved everything about the course. When I told her about changing my degree from English literature to comparative literature, she was really happy about it and sent me a MASSIVE email with potential courses I should pick before changing my major, along with requirements, and things I should keep in mind, and so on.

One of her main points was that learning languages is always a huge plus for comparative literature, and since I already know a couple European languages, she suggested to go for either Japanese or Chinese. As a young teen I always wanted to learn Japanese (for all the wrong reasons though, which is why I always quit :wink: )

So this time, I enrolled in Japanese evening classes, which were very slow (but still really helpful) and am now here, learning Kanji (and some grammar on the side), readying myself for the JLPT in December.

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This is so wonderful! I hope I am as close with my daughters and still learning things together with them when they are 19 :slight_smile: I love that your daughter motivated you to learn with her!

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I hope you do go back and have a wonderful chat with the chef. This is so cool! I would love to travel to Japan someday. Also, authentic sushi sounds divine. :yum:

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Have you heard of the app Learning Japanese by MindSnacks? Your kids might like it!

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I haven’t! I’ll check it out, thank you so much :slight_smile:

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He has wonderful short stories too if you’d like to start sooner. :slight_smile:

Also, I hope you passed the N5. Being the polyglot that you are, I’m sure you did! Keep us posted. :smiley:

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Where dem chinese wives at doe.

Youre more than welcome to join me on my hunt, my friend. Personally so long as I can find one who is cute and is good at making Pho, I’ll be happy. Also I would prefer she at least be upper intermediate level in the refined art of Mongolian throat singing.

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My uncle married a Japanese woman, Noriko (のりこ?), while stationed in Japan during his military service. When I was a baby, he used to do this singsongy rhyme in Japanese while playing with my feet. My dad continued to do it with me and my younger sister, and other younger family members, and I still remember it today (mostly), although I have no idea what it means.

It went something like this:

chowchi chowchi a wa wa, chowchi chowchi a wa wa, …something something… kaiguri kaiguri, to to tomei asuma tin tin!

(Please forgive my mangled attempt to translate a childhood aural memory into romaji…)

When I was about 12, my family hosted a 16yo Japanese exchange student for a month. I totally idolized Erina, and she sent me and my sister care packages after she returned home. They were full of fun things, like pocky and candies, various sundries, and simple English language books and manga.

She once gave me two Japanese novellas (part of a series, I believe) in English translation that my tween self fell absolutely in love with, and I’d love to eventually read them in the original Japanese. I can’t seem to find them now, but they were about a girl falling in love with an angel who saves her from attempted suicide and eventually becomes human. [If anyone out there knows what these are and how I can find the originals: dude, let me know!]

In high school, I watched Akira, and Ghost in the Shell, and several Studio Ghibli films (usually ripped copies from friends working at video stores :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:) and loved them. And they all had a more profound influence on me than I realized at the time. I found myself returning to anime films here and there as time passed, but it wasn’t until 20ish years later that I really started getting into anime shows and manga, and now I’m irrevocably hooked (as if I wasn’t before).

Someday, I would love to be able to experience the culture without the language filter. Dubs and translation are great, but I want the native experience. And I want to visit Japan, for all the touristy reasons, of course, but also to go to Date and look up Erina, and speak with her for the first time in her native tongue. That would be a major life achievement for me.

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