ひげ
downloaded duolingo for japanese. i know it's not perfect and won't make me fluent or anything, but my brother used it for like 6 months or so before his japan trip and he had no issues getting around and making light conversation. i want to go to japan at some point so i figure i should probably do that.
spent like an hour on it today, maybe i can do that while i'm walking or just on my breaks at work.
@NotAWeeb maybe i'll look into it after i'm done doing duolingo stuff in the future! thanks for the rec.
i've also got those "learn japanese or die" games on steam. those teach you all the symbols from scratch. i'll probably go back to that later on too.
@beardalaxy if you learn japanese, please download NP21w and XEiJ
https://stdkmd.net/xeij/
https://simk98.github.io/np21w/
you can then experience hordes of untranslated 80s/90s japanese computer games, definitely also get a PC-88 and MSX emulator (openMSX) too for the older days.
@beardalaxy the other tip I see people using to learn Japanese is to watch subbed anime with the subs off, especially anime targeted at younger demographics with "simpler" Japanese.
There was some obscure kids anime me and some friends passed around because it had character designs we liked and some of the nyaa comments were stuff like "nice upload this is great to learn Japanese with" on the raw upload before it was subbed so keep that in mind.
@sendpaws yeah that is a really good idea, i was thinking about maybe doing that with some ghibli films. i took chinese in high school and, funny enough, the only time i've ever watched mulan was in chinese xD that's a great way to learn though, pretty much everyone says that helped them learn a language no matter what it is. hell, that's practically how i learned english and it's my first language. lots of video games where you had to read lots of text, before full voice acting existed. it's much easier to tie it to something you enjoy doing because you'll keep doing it even if you don't fully understand it.
@beardalaxy i mean if you want to learn anything the best way is to have motivation
it's why I can't read most programming books because they expect you to learn with boring bullshit like writing a database or writing some dumb calculator
@sendpaws @beardalaxy
>it's why I can't read most programming books because they expect you to learn with boring bullshit like writing a database or writing some dumb calculator
Make text adventures. They can help teach the fundamentals while still being fun. Depending on the game, they can also teach parsing and databases (for MUD-like games).
@beardalaxy Welcome to the rabbit hole
@beardalaxy >spent like an hour on it today You should ideally only use it when you’re exhausted and you can’t bring your ass to do anything better (after work, before bed, etc) or while just sitting around doing nothing (on the bus, waiting at a station, pooping). That’s when apps like Duolingo shine.
If you do have energy, and want to use your time more productively, most of that hour a day should be spent on just listening/reading/trying to meaningfully produce real japanese and not broken sentences with no context. Nonetheless Duolingo is a good start to actually get minimally familiarized with the language before you start learning it “seriously”.
t. langfag
@kerosene oh yeah for sure, for me it's just that as of right now, the longer periods of time i have are dedicated to doing things like working on my game. since today was the first day of getting on there i kind of just went at it. i was also lying in bed because my neck/back still hurt so it was still kind of "doing nothing time."
in the future though i'm sure it'll mostly be on my work breaks, and then on my days off when i'm walking i might do it then as well.
i mainly want to use duolingo to get more familiar with it and get a lot of stuff done really quick. then i can go back and dedicate some more time to really learning the language itself instead of just learning the words and the phrases. if that makes sense.
Likely you'll be able to get up to light conversational level on either app but I'd give it a look