/mai/ - Waifu

…I can recognize her name, but that's it.

>>60894

pretty much this

>>60890 your handwriting is waaay nicer than mine

I took my best crack at it. I haven't bothered to learn to write her name since i'll eventually get to it but i do recognize and know the kanji. I'm currently learning jap but i'm only like 300 kanji in so i barely know anything but hopefully at my pace i'll be done with kanji in 2 or 3 months and will already be on vocab.

Her name is in katakana, which is unfortunate because I don't like the way katakana looks. I almost never use the kana form of her name anyways.

I started learning Japanese ~7 years ago with AJATT, Kanjidamage, and Anki SRS Mass Cloze Deletion cards. I gave up a couple of years later from burnout though. I knew all the meanings of the Jouyou kanji and on/kunyomi for about half of them, I've forgotten most readings but I can still remember the meanings fairly well.

If you're trying to learn, the way that worked for me is:

- Learn the kana in a couple of days, make an Anki deck for them if you need it.

- Learn the proper stroke order rules, generally top-to-bottom and left-to-right. I found that writing in a consistent way helps a lot to remember the shapes. http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/stroke-order.html

- Start learning the radicals and make up a mnemonic for each one, put these in another deck. These are the most important to learn.

- Use Kanjidamage or Heisig's RTK to make another deck for kanji, make up a story for each one with the radicals. I used two types of cards for each kanji, ones where the kanji and story are shown on the front with the meaning on the back and ones where the meaning and story are shown on the front with the kanji on the back.

- At the same time, use Mass Cloze Deletion decks to learn readings, context, particles, and grammar. I found it helped a lot to make the cards myself, I would use song lyrics or use AGTH to extract lines from VNs and make the cards from that. Here's some examples of what they could look like: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/12-free-mcd-examples/

>>60891

Denshi Jisho is great since you can search by radical or draw it yourself, it saves a lot of time when you need to look something up.

This is interesting. I tried, but my calligraphy is really bad. Well, better than nothing I suppose.

Anyway learning jap is one of the things I wanna do. Thanks >>60929 for all the tips. They are nice and useful.

>>60890

>Your waifu has a nice name and everything, but can you write down?

Sure, I can both read and write her name in Japanese. I like to write it on steamy glass.

>Can you write, in japanese, more than just her name?

Yes, I've been learning Japanese for about eight years now. I used to be able to write about 1.2k Kanji by hand, but I forgot how to write most of them due to Japanese IME conversion and forgot a lot of readings over time.

I mostly focus on reading nowadays, e.g. by playing games, reading manga or browsing through twitter in Japanese. But to be honest, I've gotten sluggish lately. I suppose I'm in a similar situation as >>60929.

>A phrase or sentence like "I love you, [waifu's name]"?

My handwritten Japanese is still good enough for something easy like this, but my handwriting is shit.

>Or can you write her an entire love letter?

Probably not, because I've never even tried learning to write or speak Japanese.

I won't write it down by hand, but I gave it a try:

大好きな妖夢ちゃんへ、

あなたと出会ったあの日から

よくあなたのことを考え、ついにあなたに惚れてしまいました。

そうして、このあとだんだん俺の嫁になりました。

あれからもう何年も過ごしたけれども、俺の恋はまだ最初のころのように強いです。

俺はこれからも妖夢ちゃんをいっぱい愛でたいんだから、永遠に俺のそばに居てください！

Ａｎｏｎくん

I only used basic kanji that I could, theoretically, also write by hand.

>>60891

In case you need an offline dictionary:

Tagaini Jisho (Windows)

Aedict (Android)

imiwa? (Apple)

(In the absence of a working scanner or camera, I've elected to brush these in paint.NET instead.)

I'm not sure that there actually is a Kanji form of her name. If there is one, it's certainly not used very commonly. As far as I've seen, artists on Pixiv usually tag her with either the English or Katakana form of her name.

Most English speakers pronounce her name [tʃɑːrɑ], and judging by the most common Katakana and Hangul forms I see for it, so do Japanese and Korean speakers. It's etymologically derived from a Greek word (Χαρα) pronounced [xɑːrɑ], though, so I've included here my best attempt at the relevant transliterations of each form, in Orkhon Script Turkish, Armenian, Hangul, Cyrillic, and Katakana.

Admittedly, it's probably not anywhere near as impressive as being able to write it in the Kanji form, if one even exists for her name.

>>60974

>Admittedly, it's probably not anywhere near as impressive as being able to write it in the Kanji form, if one even exists for her name.

Impressive or not, you dedicated some effort to your waifu and that really counts!

By the way, in case you didn't know, "Χαρά" aside from meaning "Joy" in Greek, is also an effeminate name.

Quite fitting for you waifu, wouldn't you say?

巡音ルカ

I've already written it a few times.

巡 is circle

音 is sound (also part of Hatsune and Kagamine)

ルカ is just Katakana.

My Japanese is bad. I only know very basic vocab and basic grammar. Also some Kanji.

I'll write something for her when I'm good enough.

Midousuji has a weird name.

御堂筋　翔

"Midousuji" is a major road in Osaka. The kanji that make it up mean "honorable"/"manipulate"/"govern", "public chamber"/"hall, and "muscle/tendon/sinew/fiber"/"plot/plan"/"descent, which I usually see people translate as "honorable house of muscle". I don't know if that's how it's actually interpreted by Japanese people and I can't find any information about why the street is called that. It doesn't seem to be used as a family name IRL. Midousuji (road) has never shown up or been mentioned in Midousuji (wifu)'s source material, and he doesn't even live in Osaka, so I have no idea why this is his name.

On top of all that, the kanji used for "Akira" seems to be pretty rare. 翔 refers to flight in the sense of soaring or gliding and contains 羽, "feather". Its On reading is "shou", like a lot of other "Akira" kanji, but its Kun reading isn't "akiraka", so I don't get why it can be read as "Akira".

>implying I actually know anything about nip

You might have a weird name, but I still love you, Honorhallmuscle Fly.

>>61183

>>61388

>>61183

>>61388

>>61409

lol

>>60890

>Your waifu has a nice name and everything, but can you write down?

>Can you write, in japanese, more than just her name?

I can do a few kanji and sentences.

>A phrase or sentence like "I love you, [waifu's name]"?

Done that before.

>Or can you write her an entire love letter?

Short ones.

Fuuka has a really pretty name.

Well, Lily's name usually appears in roman/western form. As a logo, it's written in a Gothic style that's pretty cool. In Japanese, it's just written with Katakana like リリィ, or sometimes リリー. I still like to practice writing it though, because my handwriting is atrocious, even in English. It basically looks just like it did in my elementary school days, except with less backwards letters lol.

I have a somewhat-related question, if anyone can help.

I've been studying Japanese lately, and as someone who has never been very good at languages, it's certainly a challenge. There's just so much to take in, it's hard not to be overwhelmed.

I guess my question has to do with nouns and adjectives. I know about 'i' and 'na' adjectives(loosely), but here's an example of something that's troubling me:

Say I wanted to say something like 'metal vase':

There's 金属(metal) which is a noun, and 花瓶(vase) which is also a noun.

Would 金属花瓶 be correct?

Or should it be 金属の花瓶(vase of metal)?

Or even 金属製の花瓶(vase made of metal)?

Sorry if this is a dumb question lol.

>>66303

>Sorry if this is a dumb question lol.

It's not a dumb question, but only a native speaker would know which one sounds the most natural.

All of the variants you listed are grammatically correct, but I would avoid long compounds.

金属のX, 金属製のX, 金属性のX and even 金属的なX all seem to exist. If you are unsure which one to use, you can just google them in quotation marks and take the one with the most results (or one with natural sounding results).

You could also use a native Japanese dictionary like weblio.

English-Japanese:

https://ejje.weblio.jp/content/metallic

This entry even explains some of the Japanese nuances (in Japanese).

Japanese-English:

https://ejje.weblio.jp/content/%E9%87%91%E5%B1%9E%E3%81%AE

杏が大好きだよ。

杏と高巻はきれいな漢字だな。

「杏」に比べ「Ann」か「Anne」、紛らわしいある。

でも、俺は初心者だ。も、これを書くは難しいだ！

I also like Fuuka's name from P3. It's very poetic-sounding.

>>60890

I did what i could. I started learning nip 2 days ago and i barely know the vowels, also kanji really seems like a pain in the ass.

>>66304

Thank you for your time!

Sometimes, it's these 'nuances' that trip me up more than the bigger concepts.

What you say makes sense. I guess it just takes time and experience to get a feel for these things.

I like the idea of avoiding long compounds, but then I see things like 日本語能力試験 lol. I guess maybe it's to make certain things more brief, as opposed to 日本語の能力の試験.

>You could also use a native Japanese dictionary like weblio.

I've never heard of that before. It looks like a very useful resource!

ありがとうございます！

>>66307

Ha, I know your pain.

I found that handwriting everything really helps me to retain it. But, after I memorized a decent amount of words, I realized that I was an idiot and didn't pay attention to the proper stroke order, and was drawing some of them wrong because the computerized glyph and the handwritten form look slightly different. So I had to re-learn basically everything.

I wish you luck though!

>>60929

I started learning Japanese again in April, pretty much as a direct result of this thread inspiring me again. I'll share some of my experiences.

- AJATT works. I'm not super hardcore about it, but I try and do something in Japanese once an hour, even if it's just for one minute (such as listening to one song or doing a couple Anki cards). I believe this technique is called timeboxing if you want to be more structured about it but I'm not.

- I picked up the core 10k deck from the Anki shared decks, between that and my normal deck I've ramped up to learning 50 words a day. I've done 32555 reviews according to Anki. I'd estimate my concrete vocabulary at around ~2500 words now.

- The hardest part is grammar. It's my honest opinion that anyone who says otherwise hasn't gotten very far. I'm planning to add a third deck with sentences only and score it based on comprehension to help with this.

- I made it easier to reach Japanese media than English, so I can be lazy. If it's more effort to turn on English subtitles for anime or find translated manga I won't. My tablet and phone are full of raw anime, manga, music, and books so I always have something to go through on hand. I bought some books and manga from Amazon JP that I keep next to my bed so I have something to read and not be distracted by electronics. Everything else that can be Japanese, is. That includes all my electronics, Steam and its games, even the GPS in my car.

- Intensive vs extensive learning: I've found the most success with material only slightly above my comprehensive level. I was going through a VN way over my head and looking up every single word I didn't know and adding it to Anki and I could feel the burnout approaching again. Reading something 'easy' and only looking up one or two words has been a much more enjoyable experience. I'll take screenshots if there's something I really want to add to my deck later.

- I write it, a lot. I study exclusively with ankimobile and for each card I write out the whole sentence on the screen and speak it aloud. I think this has been the biggest factor after immersion in my improvement and it's helped my reading speed significantly.

- I didn't bother with kanjidamage or any other kanji-in-isolation tools this time around. I'm learning them in situ sans mnemonics and it's going just fine. Radicals are still important.

- Music has been a great motivator. I added some of my favorite song lyrics and clozed them word by word.

- I still can't express my thoughts or speak it freely for shit beyond the basics. I'm taking Khatz's advice that it will come with time.

Easy anime I would recommend: K-ON (by far the easiest, start here), Aria, Yuru Yuri, Hidamari Sketch, To Love-Ru, Idolmaster (346 / 765).

Manga: Yuru Yuri, Hidamari Sketch, Aria, Thermae Romae, Sora no Otoshimono, Sketchbook.

Games: Mario Odyssey, Zelda BOTW. I got a Switch just so I could play games in Japanese. Mario is simple, but BOTW requires more work - thankfully all dialogue has furigana. If you have one of these I recommend switching the system language over. Hearthstone has a great localization and full voice acting if you're a fellow sucker who's still playing it. Any VNs you've already read, I bought Higurashi and Fate / Stay Night on my tablet so I can read them again wherever I want. F/SN is still far over my head but Higurashi is only slightly so.

Music: Idolmaster. There's something in pretty much every genre in this franchise, the lyrics are great, the phone games are some of the best on the platform to keep you interested. Hirasawa Susumu / P-MODEL's songs are fantastical and will teach you lots of interesting words. 80's city pop - Tatsuro Yamashita, Taeko Ohnuki, Junko Ohashi, Wakita Monari, Toshiki Kadomatsu. Anime OPs / EDs that you can stomach watching again and again until they're permanently stuck in your head. I recommend getting a jpopsuki account and just going wild downloading everything that catches your eye.

I don't know how you'd spell Ruby's name in Japanese. I only know a few words and phrases in Japanese, and can't read it at all.

Ruby's from an American source and speaks English, so the language doesn't really have as much significance in our relationship like it does for some people.

>>66310

You sure seem to put a lot of effort into learning Japanese.

Meanwhile I only really read manga and play games in Japanese. I even note down new vocabulary, but usually it only collects dust in my endless vocabulary list.

>Games: Mario Odyssey, Zelda BOTW. I got a Switch just so I could play games in Japanese.

It's great that the Switch is region-free and that many games also support Japanese in its Western releases, but so far there aren't any Switch games that are good for learners.

Neither Mario Odyssey nor Zelda BOTW are that text-heavy seeing as they are mostly exploration-based. In most of your play sessions you won't get to see any Japanese text outside the menu.

A Japanese or hacked 3DS is a much better console for learning Japanese right now.

I would especially recommend RPGs for children such as Youkai-Watch. They tend to have fairly easy language, often have furigana and surprisingly also tend to have a lot of dialogue.

Hopefully, it's just a matter of time until the Switch gets similar games.

>>66326

>Like, a literal list?

Actually multiple lists in Aedict.

Aedict also has flashcard function similar to Anki, so it's basically both a list and a flashcard deck at the same time.

It's much easier than using one application as a dictionary and another one for the flashcards.

But I haven't used either flashcard function in a long time, so I learn new vocabulary mostly by looking up the same words way too many times.

>>66326

Both BOTW and Mario have a lot of NPCs, of course, but mostly in the towns. Especially in BOTW I spent most time just wandering the wilds. There's also barely any actual dialogue in the games with the protagonists being mostly silent. So, a lot of text boils down to one-sided explanations.

Basically, dialogue-heavy games are much more worthwhile if you play a game to learn Japanese specifically.

>>66310

>>66311

Those are some pretty informative posts! Thanks for the links and info!

also

>P-MODEL

Yo, I love them! And Kaku P-model. I listened to them before I started my studies, so it would be interesting to re-examine it now.

>>60894

Pretty much.

リンディス

I know it's pronounced Rindisu or shortened to

リン or Rin.

Like 5 minutes in paint. Something a 3 year old would draw but I think I got it.

>>66310

I guess it’s time for another update, and probably my last. Earlier this year I started and completed RTK, and I’ve stopped using the Core deck in preference of material I gather myself. I’ve completed the monolingual transition to using solely J-J references which was easier than I was anticipating. This is about the hardest my cards get at i+1.5 (one unknown word or a word using a character in a new context, 爽やか, and one which I have heard in my immersion or can guess by the characters, 快活) which is a comfortable spot for me. I’ve done some optimizing in order to get my anki usage below an hour a day so I can more easily identify problematic cards and spend more time immersing. I have also begun studying pitch accent, I obtained copies of the NHK日本語発音アクセント新辞典 and 新明解日本語アクセント辞典 but I mostly rely on those for pattern reference and do the bulk of my lookups electronically with the NHK and 三省堂 スーパー大辞林 epwings. As I slowly transition from the intermediate stage to conscious fluency, I’m gearing more of my studies towards being able to reflect upon, internalize, and produce proper spoken Japanese without a foreigner’s accent, which is an important goal of mine. My motivation’s still there but more and more of it is giving way to habit, discipline, and the pursuit of the intrinsic joy that comes along with honing a skill.

To everyone still studying Japanese or any other language, or working on some other passion entirely, I wish you luck. The journey is long. If you spend some time to refine your methods and find something that truly works for you, that journey will be a lot more enjoyable. Don’t stick with something you don’t enjoy just because someone else told you it was the most optimal path. Take their advice into account, but think on your own and do your own exploration. Good luck, and hopefully when you hear from me again it will be in Japanese.

>>68307

That's very impressive! I'm still a great distance away from even this point… but seeing your progress inspires me to continue. I wish you luck as well!

> If you spend some time to refine your methods…

This is important advice. I've kind of been 'throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks' so far when it comes to study methods, and I feel like my current habits aren't so great. I want to try to improve them before continuing.

I've always been able to write her name but i've never thought of anything else! Maybe I should. But when it comes to her clothes she looks like she's more western, so I like to think that she's British or French or something, so I never really thought of her speaking only Japanese like in the original game. It's kinda like if you'd have Remilia or Flandre Scarlet as your waifu

翡翠, meaning "jade" in English, she was named after her eye colour. Though jade is usually thought as green, it also exists in shades of blue.

It makes it pretty hard to find pictures of her from Twitter artists though, but a lot of artists refer to her as 翡翠ちゃん or "Hisui-chan". Fan art of Hisui that I haven't seen is pretty scarce, so I have to really dig for it.

Mine is pretty easy though. I did end up forgetting how to write 好 though and I don't really know the grammar around 愛してる

>>68778

and I forget to flip it. Also took me ages to remember the character for ロ

A small addendum since I've found something tremendously useful other people should know about.

With Subs2SRS and "Xavier's Retimed JP Sub Pack v01" I've been experimenting with a supplemental deck for audio comprehension, and I've had very promising results so far.

First, spoken words seem to be much easier to learn when they're spoken in a context that's actually interesting to me. Testing both reading and listening of the same sentences with the interval modifier cranked up to 200% has made them easier to learn while having far fewer overall reviews involved.

Second, I am saving an incredible amount of time making my cards: Subs2SRS spits out everything nicely formatted into fields with audio and images automatically, then I import them into a custom card format that generates both a listening and reading comprehension note from each card. All I have to do manually is go through the browser and mark the sentences I'm interested in and add a definition, 90% of the tedium is done for me. No pitch lookup and coloration is required since I can just listen to the audio.

Just something you all may want to try out if you make your own cards.