You are the weebenest weeaboo i've ever heard of. Learn a practical language that you'll actually use

I've learned a tiny bit of Japanese from a certain someone on Vizzed. He was learning Japanese when he used to be in school. He even had a live stream dedicated to learn Japanese one time.

Eirinn and company, maybe Linkums can help you out on your Japanese learning adventure.

Linkums : I am not sure if you are interested to teach other people with your abundant knowledge of Japanese.

Well, if that's the case, I'm certainly interested in trying. I just didn't want to annoy anyone by jumping in and falling behind.

Eniitan :
ZeroTails :
xxAriaxx :
Mynamescox44 :
Zlinqx :
m0ssb3rg935 :
EX Palen :
sevencube3 :

We'll start tomorrow, but first I need to know something: would you prefer a video with Romaji (think of them like phonetics. It's Japanese written with Roman letters so English speakers can see how to pronounce them more or less) and/or straight up phonetic break downs (like: Co-nee-chee-wah) to help you understand what is being said, or audio files that you can download and just listen to the words on your PC or mobile devices? Each Mp3 or Mp4 will contain only a handful of words to keep things simple and allow everyone to grasp it better, so they'll be fairly short, probably a minute or less most of the time.

Alternatively, we can have just text phonetics so you can read how to say them, but there are certain accents that I don't know how to indicate through text, such as the proper way to say each word (sue me, I struggle with the difference between pronunciation and enunciation lol). For example, when Romaji uses an R, it is not pronounced the way that a native English speaker would normally pronounce it, so audio or video might be ideal.

Eirinn : I like enii used to be learning Japanese then stopped for a while and I would love to start again. 

Honestly, all of the above would be optimal, but video/audio downloads might be rather large in size and if I had to pick between the two, I'd probably pick Romaji with phonetic breakdown. And now for the first noob question of the class: Do I need to actually print anything? I don't have a printer. I forgot to mention that...


EDIT: Also, it might be better for me to learn the words, characters and sentence structure before getting proper pronunciation down since that's something that I can polish later. The hardest thing in the world for me is memorization.

I wouldn't mind learning more Japanese with you Eirinn I already know a few words and phrases in Japanese thankz to my love of anime and not being annoyed with listening to it in Japanese while the English translation is shown at the bottom of the screen

also I do google translate some of what I want to learn to say and while yes it isn't flawless and sometimes there are easier words and phases in Japanese then what is shown it is stillz none the less helpful to me and I hope it will be able to help you also Eirinn ^^

Eirinn : I like the break down one please I would had said the other one, but that might not work for me at all lol. Again thanks for taking the time to teach. ^-^

I'm used to Japanese pronunciation after countless anime episodes, so I can go directly to Romaji without any break downs. I don't mind going with a simpler method if the whole group decides so, just that I can safely go to a higher level if needed.

I could tell you how to indicate accents if you need it. The R in Japanese is one of the accents we have in Spanish, and considering the many other accents Spanish has that English lacks I'm sure there may be a few more I can help out with.

EX Palen : That's true....usaully I would watch the subs a lot so Romaji might be best. I dunno at this point....what do you think?

Eniitan : Well, for you, English speakers, it may be best to learn pronunciation first before trying to learn words and expand your vocabulary. It's easier for me because in Spanish everything is read as it's typed/written so I wouldn't need any breakdown, but Eirinn demonstrated you may not be familiar with some accents and here I have kind of an advantage.

It's up to the group as a whole to decide. We must find the intermediate point where everyone feels comfortable, and since I think I'm a bit ahead in pronunciation and memorization I'll let you guys choose whatever you think it's best. 

EX Palen : Well if you must know lol I did speak the words out. I practice it such as calling my brother oniichan or calling my  mother in Japanese as well my mother found it a bit odd my brother was fine with it lol. There were times I went into saying are you ok? Daijōbu? Would be the one I would remember the most and I did other things too. I just...stopped then forgotten what I had learned really.

Eirinn : Oniichan what do you think?

deggle : Awesome! Glad to have you joining us, man. I can't wait to get this started.


m0ssb3rg935 : I may actually make all of those methods available and just let everyone pick whichever works best for them. And if I make videos I'll probably upload them to YouTube rather than offering download, unless that would be more convenient for you guys (I could see how it might be).

As for a printer, it won't be necessary, no. I do plan to eventually offer printable material so you guys can practice Hiragana and Katakana handwriting, but even that will be optional. As long as you can identify the characters and read them then that's all that matters. Proper handwriting is nice, but once you can read and type it, you should be able to figure out writing it by hand.

True, proper pronunciation is less pressing than the rest, but at least it'll be there when you are ready for it. That's if I make the videos or audio anyway.


Jygin : Okay, great! Glad you're joining us.


Eniitan : Alrighty. I'm leaning toward the break downs with phonetics and Romaji. I can make those videos fairly easily from my PS4 so it should be simple enough. Also as I said to m0ss, I may offer all of the methods and let people choose which works best for them. It all depends on how much work that would be.


EX Palen : Yeah I was thinking that Spanish had some of the various pronunciations in common. I'll definitely look to you for help if I can't find a good way to describe it. The only problem that leaves though is...will they be able to read it? Also I won't use all proper pronunciation marks such as the proper sign for the "uh" sound, since my keyboard can't make that, so the phonetics will be written to be as plain as I personally can think to. For example look at how I broke down Konnichiwa. Not proper, but hopefully it made sense.
How do you signify that R sound though?

Eirinn : I've been doing some search, and I have found the Wikipedia page for that sound. It includes examples in different languages, including some dialects in English where it's also present: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental,_alveolar_and_postalveolar_flaps

If we made a search for all the affected accents, I'm sure we can figure out something like that link above so everyone knows what accents we're talking about even if their language doesn't use them, so that means one less problem to care for.

Eniitan : Well, we already speak in a rare way in my family, so they wouldn't notice if I'm speaking another language or just misspelling like all family members do regularly

If you practiced in the past, then you only need a few bits of information to remember. Hell, nowadays you can even rely on videogames instead of anime to learn a few words, so it wouldn't be that hard for you to regain your pace.

EDIT: This is why I hate when Vizzed goes down in the middle of a reply.

Eirinn : Thanks oniichan, that works well with my learning. I knew you'll come up with a better suggestion. Looking forward to learning. ^-^

EX Palen : Thanks lol yeah that's true mostly that you can reply more on video games, but it depends what you do more of though. Yeah I hope to regain back my pace. I remember going into like greetings a lot and how to introduce myself. Wow thinking about it now I learned a lot of sentences well learned the small ones first, and worked a lot on sentences in the past. this time I don't plan on stopping.

Eirinn :

Like I said I've been taking it for 3 months already so I think I have a good enough grasp on the initial basics like pronunciation. So I don't particularly mind one way or the other, whatever the others prefer. Aside from that it occurs to me that I also have access to a few resources others don't, mainly a Japanese teacher several times a week, I might be able to be of some limited help when it comes to questions now during the initial stages (though I won't say too much yet lol).

I'd like to get in on this too! I want to learn some Japanese. I don't know all that much about dialects and pronunciation. I mean, I watch anime. But it's all Greek-er-Japanese to me. UNTIL NOW!!!

If you want to help me learn Japanese I won't stop you. And I've been looking to get somewhat back in touch with the community here anyway. So it's a win/win.

Eirinn : I'd be good with both since I have some experience with pronouncing romanji (I know how to sing some parts of some Japanese songs because I was bored one day), but a video of how to pronounce would be helpful as well.

Howdy. I see I was tagged, hehe.

I majored in Japanese, so I'm like... 63% fluent and know how to look stuff up for the times that I'm not fluent.

Here's the recording of the Japanese-teaching stream I did which'll cover a bunch of basics like pronunciation, basics of the writing system, greetings, I forget what else...


I teach private lessons in real life for money, but only have one student at the moment. I'm about to be starting an unrelated full time job next week though, so I don't really have time to be teaching more people much, at least not right away. I don't min helping out though if you have questions about stuff. Just tag me because otherwise I'll forget to follow up on this thread.