How hard is it to learn Japanese?

THey use kanji beacuse it seperates words better liek spaces, cuz hiragana somtimes gets mashed in really tight

Minsc is currently on hiatus. Must you point out all of the idiosyncrasies of every member you come across?

learning to write and read kanji would probably be the mos difficult part of learning japanese. There are also severaly smaller factors, like other languages you havelearned. ie. Japanese has stolen some stuff from chinese writing therefore if you know chinese it becomes easier to learn Japanese.

japanese is easy to learn if you watch animes with subtitles.

baka = idiot
oni,anki = brother
and all of the different endings: -chan -san -kun -sama -dono -senpai -sensei

that's all you need. the rest is up to your gesticulation

Actually,

-chan, -kun, -san, -sama, -dono, -sempai, -kohai, -sensei, -bozu

emm

oni= demon

ani= brother get it ??

I think he meant Onii, although that by itself doesn't mean brother unless placed with -san or -chan, as in Onii-chan.

You're right though, Skyler. Plus, Ferozban, it's not anki (which, depending on the kanji used, can mean a few things; most commonly, it means to memorize something), it's aniki (whoops my bad; thanks kanaxxxkarin). I think you just proved that learning Japanese from watching anime doesn't work.

How long have you been learning Japanese?
About 2 years

How well do you speak the language, in your opinion?
Quite Well

I've heard a few people in a couple forums say that it's much easier to speak the language than to read and write it. Is that true?
Kinda

Do you or have ever attempted to speak any other languages besides your native language and Japanese? If so, how would you compare the difficulty between learning that language and Japanese?

I learn Madarin but since im am fluent in Chinese its its great help with both Madarin and Japanese cuz the kanji is about the same.

Would it be much more effective to take some sort of class, or could I get by with just books/software/etc. and teaching myself?
Yep cuz if you have a teacher, your sure that your learning the correct way of speaking it (and in anime they often use the shorten form (or the impolite form which is only suitable for friends not teachers)

Do you have any book/website/etc. recommendations for someone with zero experience with the language? [/h]
Definitly get a good japanese CD and friend and try to communicate with them only in Japanese

I grew up in the US learning speaking English at home, and going to a Spanish immersion elementary school. By fifth grade, I was reading the original Don Quixote (in archaic Spanish), and speaking fluently with our teaching assistant from Argentina.

That said, I had the advantage of starting at a VERY early age. But the same ideal applies: the best way to learn a language is through guidance and immersion. If you have all the money and time in the world, get a full time tutor and go to Japan.

Now, for everyone who has an ounce of practicality in them, that's impossible. But you can still try to get some sense of an immersion experience (and spending some time in Japan once you have developed some language skills would be a definite benefit, and hell, if you're on here, you probably wouldn't mind doing that anyway).

I spent some time learning basic Japanese this past summer, using a combination of online resources (fairly generic stuff), and the Pimsleur Japanese program. The Pimsleur program is incredibly well done, and I felt surprisingly comfortable with the vocabulary and language structures that it had taught me (you might be able to find it at your local library, I know that my country library keeps a couple sets if it in distribution). I currently am in a rut, due to a bunch of big projects coming up, but I really should push myself back into my daily routine. And that's part of the trick: if you're doing it on your own, make it regular, and make it a habit.

Once you have a feel for the language, start learning the writing. Ideally, you want to get to the point where you can learn how to write the vocabulary that you already know, and begin to pick up new vocabulary. This is where a good dictionary will be invaluable. When I was learning Spanish in elementary school, I'd look up words whenever I thought of something. Because I was actually doing WORK in Spanish, I had to look up words and use them, and this cemented them into my memory. Try to do the same with Japanese -- find things that you can do as... well, not necessarily *work* in the same way... but things such as finding a good online chat channel where people practice their Japanese, etc. and start practicing. Try to hold a conversation. Be patient. Be willing to look up words you don't know, and words that you'd like to be able to use in conversation. You're idiomatic usage might not be great, but that can only develop through interaction or immersion with native speakers (and, yes, watching/reading/listening to popular culture CAN help with this, but don't do that as a first line of learning).

Anyway... Sorry for the complete tl;dr, but hopefully some of this can be of some help.

"boke = aho = idiot" works too, although boke isn't very common
onii-san, ani, aniki are for older brother
onee-san, ane, aneki are for older sister

then imouto (hear it a lot from School Rumble :P )for younger sister
otouto for younger brother

itoko (learned from School Rumble too) for cousin

oji-san for uncle or some middle-aged man
ojii-san for grandfather, old man

oba-san for auntie or some middle-aged woman
obaa-san for grandmother, old woman

ojamashimasu whenever someone enters somebody's house
jamasuruna - impolite probably; means to stay out of the way
jama would then be the root word

some words would mean differently when used in a different context
or like used as an expression
otsukaresama is said after someone does something that is usually exhausting
at some reference source, it means "thank you"

i started to learn writing by studying a table of kana from a name input screen of a video game that is in Japanese...
not knowing how each character is pronounced, i had to look for the same characters on familiar names like "Ranma" and "Akane"

and after studying a little from a book (i can't get enough motivation to finish), i learned some basics of the sentence structure

watching anime helps me know how something would sound "natural"
although i shouldn't rely on it so much if i want to learn how to speak Japanese...

well, i still have a lot to go but learning Japanese is not as nearly as hard as trying to learn Deutsch (German)

they're like complete opposites: a German newspaper would have a two-page sentence with most of it being the subject XD

Japanese is hard for westerners to learn. Its not impossible but hard. Learning how to it write is super hard tho. Something like 3000 characters it’s a little over whelming. My brother lives in Japan and and loves every second of it but in the end took a full year and a half of constant emersion to become fully fluent.

Bumping topic to put it up for stickying. A few users have requested Japanese help, and this is a good topic, so how about someone gives it a sticky so it's more visible.