This was the thing that gave me a ton of trouble. Maybe tsutomu nihei was a bit too heady for a first try. I’m gonna load up some pokemans and maybe some dragon ball or something and give it a shot.
I would recommend the later Pokemon games that have Kanji/Furigana. I tried playing the GB(A) titles and the Kana only was suuper hard for me parse
I think the best early reading practice comes from sending messages with people on the internet, since they will subconsciously use simpler language for you. Though maybe that can be too stressful, since this requires you to send your own messages, which at such an early level will by necessity be quite silly and embarrassing – and of course you have to manage to find a person willing to message with you in Japanese.
When I started learning Chinese I messaged a lot with a guy in his 50s from some small town for whom reading a single sentence of English a day was enough to make him feel accomplished. I think this is probably the ideal sort of language partner for just starting out.
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I ended up playing TTYD a bit more but eventually got a bit tired of having to struggle my way through so much dialogue.
Now I’m playing Mario Wonder which is a way smoother experience to play in Japanese. I can always learn new Kanji through the stage names and every third stage or so there’s like 3 dialogue boxes. Sometimes I don’t even have to look up a single word in a dialogue box and it’s such a good feeling!!
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Would anyone here be interested in starting a Japanese study group chat (maybe on Telegram or Discord)?
I joined some public discords for learning Japanese but they’re all very big and kinda impersonal… it would be cool to have something more tight-knit where people can post like a daily Kanji they learned and their funny mnemonics for it or sentences and passages that they’re struggling to understand.
One big sub-goal of mine for learning Japanese is being able to play Boku no Natsuyasumi, would be fun to also play this together as a sort of book club as part of the study group.
Is anyone down? Paging @freakscene who seems to be at a similar level of Japanese as I am.
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I like the idea but I know I’m in general a flaky person when it comes to a lot of my personal goals haha I’d give it a go for sure, might actually get me back to learning Japanese which I’ve put on the back burner for a few months now, but no promises or anything
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I’m interested! Don’t know how often I would post and definitely feel like I’m at a lower proficiency level than others (just started learning this year), but it would be nice to have a community!
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I would join
Heck yeah : )
I made a discord feel free to join here: japanese study group
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Bumping this for visibility.
Going back in on learning Swedish. I’m fluent enough, but I could always be more articulate. I catch myself using it a lot. I took a break to continue German studies.
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how fun! i’m swedish and would be happy to answer questions and/or just chat, if that’s something you’re interested in. DMs are open etc (i think? can you DM on here?). i suppose it’s not a language one gets exposed to a lot outside of scandinavia.
or the “hygge” in your screen name means you’re danish in which case we’re mortal enemies and i refuse to be helpful in any way. (jk)
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