>>8656
And it's difficult for someone who speaks a language where stress isn't contrastive to tell the difference between, say, insight and incite. Different languages use different tools to do different things, and unless you're learning a language from the same family you will have difficulties.

>>8656
I was under the impression that Japanese is not tonal.

>>8659

It has a pitch-accent, like Norwegian/Swedish. Tonal languages have tones on every syllable, whereas pitch-accent languages have tone restricted to one of the syllables in a word, or no syllables at all in some situations.

>>8593

Sikke da noget åndssvagt pladder! Du må da være komplet idiot, håbløst uvidende eller begge dele på én gang.

>>8593
Just put a potato in your mouth and use any language you know and then it's danish.

you´d be amazed how fast you forget a language if you don´t use it, if you go to another country be sure to keep reading, listening to the radio, watch TV in Spanish, otherwise after about a year you won´t speak or understand it and all that will come out is the new language you´ve learned.

>>9115
Spanish is my girlfriends first language, and it is what we speak 95% of the time.

Basically, I have narrowed it down to, as stated above, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian. I'll have to take a short trip to each place and see which country I enjoy better I suppose.

Anyone here with experience learning Romanian?

>>9117
I'd learn Italian or Romanian (Why Romanian? such an odd language to learn) if I were you (Spanish is my native language, english is my second). Portuguese is really a lot alike spanish, I find it kind of boring, I dunno. If you learn latin or ancient greek, most european languages will be a looot easier to learn.

>>9121

this

Portuguese is really easy to understand if you already understand spanish, Italian wouldn't be hard to take on because of the similar sounding of many words but don't expect the structure to be alike. Romanian resemblance spanish in no way, not at least one that would make it easier to learn.

>>9121
Seconding this. Fuck yeah Italian and Romanian might be useful for some random use, so since you chose it, it might be fate.

Only read this post because of your picture, which I enjoyed and saved. Thanks.

>>9431
My guess is it says "Made in China". I'm sure I've seen those four characters before, and I know tthat the two two say "China".

I don't know what the second two mean.

中国制造 Zhong guo zhi zao

Yes, made in China. Strange that I've been thinking of this phrase lately. I read a lot of crap when I study, though.

>unless you are too scared??
>Made in China

I knew it was a curse, I knew it.

>>8872
boards.420chan.org/f/res/18862.php

It's kinda buggy but maybe it'll help you learn Katakana.

I'm still just a beginner, but I'll share what I know from my experience. Learn katakana first, and then start working on some vocab and kanji, later moving on to simple Japanese-English sentences, and ultimately Japanese-Japanese sentences.

First of all, download Anki and learn how to use it. Anki is God :D You're going to use it to enter all your material (vocab, kanji, sentences, entire anime show/j-drama/movie subtitles, whatever). Personally, I think it's way, way more efficient than the textbook + workbook approach. My progress, learning rate and memorization all went up dramatically when I made the Textbook -> Anki switch.

For vocab, you can start entering some words you often hear in japanese media, or just things you're interested in, really. You can also get this Anki shared deck https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2353399735 to use in addition to your personal list. If you do, it also has example sentences using the vocab which can be very useful. I suggest learning just the vocab at first, or it may seem overwhelming.

While you're studying your vocab, also work on kanji. RTK is the most common route, and if you're using Anki you can get a shared deck here: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2582505257. I use a modified version I got from somewhere that only has 1900 of them, and I added additional meanings to the cards to help me out.

I started sentences when I had about 500 vocab and 500 kanji memorized, and that's when I also started watching Japanese dramas and movies without subtitles, or with subtitles in Japanese. No matter what method you use to study sentences, I suggest watching or listening to japanese material that's not recorded for a textbook. It will help you develop a feeling for how real japanese sounds - anime and textbooks recordings don't count. If you're using Anki, also check out subs2srs (http://subs2srs.sourceforge.net/). If you have a episode of a show, and subtitles in both english and japanese, it will automatically create Anki cards from the entire episode with the sentence, its translation, an audio clip and a screenshot. It's very, very powerful and simple to use. For the shows and subtitles themselves, you can check out http://www.d-addicts.com/ - the subtitles are in the "subtitle index" in the left menu.

Beyond that, I can only recommend what I read elsewhere. When you go trough about 1000 sentences (and hopefully finish RTK by that time) move on to Japanese-Japanese sentences, totally removing english from your studies.

That's kind of a short summary for such a big topic as learning a language, but I'm sure you'll find your way if you're determined to learn it :) Some more random resources:
http://tangorin.com/ - My favorite online dictionary. Very powerful and looks nice as well.
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/ and http://japaneselevelup.com/ , two websites by guys at or near fluency offering their tips and experiences. I got or modified some of my study methods thanks to them, and they're also good for motivation - especially AJATT :D

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Uh.

>>8866

Bit ambitious to be shooting for Kindergarten level already. But if it's available, you might consider watching Dora the Explorer in Japanese. You'll pick up loads of vocab from it, that's for sure.

As an 一年生　going into exams soon, the advice on learning Kanji is dead on. The advice we get from all of our senpai that return from their year abroad is to study our kanji. Don't worry too much about mastering any of it, just start throwing it in. It's not disgraceful to have to look up characters if you don't know them, whether hiragana, katakana or kanji, but the important part is that you do. Once you're comfortable with looking at ANY character and being able to look it up through radicals or stroke count like Ninkendo is essentially advocating, then you've broken through a wall most people don't have the patience to overcome.

>Erin's challenge

We get shown this in university when it matches a point we're being made in the textbook. https://www.erin.ne.jp/en/ It's good stuff for beginners and to get some listening practice.

If you can afford it and are serious, consider taking some actual lessons. The one year I've spent studying at university has taught me 20 times what I've had the willpower to look up myself.

There's also the advice we get from our Japanese exchange students, on how they learned English, doing things like watching an American/British TV show or Movie with Japanese subtitles once, then removing the subtitles and trying to remember the context of the words and stuff.

But yeah, be ambitious. If you're diligent enough to study on your own I highly recommend it, but if you need the extra push, an actual programme of study is a good way to learn it.

I'm using this right now:
http://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/8361368/Assimil_-_New_French_With_Ease
There's a follow up called Using French in the same series too. Don't know how comprehensive they are, but since you're going to be immersing in a Francophone region, you'll learn more than if you were just relying on resources.

Fume herbam cotidie

>>9417

Oh man it's fumare fumo not fumere fumo fuuuuuuuuuuuu

German: Kiff jeden Tag (note: kiffen is slang)

fumar la mota todos de las dias.

"Shmodokinn weedd erryfday brah"
My favorite foreign language is English.

>>9432
nvm I think I got it.
Truth in Kanji.
http://japanesekanji.nobody.jp/image/truth02.gif

>>9432
is there a standard way to find Japanese words? Every time I see a Japanese symbol I'm baffled by how I might look it up.

>>9437
Yep, you can look them up in various ways. If you don't know the pronunciation, then you usually look Kanji up by stroke count (how many times does you brush touch the paper to draw this?) and/or by radical (what element is there in the kanji?)

For your example:
The stroke count is nine I think.
The radical is the thing at the top that looks a bit like a flat roof and chimney.

>>9440
Is the apostrophe part on the left part of the radical, and if not, are radicals always connected?

>>8642

>general introduction
>arsetalk about vowels

sorry man, can't think of any general advice right now. In my eyes, Norwegian has far fewer silly conventions than English and Dutch, so just be sure to tackle it with sense and no prejudice.

Bump?

It would be cool if anyone was learning my language.

>>9422
Perhaps some day, my friend... still have to finish learning japanese, pick up where school left off for french, and i should probably brush up on my german, but after that it's definitely norwegian

The funny thing is: Everyone here is learning Danish.

Norway is cool, yous has the black metals.

This is my mother tongue. It's the second one.

how could "tengo" mean "she is". Learn conjugations.

It is "se" and not "me" and so the person must be talking about someone else. (the subjunctive for the first and third person is the same)

then they changed from the subjunctive to the infininitive? Why would that happen? Because when you talk about yourself in this type of sentence you don' t need subjunctive.

Even if you didn' t understand that the "Le" is another thing that tells you the damage is being done to the indirect object.

So the sentences means

I'm afraid she'll fall in love and I'll hurt her.

>>9424
don't be a dick, what if this guy needs to eeavesdrop on a private conversation and you ruin that for him?

>>9425
Well it doesn't mean she is. I wasn't translating the quote word for word, just the general jist. There are a few reflexive verbs that if I don't have much practi e with can confuse me.

>>9434

enamorarse is a reflexive verb yes, and they all work in exactly the same way, so don´t say "a few" of them cause you a problem, either they all do or none of them do.

A lot of beginners have difficulties with object pronouns in Spanish, I used to find it impossible, now it´s second nature. Just keep at it.

>>9406

In linguistics., Not in your instincts. Buy a book or google it.

I can´t BELIEVE i live in a world where there are people that don´t know that an infinitive is a noun.



To be or not to be, that is the question.


What is "To be" in that sentence? A verb? No. A verb can´t be a subject, it´s functioning as a noun.

I need TO GO.

>>9408

>To be or not to be, that is the question.

What is the subject of that sentence? "that" is. And its antecedent is the phrase "to be or not to be". You could say that's a verbless utterance containing the nounphrase "to be", but I would say that nounphrases generally have determiners in them. And I don't consider "to" to be a determiner.

That doesn't prove my point of view or yours though, so I'll offer this:
Infinitives are modified by adverbs, not adjectives.

I have also run "an infinitive is a noun" through Duck Duck Go. There are several other people who make the same claim, but I dispute it. I am of a different view, as many linguists are.

In any case, I have a feeling this discussion flared up because you said my post was bullshit without offering any sort of explanation. >>9406
Are you the same person as Hamilton Brookhall?

>>9410

Give me an example of an infinitive being modified by an adverb.
Give me an example of a gerund (I don't mean something like "parking" which is often used as a stand alone noun "I can't find good parkin" I mean an actual word which is in this moment functioning as a gerund). being modified by an adjective.


To run well is important.
Running well is important.
I like writing.
I like to write.




Gerunds and infinitives work the same way (but with different colocations), the linguists who reject that an infinitive is a noun do the same for gerunds.

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>>9410


I thought you were hamilton brookhall

>>9428
You still haven't answered my question: in what way is an infinitive a noun?

>Give me an example of an infinitive being modified by an adverb.

"I can write well"
"To boldly go where no man has gone before"

>Give me an example of a gerund [...] being modified by an adjective.

I can't think of one. Actually, I think they're generally modified by adverbs. So maybe the "proof" I presented in >>9410 was not conclusive either way.

>To run well is important.
>Running well is important.

The potato is important.
That he runs is important.

>I like writing.

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What profession? I know a guy who studied arabic specifically because it got him a good job in the army blowing up large parts of the culture he had learned about.