Anyone fluent in Japanese?

I'm mainly asking about people that studied Japanese at school, or took courses, and not so much native speakers, but either opinion would be valid.

So I'm just curious, what did you find most difficult to master about the language? Was it the grammar, the pronunciation, or what exactly?

I don't know... I have been studying at college for 1 year or so and I have had no problems with grammar or pronunciation, however, I find learning kanjis quite irritating. I mean, the few I have studied, if I were to see them I would probably know what they are, but I often forget how to write them. And, I also forget their different readings. :-/

Any suggestions that don't involve simply writing every kanji 1000x times? Perhaps you could suggest a nice piece of software?

Idk alot of real Japanese people told me that if you weren't born there it's extremely hard to learn it fluently like native japs do

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Originally Posted by illgamez

Idk alot of real Japanese people told me that if you weren't born there it's extremely hard to learn it fluently like native japs do

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No kidding. :-/
It's such a different language, I mean... so COMPLETELY different.

You have to unlearn , to learn again.

The hidden way of the yawning coyote

I don't know Japanese, but I do know 6 languages, and the hardest part, as stated above, is reading and writing.
Also, grammar is hard too.

Well I pretty much learned Hiragana and Katakana on my first semester. Right now I know about 40 kanjis and several words with them. From what I know there are like 1000 basic kanjis that every Japanese person must memorize, or something like that... At least in order to read the newspaper.

The bit I failed at the most is writing Kanji, Mainly because I was learning from video's made by a drunk guy with a dodgy eye.

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Originally Posted by Orpheus

Thanks hian! I really appreciate your input. To be honest I'm interested more in reading/writing because I enjoy reading/writing a lot more than speaking. I understand it's going to be a difficult road, but I really do want to be able to say... read a novel in Japanese sometime.

My teacher in college is actually Japanese and she makes the language sound like so much fun. I don't know, I sometimes feel the class is going somewhat slow (content wise) because we don't learn that much grammar/kanji in a semester, but that's because she tends to focus a lot on conversation with real Japanese people: what's polite and what isn't, what's friendly and what isn't.

Pronunciation isn't difficult AT ALL because Spanish and Japanese are pretty similar in terms of sounds. So I got no problem there.

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That's great! Yeah, I met a few Spanish, and a lot of Brazilians who're pretty good at Japanese, so maybe they're blessed like the Scandinavians :p

Well, if you're interested in reading novels, I'd still recommend you focus a lot on speech patterns at least, and remember the points of my last post still stand in terms of reading and writing as well. After all, works of fiction often contain direct speech, lot's of implication rather than direct statement, and in a sense, at times, might be much more "oral" in their respective styles than even regular people are talking.

Sounds like your teacher knows what she's about. After all such cultural contexts are just as important in Japanese literature.

In any case, I'm glad my wall of text didn't kill you. Good luck on learning Japanese. Might sound unrealistic, but if you study real hard, you might be able to read regular novels(probably still gonna be times you don't understand everything) after about 2 years.

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Originally Posted by hian

Yeah, I met a few Spanish, and a lot of Brazilians who're pretty good at Japanese, so maybe they're blessed like the Scandinavians :p

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When I'm drunk and try to speak Spanish I always mix in some Japanese words in the sentences and it usually sounds perfectly normal in my head..