Learning Japanese...

[Tycho]

My main problem is the word order... Kanji is the VERY LAST thing I plan on learning. X_X

Kanji may be difficult, but you should start learning it as soon as possible. Because in order to become good at reading, you'll have to start reading Japanese texts. And they don't go easy on the kanji because your a beginner. :-)

Plus, kanji makes it soooo much easier to read. You might not know what the exact reading is, but if you know the meanings of the kanji, you can figure it out.

Let's see if I can do an example
Take the kanji for road: 道]

[Mimichan]

Almost all english browsers have problems with foreign text. When you visit a japanese site and see boxes or strange characters, you need to change your text encoding. Different browsers have the menu in different places, but its almost always label "Text Encoding" or "Encoding". Select the menu and pick Japanese. Sometimes there are multiple japanese encodings, so try them all until the text is correct.

I went to the "encoding option" and tried each of them. They don't seem to work. Oh well..I can live without it.

[Shao Feng-Li]

http://japanese.about.com/blkodgrade1.htm

here's pages of kanji. how to read them and all the meanings

http://members.aol.com/writejapan/
this site will show you meanings and stroke order

[shooraijin]

> Is that kanji "muzuka" perhaps??

'tada-shii' actually => correct, right => "Annette, the kanji are correct, I think"

[Tycho]

I went to the "encoding option" and tried each of them. They don't seem to work. Oh well..I can live without it.

Are you on Windows? You may have to install the Japanese Global IME. Just do a google search and it will take you to the correct Microsoft site.

[Azier the Swordsman]

While I still can't understand much of the Japanese in the anime I watch without the aid of subtitles, I am slowely starting to understand more and more. And for the first time, I can now count backwords. (I have known the numbers for one to ten previously but have never been able to count backwords.) So I'm actually getting better! I hope to have learned the language by six months, tops.

[Tycho]

While I still can't understand much of the Japanese in the anime I watch without the aid of subtitles, I am slowely starting to understand more and more. And for the first time, I can now count backwords. (I have known the numbers for one to ten previously but have never been able to count backwords.) So I'm actually getting better! I hope to have learned the language by six months, tops.

That's quite an goal. Good luck in learning the 1000+ kanji needed for basic reading.

[Shao Feng-Li]

please go to about.com! they have hundreds of kanji!

[shooraijin]

> Good luck in learning the 1000+ kanji needed for basic reading.

It's worse than you think ... in the Jooyoo Kanji official list, I think the total number of "officially recognized characters" is 1,945 (an intriguing historical irony which just dawned on me).

[Azier the Swordsman]

I'm planning on purchasing the book 'Remembering the Kanji' to use for learning.

Thanks to other books by the same author, I have learned to read hiragana, and am now working on katakana.

[Locke]

only cantonese...V_V

[Tycho]

> Good luck in learning the 1000+ kanji needed for basic reading.

It's worse than you think ... in the Jooyoo Kanji official list, I think the total number of "officially recognized characters" is 1,945 (an intriguing historical irony which just dawned on me).

Yah, I know. I just couldn't remember the exact number of kanji in that list. And one should also point out that those are individual kanji, each which have many combinations and pronuciations!

[Bobtheduck]

It's intuitive, though... It gets easier, the more you learn... Or, at least, that's what I had heard... The more you learn, the more you can figure out on your own... Like Learning Multiplication tables, I guess... The way you figure out the kanji as you're reading is to learn spoken japanese, hiragana, katakana, and about 1/3 of the kanji, (learning all the radicals) then guessing what the symbols mean based on the context and radicals in it... Then, that should also tell you the pronunciation... That should make it easier to learn them...