Post

Ter Voland wrote:

Hope y'all are doing well! I know that new year's resolutions are viewed as mostly jokes but I actually took mine from last year seriously. I'm pretty happy that I was able to keep mine on learning Latin. I'm at chapter 10 in Lingua Latina by Hans Orberg. For this year, my new year's resolution will be to learn Japanese along with Latin. Would be nice to understand vocaloid without looking up translations. I'm currently reading Genki. If any of y'all are studying Japanese, I'd appreciate any tips.

I wonder how hard it is to make Miku songs in Latin haha. Would be awesome to translate some songs once I finish Lingua Latina.

頑張って！応援するから!　That is an impressive resolution, all the best. I've studied Japanese for thereabouts of 5 years and am able to speak a limited amount of Japanese casually.

If you are studying via a book, don't. At least until you're off the basics (N5). The reason is, I consider it tantamount for a beginner to familiarise themselves with the writing system and pronunciation of Japanese. It will help a lot if you have a solid foundation!

In the meantime, try as soonest as you can to move away from Romaji towards Hiragana. Use Anki or one of those apps to try mastering the Gojuon (the alphabet). After that move to mastering Katakana. With the alphabet down, then you can try for a class or one of those online classes like Dogen's.

Once you're comfortable with several phrases, try finding Japanese YouTube channels on a topic you are familiar with AND one of those daily channels, you can use the former to help you contextualise terms and get some association learning.

Then try to spread your wings on social media or the sort where you can interact in a way or form with native speakers. Of course ideally it would be to have Japanese friends or visit Japan.

I'll be honest in my first year of studying Japanese, a family trip to Japan worked wonders on pushing me forward in my Japanese.

What I can say for sure is this, don't be ashamed to try, and try again!