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I don't understand anything and I tried a bit, but IMO this is much more effort than normal. A friend of my confirmed you need to know hiragana. She has studied

I don't understand anything and I tried a bit, but IMO this is much more effort than normal. A friend of my confirmed you need to know hiragana. She has studied it a bit and could follow the lessons, whereas I couldn't (knowing next to nothing).

hombre_fatal 6y ago
I couldn’t even tell if the first example was showing how to create a conjunction “banana and monkey” or something else like “monkey eats banana”. Yeah, this would need a lot slower of an approach to work for day 0 beginners. Rosetta Stone and Duolingo are great examples of how it can be done.
- toto444 6y ago
  The site is definitely not supposed to be the main resource used to learn Japanese despite being self contained. It exists to complement the learning from a more traditional app.
- smeej 6y ago
  I didn't even get this far. I wonder if it's related to my aspie, literal brain wiring. In my head, it read like, "Symbol for monkey emoji. New symbol. Symbol for banana emoji with new symbol below it, and to the right." I certainly didn't get anywhere near "eat." I was comfortably conversant in English before I was 2, and I've learned Spanish, Greek, and Hebrew reasonably well, so it's not my language ability, or even learning with non-Latin alphabets, though I suppose it could be trying to learn without an alphabet at all? My patterns matching skills are strong. But guessing meaning of unknown symbols from their nearness to each other? Whooshes right by me!
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Well the good news is that the kana are really low hanging fruit. You can learn them in a day and as long as you continue learning Japanese you will be constantly exposed to them. There are only just over a hundred of them and, unlike English, they are only ever pronounced one way[0]. Kanji are significantly more effort, with 2k characters to learn and multiple pronunciations for each. Interestingly, while you will probably hate Knaji at first and wonder why they are still used, you will come to appreciate them later as they aid reading by breaking things up[1] and disambiguating between homonyms. [0] Ok, sorry, that was the lies-to-children version. Katakana are only ever pronounced one way. Hiragana has different pronunciation for は and へ when they are used as particles. Also there's pitch accent. [1] Japanese generally doesn't use spaces.
- imtringued 6y ago
  It took me at least a month to learn all Hiragana + katakana using getkana and they only really stuck after I began learning vocabulary. Learning them in a day is impossible. You can look them up if you want to get started on day one but that is completely different from actually knowing the by heart.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    Like I said, if you continue studying Japanese you'll be continually exposed to them which will make them stick. By "learn them in a day" I meant one day of decently focused effort to memorize the syllable for each kana character. Between flashcards, pronunciation, and writing it is very doable because that's what I did.

hombre_fatal 6y ago

I couldn’t even tell if the first example was showing how to create a conjunction “banana and monkey” or something else like “monkey eats banana”. Yeah, this would need a lot slower of an approach to work for day 0 beginners. Rosetta Stone and Duolingo are great examples of how it can be done.

toto444 6y ago
The site is definitely not supposed to be the main resource used to learn Japanese despite being self contained. It exists to complement the learning from a more traditional app.
smeej 6y ago
I didn't even get this far. I wonder if it's related to my aspie, literal brain wiring. In my head, it read like, "Symbol for monkey emoji. New symbol. Symbol for banana emoji with new symbol below it, and to the right." I certainly didn't get anywhere near "eat." I was comfortably conversant in English before I was 2, and I've learned Spanish, Greek, and Hebrew reasonably well, so it's not my language ability, or even learning with non-Latin alphabets, though I suppose it could be trying to learn without an alphabet at all? My patterns matching skills are strong. But guessing meaning of unknown symbols from their nearness to each other? Whooshes right by me!

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

Well the good news is that the kana are really low hanging fruit. You can learn them in a day and as long as you continue learning Japanese you will be constantly exposed to them. There are only just over a hundred of them and, unlike English, they are only ever pronounced one way[0]. Kanji are significantly more effort, with 2k characters to learn and multiple pronunciations for each. Interestingly, while you will probably hate Knaji at first and wonder why they are still used, you will come to appreciate them later as they aid reading by breaking things up[1] and disambiguating between homonyms. [0] Ok, sorry, that was the lies-to-children version. Katakana are only ever pronounced one way. Hiragana has different pronunciation for は and へ when they are used as particles. Also there's pitch accent. [1] Japanese generally doesn't use spaces.

imtringued 6y ago
It took me at least a month to learn all Hiragana + katakana using getkana and they only really stuck after I began learning vocabulary. Learning them in a day is impossible. You can look them up if you want to get started on day one but that is completely different from actually knowing the by heart.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  Like I said, if you continue studying Japanese you'll be continually exposed to them which will make them stick. By "learn them in a day" I meant one day of decently focused effort to memorize the syllable for each kana character. Between flashcards, pronunciation, and writing it is very doable because that's what I did.