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This thread still needs help to grow. Feel free to post your useful resources, with a small description of what it is. You can also ask any questions related to this topic. ------------ Chances are, if you read VN, at some point you'll get interested in learning Japanese. This thread will NOT tell you how to learn japanese, I'm not qualified for that. This is a compilation of useful resources you might need, put together by helpful members and myself. If you know absolutely nothing about the language, I recommend you to read a bit about it before. Read some wikipedia pages and the introductions of various guides. The best way to approach things is probably to try out a bit of everything and see what works for you. Here are the categories of resources presented: *Learning methods: more-or-less complete schedule other people put together. *Useful softwares, apps & cie *Kanji & Kana *Grammar *Practice material Learning methods Those hardly consist of rigid guides that'll take you all the way, but they might help to give you an idea on how to approach learning the language. Don't spend too much time looking for methods, you'll most likely end up doing things in a different way anyway. Tae Kim's complete guide to japanese (everything is not complete yet) Nukemarine's Suggested Guide for Beginners "It's a guide on how to learn japanese by plowing through anki cards in a effective manner. It's made by a community member at Koohi forums. (I'd like to mention you can learn vocab very fast with this method and keep it in memory. But you learn without a lot of context, which has its negative sides.)" (Bolverk) The Tay way (note that this is from 2013 and no longer in use) Aaeru's "learn how to read VN in two years" Useful softwares Those are basic tools you'll almost certainly need, or at least try out, in your learning of japanese. Google IME: Allows you to type in Japanese. Click this link, click the big blue button, install: you can now switch your typing mode to japanese. Rikaichan: Firefox app that gives you a dictionary entry for a word by simply hovering over it. Extremely useful. Also exists for Chrome. Anki: A flash card software with a built-in algorithm for learning efficiency. Exists on Android and iOS too. (Regular hand-written flash-cards can be a useful tool too). Use shared decks to find vocab/kanji pre-made decks. Note about Anki: the use of Anki is advocated as necessary by some and deemed completely useless by others. Starting out with basic vocab/kanji grinding will probably help you ease into practice material, however learning tons of words, or worse even tons of kanji out of context is not a good idea. It's up to you to find out whether you want to use Anki (and whether you can). ITH, TA, Mecab, Jparser: ITH is a text hooker that'll extract the text from, say, a VN for you. Translation Aggregator will pass said text through parsers and dictionaries. Extremely useful to practice on VNs. Some tips and other softs for ITH here Chiitrans: a useful alternative to ITH/TA. Same principle. Read the tuto for more details. Visual Novel Reader: Another alternative to ITH/TA. Note about text hookers: it might seem obvious but do NOT use machine translations with your text hookers. You won't learn anything from the garbage it feeds you and you won't even actually understand what's going on, whether you think you do or not. It is also not a very good idea to rely on parsers for grammar purposes. Parsers are far from perfect. They certainly can't replace a grammar resource and basic googling. Think of text hookers as crutches you use until you become able to read without constantly looking up vocabulary. It is also a good idea to switch to japanese-japanese dictionaries as soon as you can - only they will give you the nuances of the words, and they're also much less flawed than existing free j-e dictionaries. Kanji & Kana Learning the hiragana and katakana should be about the first thing you do. It's not very long or difficult. Becoming accustomed to reading them is longer but it eventually comes. Kanjis are probably the biggest psychological barrier for japanese learners. I don't have a magical method to suggest, but do tell yourself it's really not that hard if you stop thinking too hard about it and trying to find the best, most optimized method for learning them. Try to learn the basic ones, see where you can get, and start practicing on reading as soon as you can. RealKana: This is just an example among others of ways to learn the kana. It's the first thing you should do anyway, and it's not hard or long. Heisig's Remember the Kanji: A method for learning kanji through memo stories, by association with an english keyword. Good for starters, probably won't get you through the whole kanji learning though. See Tay's guide and this website too. Kanjidamage: Learning the kanjis through radicals and memo sentences. I'm not a fan of his method, but it has some interesting information in the introduction and on some kanjis. Grammar Basic grammar: Tae Kim's guide: The most popular (and free!) guide on the internet. Rather compact, has all the essential grammar with good explanations and examples. A must. Genki: To take things more slowly, or have a different view on points you didn't get. (No links for that one yet, it's not free, sorry) Nihongomori: this is a youtube channel with videos explaining grammar, but also vocab and other misc things, done by native speakers (in english for the basics, japanese later). It goes from basic grammar (JLPT N5-N4 level) up to finer points (N2-N1 level) so it actually covers intermediate/advanced grammar too. The videos are pretty fun and well done, if you like the video media it might work good for you. More advanced grammar: Imabi: Lots of in-depth explanations about various grammar subjects. Not recommended for pure beginners and not written as a guide. If you want to go further than that, you'll need to go into japanese grammar books. Don't forget a simple research on the internet can give you lots of explanations about pretty much anything anyway. Advanced grammar: If you want to go further into grammar than that (for example if you want to read 古典 and such), you'll probably need to go into japanese grammar textbooks. This guide is approved as being really good. (Change the encoding of the page to Japanese EUC-JP for it to display correctly) This page could be useful too. Feel free to do your own research! Others: A grammar cheat sheet. Not for beginners, obviously. Nihongoresources: A grammar guide. Never tried it. Practice Material General advice: Try to avoid material based on comedy (because you need a good enough knowledge to get the jokes), or that rely heavily on slang or local dialect. Also, avoid things that have too much technical vocabulary (hard sci-fi) or chuuni stuff with abstract concepts and archaic kanjis. Chokochoko: Some practice texts (articles on various stuff), ranked by JLPT difficulty. Children's tales: easy place to start. Japanese subtitles for lots of anime. VNs in japanese: *Relatively easy language for a story-focused VN. *List of VN for beginners, with two levels of difficulty. *A big list of Visual novels to read if you are confident enough (~JPTL N2). I won't point you out to raw mangas, of course, but if you can find high enough quality scans (or can afford to import them) it's obviously a great way to practice. Every shoujo and shonen manga have furiganas on every kanjis. Seinen/josei may not have them, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily more difficult. Dictionaries, vocabulary resources Note: Japanese-english dictionaries (the free ones you'll find on the internet) are pretty much all based on Edict. Of course, as a beginner you have to use j-e dictionaries, but 1) edict is far from perfect 2) j-e dictionaries are inherently limited anyway: only japanese dictionaries will give you the right nuance (and they're rather excellent). So as soon as you can, switch to japanese dictionaries. The jump is not easy but it's necessary, especially if you intend to read VNs with a higher level of language. Overall, the internet is your friend! A simple search will often yield whatever you're looking for. Finding your way, especially in japanese websites, is the most useful skill you can develop (although once again you need to reach a certain level of confidence first). Jisho: Jap/eng dictionary. Tangorin: Same thing. WWWJDIC Dictionary site. Japanese online dictionary. Requires good enough knowledge of japanese to be used. Slang dictionary. Same as above. Writing recognition: Tries to find a kanji directly written with your mouse. Tanos: Various JLPT-related resources: vocabulary and kanji lists, etc. Blog posts and articles about learning japanese Blogpost by garejei: Tips and a view on kanji memorization. ----- Thanks to Clephas, Bolverk, cryofrzd, Okami, garejei, Mephisto and probably a bunch of others I forgot to add (sorry!) for their contributions.
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Nessa no Rakuen is a boy's love game. As from what I've seen, no one has even considered translating it and its such an amazing game! I mean that's just my opinion. I don't understand a word of it though and it upsets me greatly. D: I have no one to turn to about this and believe me if I could I would translate it myself but unfortunately I don't know how. ;___; So if anyone of you is willing to begin a translation project on it I would be so thrilled. Really, it would mean a lot considering no one has translated it yet. <3 The picture displayed below is a cover of the game. (The game itself takes place in Arabia from what I understand) And the characters displayed are Will (the blonde), Hakim (the man with dark hair), Ashraf (the man with purple hair), and Karim (the silver haired boy).
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- nessa no rakuen
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Hello folks, As the title suggested, I'm curious to see how many people will be interested in watching an instructional jp basic grammar livestream (which will be uploaded to youtube). It will be aimed for beginners. If I'm successful I will keep on going~. So far I only have rough plans but the set-up will look like this: Hitbox livestream 720p Microsoft Powerpoint Presentation No webcam I'm only planning to go over basic grammar (for now). As for the sequence, I'm going to follow this book and get other support reference from Taekim and Genki textbooks. I plan the frequency of the stream to be once a week, during either Saturday or Sunday (afternoon/evenings EST). I intend to answer questions during the stream in real time, though I will only have access to hitbox's chat, so you might have to register first (???). If I see enough people interested, I'll start preparing. Don't expect too much of me though, I don't know how well I teach yet . If you have other recommendations please do tell. I expect to start by March, by then I should have a months worth of presentation finished. Tentative topics covered during the first few weeks would be: Japanese sentence structure, Hira/kata, Kanji, Particles, Basic verb forms, etc. I will use romaji (under the hiragana for the first two/three weeks) and then phase it out. For example sentences, I will use the books' and pick up stuff from VNs I happen to read. I will ONLY teach GRAMMAR. For vocabs/kanji, you'll be on your own.
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When I launch MemoriaEN.exe it shows this I've been playing Hoshizora no Memoria for about a week now, and suddenly it does this. I've triple checked my non-unicode settings, it's in Japanese. Any idea how to fix this?
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- Hoshizora
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http://august-soft.com/hatou/ Plot: Peaceful, everyday life has returned to ashes. 2,000 years since its inception, an empire ruled by a single-family fell to barbarians. As one would expect, everything began falling apart in quick succession. While being pushed around by the torrent of the generation, people refused to give up and continued to search for a future. The only remaining successor of the throne(Miyaguni Akari) desired power. She had to expel her sworn enemies, and retake the country. A soldier who lost his past desired a master(tokita soujin?). A tempered sword must only be wielded for loyalty to one's master or country. That day, guided by fate, the two meet. Whether waiting for them at their destination is success or disappointment, nobody knows. I don't know if I'll actually bother with the characters. Discussion: Aiyoku no Eustia v2.0? Hype? Disappointment? What should we be expecting here?
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We already have a similar topic, but after several of years reading about Saya and Clannad and any other English translated VN, I'm a bit tired and now find those discussions uninteresting. Don't take it wrong, I do read English translated VNs, but It's really easy to find someone to talk about them now. Still it's much harder to do with untranslated VNs, and maybe this kind of topic can even help a TL group to decide on their next project. I know several people here who do read Japanese, and it'd be much easier to share our thoughts within a separate thread. TL/DR: let's try to start a dedicated thread to discuss untranslated VNs. Recently I've finished the first Tiny Dungeon game (want more Fon's voice) and now about to start my next Jp VN. I'll continue with TD later, but for now I'd like to have some imoutos. It doesn't seem that we'll be having SakuSaku patch released soon, so this is my number one candidate for now. But there are two more options - Caramel Box Great Art and Random Moe Imouto. I doubt any of the two can win against SakuSaku in terms of art and imouto, but what do you think? Maybe you have something to suggest?
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Edited April 5th, 2014: Beginner's room is now CAPPED. Everyone else who wishes to join from now on will have to be put on a waitlist. Intermediate room is still open. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello All, Me and my friends are looking for people who would like to join us in learning Japanese through Visual Novels. We use skype to get together. How this works: In general, you might be familiar with Aaeru's post. http://visualnovelaer.fuwanovel.net/2013/02/how-to-read-visual-novels-in-japanese-in-2-years-time-or-1-year-if-you-are-fast-%E2%80%95-learn-to-read-through-vn-or-anime/ However we'll be jumping straight into reading VNs after hira/kata, a few hundred kanjis, and basic grammar. (If you're still a beginner, that's no problem, come and hang around with us) We would answer any questions and help you with your studies. The setup the majority of us use is VN + ITH + JWPce/Jisho. Others use the wonderful Jparser. Feel free to use any other dictionary. Others supplement with Anki flashcards. For the near future: Once the recruitment process is done, people will nominate and vote for a VN to read and learn from. We would then set a deadline to read X amount of stuff by such-and-such date. The deadline isn't a doomsday time, rather we'll apply some sort of incentive system instead of punishing people who don't meet the deadline. We'll also set up a day to discuss material in group before the deadline. You can post questions in the skype room anytime, anyday. People should see it once they come online and be able to help you. If you want more help, you can always pm or call someone individually for help. This is suitable to fit people's schedules. The aim is to foster discussion with people asking questions as they read through the VN, and with others trying to help clarify. Anybody can hop in and join, from beginners, to advanced people (if you want to help). We just want the following from you: Be Open to H-scenes since that would keep our options wide. We probably won't be going to the extremes (yaoi-yuri, gore). To be courteous and respectful of other people's tastes. To be open-minded in many ways, open to new ideas, open to self-teaching. To participate actively and don't shy away from asking questions. If you're interested send me a message here at fuwanovel. OR skype me "rains90" EDITED MARCH 30th, 2014: Beginner's room's VN started 2 weeks ago on Koikishi Purely Kiss: http://vndb.org/v7260 Intermediate room's reached the OP movie of Kono Oozora http://vndb.org/v9093 Right now I need to know people's japanese skill level (more like what room they want to be in) and split people into the two groups. Everyone would have the option of switching in between the rooms if a beginner wants to tackle the harder VN, or vice-versa. So there're two options when it comes to the VN you want to do.
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I've learned so many new words from reading translated visual novels. For someone accustomed to the English language this comes a surprise to me. Is it a question of the Japanese dialect being so broad or the work of the translators? Either way I still think it's amazing :3 ^.^
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I recently finished reading a visual novel called Sakuya. It's in Japanese, but it isn't too difficult if you use text hooker and know some grammar. I just wanted to share it in case anyone else was interested in trying a short romance VN. I personally thought it was really cute and sweet When I read it, it felt really easy-going slice of life kind of VN. The setting takes place in a world that has advanced to the point they have human-looking robots working/living along with humans. The main character Akane, lives her daily life with Sakuya whom she considers family.. but in actuality, he's a robot. The special thing about him though is that he looks/acts almost human, and such compared the other normal robots. You could download the game for free at their site here. The free version contains no Hentai content, and the paid version includes it. It seems they also have other free VNs on their site too.
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I have notice this whenever I change locales from English to Japanese, but I never bother to be concerned about this. And now, it kinda bugs me when I see this. When I changed my locale back to English, I always see this japanese characters on my desktop. Then I thought it was weird to have this when I already changed my locale back to English. Any fix guys?
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Does anyone know any Japanese learning games? I really wanna play some games but all I can find are really lame quiz type games or super beginner games. I am kind of midway I can read some and I have a decent vocab but cant quite read a VN just yet. Are there any cool games? not quiz type games though。。。-_-' 。。。 っていうかそれほんとにゲームのか?!?
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Hi everybody! I have been studying japanese for some time now. To further improve my japanese, i want to read/play visual novels. I have been looking around at vndb.org, but as im kinda picky when it comes to entertainment (books, games etc.), i`d like to find what fits me . To break things up for you, And to help me visualize what kind of games is being recommended, i have thrown out ALL the things i would like to see in a game. I have also given a maximum amount of STARS to each. Say mystery have 3 stars maximum. If your recommendation have no mystery it will get 0 stars, some mystery 1 star and so forth. Up to a maksimum of 3 stars. One million cookies to the one who recommends the game with the most stars! No cheating TECHNICAL Short ☆☆☆ I would like the amount of time it takes to finish a game with true/best/good ending WITHOUT WALKTHROUGH to be relatively short. So if i need several playthroughs to FIND the true route, you should factor in this. TOTAL TIME <15h ☆☆☆ <30h ☆☆ <50h☆ Easy Japanese ☆☆☆ All / Almost all text is voiced ☆☆☆ Replay voice button ☆☆ Since i want to use VNs to improve my Japanese, it would be great to listen to difficult sentences several times. GENRE Mystery ☆☆☆ Comedy ☆☆☆ Action ☆☆ LIGHT Romance ☆☆ GAMEPLAY / FEATURES Interesting gameplay OR Choices that are NOT based on luck ☆☆☆☆☆ IF the game has srpg/rpg/action/adventure elements; This criteria is judged like you would any normal game. I prefer hard games btw:P IF the game has the choices more often seen in VNs; Stars are given based on how much thought you would put into the choices etc.The choices should NOT be based on luck: e.g "You go through the forest, and the road splits in three, will you take route A, B or C ?" . Nor should they be "Which girl do you want?". An example of more interesting choices could be a detective novel where you get presented with a number of choices, where only one is the "correct" one. To choose the correct one you would have to logically deduce it from what have happened earlier etc. Many VNs will get a low/zero score here even if they have many choices. So for a good score, the choices should be HARD but LOGICAL IF the game is a kinetic novel (or just one or two straightforward decisions) the score will be 0. "Easy" to choose different routes ☆☆ Making it easier for the player to know when/where the crucial choices are, for example by having a flowchart. (Maybe with the option of jumping around on the flowchart) OR having new game plus etc. Possible to work towards true/good ending. ☆☆ I would like the choices needed to get the true/good ending to make sense, and not be luck or Trial/Error PRESENTATION (I know this will be more subjective than the other things) Nice Artstyle ☆☆☆ Good voicework, with few irritating voices. ☆☆☆ Few extreme H-scenes ☆☆☆ I dont mind if there are no h-scenes at all, or a ton of them, either is fine. But i dislike: AAA - girls (children), bondage, scat, violence/murder sex, tentacles. Wow thats a long post from me. A thousand cookies to the ones who is bothered even reading it all. Here is a template: NAME OF THE VN TECHNICAL Short ☆☆☆ Easy Japanese ☆☆☆ All / Almost all text is voiced ☆☆☆ Replay voice button ☆☆ GENRE Mystery ☆☆☆ Comedy ☆☆☆ Action ☆☆ LIGHT Romance ☆☆ GAMEPLAY / FEATURES Gameplay / Choices ☆☆☆☆☆ "Transparent" routes ☆☆ True/good ending NOT based on pure luck. ☆☆ PRESENTATION Artstyle ☆☆☆ Voiceacting ☆☆☆ Few extreme H-scenes ☆☆☆ TOTAL : 00 x ☆ [COMMENTS] I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope someone would take the time to recommend me a game or two. Just copy the template, and bold the stars the game does deserve Thank you very much
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- Recommendation
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