Questions from a noobie

[kcander902478]

Hello all. This is my first time actally putting some time into learning Japanese. Its something I've always wanted to do. And now I'm finaly doing it. Japan is also the one country on earth that I really want to go to. there are other countries that I wouldn't mind seeing, but Japan is something that I must do before I kick the bucket. I'm 19 now so I should have plenty of time do that.

I have lots of questions of course but I'l try to keep them to a minamun for now.

My first one is where excatly should I start. I just clikced on begginer courses and went to the oldest lesson. Is that right, or is there somewhere else I should start out?

My second question revolves around the written language.

Where do I even begin?

[ChrisClarke]

I started with the Newbie lessons season 2, specifically the Nihongo Dojo - Welcome to Style You series, and I'm now in Newbie Lessons Season 3 - Nihongo Dojo - Style You and Beyond. This seems to be the suggested starting point. After this I'm planning to go through the beginner series season 1, then Intermediate, and so on - at that stage, I'll probably also do the latter seasons of beginner as they are apparently non-linear.

You should at this stage (while you do the newbie lessons or even before you start) be teaching yourself hiragana and katakana. It should take less than a month for both sets of characters, probably less depending on how much time you spend each day. I found Smart.fm to be the most effective with kana. At each card, I would write the kana out about 5 times while saying its reading. The main goal is to ditch romanji as fast as possible - since Japanese is read differently to English and it’s so easy to fall into the trap of pronouncing Japanese words as you would English words while you continue to use romanji. After this you need to start Kanji, but since I haven't started that yet, I won't comment except to say I plan to use Heisig's Remembering the Kanji.

Good luck!

[kcander902478]

Thanks for your help, and relply

I have decided that I am going to do my best to learn the Kanji for each lesson as I go along.

Now I have another question: how do I type in Kanji?

Or do I have to copy and paste everything?

[Jessi]

kcander902478さん,

Please check out this link for steps on how to type in Japanese

http://tinyurl.com/typejp