はじみまして！

[reboundstudent]

はじみまして！

私の名前はミチェッルが、マルテをよんで下さい。中学校に英語を教えています。日本語を習いたいです、だけど学校に英語を話さなくてはいけません。週に四かいポドカツを聞きます、でも上手じゃありません。アドヴィスありますか？

[Annihilator]

Hey Mitchell! (If that's how you spell it), nice to see you here on the forums. =)

Ok well, it seems to me you're starting to get a decent hold on sentence structure and grammar; kudos to you on that. ^^ However you did make four or five grammar mistakes (Double copula) and a couple spelling mistakes haha. Um..if you want to become better, I suggest checking out http://guidetojapanese.org and reading through that. It's an absolutely huge guide to Japanese grammar lol.

Once you've pretty much mastered most of the grammar in there and have a decent vocabulary, you should start with making your Japanese sound more like a native speaker and less stiff as if a textbook were talking to you. The way I've been doing that is by playing Japanese online games and picking up the colloquialism and idioms that are used. Japanese MapleStory to be specific.

Good luck with learning Japanese!

~Brian

[reboundstudent]

Hi! Could you please tell me where the spelling errors and so forth are?

As far as colloquialism speech goes, I've heard that it's better to start out with a more rigid style (long form, honorifics) and work your way down (short form, slang.) I don't have any numbers to back me up on this, but friends of mine have said that learning "slang"like speak has made it really difficult to adjust to honorific language. Anybody want to offer an opinion?

[Javizy]

私の名前はミチェッルが
私の isn't necessary because we know you're talking about yourself, and you need a です after ミチェッル. You can just say ミチェッルです/と言います if you like.

ミチェッル、マルテ
Are these names supposed to be Mitchell and Marty? ミッチェル and マーティ sound better to me.

日本語を習いたいです、だけど学校に英語を
You can't have だ following です like that. It should either be 「です。だけど、学校」 or better yet 「ですけど、学校」

ポドカツ, アドヴィス
These should be ポッドキャスト and アドバイス/アドヴァイス. You really need to look these words up like any other, because sometimes they're made with complete disregard to English pronunciation.

聞きます、でも上手
でも, like だけど, comes at the beginning of a sentence, so the comma shouldn't be used here.

I wouldn't say learning ていねいご first makes things any easier. In fact, there's not much to it other than です and ます, so I guess you've already finished learning it. What you want to do is learn the plain uncontracted forms, with particles in place, and an understanding of what's being inferred in the sentence. This is really the core of the language that you customise to suit the setting.

I'm really not sure how you learn informal Japanese first. Take this, for example:

かれにメールおくっといたよ。
かれにメールをおくっておいたよ。
I sent him the e-mail.

へぇ、もうおくっちゃったの?
へぇ、もう(メールを)おくってしまったの?
Huh? You sent it already?

Both of these auxiliaries take a bit of understanding, and no textbook or teacher introduces contracted forms first, so I've got no idea how somebody could use and understand them without learning the plain forms first. It's the same with the particles: how do you know you can drop it if you don't understand what it's doing?

[Annihilator]

Ah, I think you guys misunderstood what I was trying to say about slang and such.

I said, once you have a complete understanding of the language and it's structure and grammar, THEN you should try to make it sound more natural. It is ESSENTIAL that you learn regular, stiff, textbook Japanese before going down to the less formal stuff or you simply won't understand it; it'd be like learning how to say something in a different language and knowing the meaning in English. Like...if I made up a language right now, I could say Blah Khe Zho Ram means hello, I like cheese, but do you REALLY understand what that sentence means?

Anyways, yeah, definitely get everything formal down first before learning colloquial Japanese.

頑張ってくだせ～！

[minty247_]

皆さん　初めまして。
私の名前はミンノです。でも日本語の名前もありますよ。
明美と呼んでください。
私はＪｐｏｄ　ｆｏｒｕｍの新人です。どうぞよろしくお願いします。
日本語はとても難しいですよね～私はまだビギナーです。
今日本語が上手じゃないですけど、もっと　もっと　頑張りますから、　きっと上手になると思います。
とにかく、私の趣味は音楽を聞いたり、絵を描いたり、ドラマを見たりします。一番好きな歌手は浜崎あゆみさんとＨｅｙ！Ｓａｙ！ＪＵＭＰの山田涼介さんです。一番好きな俳優は藤木直人さんです。
皆さん～一緒に話しましょう～