My first New Years Resolution...

[MasterSwordUltima]

Oh boy. I never considered a New Years resolution because I never needed to lose weight. But it turns out that you can make ANYTHING New Years resolution, so I thought to myself in my seemingly endless nights at work, what is something I would like to change (for the better). Uh, saving money is well and good, but I want to have something to show for it; perhaps making something or learning something. Hmm.

Fuck it, I'm going to (attempt to) learn Japanese.

I can speak (some) Serbian (Serbo-Croation), and I can read/write Serb and some Russian. I find different alphabets to be fascinating and fun. It's like a secret code that millions of people know - but most Americans don't.
Anybody have any proper knowledge of Japanese sentence structure and grammar? If so, throw me a message. Learning the hiragana and katakana should be moderately easy - yet still a good challenge (wishful thinking hopes I can play some of my untranslated S/NES roms without having to learn much kanji - and Animal Crossing names will sound correct).

Anyway, I'm posting this for two reasons:

1.) Anybody feel like joining me (unlikely, I suppose) - I do have some friends that are learning this with me, but the more the merrier.

2.) I want to hear some of your god awful New Years resolutions.


/discuss

[Liliith]

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[mrz84]

Resolution: Finally learn to play the violin. That's something I've been wanting to do for years.

[MasterSwordUltima]

Actually, a close friend of mine wants me to start learning piano/keyboard so we can play freestyle funk - him bassists and another friend lead guitar. Okay. I doubt I'll ever truly learn the depths of music theory, but dicking around and making a fun beat is A-OK with me.

I'm finding flashcard programs/apps for the different kana is incredibly handy. Especially ones that show you the kana, then you reply by typing the romaji. I've gotten A-I-O-U-E, KA, Ki, KO, KU, KE, SA, SHI, SU, SO, and SE pretty much down pat (hiragana) and it's only the first of the new year.

[MasterSwordUltima]

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UPDATE DOUBLE POST WOAH!
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So goshdarnit, I'm still at it. Kinda proud of myself. I've been reading hiragana left and right just about everyday. My comprehension of anime has gone up about 20%, mostly due to me jumping ahead of my schedule and trying to learn some sentence structure and words. "Kore wa pen desu" was actually a lot of fun to learn, and then switch it up into question form, change this to that, or over there, etc etc. And now when the Mrs. wakes me up I found myself yelling "sugu sokodarou"...then I sit up and think to myself...wtf did I just say that subconsciously? Which is something I never did with serb or russian. I really dig this nihon stuff.

[Gleeok]

Sounds like you are making some good progress. I've actually thought about learning to read Japanese solely for the purpose of being able to play through Japanese games that have not, or will never have, been localized. From what I was able to gather on the subject so far however, is that it is very difficult to learn the various Kana without first learning the spoken language, or at least the basics. This was at least five years ago so there may be more (better) online resource aids now.

[MasterSwordUltima]

Hmm, that's interesting. I can see how some phonetics can be taught, erhm, wrong? For example, words ending in U, the U part is rarely pronounced - (unless you want to sound extremely girly/gay, which most people don't). Same thing with Shi, you basically don't ever enunciate the i part - so the sound is basically "sh". However, like in english, there are exceptions. Words like Shite would be prounced shtay.

Translating obscure games is actually a big part of the reason I'm learning. I feel as though I can enjoy the earlier Final Fantasy games better this way, along with tons of other stuff.

[Saffith]

A word of advice for when (or if) you start learning kanji: use multiple sources. Different books/dictionaries/websites/whatever are likely to disagree to some extent on meanings and pronunciations, and you're likely to see incorrect stroke orders now and then.

WWWJDIC is quite useful. The Yamasa Institute's dictionary is the best I've found for stroke orders.
Once you know a few hundred, though, the stroke orders of new ones are usually obvious. Usually.

Sounds like you are making some good progress. I've actually thought about learning to read Japanese solely for the purpose of being able to play through Japanese games that have not, or will never have, been localized.

If you just want to navigate option menus and such, you don't need to learn much. Kana, a few simple words, maybe a few basic kanji. Transliterated English words are common, so just knowing katakana is enough for a lot of games, as long as you don't care about the stories.




I've been making a point of spending at least an hour a day working on the stuff I want to do - working on my quest, or ZC, or other programming projects, whatever. Seems like finding time for things I want to do should be easy, but apparently I'm so lazy that I have to make a point of it.
I didn't really think of that as a new year's resolution, but it's something I resolved to do starting in January, so, sure, why not.

[MasterSwordUltima]

It's strange, this is perhaps the most in-depth I've ever gotten with ZQuest. I realize ZScript has been around for a while, but for some reason I had this idea that it was so minute and niche. I mean, I programmed RGSS/2 general stuff before, so why I never delved into this is beyond me. The only barrier really is just syntax.

I'm trying to pick up at least a new word a day or so. Just asking random questions, then I check out various translations and definitions. It's not unlike a Zelda game, where you need to keep going back to places once you've discovered new definitions of older words, and it unlocks new phrases. At least that's how I'm looking at it.