CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

So I'm looking for a good site that might be able to help me, to simply build my Japanese vocab^^ Thought I found a good demo program last night, but looked like it didn't really work :/ So yeah if anyone knows of a good site, for an alternative of not sitting there and reading through my pocket dictionary, or paying ever-so-close attention to sub/lyric translations, or even havign to go out and buy a new book. And hopefully a site that works with images, because my mind processes better with visuals^^ So if you can help, thanks a bunch!^^

This program isn't bad:
http://web.uvic.ca/kanji-gold/

However, if you want to use your own vocabulary lists, you'll also need to download Japanese Word Processor (JWP)

i've been trying to figure out how to inrease my vocab (from pathetic to decent)

Grab yourself a copy of Kanji and Kana: A Handbook of the Japanese Writing System my Wolfgang Hadamitzky and Mark Spahn and teach yourself the thousands of vocabulary AND Kanji at the same time.

Utilizing this flash card software helps tremendously.

The best way to build Japanese vocab is to either move to Japan or immerse yourself in Japanese by watching/listening to anime, cd dramas or random Japanese TV shows. Failing that I go here for help a lot:
http://www.nihongoresources.com/
Also you could just try http://www.kanjisite.com/ I’ve always found that learning new kanji helps with building vocab.
The method I generally use is the translation one… basically I just find some raw manga and read it. If I don’t know certain words I’ll look them up on either an online dictionary or a personal one until I understand the whole lot.
You could also try random Japanese web page browsing and try to make sense of things…
頑張って暮れのろまちゃん。(^_~)v
(J/K about the のろま part.)

one of my good friends is going to japan for a year, and he's leaving me his issues of jump ^_^ that should be good reading practice. i've also heard anime isn't the best place to learn good japanese.

samuraidragon wrote:one of my good friends is going to japan for a year, and he's leaving me his issues of jump ^_^ that should be good reading practice. i've also heard anime isn't the best place to learn good japanese.

And what grounds is that based on?

In anime, you are hearing people speak in modern, everyday language.

well phrases like bakane (spelling?) meaning impossible, are never used in conversation.

samuraidragon wrote:well phrases like bakane (spelling?) meaning impossible, are never used in conversation.

Actualy it's 馬鹿な　(Baka na) and it really has more of the meaning of stupid or odd. Unless you mean Baka-me... but that also just means stupid. Suppose the 'ne' would work there if the 'na' does though.
It depends of what type of Japanese you want to learn as well which dialect ect. as well as the random slang *Shudders at Gal-moji* and whatnot. I'd say it's the fastest way to get a good ear (well second fastest, fastest would be live action or the news) and hasn't failed me yet but you've got to remember they're just speaking the standard dialect (though you hear kansai-ben quite a bit for hilarity) and chances are they're going to sound more direct and exagerated for characterization purposes.
Also never say never, I remember in highschool I heard a group of female foreign exchange students using 'boku' and 'kimi' while chatting about random things, which is very casual.

sounds good

Wahh I miss my Nihongo classes v_v... Actually, I'm missing those days with the flash cards of "kuruma" and "ensoku"... sensei's pink shirt... Those were the days^^ yeah hoping there was a program out there that had visuals in that way. I'm much too busy nowadays to even try and make them myself @_@... Still watching a ton of subs though but since they're shows that I've never seen before, I find myself really paying attention to what's going on rather than the actual language. Still pick up things here and there, but not so much. Moreso, need to watch raws of anime I've already seen. Stupid Chobits DVDs don't have that option though >_<

You know you could try just toggling the subtitle options on the controler, I've found more often than not it works even on the DVDs that don't actualy have the option on the menu and as I recall I got it to work for Chobits.
I miss the Japanese class as well... still progressing though need to work on my kanji.
Someday I'll have enough money to get the Zhonghua Zihai 80,000+ kanji whoot...
Pointless but fun. 楽しい！楽しい！楽しい！^_^v

Ouroboros wrote:I’ve always found that learning new kanji helps with building vocab.

For reading kanji, http://www.rikai.com/ is an awesome site. You can either put in Japanese text or a webpage and it will tell you what the individual words mean and information about the kanji used. I haven't gotten to use it much, but the times I have it came in very handy.

i think i'm going to take a japanese class at my local community college, that might be the best.