Well, checked the FAQ, and didn't see this one answered.

I was curious about the translators.

What was your first language?
How did you learn English/Japanese?
What do you think is the best way to learn Japanese?

And finally, which is your favorite language? For Anime? In General?

Just a curious lurker and a big Inu fan.

Draco-1

Well, I'm not a translator at FGF, but you'd probably consider me fluent in both Japanese and English, and I'm confident I'd be able to produce a reasonable quality translation if I tried, so I'll take a shot at answering your questions.

>What was you first language?

English. Born and raised in Portland, OR. Chronologically, 17 years in Portland, 1/2 in Japan, 1 1/2 in Portland, 2 in Japan, then 1 1/2 in Portland, which pretty much leaves me halfway between 22 and 23.

>How did you learn English/Japanese?
>What do you think is the best way to learn Japanese?

As both my parents speak only English, I didn't really have any chance to pick up Japanese before 14 when I went to high school. I studied fairly hard, or at least harder than every one else in my class, the first year, and, since I also was going to night classes at the local college, I was pretty much done with what my school had to offer by the beginning of my junior year. Mid-junior year, I went to Japan as an exchange student for a half-year and attended a Japanese high school during that period.

After that, I returned to the US, and, for a year and a half studied Japanese independently, mostly using Kumon (www.kumon.com) correspondence. I then left for Japan again in 2000, attending a Japanese Language school in Osaka. I had originally intended to go to college in Japan, however, due to a number of personal reason, I was unable to complete that goal and eventually returned to the US 2 years later.

From my experience, the most effective way to learn Japanese, or any language for that matter, is to place yourself in an environment where proficiency in that language becomes a necessity for you. As they say, necessity is the mother of all invention. If you cannot make yourself believe that the language is somehow necessary for yourself, both consciously and subconsciously, I'd find it hard that you would even be able to get anywhere in the language. But hell, IMO, you can really say this about ANYTHING.

Anyhow, for most people, this would probably mean going to Japan and living there in an environment that requires you to learn Japanese. Thus, teaching English in Japan, for example, would not be optimal for this task, nor would sitting in America and just passively studying Japanese in your "free time". Some people, though, can't go to Japan for whatever reason, and for those people I'd just like to say that a committed student who is actively studying as hard as they can outside of Japan is going to go a lot farther than someone who just goes over to Japan with a passive expectation that Japanese will eventually just "sink in".

OR...

We could hang out and talk to people like you and watch anime, that works too!

I'm not a translator, but I know them pretty well. For all three, English is their first language. All are taking Japanese in college right now--which is probably the best method of learning it. Bakadeshi, accela, and kai-san will answer you once they get back into town.


The Chibi Has Spoken

well im no translator but i'll take a crack at it...

though i speak cantonese, it was mainly my first language. second language was english. i found it easy to learn bantonese by watching Chow Sing Chi movies...

so i guess the best way to learn japaenese is to watch japanese movies w/ subtitles as practice after u study japanese. if u understand hte movies somewhat, u're doing pretty good...

anime is fine in japanese though im cantonese.. i cant read or write but i understand hte language. i want to take japanese but my high school doesnt offer it as a foreign language coruse, so i'm crossing my fingers that the college i want to go to has Japanese as a class cuz i want to learn and understand RAW anime instead of waiting for subs.... plus i plan on going to japan maybe next summer XD

Thank you all for your replies. Immersion is a great teacher, but unfortunately I won't be going to japan any time soon. A college course is an option, though I was looking at some of the self-teaching resources to at least get a foundation to work from. Anyone try those? I also once saw a book that explained Japanese cultural refrences you often find in their language. A similar reference would be "Even the Playing Field" or "The Final Straw." From what I read it was rather neat .

I would love to hear from the others as well.

Thanks again.

Hi, I'm not a translator at all but this topic really interests me even though all I can do at the moment is wish that I could speak and understand Japanese fluently.

I am a 16 year old male born in the U.S and I am full Chinese. My native language is Chiu Chau, it's a dialect that's not at all widely used as Mandarin or Cantonese. I am fluent in all aspects of English, I also speak Shanghainese, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Spanish. I can understand Cantonese as well but I am rarely exposed to it. Lastly, I know a tad of Japanese from anime and especially jpop! (Ayumi Hamasaki ). The languages I listed were in order of fluency by the way

When I am older, I am willing and hopefully will in fact travel to countries like Japan in order to learn the language and culture, as Nihongaeri has advised There's so many more languages that I want to learn! I just wish there'll be enough time for me It's something that I want so badly but I don't know if it will ever work out in the long run.

Right now I'm trying to absorb as much Japanese as I can from watching Inuyasha and Ayumi Hamasaki concert videos and listening to hundreds of her mp3s hehehe This is a good way to learn while at home and still enjoy some good entertainment. You should do the same too DracoOne, that's only if you haven't yet, I mean.

I shouldnt even reply here, Im not fluent at ALL lol, tho when I watch a RAW Inuyasha ep, or even a subtitled one, I do understand some times what they are trying to get across..but not enough to ever say I know the language lol

My highschool doesnt offer Japanese

But the little bit of Japanese I know, which is prolly in the range of 150-200 random words..cant do real sentences..well write them sometimes I can read them..but not in the actual Japanese writing, just Romjia or whatever it is.

But I learned that from watching Inuyasha, Rurouni Kenshin, Chobits, and Fruits Basket..I also learned it from several japanese to english online dictionarys plus just a few websites that had lots of Japanese words on it

Wow..I typed alot..thats unusual for me

Well, I'm not an official translator, but I do seem to be a source of random news that I pull from random Japanese websites, so... it's almost the same thing! :P

Anyway, my first language is English, and I've had three years of Latin in high school and two years of Japanese in college (I would have gladly taken more, but my college only offers two years ;_;). Strangely, having taken Latin beforehand made learning Japanese really easy, because the grammar of the two languages is strangely similar (and I didn't get thrown for a loop with all the different verb endings for Japanese, since Latin has, like, fifty ^_^*). Pretty much the hardest part about Japanese is the different levels of politeness (and knowing when to use them), and all the weird idiomatic phrases they use.

When it comes to written Japanese, I'd highly suggest learning it from someone who knows it rather than just memorizing and copying the hiragana table (at least when it comes to writing it yourself). It's all about stroke order, and the way you have to do all those "lifts" and "sweeps" and whatever that you can't learn just by looking at a picture. I mean, once you get the general gist of how things are written, you can probably figure out stroke orders of unknown kanji, but when it comes to first learning it, get some help.

And this is gonna sound silly, but I kid you not, I still rely on it to this day. I had a private Japanese tutor for about two weeks, and he told me, "Think of two names, one beginning with 'A', the other beginning with 'S'." Now, it's probably the fact that I picked "Aristotle" and "Santa" that made this sentence so memorable ^_^*. But, basically, the sentence ended up being: "Aristotle kicked Santa twice near his mother's yard. Really? What nerve." Why's this a useful sentence? It's the Japanese alphabet! A, Ka, Sa, Ta, Na, Ha, Ma, Ya, Ra, Wa, N. Spiffers.

Now, even though I translate stuff for fun all the time, I don't claim to be fluent at all. That would take years, and would likely require me to actually go to Japan, which is an endeavor that I do not see happening in the forseeable future. But, in the meantime, I brush up on my vocabulary by regularly perusing Japanese websites, and do other such things to help keep the constant Japanese input into my head. Really, it's the best way.

I don't translate for any fansubs specifically but if my cousin gets raws of Inuyasha before subs come out, I usually translate it for him first. It usually takes me around an hour or two to translate a full episode of Inuyasha. I don't know how to describe my Japanese level but I have been taking it for four years. I can perfectly understand something like Inuyasha, but I don't understand anything in Ghost in the Shell. My high school had it and between the summer of my junior and senior year I studied abroad in Hiroshima for the summer and I just came back from Hiroshima again for a short visit on Tuesday. Most of my teachers say the best way is to go there.

There are certain English teaching positions in Japan where Japanese is not required so that may not be the case at some points. One of my recent Japanese teachers never took a conversation course in his life and learned all of his Japanese by first hand experience. He went to a specail kanji school in Tokyo and learned like 800 kanji in like 6 months. I only know like 450-500 (well over a million if you count numerical kanji). I know in Elementary school they teach up to 800 though.

My uncle has recentley been showing me like one week jobs for businesses that need Japanese speakers. Even though it's one week, the pay is like $8000. When my uncle showed me these jobs, I was barley learning humble speaking and the super formal way of speaking, keigo. Now that I know them I guess I will take whatever opportunity comes next.