I've been thinking as to why I want to learn Japanese, and I decided that it was because I want to… - Feed Post by Orval90
I've been thinking as to why I want to learn Japanese, and I decided that it was because I want to visit Japan someday. Why do you all want to learn Japanese?
posted by Orval90
Comments 24
I made a post similar to this before but we all want to learn because of anime and manga anything that deals with Japan's cartoon, drama, and music culture. IMO I don't like the music though.
I KNOW RIGHT @Ghosts it usually starts with anime and manga
I want to conquer Japan someday
For me, when I was a kid I had a strong general interest in languages, including programming languages (such as "B.A.S.I.C." on my Acorn Electron computer), although mostly Western European languages. But I had no desire to try to learn one properly—just a fascination. I particularly liked the look of writing systems in East Asia.
When I started secondary school dial-up internet was beginning to get more common and we got our first internet connection, where I began to get interested in more programming languages and HTML. Now I wasn't limited to using books to learn about languages. I began to get particularly interested in Japanese, as I started to learn about the existence of many video games that either never made it to the UK (such as Final Fantasy 1-6&Tactics) or were Japan only. Shortly around the same time in the late 90's I discovered anime when I came across a hidden anime slot on one of our primitive selection of 4 TV channels here in the UK, shown really late past midnight one or two days a week.
http://www.geek-pride.co.uk/filmandtv/insomnia-channel-4-the-90s-and-an-introduction-to-anime/
Eventually we got Satelite TV, which even though we now had hundreds of channels still didn't show anime other than on one single channel (Sci-Fi) only really late at night. But having watched Akira, Roujin Z, Perfect Blue, Wings of Honneamise, the first GITS movie, Martian Successor Nadesico, Evangelion, Blue Gender, Dirty Pair Flash, Burn Up Excess, and even awful stuff like Urotsukidoji, and of course Dragon Ball Z, I was hooked on anime for life! We switched to a different dial-up internet that didn't charge by the minute, I then started trying to find more series on the internet, leaving my computer running for days just to download single episodes of anime—often only to find out at the end that it wasn't dubbed/subbed or the subs were unreadable. Anime pretty much didn't exist in UK video shops though.
All this stuff spurred me on to want to learn Japanese more than any other language. I wanted to be able to be able to watch anime and play games that didn't release outside of Japan.
However, once I started learning Japanese, the language itself became the biggest attraction for me—the complex writing system particularly. I hated being forced to learn French at school, when there were other languages I had a much stronger interest in. So I spent many of my French lessons messing around looking through my Collin's English-Japanese dictionary instead and with practicing writing out the hiragana and katakana tables from memory.
Now, almost 20 years since I first started thinking about Japanese, I'm still really interested in the language itself and don't have any major specific purpose behind it. For most of the years after finishing school I barely practiced Japanese at all between college, working and playing video games. So I haven't become fluent in the language, as I'm mostly just having fun messing around with whatever aspect of the language I'm interested in.
I never planned to go to Japan, not even for a holiday. I'd never been abroad before. However, last year I got my first passport, at 29 years old. After saying I had no interest in ever travelling to Japan, for some reason after getting tired from my job I decided to quit and spend some of my money on spending a month in Japan. I went alone without using a travel agency, and didn't pre-plan my trip. I managed to travel around several different parts of Japan and met lots of awesome people. However, because the way I learn Japanese has been extremely haphazard and with no focus at all on speaking Japanese (only for reading it), I could barely speak Japanese at all. I realised how much I wished I could have talked properly to some people I met who barely spoke any English.
So now I have a bit more focus on speaking and listening, and hope to actually learn the language properly in a structured way now, so that I can actually communicate with Japanese people rather than only being able to read things. I don't think I'd want to live in Japan, as Great Britain is my home no matter how many different things I love about Japan. I have a deep longing to go back there on holiday though, far and beyond wanting to try out any other countries, and I want to be able to communicate fully with people next time, no matter how challenging it will be to learn to do on my own outside Japan. ^^- In short: "anime", haha. :D
@mog86uk are you still watching anime?
Anime is the main reason most people decide to learn Japanese. I am so guilty of that.- @Mika93. Yeah, of course! There's way too much anime I still haven't watched. I don't think I'm going to run out of that. I've got a couple of boxsets on my shelf I've not even got around to opening yet. :P
My main goal is to be able to play games in japanese, but along the line I met a really sick person who wanted to be a fanslator but couldn't. So I sort of took up their dream.
I have no idea how far I can go or if i'll succeed.
I started learning because I hosted some exchange students from Sendai and I wanted to be able to talk with them and make them feel at home. Also, I liked Japanese music. So basically it's a combo of culture + music + the language is really pretty and fun to learn.
Like most people, I wanted to learn the language mainly because of anime. It'll also help the career I'm aiming for though. My story is similar to mog86uk's. I'm gonna go ahead and right a novel too lol:
Right after Pokémon had changed the way the US viewed anime, a wonderful cartoon block called "Toonami" decided to take advantage of it's popularity by airing even more anime. My group of friends and I became immediately hooked with practically everything airing. My best friend and her sister decided they had to learn Japanese around this time, because of how much we all loved the culture we were learning through these mediums. She would come to school, and teach me some of her lessons from her private tutor. So I learned a few basic words from her when I was about..12 or 13. I loved it when she would bring me her notes, because I hated being forced to learn Spanish (a language/culture I had zero interest in, but was being forced upon me twice as much as my classmates due to my ethnicity). My parents were annoyed that I was more into Japanese than Spanish, and stopped allowing me to learn the language. I never stopped wanting to learn it though.
Fast forwarding 10+ years, I have decided on a career where being multi-lingual would be a huge benefit. Unfortunately, I am once again being forced to learn Spanish (due to it being practically a second language of the states, it'll look good on my application..). However, I decided that since I have to learn a language I've never liked I will also learn a language I've always wanted to learn. Even though it won't make me particularly competitive (as it's not one of the languages that help in this job), it's my way of rebelling upon having to learn Spanish lol.
The final nail in the coffin, because this career I'm shooting for is years off, was when I was re-watching Detective Conan. There are A LOT of bad fansubs for that anime...I got sick of it, so I decided to start learning Japanese early lol.
Huh. This is really interesting. I never really got into anime (mostly because no one told me the good ones, so I ended up finding things like Dragon Ball Z), but it seems to be one of the most influential mediums for you guys to learn Japanese.
Same here. I want to watch anime without having to bob my head up and down for the subtitle.
My original reason was to make manga and self publish in Japan and the USA. I had a plan too, but I ended up getting caught up in learning Japanese that I stopped drawing and watching anime (too much frustration from haters as well...) well, I kinda lost motivation since then and now want to return to learning years later
I, Adrian Tokugawa, will learn Japanese to one day restore the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan and bring power to the Emperor.
I mean, anime :D
check out my http://intelezsolution.com/uric-acid/
I started learning Japanese because I'm unemployed and on disability and I was getting profoundly bored. I watched a YouTube video by "whiteenglishgirl" where she explained why and how she learned Japanese and I thought "why not". I bought the Genki books and started self teaching. I've always liked Japanese video games, and anime is interesting at times. I'm very interested in Japanese history and philosophy, and when I started learning I found the Japanese cultural approach to many things is something I appreciated...
So really, I started learning on a whim. Now 7 months later, I'm still learning because I'm finding it genuinely inspiring and realised I'm developing quite a passion for linguistics. I'm even considering moving to Japan, even if only temporarily; as I feel it would be a good environment for me.- It's so cool hearing why everyone is interested in the language, I suppose it started because of anime but when I investigated the culture I became really involved with it so now when anyone says anything to do with Japanese I'm interested even if what they said had nothing to do with Japanese and it sounds like Japanese I'll just be like did you just say what I thought you said?!
Anyway anyone who might be a teacher can you give some tips? I'm running a Japanese class I'm currently teaching them how to write and encouraging them to use 'memrise' the site where I learned how to read and write Japanese + vocabulary anyway it's nice to have a website like this where people can discuss something they like or are interested in and can move towards a common goal 
My main reason is because I want to be able to import japanese games and play them.
I became to like japanese language from watching anime, but I want to learn japanese so that I can watch variety shows and also to understand japanese songs.
Mainly i'm dedicated to learn japanese because i want to be independent of translations, localizations or some stuff like that. It's not that i'm against it but i have my rights to do my stuff in the original language without modifications.
And of course, i'm planning to go travel or even living in Japan despite being aware of the problems and difficulties that are possible to face on.
I want to learn Japanese because, not only is it freaking cool to be bilingual, but I'm kind of contemplating whether I plan on living there when I get older. I find the culture and especially the language so beautiful. Don't get me wrong, America's cool and all but man, Japan is just so amazing. (In my opinion <3)
Anohana.
Cuz i want to visit japan, i want to watch anime without subtitle, and play a game from there
