Japanese ...

[skate.101]

I was wondering if any1 who doesn't live in Japan and isn't by birth Japanese managed to learn the Japanese language and understands the Op/Ed of Anime ... by "understands" I mean you really do get it and enjoy it just like any other song in your native language ...

[Diablo]

I've been learning Japanese for 6 months from self study and I do understand many of the japanese dialogues in the Animes. But songs are too fast to understand and they're spoken in somewhat different way. So I think maybe I'll start getting the words from the songs in after maybe 6 more months.

[Jikochuu]

I've been learning japanese for three years at university and I gotta say that I don't really get the songs XD any of them actually !

Singers use to employ methaphor that are hard to get when you're not a native speaker... I can understand the words, but not their senses in this context ! Which means (ultimately) that I don't get the meaning of the song ^^'

But I do understand the dialogues and the story (excepted when the characters start to speak faster than my ears can catch the words XD)

Also, one of my teacher told me one day that we were the only ones who can interpret the words as we understand them... She said that one japanese sentence could mean different things according to the person.

I guess it means that we are able to perceive a song's meaning in our own way ^^

[kaoru]

I've studied japanese when I was in the university but never finished my degree anyways. It's a really hard language to learn, harder to speak, and MUCH HARDER to read, you have to have a top-notch memory (which I don't.) Anyway, yeah it is a very poetic language where each word often has more than 10 different meanings depending on the way you write them, the phrasing, or even the sound. For example the verb "akeru", which is used more commenly as "to open", also means "to unravel", "to begin", "to expire", "to make a hole in" etc. It also means "dawn" or "to end" if you are referring to the sun/sky (yoru ga akeru - the night is ending) and its also the word people use when referring to the empty space when someone leaves a room- so yeah study up, hard of course watching anime/japanese tv shows also helps you improve your vocabulary and learning these little quirks.

[Ashnay]

I've been trying to self-teach myself Japanese recently, but I've decided to learn the alphabet before I did grammar and everything. Right now, I'm focusing on Hiragana, then Katakana, and then whatever Kanji is. Learning a language does take a lot of memory skills and if you don't use it, you'll forget it. I doubt I'll ever be able to understand the songs but sometimes when I hear them say stuff, I recognize it. : D