I did a search and I could not find any results that came close to this so I ask of you all: Does any body have any tips on learning how to speak/read Japanese?

Thanks,
Davus

I strongly suggest you start learning kanji from the outset.  Don’t trust your Japanese teachers, who’ll most probably tell you you can always do that later.  That’s a waste of time and the real world is not as nice to you as your Japanese teacher is.  Besides, having a good command of kanjis will increase your vocabulary in ways that you would never imagine.  Try to learn at least one two kanjis every day and you’ll do fine.  Also look out for them damn postpositions, especially de and ni, they can be tricky and the Japanese (at least the Japanese book writers) like to quiz you on that.

Brazilian dude

I wrote a simple dyke and the censor shushed me?  Sheesh.

Brazilian dude

Lesbian?  I didn’t write lesbian, I wrote dyke, shesh again.  What about all those walls that prevent flooding?  I wouldn’t say they are lesbians, are they?  Sheesh…

Brazilian dude

Come on!  I wrote d y k e.  Sheesh…

Brazilian dude

Should I learn them in any sort of order?

Yes, kanji books normally list the simplest first and move on to the most complicated ones.  Besides, you don’t need to learn all of them.  They’re over 50,000 of them that have been created.  I’ve heard that there are 8,000 in current use in China and 1,945 in Japan.  Those 1,945 are the ones you should learn in order to read anything in Japanese.

Take a look at these sites: http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/kanjibukuro/japan-joyo.html

http://www.rikai.com

http://www.kanjiclinic.com/links.htm

Brazilian dude

The best way to learn any language is the way you learned your native one: by speaking and listening. Did your mother teach you by writing? No that comes later, after a basic grounding in speech. Ganymede

That would be true in an ideal world, but a lot of your skills are lost after you grow up, and the circumstances are not the same any more.

Brazilian dude

I agree, Ganymede, but we don’t always have the opportunity to learn a language that way.  Besides, as BD already stated, when you learned your native language, you were much younger.  I hope.

Sometimes I wish I had a secret button I could press that would make everyone around me speak a different language that I wanted to learn… And on rare occasions I wish I had a button that would just make everyone shut up.

-Tim

Hahahahahaha.

Brazilian dude