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Learn the language. I won't say that E->J isn't more difficult than J->E, but if you actually learn the language it becomes a lot simpler.

Do you know the grammar? Particle words, verb conjugation? Okay, so the rest is just plug-and-play vocab. Whoops, now you can translate either direction.

If you're serious about it, you should see if there are any classes available near you. It's worth it to have a professional teacher.

Already use Jisho and Weblio for J->E purposes, xiao Not that I disagree with your approach for general E->J, but the problem for me is that I was thinking of making natural sounding translations rather than just settling for comprehensible, and relying entirely on those can be better than nothing, but gives you no real indication of what would be natural or unnatural. Thanks all the same though.

Welp, guess that settles it. If I want to do this, I'll just have to take N1's advice and do things the slow but honest way. Thanks for the opinions, everyone.

Natural as in .. translations that sound native ? Yep there's no way around it like Nomake said, we gotta learn the language. Start watching more live action shows like Kamen Rider or J-drama, YouTube JP subbed interviews etc etc. I can't use Weblio .. it looks too web 1.0

I just do it like little kids & imitate Japanese celebrities whenever I talk to someone fluent in JP. They might give me a weird look at 1st for sounding like Matsumoto Jun at the start of the sentence and ending it sounding like a VN dojikko anime character. But we have a fun laugh with the language, formality's over-rated！ ～ ♩

The biggest problem for me to learn japanese would be Kanji. How many ideograms do even exist and how many of them are used and do japanese people really know all of them? Do you also need to draw the lines in the correct order when you're writing them with your hand?

For me learning the proper stroke order is sort of an art ～ so besides liking it it helps me out. My JP teacher in high school was a Japanese girl from Osaka & she'd tell me how fun it was for her to sit down get drunk off cold-cold zake & draw calligraphy as if she was a painter .. it sort of rubbed-off on me sans the being an alkie part 😅

Jishorg's a godsend tho'

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There are just over 2,000 common-use kanji. There are far more if you want to get fancy but if all you care about is being able to read signs and websites and talk to people, 2,000 is your magic number. Japanese people tend to know the majority, though the age of smartphones has helped a great deal (because if you know what the word is, the phone can help you figure out which kanji it is).

You will get slapped by any Japanese teacher if you write in the wrong stroke order, but in general no one cares. The thing is, though, making them look right tends to work out better if you use the proper stroke order. Once you know the rules of stroke order, it gets a lot easier to figure out how to write something just by looking at it. Similarly, once you know the basic radicals (and their meanings), it gets a lot easier to understand the meaning of complex kanji (even if it won't help you pronounce it in Japanese).

These are two key pieces of advice.

Rule: top to bottom, left to right; try to make each character fit into the same size square box

Radicals are key to understanding chinese characters. They're like clues to what the word means. Something that has to do with water will always have the three strokes on the left. Something that has to do with people will always have the bar on the left with a hat. Something that has to do with fire will either have a fire on the left or four dots on the bottom. There's a limited number of radicals, so memorizing and recognizing them will greatly help in general kanji understanding.

Nomake! I has question, any recommendations for elementary japanese books? Gonna head to Japanese for a college course, wanna get at least a head start.

☆ Genki・Japanese for Busy People・and Japanese from Zero！ ～ きらきら☆

Get a book on particle words, such as "All About Particles" by Naoko Chino. Get a book on verb conjugation, such as "The Handbook Of Japanese Verbs" by Taeko Kamiya. Get a decent Japanese dictionary, of which there are tons. With Japanese, once you know particle words and verb conjugation, it stops being a mish-mash of sounds and starts to make sense. Suddenly all you're missing is vocab, which you can get just by listening and looking it up in a dictionary.

If you want to get a head start on writing, get some kana and kanji workbooks. Just doing kana practice will give you a massive boost in writing exercises, since hiragana and katakana are the basis of everything else. Doing kanji practice is just icing if you plan on taking formal classes anyway.

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Most of all be curious .. I'm currently trying to learn Korean as you might've guessed by all the K-pop videos I've been posting. My Japanese isn't perfect, but I feel like if I need to know what something means or how to say something in Japanese, it's as easy as getting milk from the fridge thanks to the internet.

Starting out my road to Korean I find myself asking two fundamental questions in learning a new language：

1. How do I say (blank)？ and ..
2. What does (blank) mean？

As long as you stay curious and don't lose interest .. things'll pay off in due time. My 2 cents ～ ☆

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YOUTUBE ( https://youtube.com/watch?v=xi9RvsTn5ig )

Those are the basic questions that someone with literally zero experience in any language will ask--no matter what language it is. That's when you have to realize that there's such thing as asking a different question.

Rather than "how do I say" or "what does ___ mean," understand the grammar of the language. Try to learn how a 'sentence' comes together. Understand the rules that govern the language. I think you'll find that once you've done that you'll get a lot more usefulness out of asking those first two questions.

Fun thing--this goes for more than just 'foreign languages', and totally applies to programming languages as well. It's all just a language. Once you see how the language operates, you can start to make guesses and figure out the vocabulary.

WTF i going on with these LCD touch screens in the cars these days?? i was watching a review of the 2018 Ford Fiesta on YT and i saw a view of the interior. they decided to slap a 15-18" screen on the center console and remove the previous set of physical buttons. some have a molded shell surrounding the touch screen (recessed) to make it part of the center dash while others just had a down sloping dash with a fucking screen glued onto the sloped center console as if its was an after thought. it looks like someone glued a ipad (including holder) onto the center console of a 2004 Honda Civic and said that it looks neat as hell .

i like the first front face (2011 model) of the Fiesta, the 1st face lift not so much but the 2018 facelift is an improvement over the 2016 face model.

This post has been edited by 207 on Nov 12 2017, 11:13 PM

That's SO true !! I remember having my epiphany that a Japanese sentence is basically SOV (subject - object - verb) even though it was staring at me right in the face since the 1st class I took when I learned what です (desu) was. Kind of like the way Yoda talks ～ rules are truly there for a constructive reason !

( I put stuff in parenthesis for APX ^^; )

Funny you mention that cause I was listening to the Snow Crash audio book today while dozing off into a nap this Sunday afternoon. The book has it's flaws, but it reminds me of the Matrix which I love.

But I suck at programming tho .. I know basic forum code and how to tweak things on HTML to fuxx with my browser .. and emoji's I guess ?

One of these days I should dive into some type of coding class or exercise .. cause like 99% of you guys my friends are all programmers or know above ordinary CompSci language skills. ❤

Well, be careful with that. That's not a hard rule by any means. Sure, it can be laid out that way, but where the subject, object and verb are are determined by particle words rather than where in the sentence they're placed.

Remember, because Japanese is a context-based language, you can even end up in situations where the subject is omitted entirely. So don't rely solely on SOV to tell you what's what. That's why learning particle words is so critical.

You're absolutely correct. I'm gonna get those 2 books you recommended because particles & verbs/conjugation are my 2 biggest hurdles in progressing my Japanese .. moreso than kanji like N1-kun so aptly mentioned！👍

Gee, I wonder what you'd think of every Tesla model, then.

Please remember that 207 is a crotchety old man who can't deal with all this new-fangled technology stuff. Be patient with him.

all i ask is that they make an effort to make it look like it fits there rather than glued onto a place where its out of place. ie this:

if you can fold it down and retract it inside then im fine with it but having that in open position all the time looks out of place.

LOL here's my critique on the Tesla model, id rather not comment on it as it would take too long . i sure must be old as hell, when will the dog year system stop applying to my actual age

i honestly wouldnt want a Tesla, it would've rusted to hell before i could find out how to scroll to the wanted radio station and set a favorite. true story, i had to use a sync Ford focus for a few days when my car was in for repairs. i had it for 3 days and on the 3rd day i realised they had some actual buttons/knobs for the radio tuner. the first 2 days were wasted trying to figure out the touchscreen.

This post has been edited by 207 on Nov 13 2017, 10:12 AM

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So when I get a new laptop eventually, I'm considering forgoing some resource-hogging antivirus entirely and just getting by using that Malwarebytes Anti-Malware thing some people here would recommend. How feasible is this? And if it is, what I do need to know before attempting it?

Going strong for almost 10 years.
Block your ads, filter your scripts, and a subscription to common sense is all you need.

This post has been edited by Sensation! on Nov 13 2017, 09:29 PM

Hmmm, so I should be getting malwarebytes too then? Gonna check on this.

Do all your surfing in Chrome, because on that browser, you can set the default settings. I disable Popups, Flash and Javascript by default, and only enable them when I trust the site.

Don't go to shady sites. If you must, then do so in a VM that you can just delete after you've gotten whatever you went there for.

I have my machine running with the same OS install for 6 years, and it hasn't bogged down yet. I only have Windows Defender (formerly Windows Security Essentials) installed, in terms of antivirus.

Finally, as a final precaution for the truly paranoid, install Ubuntu, and dual boot Windows and Ubuntu. I use Ubuntu for paying bills online exclusively, so in Windows I don't really care if everything on it is taken over.

(I have a separate Ubuntu server running where I do all my emails. But, that takes way more time and effort to set up than what is practical.)

Seconded.

This post has been edited by umustwait101 on Nov 13 2017, 09:47 PM

I'm sure you can do this in literally any half-decent modern browser though. I'm speaking as someone who uses both Chrome and Firefox. Firefox doesn't have Javascript blocking built right in, but the necessary add-on is easy to get and the browser blocks Flash stuff by default.
As for shady websites, I stay away from them on principle. No need to treat me like the average tech support client.

Anyway, settling on the no antivirus route for the next laptop then. Thanks for the opinions. I've kept this aging laptop from 2006 going (and it's still going) with antivirus installed, and gotten a bit tired of all the resources it needs, so not having to run one at all will be refreshing.

Also, make a backup of the system as soon as you get it into how you like it. If something does go haywire, restoring from a backup is much easier than reformatting and re-installing everything.