A warm greeting from Alex, here in Denmark

あれっくす · 29 Sep 2019

Hello everyone!

My name is Alex, I am 29 years old and I live in Denmark, Europe.

I've had the interest of learning Japanese for a very long time, and last year around October, I decided to attend classes in Japanese, I paid ¥31639.38 or 2000 danish kroner, for 50 lessons, spread over 15 thursdays, and I learned a lot from that course, so this year I decided to attend a new class, and that class started last thursday, and it's been great so far!

I spend around 2-3 hours a day, reading hiragana, writing hiragana, listening to hiragana and doing my best to remember it all, I have also ordered a few books from Amazon, mainly books about "How to write Hiragana" "How to write proper Hiragana" and the last two books I ordered, should arrive by monday, and i'm looking so much forward to starting with those books.

The best way of learning for me, is trying, trying to read something aloud, and if it's wrong, hopefully someone would correct me, and in that way, i'll discard the wrong, and replace it with the correct

I'm happy that I found "jref" it seems like a really nice and cozy place, where people can talk with each other, and it seems like a really great place to learn from, so thank you!

Best wishes and regards from Alex!

Grandpa Frank · 29 Sep 2019

Welcome Alex ! Glad you found us. Many members here join to help with their Japanese studies. You will find a lot of helpful information in old posts here as well as newer ones. Members and staff here are super helpful with any questions you may have. Hope you enjoy your time here and find our site helpful in your learning.

あれっくす · 29 Sep 2019

Thank you Frank!

Oh, tell me about it! I have been roaming the forums for an hour now, and i'm so glad I joined JREF, and I already posted my first question in the "Learning Japanese" section, hopefully it won't be taken as "Wow, that was fast he asked for help..." but I am really stoked about learning japanese, and i'm dedicating a lot of my time into learning it, and who knows, I might end up being good at it?

Enjoy the weekend Frank!

Alex

thomas · 29 Sep 2019

Welcome to the forum, Alex!

TGI-ECT · 29 Sep 2019

I am not normally a welcoming type of human in any sort of venue, but I like that use of 'warm' up there and I am guessing that English isn't your native language, but you are using it in an excellent way in your writing that I see so far and that is mighty interesting.

Wait, I might have messed up there. You wrote "live in" so maybe English is a native language?

Anyway, I'll extend a welcome to you, but I am not a proper sort to be welcoming folks as I get folks angry at me a lot for my odd and sometime not nice style.

By the way, an idea from me that might prove useless, but I have done it with a couple of other languages and did it with Japanese and can be interesting; watch television shows meant to portray historic type fantasy based very, very loosely on fact. For Japan, some of the older jidaigeki, like the older Mito Komon. I mean, I know that Mito Komon didn't exit his area of living as the TV series has him doing, but the language they use is good for the ear to pick up and it is amazing how it can stay lodged into your brain when other stuff/lessons sort of escape.

Just keep in mind that them baby folks are listening to a whole mess of a language for a long time before they can actually speak it. There has been research done on how to duplicate that in adults, but my system has been to find some neat old interesting series that entertains even though I am not sure what exactly they are saying. The actions you see give you a lot of information and can provide some entertainment.

And in jidaigeki some of that sword work they do is very good. I wasn't so bad at a particular sport that has to do with nasty stuff called fighting. As an old geezer now looking back I realize I was mighty stupid with that, but it does help one to appreciate the physical work and co-ordination needed for that sword work they do on the jidaigeki set.

Sorry, this post got way too long. Another reason folks tend not to care for me --- yakking with my fingers way too much.

I'll do that welcome thing again --- welcome to JREF.

Lothor · 29 Sep 2019

Hi Alex,

Nice introduction to yourself. Welcome! Can I suggest you also start looking at some of the most commonly used kanji too? First of all, they're useful for survival skills if you come and visit Japan (and I hope you do!). As you exit a station and you're looking for the west exit, you'll see 西口 rather than にちぐち。Second, if you decide to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test to assess your progress, you'll need to be familiar with about 80 kanji. Third, as you start to move onto more advanced textbooks, you'll find more and more of the hiragana being replaced by kanji.
Best of luck in your studies.

あれっくす · 29 Sep 2019

thomas said:
Welcome to the forum, Alex!

Thank you Thomas, it's been such a pleasure so far!

あれっくす · 29 Sep 2019

TGI-ECT said:
I am not normally a welcoming type of human in any sort of venue, but I like that use of 'warm' up there and I am guessing that English isn't your native language, but you are using it in an excellent way in your writing that I see so far and that is mighty interesting.

Wait, I might have messed up there. You wrote "live in" so maybe English is a native language?

Anyway, I'll extend a welcome to you, but I am not a proper sort to be welcoming folks as I get folks angry at me a lot for my odd and sometime not nice style.

By the way, an idea from me that might prove useless, but I have done it with a couple of other languages and did it with Japanese and can be interesting; watch television shows meant to portray historic type fantasy based very, very loosely on fact. For Japan, some of the older jidaigeki, like the older Mito Komon. I mean, I know that Mito Komon didn't exit his area of living as the TV series has him doing, but the language they use is good for the ear to pick up and it is amazing how it can stay lodged into your brain when other stuff/lessons sort of escape.

Just keep in mind that them baby folks are listening to a whole mess of a language for a long time before they can actually speak it. There has been research done on how to duplicate that in adults, but my system has been to find some neat old interesting series that entertains even though I am not sure what exactly they are saying. The actions you see give you a lot of information and can provide some entertainment.

And in jidaigeki some of that sword work they do is very good. I wasn't so bad at a particular sport that has to do with nasty stuff called fighting. As an old geezer now looking back I realize I was mighty stupid with that, but it does help one to appreciate the physical work and co-ordination needed for that sword work they do on the jidaigeki set.

Sorry, this post got way too long. Another reason folks tend not to care for me --- yakking with my fingers way too much.

I'll do that welcome thing again --- welcome to JREF.

Hello TGI-ECT, and thank you so much for the message, and it's not my native language, no, my native language is danish, and I do know for a fact, that I have some grammar issues here and there, but while speaking or writing english, i'm trying my hardest to be on point

And while you're not the "proper sort" of welcoming people, due to your "odd" and sometimes not nice styl,e, I don't see that anywhere here, to me you're very friendly and humble in your way of being, so the "not so nice style".. I don't see it!

And the idea you have provided me with here, is not useless at all, in fact, it's something I read about a while ago, that watching television shows, movies etc, could help you with learning a new language, so i'll definitely look "jidaigeki" up, and perhaps some other shows or movies will tag along, and reading further into your message, it's clear to see, that I should give "jidaigeki" a go, seeing as it could provide a lot of information and entertainment, and it's also a way for me to learn!

Regarding the "way too long" post, i'm in the exact same boat as you, I wouldn't say that people cared less for me, due to my long messages, but I just feel like I have a lot to say sometimes, and one thing is for sure, if it's a subject that catches my interest, such as learning a new language, i'll end up writing novels, and it has pros and cons really, pros = you might provide a lot of information to someone - people might see that you're actually interested in what you're doing, and that pushes some people further, at least it does that for me, the cons however.. cons = people will look at your post, and after 2½ minutes, they'll end up thinking "damn this guy.....HOW can he keep talking... i'm falling, ha... half... a ... sl......."

TGI, once again, thank you for the welcoming to JREF; it's been such a pleasure so far, and hopefully i'll bump into you again on the forums!

Best regards,
Alex.

あれっくす · 29 Sep 2019

Lothor said:
Hi Alex,

Nice introduction to yourself. Welcome! Can I suggest you also start looking at some of the most commonly used kanji too? First of all, they're useful for survival skills if you come and visit Japan (and I hope you do!). As you exit a station and you're looking for the west exit, you'll see 西口 rather than にちぐち。Second, if you decide to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test to assess your progress, you'll need to be familiar with about 80 kanji. Third, as you start to move onto more advanced textbooks, you'll find more and more of the hiragana being replaced by kanji.
Best of luck in your studies.

Hello Lothor!

Thank you very much, for the welcoming and i'm glad you found my introduction nice, really!

I'll take every single suggestion I can get, and it's greatly appreciated, and I just signed up to a website, that seems to be free (i'm not sure I can link it here, so i'd rather not, just in case) and that website provides flashcards for kanji, and so far it seems really good to use, and the books I talked about in my introduction, one of them was actually "Remembering the Kanji 1" by "James W. Heisig, and I must say.... wow...

And by "wow" I mean, there are 2200 characters of kanji in this book, it's great! But while being great, it's also really overwhelming for a beginner, but noone forced me to learn all 2200 in a year, and I would more than happy, if I could memorize 80 kanji!

In the beginning of my class, my teacher did tell us "I'll not go over kanji, since it's such a huge section of learning, but for those of you, who wants the additional challenge, you can study kanji by yourself, and study hiragana and katakana here at school, but if you do have questions in terms of kanji, I don't mind helping you with that" but as I can see from your message, more and more of the advanced textbooks will replace hiragana with kanji, so i'm up for the challenge, hiragana, katakana AND kanji!

And thank you Lothor, you'll be seeing me often here on the forums, i'm either going 100% into this project of learning japanese, or not going into it at all, and I already picked the 100% option!

Best regards,
Alex.

A warm greeting from Alex, here in Denmark

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