Disclaimer: I’d like to think of myself as a native speaker, but I’m from a country where English is taught as a second language. My mom teaches English, so that helped with my exposure to English, to the point that I basically grew up bilingual. I went to the US for my undergrad, though.
When I started my Japanese learning journey I did want to watch anime without subtitles (which I was able to within two years while still doing college full-time). Then I burned out in my junior and senior years, and thought of working in something that was Not My Academic Major — Japanese happened to be a skill I could polish, and I did.
Now, a second burnout and a pandemic later, I’m much happier working as a freelance translator than I ever was during my burnout episodes. Which reminds me, I have some work to submit to my client tomorrow…
Just wondering, why specifically just english native speakers?
At first I just wanted to learn so I could read manga and light novels without needing to wait for translations, but lately I’ve been really into Japanese rap music.
I have a very very long way to go though lol. While I can read some manga now, I still have no chance at reading light novels. And there are times where I can’t even make out what words the rappers are using, including when they use English words which is just a really bad sign for me I think haha.
I’ve only been learning for a bit over a year though, so gonna just keep grinding at it and see if things click eventually.
I was bored
Saw a post a while ago about how you could learn a language and not let anyone know and then one day you could slip on a banana peel and fall unconscious, only to wake up speaking a different language and pretending you have no idea what’s going on.
I thought that was pretty funny, now I’ve been learning for 2 years
When I first got into manga, I found there’s a whole TON of manga- and light novels- that have interesting stories (based on their summaries) but no translations. And to this day, there are still plenty of untranslated manga and LN titles that never get translated. So you either wait for them to be picked up… or you learn the language. I chose to learn the language, even though as I’m finding, the stuff that “slips between the cracks” is still beyond my ability. Mostly because it’s TONS of kanji, and no furigana.
I have a dream, one that is probably entirely impossible currently but a dream nonetheless. It started in highschool but only really took hold and shape in University.
It’s a real fuckin long story so I won’t bore anyone with that unless it’s asked. To make it short, due to my upbringing of being isolated from nearly all foreign anything until highschool, I’ve seen how detrimental it can be to someone and how they feel about places outside their country. I want play a part in increasing international cooperation and interaction between young children (specifically in America since we’re fairly isolated from most of the world.) This isnt just for Japan either, it’s just my current focus.
Luckily, my Uni has this sort of program for students learning japanese and my professors are really into increasing communication between these countries. I’ve got a good start due to this and hope that in the future we will be able to allow children to interact with eachother.
I hope that all makes sense. I tried to not get too deep into the specifics.
As a kid I had Tomica and Tomy toy trains that I was obsessed with and they were models of Shinkansen (新幹線), so my grandparents payed for me to learn Japanese and take me to Japan when I turned 10 years old so we could see it in real life. We never went to Japan but then I fell in love with 書道 (Japanese/Chinese calligraphy) and I studied more than I used to. Then I started learning Standard Chinese from motivation from my Chinese friend from Hong Kong, and it is really fun because I love all of the radicals and all of the Kanjis and Hanzi, and I always find myself studying variants and the history of each character.
(I’m actually a native spanish speaker but I live in the US so I would say I speak native english.)
Edit: I learn Japanese from English, not Spanish. My Japanese learning resources have always been in English.
An interest in linguistics as well as wanting to understanding Japanese content, particularly artwork of the NSFW variety (and occasionally help translate said artwork). After maybe a decade(?), my Japanese has never gotten any good because it doesn’t need to be. I just need to look up vocabulary and grammar as needed, which is tedious, but doable.
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Disclaimer: I’d like to think of myself as a native speaker, but I’m from a country where English is taught as a second language. My mom teaches English, so that helped with my exposure to English, to the point that I basically grew up bilingual. I went to the US for my undergrad, though.
When I started my Japanese learning journey I did want to watch anime without subtitles (which I was able to within two years while still doing college full-time). Then I burned out in my junior and senior years, and thought of working in something that was Not My Academic Major — Japanese happened to be a skill I could polish, and I did.
Now, a second burnout and a pandemic later, I’m much happier working as a freelance translator than I ever was during my burnout episodes. Which reminds me, I have some work to submit to my client tomorrow…
Just wondering, why specifically just english native speakers?
At first I just wanted to learn so I could read manga and light novels without needing to wait for translations, but lately I’ve been really into Japanese rap music.
I have a very very long way to go though lol. While I can read some manga now, I still have no chance at reading light novels. And there are times where I can’t even make out what words the rappers are using, including when they use English words which is just a really bad sign for me I think haha.
I’ve only been learning for a bit over a year though, so gonna just keep grinding at it and see if things click eventually.
I was bored
Saw a post a while ago about how you could learn a language and not let anyone know and then one day you could slip on a banana peel and fall unconscious, only to wake up speaking a different language and pretending you have no idea what’s going on.
I thought that was pretty funny, now I’ve been learning for 2 years
When I first got into manga, I found there’s a whole TON of manga- and light novels- that have interesting stories (based on their summaries) but no translations. And to this day, there are still plenty of untranslated manga and LN titles that never get translated. So you either wait for them to be picked up… or you learn the language. I chose to learn the language, even though as I’m finding, the stuff that “slips between the cracks” is still beyond my ability. Mostly because it’s TONS of kanji, and no furigana.
I have a dream, one that is probably entirely impossible currently but a dream nonetheless. It started in highschool but only really took hold and shape in University.
It’s a real fuckin long story so I won’t bore anyone with that unless it’s asked. To make it short, due to my upbringing of being isolated from nearly all foreign anything until highschool, I’ve seen how detrimental it can be to someone and how they feel about places outside their country. I want play a part in increasing international cooperation and interaction between young children (specifically in America since we’re fairly isolated from most of the world.) This isnt just for Japan either, it’s just my current focus.
Luckily, my Uni has this sort of program for students learning japanese and my professors are really into increasing communication between these countries. I’ve got a good start due to this and hope that in the future we will be able to allow children to interact with eachother.
I hope that all makes sense. I tried to not get too deep into the specifics.
As a kid I had Tomica and Tomy toy trains that I was obsessed with and they were models of Shinkansen (新幹線), so my grandparents payed for me to learn Japanese and take me to Japan when I turned 10 years old so we could see it in real life. We never went to Japan but then I fell in love with 書道 (Japanese/Chinese calligraphy) and I studied more than I used to. Then I started learning Standard Chinese from motivation from my Chinese friend from Hong Kong, and it is really fun because I love all of the radicals and all of the Kanjis and Hanzi, and I always find myself studying variants and the history of each character.
(I’m actually a native spanish speaker but I live in the US so I would say I speak native english.)
Edit: I learn Japanese from English, not Spanish. My Japanese learning resources have always been in English.
An interest in linguistics as well as wanting to understanding Japanese content, particularly artwork of the NSFW variety (and occasionally help translate said artwork). After maybe a decade(?), my Japanese has never gotten any good because it doesn’t need to be. I just need to look up vocabulary and grammar as needed, which is tedious, but doable.