How many of your speak / read Japanese

[Nando]

How did you learn?

How well do ya know it?

[BlueBMW]

私は少し日本語をはなします。

高校時代に私は日本語を 勉強しました

だから、私は少し日本語をわかります。

[Arkhan]

I can fumble through moonrune RPGs and stuff fairly OKlike, sorta.


Heres how you do it

Step 1)  Pick an RPG that isn't very complicated
Step 2) Get a Katakana/hiragana chart, learn the difference, and get a Japanese word dictionary.   Something that lets you lookup Kanji with the SKIP method (find the radical, count the strokes, find the Kanji) helps also. 
Step 3) Talk to every motherf*cker you see, and read every menu until shit makes sense.


As soon as they start doing voice overs, I no longer know what the hells going on.

[Nando]

Immersion is the key for sure and what better way to learn that with the PCE!! *does that read like a commercial or what?

LEARN JAPANESE THE PCE WAY!

[munchiaz]

i took japanese for 3 semesters in college like 4 years ago. I dont really recall to much. I've always wanted to give it another shot and learn

[grimm]

Its my favourite language to learn, but ive never had the level of concentration, motivation and dedication needed to learn such a radically different language compared to swedish, or other germanic or romanic languages we are used to in the west.

If my life ever turns around, i would definetly give it a shot. I love the language, some of their culture (mostly the ancient, not too into the "you gotta have new stuff or you are shamefull" business), and definetly the women. those eyes man.

[SuperPlay]

Unfortunately not :-(  I have to rely on translation projects for games (that kind people produce) and for articles etc. I have been using some open source OCR software (not pretty)

http://code.google.com/p/nhocr/

and

http://translate.google.com/#ja|en|

Also I use Google translate for web sites.

I have read about a better open source OCR application that supports Japanese called SmartOCR Lite.  Details here:

http://www.sandg-anime-reviews.net/?p=552

Not tried it yet!

[DragonmasterDan]

I took a year of it in college and have forgotten most of it.

[ps3repair1981]

Actually sometimes  Google translate is not that accurate with the Japanese.   

[Gao]

I took it for a year and a half in college (one semester was intensive), and I spent about a month in Sapporo on this mini exchange thing my college offered, but I felt like I was hitting my limit with the thing.  Basically, I could do tests and homework and the like well enough, but I had a lot of trouble actually conversing with anyone, and it was a bit frustrating to see the one person who went over knowing virtually nothing being able to have a conversation better than I could by the end of our time in Sapporo.  Around that point, I was able to get the gist of what was going on when I played of Dragon Quest III and Fire Emblem Gaiden with a dictionary, but it was really slow.  It's been over five years since then, and I've atrophied a bit, but I can get around menus in games pretty easily.

[Tatsujin]

I'm forced to speak, read and write (thanks to PCs) it for the past 7 years. being now over the 30s for the same amount of time, it isn't always easy to remember all that stuff. So most of the shit I can speak and remember is the daily stuff I am confronted to, since I haven't much of time and the will to study that stuff when I'm back home (after hearing/using it all day long).

I have learned some basics (like kana and some kanjis/vocabulars) already two decades ago, so that helped me a lot to build up on this during the past 7 years.
without knowing some basics, this shit will go in one ear and straight out the other.

And I'm not really good at languages in general..lol.

[SuperDeadite]

俺は日本語をわからんけど。。。
でも、マンコ語は上手だよ!

[Tatsujin]

I like mango too.

btw. anyone speaks some ゼビ語?

[kazekirifx]

10th year living in Japan for me, so of course I speak/read/write.

PCE was the catalyst that got me here to begin with!
It's a good thing TTi failed so miserably and I had to start buying import games.
Don't know where I'd be today otherwise.

[Tatsujin]

10th year living in Japan for me, so of course I speak/read/write.

It's not so much of an of course. I know peeps being here even longer and they can't barely speak, let alone write stuff.

It also matters a lot at which age you move over? plus do you bring some basics with you at that time? plus are you willing to learn? etc.