How many of your speak / read Japanese

[grimm]

Assuming everyone who lives in a country not of their origin who does not speak the language well, or at all, to be an culturally insensitive dumbass, if that is indeed your assumption, is very harsh.

You missed an important point there. I've been here over 9 years. Indeed, if I was saying that anyone who can't pick up the language in a half a year is a dumbass, then that would certainly be a little harsh.

I didnt miss the point, i simply didnt take it to heart, because i dont think time has anything to do with it, not knowing a persons circumstances.. Finnish people migrating to Sweden in the 60-70's workforce migration can STILL not speak proper swedish. They have all sorts of weird grammar and pronounciation (not related to their finnish roots) simply because they learned the basics in the barracks while not working.

And regardless of how long anyone has lived anywhere, i still disagree, i am in no way disgusted or insult people who lives in sweden and cant pick up the language. I just accept the fact ill have to communicate with them some other way, and there always is. I dont take it as a personal insult, and neither should you. But thats up to you.

Its good if they do pick up the language, but they arnt automatically culturally insensitive dumbasses if they dont.

[Tatsujin]

I can read some romaji but that's about it.

pure reading can be done by almost everyone who learned reading in school,
to understand the meaning behind is an other rabbit hole 

[termis]

This thread pops up once every couple years, it seems. 

日常生活に必要なことばはできるけど・・・

I lived in Japan for one year between '05-'06, so I was able to pick up a good amount that year.  I had a good head start than most Westerners since I'm Korean and Japanese language structure is pretty similar to Korean (i.e. default/flowy/optional subject-object-verb order, usage of particles, usage of kanji-derived nouns, etc.).   Oh, and I studied the hell out of it when I was there too.  But of course, it's been on a slide ever since I left.

And agreed that immersion's the way to go if someone's serious about learning the language, but that's no secret...

As a matter of fact, I have to start thinking about how I'm going to get my 1 1/2 year-old daughter to pick up half-decent Korean.  She won't be able to do it in her current environment (in Western Australia, stay-at-home wife is Canadian).  Might have to go back to Korea for a few years I guess...

[jeffhlewis]

Took Japanese for four years in High School (we had a teacher exchange with a High School in Hiroshima) - by the fourth year I could conversate at like a kindergarten level, write about 80 kanji and knew kata/hiragana like the back of my hand...

Now 12 years later, most of it's gone. I can still read/write kana but my kanji knowledge went out the back door. Thinking about diving back in at some point but it's hard to find time.

[nodtveidt]

pure reading can be done by almost everyone who learned reading in school,
to understand the meaning behind is an other rabbit hole 

That's what I mean, ya weirdo.

[ps3repair1981]

What is the best Japanese dictionaries to get ?

[Tatsujin]

pure reading can be done by almost everyone who learned reading in school,
to understand the meaning behind is an other rabbit hole 

That's what I mean, ya weirdo.

lol, sure I had extracted that out of your post, therefore j/k

[kazekirifx]

What is the best Japanese dictionaries to get ?

http://www.alc.co.jp/
is really much better and easier to use than most book/electronic dictionaries in my opinion.

[BlueBMW]

My textbook in High School was called "Japanese for Busy People" lol

[Tatsujin]

hahaha benby, I used the very same books for my autodidactic learning, but as its german aequivalent (univ. issue).

@kiri. good link, but not really useful for any beginners, since everything is explained in japanese only. sure very good for japanese people and those who studied the language over few years.

[kazekirifx]

@kiri. good link, but not really useful for any beginners, since everything is explained in japanese only. sure very good for japanese people and those who studied the language over few years.

True. Still very useful for copying and pasting long and difficult terms. It has quite a bit of official names and long terminology which a typical dictionary does not include. I find this very useful for translation.
Also, it does pretty much the same thing that electronic dictionaries purchased in Japan do, which I have seen many a beginner purchase and attempt to make use of (presumably with some difficulty).

In my beginning years, I found a paperback version of Merriam-Webster's Japanese-English Dictionary to be indispensable. I hope that helps.

[spenoza]

Kodansha has a wonderful kanji guide for the jouyou set. All sorts of great indices as well. If you can't find one of the included kanji in that dictionary, you'll never be able to use a kanji dictionary of any kind.

[Ji-L87]

Well, if you have a DS there's always this.
It's not the best, but it's easy of use make it good to have.

It was a while since I used it but I think it's more for words than just a single kanji but you can both write the word to look it up, or you can look it up writing in english. Pretty handy. Though, there are a lot of words that doesn't have an english translation, with only a japanese description, but as I said, pretty handy software.

[Samurai Ghost]

What is the best Japanese dictionaries to get ?

http://www.alc.co.jp/
is really much better and easier to use than most book/electronic dictionaries in my opinion.

I agree that ALC is the best dictionary and extremely fast. I use it all the time for work. But for studying a paper dictionary has its merits. I feel that when you have to look up a work by hand you have a higher chance of retaining it than just copy-pasting something. It does take a lot longer though!

[CPTRAVE]

Does Rosetta Stone really work?