[brayniboy]

Originally Posted by ktchan79

I've taken the JLPT3. Waiting for my results in February, I think I did okay on all except listening. x_o My main goal is to be fluent- that means reading, writing, listening, speaking, but others may just limit to listening/speaking or other combinations. Your choice; structure your own learning course carefully based off of that.

Okay, so there's a shitload of free resources online. I did buy a few books- the most useful of which was Japanese Step by Step by Gene Nishi. However, the most helpful things... were free! However, all of these resources assume you know how to read hiragana and katakana already. I suggest you memorize those before moving on to these resources.

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ] by Tae Kim gives a rundown on nearly every grammar you'll encounter, including slang, teineigo, kenjouhyougen, you name it.

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]is a strictly vocab-practicing website; I used to use it a lot in the beginning. Some people also like to use [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], but my brain tends to memorize things reasonably well if I just write them ten, twenty times and stare at the word/definition for a few minutes. Or hours.

If you're looking for a dictionary, I swear by [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]. Searching by radicals is awesome too, if you're familiar with those. If you can't read anything, you could also use this: [Only registered and activated users can see links. ].

There's a site called Kanjidamage, which my friend recommended for learning kanji. There's also readthekanji.com. I just go by the tried and true... write it a million times. Oh, here's some free [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], if you want pretty Japanese text.

Thanks for all the online resources. I've tried googling some sites already and came up with a lot but these sites you provided are awesome.

I'm saving up to take formal lessons but these websites are really useful. Just by reading some of the online lessons, I can already understand some of the words in the animes that I watch so I'm wanting to learn more so I can have my own interpretation of the anime and manga i watch and read.

[imSOecchi]

Im using My Japanese Coach for the nintendo DS its pretty good but it focuses a bit too much on reading and writing apposed to speaking and listening so I know all my kana characters but can only speak a few sentences

Though watching anime is sorting that out for me... I think im picking it up faster because of it

[GhostOfNobody]

Originally Posted by Kurosaki Ichigo

I do a medical degree

you must be really smart, some my friends have have applied to do med degree its super hard to get in, i myself after doing AS chemistry despise science

im might start a degree in japanese & geography next year, if not it'll prob be pure geog or geog and politics but im still gonna learn cause most uni's provide language courses

[Kuro Dono]

i want to learn it. need to look into it to see if theres any classes i can take in my area.

[lastonlyme]

i will be learning soon dawg~

[Duratrix]

Originally Posted by Kurosaki Ichigo

Well I'm gonna learn starting from next week, cause I waste a lot of my spare time. So what about the guys on here? Are you learning/fluent already? If so what did you use to learn and how easy/hard was it?

So have you gotten any better at it and what did you do to learn it?

[sarabjeet]

はい　ちょおと　だけ　べんきょしますた。

[Sam201]

This is more of a starter but watch plenty of subbed anime and you will learn a little or more it mainly depends on how much you watch lol ^_^

[Nygus]

Originally Posted by sarabjeet

はい　ちょおと　だけ　べんきょしますた。

Is the last word supposed to read be-n-kyo-shi-ma-shi-ta? Coz i'm reading be-n-ki-yo-shi-ma-su-ta.

[chomio]

I really wan to learn Japanese and korean, but first I need to complete my current studies.