Anyone here speaks japanese?

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I was wondering if anyone here speaks japanese? Or is learning it? If so talk about it here ^.^

i'd like to learn japanese, but only cus i'd like to learn every language on the planet.
japanese has a cool sound, but those pitches annoy me, same with chinese.

I think I'm turning Japanese..

I really think so.

I'm trying to learn it.

I'm living in Japan and definitely trying to take advantage of my situation and learn some Nihongo (^_^)/

I can read pretty well by now, (I'm fascinated by kanji, since the way you process and store kanji in your brain is so different from phonetic writing systems like English), but listening/speaking have been really difficult for me. When I first came here, all words sounded so similar to me, I couldn't remember anything. In Japanese, vowels are just as important as consonants...which is an unnatural sensitivity that I've had to work hard to cultivate as a native English-speaker. A fun example of this is "kirei" is beautiful, but "kirai" is hate.

When I came to live in Japan, all I had learned previously was how to read katakana and hiragana (literally on the plane with flashcards). It's been about 20 months, and now I can read a good amount of stuff and have great English/Japanese Star-Wars-universe-esque conversations with one of my good friends here.

I actually only have about 3 months left in Japan, so it's go-time now! I think I'm going to force myself to speak only Japanese from now on as a way to maximize my experience, but if you all have any suggestions on how else I can improve during my final stretch here, let me know^^*

As for learning methods, I've used mostly internet sources. My favorite is iKnow for anyone who might be interested--> http://www.iknow.co.jp/

I know most hira and kana, and some 100+ kanji, but even though I'm at a university I never have the time to study japanese. I did studied japanese in middle and high school (freshman year).

The Japanese pitch accent is quite simple, scarcely more complicated than a stress based accent (alright, just a wee bit), and bears no resemblance to the tonal nightmare that is Chinese.

im a norwegian, we got pitching ourselves, altho i dunno enough to compare if its less or more. to me, it would be too weird to assume another language's pitches. i feel embarassed on the behalf of the speaker, when i hear a norwegian speak fluent japanese (which ive heard only once)

dunno why, maybe pitches are too personal for me?

chinese pitching does indeed sound complicated, especially since i notice a lot of chinese words are very short and abrupt, meaning there must be lots and lots of pitches to be used correctly

Domo Arrigato, Mr. Roboto.

I'm trying to learn Japanese ATM out of a book, not doing so hot. Might take it as my foreign language course in college, though. Traveling to the Land of the Rising Sun has always been on my bucket list, and knowing the native tongue might help me in that respect.

Oh, BTW:

Sore-wa Godzilla-desu! HASHIRI-MASU!! !! !! !! !

Just kidding, lol

Well, I wanted to learn it for awhile, but in the long run decided it was more useful to learn Spanish.

is that sentence really used in the movie? Because i'd rather think tthey would say "nigete" inplace of "hashirimasu" oh well never seen it so wouldn't know it (btw nice avatar haha)

who marked the "i hate japanese" poll option?

Kai-Lan has taught em everything I know.

i was tempted to, but no, cus i dont hate japanese per se, but the FAD.

Me and my son are taking a japanese for life course in september, and we're visiting Japan next year in the spring. I hope to live there someday.

Well, I'm not sure how the accent works in Norwegian, but pitch accents like Japanese are considered distinct from tonal languages like the Chinese languages. Chinese is indeed short and abrupt because it is monosyllabic (i.e. the basic unit for meaning is a syllable rather than a string of syllables), so that means each of the several tones is pronounced entirely on one syllable (and of course changes the meaning of the word entirely). In Japanese, on the other hand, the pitch of a mora (which is like a syllable, but not quite) is entirely determined by where the accents are placed in the word.