<p>I'm thinking of majoring in Japanese; I love the culture and would even like to study abroad there in my junior year (I'm a freshman now). I already know that it will be a challenge to learn Japanese, but this is something I really want to do. I just wanted to get some feedback from people who have either majored or minored in it. What was your experience like? What's the best advice you have about studying Japanese? Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Well, first, you don't need to major in Japanese in order to study the language or even go abroad. In fact, I'd recommend majoring in something else and working Japanese into that.</p>
<p>Learning Japanese is difficult for several reasons. First, of course, is the writing system. The key to that is constant practice. Don't write a new character once, not ten times, but a hundred+ times until it is second nature. I used to practice on a chalkboard in addition to using paper/pencil. As you learn more characters this becomes less necessary, but for at least the first year you need to do a tremendous amount of practicing. The number of characters you need to learn increases over time, which I found made it more difficult. Vocabulary never really becomes easy to acquire.</p>
<p>The other difficulty with Japanese is the grammar is different than English. The way to deal with this is to practice sample sentences and try to create sentences in Japanese. Creating English sentences in your head and the trying to translate them isn't going to work, since the word order is different. So try to think in Japanese as soon as you can, trying to shoehorn English into Japanese won't work.</p>
<p>Fortunately, Japanese is quite easy to pronounce.</p>
<p>Japan is a wonderful country, going abroad there is pleasant and fascinating. ICU (International Christian University) in Tokyo has a wonderful exchange program/Japanese language program.</p>
<p>Anyway good luck!</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice! Yeah, you're right about the practice. I've just completed my first semester of Japanese and it was a lot of practice with hiragana and katakana. Next semester I'll start learning kanji, so I'm excited but a little nervous. I know I don't have to major in it in order to learn the language, but I just want to take something that I absolutely love. I'm not going to declare my major until probably the end of my sophomore year so I have a little bit of time to change my mind. I can always work it into something else, like you mentioned.</p>
<p>bookgirlworm wa ganbatte!</p>
<p>been taking Japanese for 4 years now(senior in high school)</p>
<p>arigatou gozaimasu, tomatoking! (and it's bookwormgirl--lol =)</p>
<p>Wow you are so lucky; I wish my high school offered Japanese. I've just started in my freshman year of college, but I guess it's never too late. =)</p>
<p>Im 4th year HS too, xcept i got my start this summer at the University of Chicago HS summer program, and now im in honors 4 highschool level.</p>