Any native japanese speakers here?

[snipeshot24]

I'm from the US and just finished teaching myself the hiragana alphabet and am starting the katakana soon. Any tips on kanji/learning the language in general? Languages come easy to me but this is the first one that seemed daunting. ありがとお！

[Remilia]

I'm from the US and just finished teaching myself the hiragana alphabet and am starting the katakana soon. Any tips on kanji/learning the language in general? Languages come easy to me but this is the first one that seemed daunting. ありがとお！

By the way, you'll learn this, but its ありがとう う not お. Various things even though it's written as 'oo' for romaji (depends on whose translating it), is in reality written as "ou". Same was　それは is は not わ. These are just mainly grammar.

Mostly I can say is just practice, read some stuff.
Since you're teaching yourself, it could help if you bought a text book, online generally isn't that great.

I'm no native Japanese speaker (Chinese), but I've had a sort of private teacher for the basics, and then self taught. Now though I'm also attending college Japanese courses.
Text books are generally pretty good for it. (We use Genki). Just practice a lot in terms of memorization.
The 'stroke' order is something I can't say much about as I've written in Chinese (even though I'm terribad at writing it). All I can say is when writing it, it is generally top left to bottom right when writing it.

Now there are people that suggest you to immerse yourself into the country, well... it sounds good and all, it may work, but at the same time it'd be very awkward and face slamming without proper guidance as you may be making yourself look like a complete fool because of a few things that aren't mentioned.
(Sometimes native Japanese speakers aren't the best, as they don't know how to teach).

[Kuniku]

i'm trying to learn Japanese too, reading and writing is definitely the hard bit, but I've enrolled for a beginners japanese course starting in september =D can't wait!

[The Kao]

I started teaching Japanese to myself about a year ago with some do-it-yourself beginner course that is primarily set around speaking and understanding the spoken language and grammar. It's slow but steady and I'm actually beginning to figure things out, but if I had the time I'd always prefer a professional course.

Thanks for the link Patchi, lots of good stuff there. Always good to have the magical librarian around.

[Litoru]

Unless noone has linked it before http://www.realkana.com/ Helped my significant other to learn hiragana and katakana. Only reading though, but good stuff either way.