maple classic™ 
learning Japanese
finished hiragana 1 and 2 before bed, 3 and 4 just now after waking up
that's all the hiragana skills on duolingo x.x that was a lot
i'm gonna cool off on it for now, come by later and do some practices
dunno if i should forge ahead on the intro lessons tonight? probably going too fast
learning Japanese
i think i'm close to being able to read all hiragana without looking it up, still haven't made much of an effort with katakana
meanwhile duolingo makes zero effort to teach you grammar and any actual language beyond forced memorization
learning Japanese
got all gold on tinycards for hiragana! gonna start katakana once i wake up
learning Japanese
@squirrel spaced repetition! go forward if you like but remember to do your reviews too
A friend sped through the whole thing in like a month so it's definitely possible, just pay attention to how much you're actually getting out of the material
learning Japanese
@squirrel woah, you're really good at writing those already!
learning Japanese
@lizardsquid i just followed a chart ??? i'm not trying to practice handwriting, i just want to memorize the characters... though i don't think this will be the best way to do it (have to look up rows and columns, not very associative)
learning Japanese
@morae id love that but i am impervious to books
learning Japanese
@squirrel this is why I've always avoided duolingo - it's not at all effective at teaching language
The best way to learn (that we know about): learn how to construct your own sentences
for Japanese, I know that
X wa doko des ka?
is "Where is the X?"
so by practicing that with a few nouns, I was iable to ask where things were when I visited japan
it's distinct from stock phrases because you're focusing on constructing your own sentences (which is... the point of language)
learning Japanese
@lizardsquid yeah i figure so, but i don't have any source of what "wa" or "doko" are
i've learnt from intuition "desu" at the end of a sentence is a particle for "is" and "ka" indicates a question but that's about it
learning Japanese
@lizardsquid and textbooks don't help me because reading is absolutely useless for me
if i want to actually learn japanese i'll probably end up having to pay a tutor because i can't learn from books
learning Japanese
@squirrel learning languages from text is incredibly difficult, it's way way easier to learn by speaking and listening
learning Japanese, maybe this will help?
@squirrel ah!
I actually know these
so in Japanese, we need to know when we've finished talking about the topic of the sentence
so the word "wa" just means "I've stopped talking about the topic, here's the rest of the sentence"
"doko" is just the word for "where"
so to ask "where is the train station?", we say
train station (topic marker) where is (question)
densya no eki wa doko desu ka
learning Japanese, maybe this will help?
@lizardsquid right i actually knew "wa" i just keep forgetting you actually meant "ha" because it's pronounced "wa"
learning Japanese, maybe this will help?
@squirrel what
why do they write "wa" as は... that's absurd
learning Japanese, maybe this will help?
@lizardsquid yep
learning Japanese
made myself a hiragana and katakana chart to help memorize characters https://computerfairi.es/media/tByBdfYiqU9Kq1rVMrA