Those are rather common words so depending on your learning source you should be able to read most of it (enough to understand meaning) in a month or two.
From this picture definitely worth learning first are those words imo:
- 行く - to go
- 先 - ahead, first
- 前 - before, in front (of)
- ない - not
- この、これ - this (I recommend to look it up because it’s little more complicated than ‘this’)
Remember to be consistent in your studies, it’s better to learn for 10 minutes every day than an hour every week.
Good luck in your journey!
I’m using Duolingo. That should be good enough to start learning, right? I don’t expect to be able to read and write all 50,000 kanji through it, but I hope to at least eventually be able to watch Japanese media without subtitles.
Duolingo is good for the first few days to see what the language is about but as a main learning resource I’d say it’s pretty bad.
When I was starting, there was just not enough content and after finishing it all I still couldn’t understand hiragana fully.
Things have gotten better in recent years that’s why I decided to revisit Duolingo a few months ago but I found content to be so inconsistent and impractical. Sometimes they teach you something simple and sometimes you get a word that is usually at the end of any language course.
Many sentences are just dumb and/or have no use in real life.
Once I got to translate: 「私はりんご」which to be fair is a sentence that one could say and it wouldn’t be weird but not only you don’t have a context but the accepted translation was “I’m an apple”. Which is obviously ridiculous. Correct but ridiculous. It feels like they took out of context examples and decided to put it in “translate this sentence category”. If you’re wondering btw how this sentence could be used it’s worth remembering that “私は” means “As for me” not “I am” so for example when someone asks your name you say:「私はトムです」which literally means “As for me Tom”. It sounds weird though so obviously we translate it as “I’m Tom”. Same with apple, “As for me Apple” can be an answer to a question “What fruits do you like?”
If you want to learn quickly I recommend downloading the Anki app. It’s a flashcards system where you can download premade decks of cards or create your own. I started with popular Anime/VN vocabulary deck and then some N5 vocabulary deck. When you want to go to the next level you download 2k/6k deck. If you still struggle with hiragana and katakana then I really recommend tofu guide.. It was so good I learned everything in one day. As for anything other than vocabulary Tim Kae’s “Guide to Japanese” is an absolutely amazing resource.
I also recommend Livakivi on YouTube. He also started with Duolingo and then got into sentence mining in Anki. Now he speaks really good Japanese. I like to watch him for motivation and to see just how much effort is needed for certain level.
Wow, damn. Right info at the right time. Watching his 800+ Days on Duolingo vid and I’m at the exact same point he started using other things. TYSM! 😃
I agree about being able to grasp the gist of the message with some basic Japanese, but IDK about being able to actually read the message.
お願い
この先は危険ですので、これ以上前へ行かないようお願い致します。
There are some parts of the message that I don’t think is included in basic Japanese lessons:
- 危険 → dangerous
- 以上 → exceeding, beyond
- 行かないよう → probably related to the V+ようだ construction, which with the following bit, might be a polite way of making a request.
- お願い致します → probably some polite way of saying ‘please’
If I were to translate the message with my meager self-taught Japanese, I’d probably render it as something like
Request
Because of the danger ahead, not going beyond here is humbly requested.
Though I don’t think that fully captures the nuance of the message itself.
True those words are N4 but some decks on Anki will include those since those are common words.
But even if you use only N5 decks you can guess the meaning. When I was starting I barely understood a thing and yet I was able to guess the meaning. You just get: “please ahead **** **** don’t go ****”. “Yeah it probably means to not go any further.” I mean true, you can’t fully read the message but enough to get the meaning.
Your translation isn’t bad but I’d say it’s too literal. I’d translate it to something like this:
It’s dangerous beyond this point, please don’t go any further.
Though keep in mind I’m no expert and this could probably be translated better :p
Thanks! About the translation, yeah, my primary concern is putting across the wording of the original, that’s why it became too literal. You know, that basic Japanese newbie learner tendency to be too literal.
I am also a bit stumped about the grammar used for the last sentence, but I’m guessing it’s some polite construction which wouldn’t affect the English translation too much.
