Let's learn Japanese the modern cutting edge way

Thanks for linking to these things. I'm currently taking a basic online Japanese class at my school through the Mango online program that most libraries around the smaller states offers for free if you have a library card. Though you can take a small amount of the lessons for free with out an account on the site and also offers a lot of other languages for free as well.

 

thanks for the above links and suggestions, I have taken a look at what a relative had recommended for learning Japanese they recommended reading: AN INTEGRATED COURSE IN ELEMENTARY JAPANESE GENKI: THE JAPAN TIMES

ISBN: 9784789009638 (or) 1920081030002

 

i dont know about japan but i really enjoying to read your articles........
thanks for sharing us this info.

 

i got a hold of some pimsleur mp3's, but i dont know if there are old versions, thank you for sharing!

 

Thank you for these recommendations. I'm checking out all these now..

 

Thanks for this!

 

I'll chime in as well.

If you are one of the people that can studiously study on your own - great. Use books, use Japanese Pod, etc.

If not, then consider actually paying for classes at college/university. Realistically, what you need is the first (and maybe second) year - it will teach you pronunciation, basic grammer and methodology on how to learn.

BTW, Pimsleur is great, but if your goal is to start from 0 and start talking, then also consider "Michel Thomas Method". It's not 100%, it has issues, and if you listen to it, one of the folks on CD will piss you off, but it works. You listen to those CDs for a couple of weeks, and you will be set to start that course at college.

Establish a study routine. Study somewhere, where you can sit down, turn off your phone, your computer, etc, block off distractions, and study. Library is great. Coffee shop is OK, just remember earplugs.

If you have a local group of folks interested in Japanese, join it. If you have Japanese folks coming to your city to learn the language (Lots of Japanese folks are in Vancouver, Canada, in Australia, in New York, etc so look for them), find a Japanese friend, and proceed to do language exchange things with him/her. Meet once or twice a week, talk, do stuff together. You'll soon discover that casually spoken Japanese is very different from the neutrally polite -mas forms that are taught in books like "Genki", "Nakama", "Japanese for Busy People" , etc.

Invest into a Casio Ex-Word electronic dictionary. Save the necessary 500$, and buy either the 10000 or 9800 model, that has Kenkyusha Atarashi Wa Ei Dai dictionary (honestly, cheaper models are OK, but you will, eventually, have to spend the extra money for the Kenkyusha on a memory card, so might as well buy it). Used is OK, but you want XD-B model or newer generation (Xd-D, XD-N), because of the additional dictionaries that Casio added. Do not listen to the folks that will tell you that you can download the EPWING version for your PC, or that you can install DroidWing or somesuch thing on your Android device, or buy some other clone electronic dictionary. Yes, you can. Trust me, I have Canon Word Tank, I have a Sharp Genius, I have DroidWing and EBPocket Free on a Nexus 7 tablet, and have pretty much tried them all. Some do not have the pen input (if you are handy with Android and have a rooted device, you can hack together a ROM, that will have Japanese pen input from NTT DoCoMo Galaxy S3, or buy "MazeC" software), some do not have the dictionaries (Kenkyusha ichiban!). And most non-dedicated devices do not have the "jump" feature, that you will need. I carry with me everywhere a Casio Ex-Word.

Any way, if you don't start, you never will get good. And being able to speak another language is very rewarding.


Disclaimer: I've studied Japanese for about 6 years now, have a minor in Japanese language from university, have plenty of Japanese friends, to whom I speak in Japanese, I regulary translate articles from "Kendo Nippon" to English (sorry, MA is a bigger hobby then video games), but I've never been to Japan. But what I wrote is all first hand experiences that work for me.

 

I am interested in learning japanese, but is there any alternatives for someone that doesn't have the money for Pimsleur? I also have an friend that lived in Japan for many years.

 

A good site I use to learn languages is: www.memrise.com

It's quick, easy, has sound and pictures, and also has game/rpg (in a simple sense) elements to it, to track your progess and entice you to learn more.

 

For those who like rude humor, I would defiantly recommend Namasensei's videos.

 

I remember that this thread got made by ASSEMbler shortly after he replied to a thread of mine asking for advice on learning Japanese. Well I took my time but I'm finally studying seriously.

I'm not much of a fan of those expensive audio/software (such as Pimmsleur, Rosetta, etc.), and I'm not sure if my plans are misguided but I'm following them through the end. It's substantially cheaper than those disks that I've mentioned (and you might need to buy more stuff to go along with them anyway) and it's popular with Japanese language forums (Reviewing the Kanji, The Japanese Page, Learn Japanese Reddit, etc. etc.) so at least I think I'm in the right track somewhat:

1- Study the KANA (I'm still here ): Kill romaji as soon as possible. With fire. Not having at least the ability to read these characters blocks you from using a large variety of resources, textbooks, etc. properly, and can screw up your understanding of the language in the long run.
Resource: japanese-lesson.com, their Hiragana/Katakana lessons are good. Nothing special though, but I got confortable with the Hiragana surprisingly fast, not sure why I'm having trouble with Katakana though.
Optional: Heisig's Remembering the Kana. Seems good and based on the same RTKanji method by the same author, or basically any free resource that can be found on the internet (be careful with their quality though!)

2- Study the KANJI: Now this is what I'm unsure of and because of that I haven't moved beyond the basic character sets yet. There's a book by Heisig called "Remembering the Kanji" that's very popular with self-learners. Basically the author makes you associate every 2000 basic chinese character list with mnemonics that helps you to distinguish the characters from one another and assign a meaning (a keyword, not always the official meaning mind you) to it. A huge boost to your studies later on when you'll seriously study them detail by detail, plus it's possible to guess other kanji's meanings with their keywords depending on context. At least that's what I've heard about it but it does make sense if you really think about it. The problem is that this must be used ALONE (ie not along other textbook) because the methods on other books will be incompatible most if not all the time.

3- Textbook: The traditional part. I chose "Japanese for Everyone" both for it's 20USD price tag and no need to buy additional supplementary material, plus the more mature and self learner-focused content. To avoid writing another bulky paragraph here's a great link that does a decent comparison between available books. http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/Comparison_of_Japanese_Textbooks_Table
Again, should I do 1-2-3, 1-3-2, or just exclude the Remembering the Kanji part entirely? Not sure yet.

4- What next? I expect to have a level of japanese to at least be able to learn the language contextually with real life "study material" like easy literature, manga, games (specially older, 1980's ones), etc. and with another, more advanced textbook to be decided.

 

I just started using Rosetta Stone the other day and I'm really getting engaged and I feel that I am retaining the concepts and material.

Right now my goal is to do a complete "Lesson" a day, which is about 2 hours. The entire suite (all three levels) has 48 of them.

I definitely think I will try to finish the entire RS Japanese course suite. I think I will have a strong foundation for the language by the time I'm finished. Any other recommendations?

-doulomb

 

Ive heard Rosetta stone is garbage.

 

Might help to post what courses are available in our local area, and, if we've done them, are they any good?

I did level 1, and am doing level 2 at Institute of Modern Languages at University of Queensland. The teachers have been very good, and the class sizes haven't been too crazy, so you do get good Q&A with the teacher.

http://www.iml.uq.edu.au/courses.html?language=Japanese

 

I've actually been thinking about learning Japanese for years now, but none of the things I've tried have worked for me in the past (I have a book from Berlitz publishing called Japanese in 30 days ISBN 978-981-268-223-9 but gave up using it, Japanese For Dummies ISBN 978-0-7645-5429-2 didn't fare any better either, and Rosetta stone is garbage, not worth your time for beginners, and I'm not gonna drop $650 on pimsleur either, it may be a good method but $650 is way too much to ask for most average people especially with the economy the U.S. currently has).

I think one of the big reasons Japanese is hard to learn for alot of people is because most courses follow a traditional classroom style method of learning and doesn't engage the person in the learning process very much (it's basically study and review without giving the student anything to really help keep their interest which reduces the chances of successfully learning the language)

But just this morning I had a thought, what if one was to take a slightly different approach and instead of starting with a learning tool aimed at adults, start with a more child oriented language learning tool (like MUZZY for example) and learn the language from the ground up like a child would instead?

On its face this idea probably sounds silly I know but think about it this way, with child oriented language learning tools you're probably going to be heavily engaged in the learning process (and it'll be step by step in a way that's easy to understand) so your chances of retaining information would probably increase by a good amount especially if the lessons are easy to understand and possibly fun, and then as you improve your knowledge, work your way up to the more complex stuff, what do you guys think?

 

Nah, if it works it's not by virtue of "learning like a child". It is quite known that our brain plasticity changes after a ceirtain age and makes native-style learning almost impossible. (this might not be true though: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2600795/)

I know you're frustrated with "adult" textbooks but you're better off using a good textbook (can't comment about the ones you used), some kind of spaced repetition system to aid in learning kanji and vocabulary, and finding native-level reading material that you might be interested in. There's really not much you can do besides that outside of hiring a private teacher to, um, teach you.

Here's something that might interest you: http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/Comparison_of_Japanese_Textbooks_Table

 

If there are any Japanese schools near you you could try enrolling and studying alongside Japanese children. You would need to have some basic knowledge first, though.

I don't know Muzzy very well but I wouldn't imagine it's really comparable to natural language acquisition. It's just aimed at children, afaik. Also, Japanese is so structurally different from European languages that it would presumably be significantly harder even for children.

This is true for any language. You need to be self-motivated enough to stay interested by yourself.

 

I don't believe that once you reach a certain age native-style learning is nearly impossible for a second, and if adult textbooks don't do anything for a person would it really hurt to try going back to basics and see if it helps? (it's also quite known that an adult brain has a tendency to overanalyze and try and make things more complicated than they actually are so if it's spelled out in simple terms like it would be for a child it might be easier to pick up and understand)