Learning Japanese

[Lord Raiden]

Originally Posted by Mad Cat

Id say its up to the person.
It took my less then 6 months for me to talk good english when i was learning it

hehe. You're probubly doing better than most native speakers are as of late. It seems that after you've been speaking a language for a while, you get lazy in the tongue. I've seen some people around here lately that sound like babblng idiots because they're just gotten lazy in the way they speak english. Sheesh. Drives me nuts. What's worse is when they make up words out of nowhere and expect me to know what they mean.

[*aznplayboi*]

I have a strange way of learning it actually. I watch anime and just figure out prefixes, suffixes, and words by hearing the character's talk and reading the subtitling...its actually been working.

oh..i don't exactly replay anime over and over and try to learn it lyke that. Also I'm korean and japanese is simalar to korean. even some of the words are the same!

[Mr. Bushido]

Originally Posted by raikage

4th semester in college, better than many but not nearly as good as others

For a good forum, go to http://www.toriyamaworld.com/forum/f....asp?forumid=8



oh god...sorry, but...
you will NOT rock in Japanese...

You'll get bad habits from watching anime - your speech style will adapt to whomever it is you watch.

Ranma - 15 year old brat
Naruto - 13 year old cocky punk kid
Belldandy - goddess ditz
Himura Kenshin - retired, peaceful samurai
Chii - Chii
Chiyo-chan - super-smart 5th grader in high school

none of which sound like appealing choices to me...

It's gonna be a LOOOOOONG time before you can understand raw anime - I can understand maybe about half of what's going on at the point that I'm at (maybe others have better teachers/programs) and I've been here for 2 years.

yea... watching those anime will HELP A LOT. I learned English of american cartoons. I didnt pick up the horrible english spoken by the characters of Rugrats. (my main source) or the australian accent from Rock's Modern Life (my 2ndary)

u may think its because i had english speakers all around me.... i learned english from books and cartoons before i went to school. Then there i refined it, but it was only to refine my korean accent. Since more characters in the anime speak normally than the couple of odd ones in a single episode. And once u learn more, u will be able to break old habits too... otherwise why would u learn?

[Posix]

Originally Posted by Elin

*laughs* I've been learning for maybe 3 months... Don't know much yet, but my will to learn is carrying me fairly far through it

Same here.
I think it all depens on the person, how eager, diligent and ambitious you are.
Japanese is probably not easy to learn for us Europeans or Americans since our languages work so entirely different from the Asian ones.
But anyway, if you really want it, you will make it. Of course, living in Japan for a few years is definitely necessary. But that's the same with any language you might want to master
Happy Japanese Studying everyone ^^

[zalas]

Originally Posted by Zoro

yea... watching those anime will HELP A LOT. I learned English of american cartoons. I didnt pick up the horrible english spoken by the characters of Rugrats. (my main source) or the australian accent from Rock's Modern Life (my 2ndary)

u may think its because i had english speakers all around me.... i learned english from books and cartoons before i went to school. Then there i refined it, but it was only to refine my korean accent. Since more characters in the anime speak normally than the couple of odd ones in a single episode. And once u learn more, u will be able to break old habits too... otherwise why would u learn?

The variation in Japanese with regards to accents and dialects and speaking patterns is a lot larger than the variation in English. As far as I can tell, British English and American English differ by a few vocab words (not including slang) and slight differences in pronunciation. Now Kansai-ben and Tokyo-ben differ a lot more, such as differences in particles, suffixes, etc. And in American cartoons, most people do speak normally, or at least not insultingly. Hence, if you try to talk to an American using what you learned in cartoons, you *may* sound weird, but you won't be insulting. Now try speaking like the typical male Japanese high school student to someone like your teacher or boss and you would be really impolite.

[chImp]

Can anyone recommend me a book wich teaches Japanese? The one I'm interested in getting right now is 'Japanese for busy people', but if anyone can recommend me a better one I'll take that one.

[Kamui4356]

I used that one for my Japanese class. It was pretty good for that, and seems like it would also work well for teaching yourself. The lessons are easy to follow and give a good feel for the very basics. It isn't that helpful for learning Hiragana or Katakana though. I think there is a workbook that goes with it for that.

[Wandering A.I.]

Hmm...I guess I'm only the equivalent of a late second year/early third year Japanese major at a normal uni. But I do love going into school book stores and reading their textbooks. So anyway, take the following with a grain a salt since I'm far from an expert at Japanese. ^^ The first Japanese course I took (at NYU) used the busy people book, but also "An Introduction to Modern Japanese" by Osamu Mizutani & Nobuko Mizutani (And a workbook for kana/kanji practice). I liked that text better than Busy People since it got more in depth, but it must be ancient by now (and wouldn't be good to start with on your own). My friend who goes to one of the SUNY schools says they use "Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese" there which I got a chance to take a good look at. I also remember checking out the Japan Society in NYC and they were using "Learn Japanese: New College Text".

Comparing Yookoso to Busy People I would recommend the former. Yookoso is a full fledged text book and has more vocabulary, more detail, and introduces kanji earlier than Busy People. If you do go with Japanese for Busy People then buy the kana version instead of the roomaji version. It doesn't take long to learn hiragana/katakana and the best way to remember them is to read and write them often as opposed to staring at flash cards or something (and the kana version will force you to use them ^^). Both series have at least two volumes AFAIK.

Also both have audio CDs and if you don't have a Japanese friend or professor to work with you really should get a CD set to keep your pronunciation on track. People working on their own can end up pronouncing things completely incorrectly and wasting a lot of work. Also Japanese has what's called a pitch accent (English is stress accent and is actually pretty guessable as to where as well) and almost no learning Japanese books actually mark down what's accented where in what word - it's just something you generally have to pick up from listening a lot and learning how the words are said.

The thing about the New College text books is they have a lot of very dense grammatical explanations footnoted on each dialogue and this is the main way you learn. I really loved these, but I know people who couldn't even understand them they were so detailed. ^^ At least some of the New College volumes also mark the pitch accent with a bar that has an up or a down to it over the text. A large portion of these texts is also taken up by drills/exercises. Anyway, I wouldn't recommend the New College texts unless you have a professor to work with and explain each lesson to you and students to drill with (if you haven't taken a class before, a huge portion of every class will generally be drilling/exercising with the other students watched by the prof so you get practice actually speaking and actively using the language).

Phew, that's more than I wanted to type or I think anyone will read. ^^ One more thing I can't not say...my favorite learning Japanese book nowadays isn't even a textbook per se, but a reader that focuses on written Japanese (and copyright 1963 Oo). It will generally introduce a ton of kanji and then the dialogue will go through a bunch of compounds and find excuses for using multiple readings and meanings for all of them and it works up to real newspaper articles, etc. Anyway, once you learn all the tenses and get a good handle on pronunciation look around for a good Japanese reader IMHO. ^^ I've picked up a ton of vocabulary this way, more so then I ever did with the more standard textbooks and for me at least learning kanji and compounds as part of functional dialogue is 1000x easier than memorizing them and seeing maybe a few examples unrelated to anything else like you do in kanji practice books (which rather than being full of dialogue and examples are generally full of space to practice writing, yuck ;p).

[babbito2k]

I will recommend Genki, which has a silly name but is a good system. To use Genki you have to learn hiragana and katakana right away, which is troublesome but worthwhile. You will also learn a couple hundred kanji, which will fry your brain but cannot be helped. There are 2 books, each with its own workbook. The workbooks are worthwhile but probably not vital as each textbook lesson already has exercises. There is also an expensive set of CDs for spoken-word recognition which I would not recommend buying. Two things about Genki I dislike:
1. It is not very well indexed and it can be hard to go back and find things.
2. The romanization was a little different from what I was used to (but romanization is only used for a couple of chapters).

[chImp]

Originally Posted by Kamui4356

I used that one for my Japanese class. It was pretty good for that, and seems like it would also work well for teaching yourself. The lessons are easy to follow and give a good feel for the very basics. It isn't that helpful for learning Hiragana or Katakana though. I think there is a workbook that goes with it for that.

Thanks for all your comments, but there is a course I could get (though it's €250 [ripoff]) and I can get the books that are in it (Japanese for Busy people and Kana Workbook) for about €60 so that's why I'm asking. So Kamui4356, you're saying that if I get these two books I'll be able to learn Japanese on my own?

[ato]

Hmmm. It is an interesting subject. In my studies, I have used the "Japanese for busy people" series as well. I keep hearing that the series (I - III) is a bit on the easy side, I guess that would depend on how fast you want to go through the material. At least in my opinion, they present an acceptable challenge at my intensity of study (which is to say, on evenings after a full workday ).

There are a couple of gripes I have with this series - The most annoyning is the sloppy habit of not including all the new words in the dictionary appendix. Also, until you reach the end of book three, you will be speaking at an "office" level of politeness. Whereas this is practical since you won't offend anyone, it makes it a bit difficult (though not impossible) for you to comprehend normal, relaxed speach. Further, as has been noted earlier in the thread, there are no pitch marks in this series of books. If you study by yourself, you'll likely aquire a highly amusing accent - But that will be the case anyway, as long as you go without a teacher

And, if you go with this series, do get the kana version. The second book in the series will introduce kanji, and you really want to have the kana down pat by then.

What would be interesting to hear from you more experienced students is how to go on once you have leveled up (heh) past the introductory courses? Wandering A.I. mentioned getting a good reader - Any examples of suitably easy ones?

[Kamui4356]

Originally Posted by chImp

Thanks for all your comments, but there is a course I could get (though it's €250 [ripoff]) and I can get the books that are in it (Japanese for Busy people and Kana Workbook) for about €60 so that's why I'm asking. So Kamui4356, you're saying that if I get these two books I'll be able to learn Japanese on my own?

NO, I'm saying it'll give you a good feel for the basics of the language. These books aren't advanced enough to learn it by yourself. After you're done with them you'll still have a lot more studying to do. They are a good place to start off though. However, if you already have some knowledge of Japanese, you may want to start with something more advanced.

[chImp]

Originally Posted by Kamui4356

NO, I'm saying it'll give you a good feel for the basics of the language. These books aren't advanced enough to learn it by yourself. After you're done with them you'll still have a lot more studying to do. They are a good place to start off though. However, if you already have some knowledge of Japanese, you may want to start with something more advanced.

Only thing I know now are a few words like Kon'nichiwa etc. so I'm beginning from a fresh start.

[ElvenPath]

Instead of buying books, take real japanese lessons.

[7thMethuselah]

Originally Posted by Sway

Instead of buying books, take real japanese lessons.

I'd have to agree on that one, it is ALOT easier to learn a language that way, at least you'll be able to get the pronounciation right...

The second problem with learning a language on your own is that it requires alot of discipline and with classes you don't need that since every lesson you'll advance a little. I tried learning japanese by myslef only to find out that I had alot of questions that i couldn't find an answer too and I found myself unable to make senteces outside the situations offered in the book. Also once I started taking classes I found out I was making alot of errors

One more BIG advantage of classes is that you can actually talk japanese to other people, which would be alot harder when studying on ypour own

But if you study it on your own, learn hiragana and katakana right away, while it's no fun at first it'll come in handy later on.

in any event : Gambatte!! (good luck)

I 'm currently into kanji and am cursing those japs to use such a complicated script

[raikage]

Kan'ji - drives people insane.

But, once you finally learn it, it makes reading things so much easier.

For example, who would want to get rid of the number kan'ji (1-10, 100, 1000, etc.)

and it keeps things simple to understand:

きる -　切る "to cut"

きる -　着る "to wear"

きる -　斬る "to behead/murder"

[Shii]

Call me unscholarly, but I really like "Read Japanese Today".

[wnkryo]

Anyone know any simple programs that translate japanese text on the internet to english ones?

[Shii]

http://babelfish.av.com/

http://www.rikai.com/perl/Home.pl

[Virus]

How difficult is it for you to learn it?

I myself find it rather easy, sinse Romaji is pronounced very much like spanish (My original lenguage). As for the symbols, it's kinda easy, but it's going to take time