Learn Japanese online

[piccahoe]

はじめまして！ ピッカホ です！

げんき です か？

ぼく の にほんご は じょおぞ で は ありません！ごめなさい！

here's some good sites:
http://jin.jcic.or.jp/kidsweb/language.html
http://www.thejapanesepage.com/grammar.htm

[Eelco]

To Piccahoe

The correct way of writing would be:
ぼく　の　にほんご　は　じょうず　で　は　ありません。

If you type it without spaces and hit the space bar at the end of the sentence, you would get this:
僕の日本語は上手ではありません。


To Roots,

Thank you for the tips

I've been working ahead a bit, and the ["A" wa "B" da] construction will be introduced in the 3rd lesson, though the full intricacies won't be explained until the 5th lesson. The problem with "da" is that it's a verb which behaves very differently from other verbs, so I decided to introduce that one later, after people will have had the chance to get used to the regular verbs. (Unfortunately all the most useful constructions have grammatical difficulties which should be slowly introduced.).

I know that it's quite overwhelming to see kanji on the first lesson (I know I'm evil ), but I think it's good to get used to them right away. I'm hoping that having the sentences in hiragana as well as kanji will enable people to use the course even if they don't know kanji. But the lack of spaces in Japanese can make hiragana sentences very hard to read.

I remember that in the beginning I thought that life would be so much easier if the Japanese would just abolish kanji. Now I know I wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of the language if they would.

I tried to pick simple kanji like 山 and 川 and such, but the second set of kanji you recommended ( 大, 小 ) has the problem of being conjugated adjectives ( 大きい, 小さい ) or part of a word with more complex kanji ( 大学, 小便 ).

If you want to focus on learning kanji only, Kanji Site is a very good one. And if you prefer to learn useful phrases Japanese Online is a great site. But I haven't found any (free) sites that combine the two into a unified whole. That's why on Japanese 101 I decided to use a structure in which you learn both at the same time.

I noticed that people learn things more easily if they can play with a test to see how many they already know. I will be creating online tests later on for hiragana, kanji, and grammar, but at the moment my attention is on the lessons and the grammar section. (The latter is gonna be especially large, with probably well over 50 reference pages.)

[vasiliki]

Originally Posted by Roots

- I think you present way too much way too fast. I think throwing all of those Kanji at the learner on the first two lessons is an evil evil idea.
(snip)
I would recommend not introducing the Kanji until at least the 5th lesson or so (and even that is a little soon I think).

While I agree with you on the first point (presenting too many kanji too fast), I disargee on not introducing kanji immediately. Kanji must be introduced from the very beginning, so that the prospective student will realize they're an integral part of the language, and nobody can get around it, if he wants to learn Japanese. "Only serious students need apply. "
In addition, because the focus of his course is on written Japanese, not conversation, there's no point in having someone optically memorizing かわ , when in every Japanese document (even the easiest manga!) he'll encounter 川.

Eelco, my own objection is that you plan on using romaji for too long. And that in the page where transcription is explained, you've translated "matte" as "hold on a sec" (=chotto matte) instead of "wait".

[Eelco]

Originally Posted by vasiliki

And that in the page where transcription is explained, you've translated "matte" as "hold on a sec" (=chotto matte) instead of "wait".

You are absolutely right... I changed the example to "kutte". (I didn't have the space to put "chotto" ).

[Blue*Dragon]

about that website

http://www.theforeigner-japan.com/in...forum/YaBB.cgi

is it the best also to enable the sounds so that you know how they speak etc

[Eelco]

I'm not sure how this should be applied to the forum...

At this moment I have neither the storage space, nor the cute girl to do the voice recording. That'll be something for the future, perhaps next time I'm in Japan.

The next lesson (no. 3) will be uploaded tomorrow. After that I'll start serious work on the Grammar section. With any luck I'll be able to upload the first section in a week, but with the new issue coming up for the magazine itself it might be a bit hectic, so no promises

[Dark_Sun]

WARNING!!!! just to warn ppl who go to www.japanese-online.com .....unless ur a pornomaniac (EWW)...dont forget to put the (-) in the url.

[Mcdonalds]

Cheers for the free japanese grammer learning website, only had a quick look through the first lesson not really had the time to delve deeply into it, but it looks pretty promising. I went to japanese online once, but tbh i found it quite useless teaching me phrases rather than actual grammatical structure etc. Being chinese, i'm assuming the word structure is totally different and that is epitomised by the first section with the world "no". Anyway, thanks for the website, will be eagerly learning japanese

[Mr. Bushido]

Originally Posted by Mcdonalds

Cheers for the free japanese grammer learning website, only had a quick look through the first lesson not really had the time to delve deeply into it, but it looks pretty promising. I went to japanese online once, but tbh i found it quite useless teaching me phrases rather than actual grammatical structure etc. Being chinese, i'm assuming the word structure is totally different and that is epitomised by the first section with the world "no". Anyway, thanks for the website, will be eagerly learning japanese

chinese and japanese grammar structures are reversed. they are the opposite.

[Eelco]

I heard that Chinese doesn't really have a prescribed word order... But that may just be someone pulling my leg

[Tritium]

lol so weird to see a dutchman called Eelco speaking japanese i really want to read japanese manga's, those are written in kanji right? so where do i start learning that

[Eelco]

Originally Posted by Tritium

lol so weird to see a dutchman called Eelco speaking japanese i really want to read japanese manga's, those are written in kanji right? so where do i start learning that

Hehe

Well, there are a lot of manga aimed at young children that are written in hiragana only. Those can still be quite entertaining.

The more popular manga are written for teenagers, and are written in kanji, though some feature so called "furigana", which are small hiragana next to the kanji to give the pronunciation.

If you want to learn kanji alone, I recommend www.kanjistep.com or www.kanjisite.com, but remember that knowing all the kanji in the Japanese language won't do you any good without understanding the grammar.

If you want to learn it by yourself "Japanese for Busy People" is a good textbook series. They will teach you grammatical structures while giving useful sentences.

Else of course you could check out my site , but lessons will be added rather slowly (one every issue, which if you're lucky means one lesson per month). There are three lessons online now, which cover hiragana, and roughly 40-50 kanji I think, plus some very basic grammar. I'd say that you can manage well with my course after 8 lessons. Then you'll have a basic knowledge of Japanese to a point that you'll be able to use it.

[Tritium]

Originally Posted by Eelco

Hehe

Well, there are a lot of manga aimed at young children that are written in hiragana only. Those can still be quite entertaining.

The more popular manga are written for teenagers, and are written in kanji, though some feature so called "furigana", which are small hiragana next to the kanji to give the pronunciation.

If you want to learn kanji alone, I recommend www.kanjistep.com or www.kanjisite.com, but remember that knowing all the kanji in the Japanese language won't do you any good without understanding the grammar.

If you want to learn it by yourself "Japanese for Busy People" is a good textbook series. They will teach you grammatical structures while giving useful sentences.

Else of course you could check out my site , but lessons will be added rather slowly (one every issue, which if you're lucky means one lesson per month). There are three lessons online now, which cover hiragana, and roughly 40-50 kanji I think, plus some very basic grammar. I'd say that you can manage well with my course after 8 lessons. Then you'll have a basic knowledge of Japanese to a point that you'll be able to use it.

so all the "easy" childeren books are written in hiragana? i'll learn that first then does anyone know a site that has raw manga written in hiragana? i don't care what it's about, as long as its easy to read ? thnx Eelco for that long reply! I will use your website as my startpage way better then the shitty msn.com site i'm now using

edit: Eelco how long have you studied japanese?

[Eelco]

Originally Posted by Tritium

edit: Eelco how long have you studied japanese?

I've studied it 5 years now, and spent 2 years in Japan. I'm still far from fluent though... that'll probably take the rest of my lifetime

[Tritium]

may i ask how old you are lol, and did you take a special study or did you do it all by yourself? My biggest wish is still reading kanji then i could play all those unreleased games and read manga

[Dark_Sun]

japanese is the easiest language to learn for me....maybe because im korean and the order of the word is really simalar

[Mr. Bushido]

Originally Posted by Dark_Sun

japanese is the easiest language to learn for me....maybe because im korean and the order of the word is really simalar

similar?? its the same bro. at least 1000 words sound the same with the same meanings of course. Us koreans have it easy in learning japanese and the japanese have it easy learning ours. I think the Chinese has the most advantage in the asian languages tho. Its like learning latin and then taking spanish, french, english.

[Eelco]

I'm 30 and studied Japanese at the university in Holland. But there are things that even the University doesn't teach you .

As for Korean: It doesn't only have the same word order, but also uses kanji (though not as much as Japanese). One point where Korean is even more complex than Japanese is the levels of politeness. If you thought they were impossible in Japanese, don't even think about taking on Korean .

But a 1000 similar words in Korean and Japanese hardly makes it the same language. German and Dutch share over 10.000 same words, and still I can't speak the language (German that is).

[QuasiSparklz]

I am currently taking Japanese at my local Community College, and the text book we use is Genki, which is published by the Japan Times. It is very user friendly, not horribly expensive, and introduces vocabulary, kanji, and kana in an organized and sensible manner. So if anyone is looking for an actual textbook to use, Fusayo-sensei told my class that Genki was chosen because it approaches Japanese from all directions. I'd definitely recommend it.

[Mr. Bushido]

Originally Posted by Eelco

I'm 30 and studied Japanese at the university in Holland. But there are things that even the University doesn't teach you .

As for Korean: It doesn't only have the same word order, but also uses kanji (though not as much as Japanese). One point where Korean is even more complex than Japanese is the levels of politeness. If you thought they were impossible in Japanese, don't even think about taking on Korean .

But a 1000 similar words in Korean and Japanese hardly makes it the same language. German and Dutch share over 10.000 same words, and still I can't speak the language (German that is).

its called hanmun in korean lol. you dont use it as much.... in fact u dont need it at all to read any mangas/novels/etc. Korea was able to develope a more effective writing system, and so we dont need hanmun/kanji as much. However law school will kill u if u dont know enough of it.

I never thought the polite level was hard in korean. lol, the most basic one is to just say "yo" at the end of ur sentence. (it wont work all the time tho) ANyway, it does seem more complicated than japanese tho....

It doesnt help u speak, but it WILL help ur vocab a lot.


QuasiSparklz is it really tat good?