Learning new laguages

As the topic stats i was wondering about ways to learn to read and speak Japanese. i figured there must be alot of people here that can and id like to know how you learned. audio, books, and so on. if possible a link to where audio could be found.

School, Computers, Get it beat into ya, Give up right now and just buy a translator device, or get a wife (or husband) that already speaks the language.

As for online... well I don't know too many I'm seaching now for one.

http://www.learnjapanesefree.com/

http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1229811121/ref=a9_sc_1?ie=UTF8&search-alias=aps&field-keywords=learn%20japanese

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Dummies-AUDIO-Eriko-Sato/dp/0764554298/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229811126&sr=8-2

Me? I learned from watching anime. I picked up some words here and there and I also took a year class in it (and got a D... it's fuckin hard to learn it)

I'd recommend taking classes. I'm in the same boat as Afroman, took a year of Japanese and gave up with a "c".



If you just want the basics, you could pick up "My Japanese Coach" for the DS.

Gratsi for the info, already started checking it out, hopefully its easier than i know think its going to be, thanks again

There's one thing that confuses me. As stated on the Learn Japanese Free site, "Learning Japanese is very simple but unlike English language, so many English speaking find difficult to learn Japanese." The important part is the beginning: "Learning Japanese is very simple."

Afroman and tsujoi said they took Japanese classes and ended up with a D and a C, respectively. If the language was "simply" and easy to learn, how could a person end up with a low grade in a class about learning Japanese?

Several times, I've seen various people here on Fakku say that Japanese is easy to learn. One in particular, I remember, said that it could take two weeks to learn rudimentary Japanese. But in Raze's posts about learning Japanese, he said this:



So, is Japanese easy or hard?

i hope its easy to learn anything, language or otherwise, but i know as you age it becomes a bit more difficult to learn things. so i guess it goes on effort, intelligence, and time. but ive also been told bilingual people have an easy time learning their third language, so i the easiest answer that comes to my mind is its dependent on who is learning.

Raze wrote:


Agreed. Learning Japanese isn't as easy as anyone think it'd be. Through watching a lot of animes & with the help of some books though, I've learned most of the basic vocabularies but it's entirely a different story when applying it; the proper construction of grammar, the pronunciation of words, to be able to read & write (hiragana, katakana, kanji).. it definitely takes time & devotion.

I don't know if it would be easy if you already had a background in Asian linguistics in general or something, but I'm fairly sure that it would be accurate to say that it is greatly different from English, and as such is hard for English speakers to understand. At least adults. We are used to specific sentence structure, grammar, etc., as well as the fact that the muscles involved with speaking and our brains are used to a certain set of sounds we use for our language.
I would assume the best way to approach it would be the same as approaching any other language; not from the point of view of translation, but as something entirely different, and build up from an understanding of the basic elements that make up the language, and worry about actual words and such later. Otherwise you'll just be using substitution for words in English, which is a slow and ineffective way to learn, because you are still thinking in the context of the English language.

On a personal note, being that a never watch anime or foreign film dubbed so as to minimize confusion or distortion of the original intention and nuance, I hear a lot of Japanese, and find myself with the urge to give simple responses and use simple phrases in Japanese at times. This is kind of annoying, because I don't really like it when other people insert words of another language that they don't actually speak into conversations, so I can't imagine other people like it when I do it.
But that's my own problem.

For basic Japanese, i suggest you learn from e-books linked below.

Minna no Nihongo 1 Set
http://nihongo-dekimasu.blogspot.com/search/label/Minna%20no%20Nihongo%201

Minna no Nihongo 2 Set
http://nihongo-dekimasu.blogspot.com/search/label/Minna%20no%20Nihongo%

You'll also find many helpful download links in that site.
As for advanced Japanese,the best way is,well,to come to Japan and learn from the real deal.

As for kanji, the E-Kanji Dictionary i use.....
http://www.saiga-jp.com/kanji_dictionary.html

If you got about 300$ to spare,i recommend you to buy one of these(assuming that it's available in your country).....
http://casio.jp/exword/products/XD-SP6700/

One tips from me,DON'T YOU DARE SKIP KANJI FROM YOUR LESSON.
Believe me,once you get the hang of kanji, Japanese is easy peasy.

At least in my opinion.

I don't know, learning languages has always been my strong suit, i never had any particular problems learning languages.

But maybe that's because i haven't tried Chinese yet.

holy crap thats alot of information in one day. thankyou much, hopefully ill have it down in a few months, thanks again

I find it hard to remember a language unless you speak it very often

Languages, easy to learn? Master it in months? Please. If languages were this easy to pick up, I'd be speaking every language on this planet in a few years. The only way you'd master a new language in several months would be to live in the country where it is spoken, and even then, you need to put in the effort. You can quit lying now, guys.

I will have you guys know I used the Taiwanese adaptation of the "Minna no Nihongo" set mnx posted above to learn Japanese, and found it to be excellent. And honestly, if you expect to get anywhere, take classes. There's nothing like pressure and expert guidance in helping you learn something this mammoth.

A few pointers to assist you in your learning the Japanese language.

- Learn your kana FIRST, and FOREMOST. DO NOT USE ROMAJI. Make sure you get to the point where you can identify them instinctively and don't need to refer to some chart.
- Make sure you COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND the grammar and sentence structures. This is an often neglected part of learning Japanese with people who don't take classes, and its importance cannot be overstated in forming a solid foundation for the language. I personally feel a good grasp of grammar is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than vocabulary; you can simply look up a dictionary if you come across new words (and thus learn them), but there's nothing to refer to if you don't know your grammar. Many, many people end up knowing a decent amount of vocabulary but cannot string a sentence together because they did not pay attention to these basics. It's not anything tricky either, which is a pitiful thing, really.
- Vocabulary. Make sure you try very hard to learn them. Studying kanji by themselves WILL NOT HELP. Learn them IN CONTEXT, so next time you see the kanji you will have an understanding of what it means, and where you've seen it before.
- Anime, Manga, Visual Novels, and any other sort of weaboo method to learn WILL NOT WORK unless you already have a decent vocabulary as well as a VERY SOLID UNDERSTANDING of how the language works (grammar, sentence structure). I CANNOT STRESS THIS POINT ENOUGH, and this is where 99% of the fanboys fail. You become the sort of person that Dante1214 outlined above: annoying weaboos who feel a strong urge to show off their broken Japanese knowledge at every possible opportunity.

tl:dr - Best way to learn Japanese without moving to Japan for a few years? Take classes, pay attention, work hard, and get a solid understanding of the language first. THEN you can go do all your anime/manga.

This post is win.

It's win because it's true. I've learnt my Japanese through watching anime and occasional forum browsing - where does this leave me? With broken Japanese: half-assed grammatically wrong sentences, unable to read, unable to write, and very hard to communicate with others. It's probably my own ability to understand some of the spoken language and it's relation to Mandarin was I actually to communicate with my Japanese cousins in an intelligible form, whom I have no doubt cringed at my excellent wielding of the Japanese langauge.

Currently my cousin from Taiwan is over in the U.S. to learn English. And like Raze said, it's best to learn a language through classes, good teachers, and constant devotion to studying and practicing. Living in an environment based on the language is good, but more often than not that fails - my cousin hangs out with people who speak Mandarin. Where's the point now?

Not as win as pie.
But, since this is the serious discussion forum, I suppose i'll have to contribute something intellectual, or get banned or whatever.

I took a class in Japanese, and failed, pretty epically.
It takes a whole bunch of devotion to learn a new language, especially one as complicated as Japanese.
I've never been the kind of person that sets a goal, and, no matter what, completes that goal.
So if you aren't, either, this language is probobly not for you.

That didn't sound all that intellectual, did it?

Or maybe learn a language that's actually pretty useful.

Japanese, sadly, is only mainly spoken in small little islands grouped up called: Japan.

Learn something useful.... like Latin.

Vade ad formicam o piger et considerm vias eius et.

Sadly my keyboard is too lazy to have any accents for long and short vowels.

):

also... I am pissed that I pronounce v as w and c as cat everytime.

As a person who speaks arabic, I am used to hard pronunciation, and a french feggit speaker, used to the accents.

BUT LATIN IS JUST WEIRD AND HAS NO GRAMMAR WHAT THE FUCK. THERE ARE NO ARTICLES LIKE A OR THE, AND THERE'S NO REAL PRONOUNS RLY.

IF YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT THE FARMER/A FARMER/THIS FARMER/THAT FARMER/FARMER

all you say is agri`cola. and it automatically becomes the farmer, a farmer, this farmer, that farmer, farmer.

lol, I took Latin my freshman year of high school. I didn't really apply myself, so I didn't get an A, but I still got a C. Latin may be difficult, but it'd probably be easier for a 15-year-old kid (who speaks English) to learn Latin than Japanese, because there are a lot of similarities between English and Latin. In fact, there are a lot of similarities between Latin and a lot of languages.

As for Japanese not being "useful," I'm gonna have to disagree with you. It all depends on what you want to do with it. I imagine a lot of people here would like to learn Japanese so they can read manga and watch anime that hasn't been translated. Maybe they want to go to Japan to enjoy the culture. In those cases, learning Japanese would be useful.

Even if not an anime fan, learning Japanese can still be useful. Japan has the second largest economy in the world; knowing how to speak Japanese could come in very handy for a businessman. Also, a foreign language always looks good on a resume, but Japanese looks really good, because most people see it as being a very difficult language. It's also uncommon to meet a person who knows Japanese, so it can make a person stand out when searching for a job.

But, really, it all comes down to what the person wants to do. For example, it would be pretty useless for me to learn Arabic, because I have no plans of going anywhere it is spoken or doing anything that would require me to be able to read or speak the language. But if a person wants to travel and go to a lot of different places, learning Arabic might be good for them.