What's the best way to learn Japanese?

[Kura Ookami]

I'm attempting to learn Japanese and I'm wondering what the best way to learn it is? So far I've started learning the hiragana, After the kana, what's the next best thing to study? The kanji or vocab? Any suggestions for books or software to study Japanese?

I wasn't sure where to post this thread. Should it be in the tutorials forum?

[AsianBlossom]

I'd definitely say to learn vocabulary, vocabulary, and more vocabulary. Even if you don't know the kanji for something right away, at least you can have a conversation with people, or at the very least, ask for help if you ever need to do so should you find yourself in the Land of Anime, Manga, and Video Games.

Actually, once you learn kanji, I think you'd be learning vocab right along with it, since each kanji has a specific meaning (and helps to differentiate between homonyms in writing...kana aren't able to do that). But increasing your vocabulary without worrying too much about the kanji is what I recommend. After all, Japanese children learn to speak first, and then learn kanji once they're in school (or whenever...there could be exceptions).

[minakichan]

<s>Learn Chinese first.</s>

Learning grammar early first could be helpful ._.

[EricTheFred]

I would say building up an understanding of the grammar (the use of verbs and particles) is critical early on. Kanji is hard to grasp out of context, since just recognizing when to appy on or kun readings is tough without knowing how the verbs are put together (most of the time, the words are run together without spaces. Often, you have to know when the kana following the character is part of the word or a separate word just to know which reading to give it.)

Once you have a basic grasp of the verbs, you could probably build up kanji and spoken vocabulary together.

[Shao Feng-Li]

Perhaps a Rosetta Stone language course?

[Bobtheduck]

I'm using Pimsleur's Japanese audio CD's... I took Japanese classes before, and to be honest they just didn't stick with me. Too much focus on the specifics of grammar and on written communication. There are many Japanese students who can read and write English pretty well, but they can't understand it or speak it because all they ever did was read and write. While a true understanding of a language includes both written and spoken language, you don't start learning as a child by reading, do you? Even if you're deaf, you learn conversation before reading and writing, be it spoken or via sign.

Pimsleur gives you grammar by teaching you phrases and having you compare similar phrases. It's not bogged down in the specifics and the kind of things that only linguists care about. You can (and should) learn those things later. I'm a little over halfway through the third volume, meaning I've done over 75 lessons, and I've got less than 15 to go. It really works if you do it they way they ask, and while it certainly won't make you fluent, it's a better start to speaking it than any class could be.

After that, I'd certainly make sure I had Hiragana and Katakana down before moving onto Kanji.

[ST. Attidude]

I've been using the 9 disc (5 CDROM and 4 audioCD) set from Instant Immersion for a while.

For twenty-something bucks, it's pretty good.

I got the gist of a lot of things, and it hasn't failed me so far.

[Tsukuyomi]

I have a lesson book called "Learning Japanese From Zero". It has all the basics you need to start out with ^^ Even if you do know the basics.. It may be a good idea to review ^ ^ Maybe that may help you furthermore as well ^ ^

(I has to resume lessons >_>)

[Raiden no Kishi]

Perhaps a Rosetta Stone language course?

Not for Japanese. Trust me on this one. I tried Rosetta Stone for Japanese. It's not enough. Japanese is simply too different from English.

.rai//

[Eddosan]

Guidetojapanese.org has helped me a lot. It's got things that my Japanese Grammar handbook doesn't cover, so it's definitely useful.

But yeah, I guess learning phrases is more practical than learning grammar or vocabulary first. How I do it, I learn a little bit of everything as I go on.

[Azier the Swordsman]

Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur are ridiculously overpriced, and I honestly didn't find either of them to be as good as some of the other language products I tried. Better than average, but not best. (Sorry, Bob.)

Try YesJapan.com

It's only about $20 a month, and for that you get five courses with over 60+ lessons, teacher support, member forums, chatroom, several hundred different videos covering a wide range of Japanese language/culture topics, downloadable Japanese music from every genre in the book, optional live classes through Skype, games, store, study tools, and probably a handful of other stuff I am forgetting.

YesJapan gets my vote for the best out of all the avaliable Japanese courses on the market. And believe me, I've tried EVERYTHING.

[Bobtheduck]

Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur are ridiculously overpriced, and I honestly didn't find either of them to be as good as some of the other language products I tried. Better than average, but not best. (Sorry, Bob.)

Try YesJapan.com

It's only about $20 a month, and for that you get five courses with over 60+ lessons, teacher support, member forums, chatroom, several hundred different videos covering a wide range of Japanese language/culture topics, downloadable Japanese music from every genre in the book, optional live classes through Skype, games, store, study tools, and probably a handful of other stuff I am forgetting.

YesJapan gets my vote for the best out of all the avaliable Japanese courses on the market. And believe me, I've tried EVERYTHING.

Well, I am test-running YesJapan at your suggestion, but I wonder... How far did you get in Pimsleur? Did you only try a few lessons and stop? Did you zoom through lessons, doing more than one at a time, or did you do one a day? I think it's expensive, yes, but you can probably find all 3 volumes on ebay for under 200 bucks in total (zenbu de nihyaku doru desu, you just have to look at the right times) and share the cost with friends, and once you've gone through the whole thing, it all starts making sense.

I think Pimsleur gives you the most results for the least effort. In order to do YesJapan or those horrible "total immersion" things (though, I admit I have an older one that jumped straight from "ringo=apple" to full minute long sentences without the disc they added in between later on), I have to take time out of my day to go to the site and do all their exercises, which I will probably do once I'm done with Pimsleur anyhow, but with Pimsleur, I put a lesson on my shuffle and listen to it while I walk or clean. I really like the Pimsleur method of incremental repetition, and I like not being tied to anything such as time. I can do it WHILE I do other things. I guess that's just my ADD talking. One mindless activity, one thinking activity, that's the way to go when you have ADD... It's why people click pens and stroke their chin while they think.

[Kaori]

General suggestions:

- You've probably heard this before, but the best way to practice is to do so as often and regularly as possible, preferably with a class or tutor or someone who can keep you accountable: even if you're highly motivated, it can be difficult to make yourself study regularly.

-Practice with a native speaker if at all possible.

As far as what to study, the next logical step after learning hiragana would be katakana and then kanji after that. Going through kanji by grade level is a decent strategy, since the lowest grades theoretically have the most frequently-used kanji.

I would personally recommend using a book or resource that gives you a little bit of everything (grammar, vocabulary, phrases, etc.) instead of focusing on one aspect exclusively. It's just not useful to know lots of words if you can't put them together in a sentence, and the opposite is also true--grammar is not useless unless you have at least a small vocabulary base. Also, while there are some ritual phrases that just have to be memorized, I wouldn't recommend doing a lot of rote memorization of long phrases; if you understand the grammar and vocabulary of a sentence, then you can alter and recombine things, but you can't do if you're just memorizing a string of sounds the meanings of which you don't understand.

I'm currently using workbooks called Minna no Nihongo, which I'm fairly content with; every lesson teaches some grammar/sentence patterns, vocabulary, a few phrases, and cultural information, as well as a conversation section that you can practice if you're learning along with someone else. The books are a bit pricey (2,500 yen for the workbook and 2,000 for the accompanying English grammar explanation book), and they are probably only available online or in Japan. However, your local bookstore might stock other books that are similar in the way that they teach both grammar and vocabulary in every lesson.

[Azier the Swordsman]

Well, I am test-running YesJapan at your suggestion, but I wonder... How far did you get in Pimsleur? Did you only try a few lessons and stop? Did you zoom through lessons, doing more than one at a time, or did you do one a day? I think it's expensive, yes, but you can probably find all 3 volumes on ebay for under 200 bucks in total (zenbu de nihyaku doru desu, you just have to look at the right times) and share the cost with friends, and once you've gone through the whole thing, it all starts making sense.

I think Pimsleur gives you the most results for the least effort. In order to do YesJapan or those horrible "total immersion" things (though, I admit I have an older one that jumped straight from "ringo=apple" to full minute long sentences without the disc they added in between later on), I have to take time out of my day to go to the site and do all their exercises, which I will probably do once I'm done with Pimsleur anyhow, but with Pimsleur, I put a lesson on my shuffle and listen to it while I walk or clean. I really like the Pimsleur method of incremental repetition, and I like not being tied to anything such as time. I can do it WHILE I do other things. I guess that's just my ADD talking. One mindless activity, one thinking activity, that's the way to go when you have ADD... It's why people click pens and stroke their chin while they think.

I used the entire first CD set of Pimsleur. And I went through them systematically, do one lesson, repeat, do the next lesson, get to five, repeat the five, ect.

I tend to learn best and quickest this way. I felt the system was good, but I simply feel that YesJapan offered me more for my money, and the system used works better for me.

Please note that I have an unusual brain flaw which gives me some advantages and disadvantages over memory/retention and different methods of learning (I retain more the faster I zoom through something) so my results are not going to be the same as the average person.

[Paul]

I'm not much in the way of the japanese language as I was in attempting Madarin Chinese. It was a huge undertaking.

Not knowing the different styles of Japanese, I can only comment on what I know with Chinese, and from that perspective comes my advice (which would benefit any language being attempted). Stick to a single dialect and learn it well. Getting several samples of the different dialects, which I found possible in Chinese, can be quite confusing. And if dipthongs, that is the different pitch and tones, applies to the japanese language like it does Chinese, that will greatly affect the meaning of the spoken language. I found out that by saying a sentence, and changing the dipthongs of that sentence can take a person from Buying a house to selling their mother. And character structure of the written language is so delicate in it's use, care is given to writing it. I asked a chinese person to write the written version of the phrase "God Bless You" for me, and the process took ten minutes with the person writing several versions on scratch paper to properly structure the statement.

So be carefull and build on what you have learned. It's easy to offend. I am glad you are trying and I think it's great. It helps people to understand others. Good luck.

Paul

[Kura Ookami]

Thank you for all the advice.
I've found a useful program. Power Japanese. It seems good for learning the kana. Other sources for learning the kana are kana de manga. There's also the free learn japanese game Knuckles in chinaland, which uses a flashcard method to teach japanese.

[EricTheFred]

Fortunately, Japanese is a little more forgiving in this respect. Unlike Chinese, which has many 'dialects' that linguists actually consider separate languages, Standard Japanese, their analog of Mandarin, is understandable throughout the country, and is the only dialect you usually find books and cds for. This is a very different situation than China, where many dialects not compatible with Mandarin are spoken by large populations (Cantonese is an example.)

The Japanese phoneme set is much more like European than like any other language in East Asia, so learning pronunciation is probably the easiest part. You do have pitches, but they are like pitches in English, not like the tones in Chinese. Get them wrong, you will sound weird, but it doesn't change the meaning. The consonants and vowels are mostly the same as found in Italian (with the exception of 'r').

But the thing that I'm told drives Japanese nuts more than any other foreign speaker's mistake is getting the timing wrong. Japanese has a defined rhythm, critical enough to understanding that the lengths of syllables are included in the written language. Every syllable has a short or long value, basically 1 beat or 2 beats, and if you don't pay attention to these, you can garble up the meaning.

You can make mistakes on the particles and it's just like a foreign speaker messing up English prepositions. It sounds funny, but often the listener can work out what you meant to say. (in fact, in Manga when they show a foreigner speaking oddly in the English translation, often the original Japanese had them screwing up or omitting the particles. The reader can still peice together what the character said.)

[Azier the Swordsman]

<s>Learn Chinese first.</s>

Learning grammar early first could be helpful ._.

A note about this: I highly advise against learning Chinese first. I've taken a little bit and the grammar and structure is so widely different and there is the problem of dialect making it as formidable as Japanese. There really isn't any practical reason to learn Chinese first.

[EricTheFred]

A note about this: I highly advise against learning Chinese first. I've taken a little bit and the grammar and structure is so widely different and there is the problem of dialect making it as formidable as Japanese. There really isn't any practical reason to learn Chinese first.

I'm.... pretty sure she was joking. It was a reference to the OP's interest in Kanji (you see, 'Kanji' roughly translates out of Japanese as 'Chinese Writing', or more accurately 'Han writing')

[Syaoran]

Find a friend that speeks Japanese fluently. ^-^

[Eddosan]

- You've probably heard this before, but the best way to practice is to do so as often and regularly as possible, preferably with a class or tutor or someone who can keep you accountable: even if you're highly motivated, it can be difficult to make yourself study regularly.

Heh. Right now I can't take Japanese in my college (classes are full), but I might be able to join Japanese club. That sounds like it can up my accountability. However, a friend of mine told me that most of the people there know less Japanese than I do (and I don't know too much), and consistently get D's in Japanese class. Not sure if it's true, but it's not such an attractive option anymore! P:

I do need to be more accountable for my Japanese. My interest in the language varies from time to time.

-Practice with a native speaker if at all possible.

I know spoken conversation is important, but would text chatting (online) with a native speaker also count? There are like, no Japanese people around Orlando, so it's kinda hard to practice with a native. And even if I did find Japanese people around my area, how would I get them interested in helping me with my Japanese? Heh.

However, there are some Japanese-born tutors here. But that costs mucho dinero. So no. XD

-----

On a side note, I've been checking out the lessons NHK has to offer. They're pretty basic, but focus a lot on conversation, which is what I lack the most aside from vocabulary. It might be worth your time to check them out, if not laugh a little. (These are FREE, by the way.)

http://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/index.html

[Bobtheduck]

I'm on YesJapan now, and I have to say.. This has its advantages over Pimsleur, but vocaublary learning isn't one of them. They just plop everything there and expect you to hear the whole words and memorize long strings of things (like the 48(?) prefectures)

I think that the timing they use, and the fact they just plop words down makes this a bit too much "here it is, now learn it" rather that truly walking you through it. What I think they DID do right, however, is hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Granted, they only teach you 80 kanji, but I think that's a good start. The best way I've encountered to learn Kanji is by writing it and doing flash cards, and they have both (you can print out exercise charts)

I just think for most people's retention, the pimsleur method ([button="bla"]yes, I know I sound like a salesman... I*m not selling my copy on ebay or anything... Not yet, though that is the best way to make back the money you spent on those very expensive programs[/button]) of

(in this case, "whatever" is the word being taught)

whatever
er
ever
what
whatever

whatever
(distraction)
Whatever
Other words
Whatever
other words
Other words
Whatever

I think that incremental thing works the best, and it works best when you DON'T repeat lessons (unless you've retained less than 80%) because they do enough repetition at increasing intervals in the future lessons that you remember better than just saying

kudamono fruit
Kudamono fruit
kudamono fruit
kudamono fruit

over and over and over again, because you'll end up forgetting that in a couple days.

WHat I really like about YesJapan is the videos. I'll have to get a subscription so I can download some of those videos with the white guy and two japanese girls. The one where he was discussing "nano" was really funny.

Ｉ　ｔｈｉｎｋ　ｔｈａｔ，　when I finally start it for real (paid account, I mean) I'll have a good enough foundation in a learning method that is really about walking you through every step that I'll be able to use their much less step-by-step method of "here's vocabulary, now study it"

I'm really interested in the skype sessions and the videos and in learning the 80 kanji they offer (which are probably the same, more or less, 80 kanji I learned in Mieko Han's Japanese curriculum) I wonder if they're going to add to that, go past level 5... I wonder if they'll get much farther than what I've already been doing, other than the occasional vocabulary word and phrase...

By the way, she may be a bit brash and offensive (and not very, um, Japanese) but I LOVE Applemilk... I'd seen her before, on youtube, and I'm excited to see what else she'll be bringing to YesJapan.

[Azier the Swordsman]

George has talked about going beyond Course 5 before, but has never gotten around to it. He also has rarely updated the site lately, but he has a very busy career in addition to YesJapan.

[Shao Feng-Li]

Find a friend that speeks Japanese fluently. ^-^

I don't think there's even a single asian person within 100 miles of me...

A few years ago, there was a Japanese exchange student that I met at my judo class. She helped a bit with my pronunciations.

[Eddosan]

By the way, she may be a bit brash and offensive (and not very, um, Japanese) but I LOVE Applemilk... I'd seen her before, on youtube, and I'm excited to see what else she'll be bringing to YesJapan.

Applemilk teaches on YesJapan?

Lol wut?

[Bobtheduck]

Applemilk teaches on YesJapan?

Lol wut?

Teaches? No... She has "cultural perspectives" kind of videos, I suppose, highlighting differences between the US and Japan.

George has talked about going beyond Course 5 before, but has never gotten around to it. He also has rarely updated the site lately, but he has a very busy career in addition to YesJapan.

Hmm... That's disappointing... What is his OTHER career? I'd think being a language and culture teacher would be enough.

[Azier the Swordsman]

Teaches? No... She has "cultural perspectives" kind of videos, I suppose, highlighting differences between the US and Japan.





Hmm... That's disappointing... What is his OTHER career? I'd think being a language and culture teacher would be enough.

He is a professional interpreter. He interprets for big corporations, mostly. His level of Japanese is pretty advanced compared to the norm. I believe he mentioned before he pulls in up to $20,000+ per job.

[Bobtheduck]

He is a professional interpreter. He interprets for big corporations, mostly. His level of Japanese is pretty advanced compared to the norm. I believe he mentioned before he pulls in up to $20,000+ per job.

Well, there you go... Interpreter is one of the careers I've been considering for if I find the game industry too much for me. A fallback, though it's an indepth fallback... You know, the kind that would take another 4 years of school... I'm sure most peoples' fallbacks are simply things like manual labor or a certificate based career rather than one based on a degree.

[agasfas]

I found that Pimsleur's Japanese audio CD's were the best for my learning style. What I liked about Pimsleur is that it's focus is primarily on conversational Japanese and the most commonly used words in the language. Another awesome feature is Pimsleur sounds out each word to help with correct pronunciation and teaches correct sentence structure along the way. I did the first 2 units/60 lessons before going to Japan this summer and I thought it really had helped a lot. Both my brother and I were able to make basic conversation with people.