Online Japanese Courses?

[ClaecElric4God]

Suppose, hypothetically speaking, one was to make an attempt to learn Japanese. Now let's suppose that person had run through their head the different methods of learning Japanese, and decided that the best course of action for that particular person was through an online course. Now, for the sake of simplicity, let's suppose that person is me.

Unless someone has an absolutely astounding, guaranteed and proven "you will learn Japanese fluently in the next fifteen minutes" deal, I am really shying away from books or books with audio CDs that have multiple people repeating words in three different accents. I am not good at learning by reading. Obviously, I can read lessons, but I still need to be able to hear the language, and I wouldn't mind having a real teacher (through Skype or whatever the system may be) so I can ask questions and have things explained to me.
I'm also looking for a course that actually teaches sentence structure, verb conjugation, etc.; instead of "Ohayoo gozaimasu = Good morning, Ogenki desu ka? = How are you?, Doozo yukkuri hanashite kudasai = Please speak slowly". I'm not a tourist; I'm a student of Japanese.

So basically, what online programs do you know of that are tried and true, helpful, worth one's time, so on and so forth? Any and all suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I'm willing to pay for a course that's actually worth it, but I don't want to pay an arm and a leg. I need all my limbs for future use.

Thanks for taking the time to read and hopefully give some input.

[goldenspines]

I sadly don't know too many online sites for learning Japanese that aren't mainly reading (other people can probably provide more! ^__^) plus I'm a cheapskate, so I don't really bother with any paid stuff. XD But here are a few resources that you may find useful (along with some fun stuff too).


- Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/complete (this covers everything from the basics to more complex stuff. It's a really nice guide for learning sentence and grammar structures as well as usage).

- Coscom: http://www.coscom.co.jp/index.html (this has a whole bunch of cool resources. It has a variety of lessons on the language and culture of Japan as well various sound clips for most of their lessons and word they cover.)

- Genki's Self Study Room: http://genki.japantimes.co.jp/self_en (this is a portion of a site for a textbook I've used when learning Japanese, actually. XD It has a lot of great stuff for beginners especially including quizzes, games, etc.)

- Anki: http://ankisrs.net/ (not an online resource, but a powerful and helpful free flash card software that is great for memorization. It already has a lot of Japanese decks to choose from with voice chips included in a lot of them to make sure you get proper pronunciation).

- アニメとまんがの日本語(Japanese in Anime and Manga): http://anime-manga.jp/index_english.html (This is mostly for fun, but it can be a cool learning tool for different ways of saying things.)

- エリンが朝鮮(lit. "Erin's Challange"): https://www.erin.ne.jp/jp/ (if you're not very good with reading Japanese, this one will be a bit difficult to navigate, but basically it has this great collection of videos that cover simple situations of an exchange student to Japan and her every day life of trying to understand the language and culture of the Japanese. Each video has the option to turn on subtitles for the Kanji, hiragana, romaji, and/or the English translation).


If you get desperate/bored, I run a weekly Japanese chat on skype. >_>;; I've only been studying Japanese for 3 years, so I'm no expert, but I'm willing to answer any basic questions about the language and such. Also, it's sort of informal as well, but if you want to drop in, shoot me a PM.

Otherwise, it may be good to look into your area and see if there are Japanese classes offered (whether through the school system or through private tutoring lessons). I suggest this as the best way to learn Japanese.

Best of luck.

[ClaecElric4God]

Thanks, Goldy. I've actually started studying on Tae Kim's site, and I'm really pleased with it. Even without live classes, I'm glad to be able to hear the language spoken and have explanations. I'm currently at the stage where I futilely try to scribble Hiragana symbols and memorize them.

I'll be sure to look into all the links you provided, and I'd love to visit your chat, once I've progressed a bit more in Japanese. Thanks for the invitation. Again, thanks so much for your help.

[Cassidy]

Uhm, only some of these are online, but here it goes! (only joined to reply... is having an anonymous function so hard? >_< anyways..)

http://www.memrise.com/ for vocabulary, personally I don't care much about reading (pronunciation), and if you have books or lists (section will follow), you can create personal lists. If you can find Japanese blogs, you can use firefox/chrome/ other add-ons to have furigana pop up, as well as dictionaries such as Rikai-chan.

Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar

Personally, rosetta stone is a waste... all it does imo is show words and display sounds, and your pronunciations mostly get marked wrong. Minus the fact that some things like built-in dictionaries are written completely in the language your learning. Radicals greatly help you read and write kanji, because kanji/hanzi/hanja all started out as very detailed pictures. Simplified writing systems such as Simplified Chinese could possibly be harder to learn due to possible radical removals.

Books: Japanese dictionaries with at least around 2,000 kanji. Mine lists any outdated writings, word combinations, radical and stroke indexes for every character, which can serve you well if you learn radicals to spot out components in a word.

Particle books. I can't find mine now, but mine is supposed to be a reference guide. It has over 5 explanations for things like　は、が、の、と so you could possibly create a course on memrise with these type of things, as well as using anki, quizlet, etc.

P.S - Memrise might not suit your needs now, since they are still improving. With anki, you can also quiz yourself, just search it on youtube. ^_^ Okay, time to disappear from the internet...

[Vracer111]

I have this on my iPod...but I'm lazy and have not gone through it much. What I have gone through has really impressed me though...looks to be very thorough with good resources and you'd learn much if you stick with it:

http://www.humanjapanese.com/features.html

[This is Song]

Have you tried livemocha? my brother is using that site to learn to speak german, he says it's really good! Here is a link to the japanese intro page: http://livemocha.com/pages/languages/learn-japanese/

It is also free so it cant hurt to try

[ClaecElric4God]

Thanks, everybody. I really appreciate the input.

[JakeAdventurer]

I truly believe that nothing compares with live lessons with a native-speaking teacher, but I understand that it can be pretty challenging in terms of time and money. I’m a fan of Rosetta Stone courses
http://www.rosettastone.com/learn-japanese
I’ve been addicted to them for about 7 months and I actually can speak in simple sentences and comprehend the speech. However, Japanese is a different language to learn and it comes with tons of nuances, so think about a real life teacher. Until then, check this one http://www.askwiki.net/How-to-Learn-Japanese

[Flying_leaves]

http://www.memrise.com/ for vocabulary

I am kind of obsessed with that website, it feels more like a game than a study session! I'm user, potentialpolyglot on there if you use the site, or will in the future.

Along with Memrise, I use Textfugu, which is an online interactive Japanese textbook. The first "Season" of the textbook is free, which goes from Hiragana, to basic grammar, to introducing Kanji. Its motto is Learn Japanese the Hard Way which is true because it takes a little while to get through the hiragana (I've only just begun learning the dakuten ), but it's so worth it in the long run! It provides outside resources and worksheets similar to a class, so I have found it the most helpful out of all the Japanese learning sites I have visited. It is from the creators of the blog, Tofugu, which publishes posts daily articles all about Japan.

I actually discovered Textfugu when looking for resources online. This website has a fantastic collection all in one place of dictionaries, textbooks, listening resources, etc.

Good Luck in your studies!

[Midknight74012]

Ah... been a while since I made a post. I found software to 1up Rosetta Stone.
http://www.transparent.com/learn-japanese/
I had a demo of this. The way it works is the same way babies learn a language. You listen first and assimilate the words bit by bit and form sentences. Then you learn to read, then write. Expect awesome results after 10 days. If before 6 months you're not satisfied, they'll fully refund no questions asked. Demos are available in the app store for free

[Anirac]

Sorry for the gravedig, but can we have this pinned? Or maybe have a thread that is only about online resources for those learning Japanese? I volunteer to help in the making of one.

And to add to the suggestions, NHK World has free Japanese lessons: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/
So does the Association for Japanese-Language Teaching (AJALT): http://www.ajalt.org/english/online/

I haven't tried them yet, but they looked fairly well-done...

[thedragongirl77]

Someone has GOT to have said this one already. But this is where I learn Japenese:
http://www.japanese-online.com/

[MIBuddy]

I'll continue the necro, this is my favorite resource: a series of cheesy 90s videos call Irasshai. Yes, they are EXTREMELY cheesy and EXTREMELY 90s, but for me they've been really helpful and I still have to strongly recommend them:
http://www.gpb.org/irasshai

156 videos each about 25 minutes, free to view online.