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Learning a New Language Using Open Source?
cmstar asks: "It's been several years since my High School Spanish courses and I'm finding myself quite a bit rusty. Add to that a new found desire to learn Japanese, and I find myself on a quest to find a good cheap set of language learning/teaching software. There are plenty of commercial packages available, but I'm poor. A quick check of Google and Sourceforge didn't produce any immediate results. I know speaking with a native is usually the best way to go about this, but with little time or money, and something portable that I could use at home and work, in my spare time, would be handy to freshen up on my skills and learn something new. Any suggestions?"
After you've learned basic grammar and such, buy a few simple (children to young-adult level) books and get translating. For me, that was a nice way to improve my German vocabulary.
Also, browse around Wikipedia. They usually have good language resources.
But if you're starting fresh and trying to learn on your own...I dunno, that's probably not going to work so well. I'd recommend taking a couple semesters (or the equivalent) of the language before going on your own. Bad habits can be hard to break.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Wikipedia's Wikibooks is free, but it is a work in progress.
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
First of all, Kiten is an app bundled in with KDE (in the edu section), a teaching/reference tool for learning Japanese.
....
http://www.katzbrown.com/kiten/About/
Then, don't worry too much dedicated apps - it's easy enough to adopt flash card programs to build and solidify your vocab.
And then, use your browser / audio streamer to make the most of what the web has to offer. Simply looking at the front page of a newspaper every day will help.
Of course, setting your box up to handle foreign characters is an education in itself
john [at] technolalia dot org
Go to the library and get the Pimsleur CDs, or whatever. Most libraries seem to have a number of audio/software learning programs these days. You may have to reserve them though. Most popular languages have plenty of content on the web as well for you to practice with.
Books are portable, have high storage density, require no power source, and boot up instantly.
There are very few good Japanese textbooks, it is known to educators as an "infrequently taught language." The people who have written good Japanese textbooks have spent years developing their work, usually in conjunction with other instructors at a university, do you really think they're likely to give it away for free? Japanese textbooks are notoriously expensive since they're usually printed in Japan and imported at unfavorable exchange rates. But still, the best money I ever spent was the $90 introductory textbook set for my first Japanese class. I used it for four semesters, and still use it occasionally for reference.
Japanese instructors are notoriously technophobic, and advancements in computer aided instruction have been very slow. Good instructors are too busy updating the existing learning systems to modern standards to bother with computerizing them too.
There are a few gadgets that will help certain areas, like kanji flashcard gadgets. I've used many of them, but none of them are much better than conventional methods (i.e. flashcards). And flashcards aren't going to teach you the whole language, it is just a reinforcement for a small subset of your primary studies. Electronic dictionaries are freely available online, but this is only going to speed up your word lookups, again, it's merely a support activity, not a primary learning tool.
The best tool to learn Japanese is a structured study plan, either with a teacher, or with a textbook with a graduated series of exercises that build up your knowledge according to planned curriculum. You can't just go at this by stumbling through native language materials like comic books and trying to figure it out as you go along.
Except, my sister gave me a "deluxe" language training software package. Windows-only, of course, which defeated the idea of learning with my Powerbook. But after I installed it, I tried it for about twenty minutes before I got sick of the pathetic interface, dog-slow loading times (they do their best to prevent you from loading it on the hard drive, too) and the overall horrible audio tracks and pixelated graphics. If anyone's seen the sort of drivel produced out of Toolbook 2.0 -- along with the associated media from the time when that program was popular -- that's the sort of product my sister paid $50 for. I gave up, went online, and started doing my own searching.
My personal approach to learning Japanese isn't driven out of any specific need -- just a deep-seated curiosity (and one I've had before I'd ever played video games or watched anime, mind you.) I decided I'd learn the alphabets first, adding kanji slowly, until I could safely go purchase a few kids' books written almost entirely in hiragana and katakana. It's worked, so far. My friend is taking courses the traditional way, through a community college, and though his speaking abilities are obviously better at this stage, he's got some serious dependence on romaji.
My single greatest resource for learning the characters has been, oddly enough, the Microsoft and Apple IMEs. I used a word processor to make myself worksheets and practice writing the characters. Five minutes and 100 sheets of "appropriated" office paper later, I had a stack of worksheets to practice with that beat any of the ones I found online or as samples in books. Best of all, if I needed more practice with a specific group, I could just print more of the same worksheet whenever I wanted it.
As for online references, someone compiled a great list of them already. In particular, my favorite from that list has been Takasugi Shinji's site, written from the perspective of a linguist. It's also got a great java applet that helps you memorize the kana alphabets -- allowing you to switch fonts to get a greater familiarity with writing styles.
In short -- I've not found any particular free-as-in-beer resource for language learning, and I don't think there's likely to be any because such courses are usually subjective. Perhaps it's something MIT and OpenCourseware can tackle in the future. In the meantime, IMEs are your best friend, and try to avoid getting dependent on romaji. :)
got standards? --- http://www.w3.org/
Great advice. Hardcore study is the only way to become decent and Pimsleur is a fantastic oral learning tool.
Try lingoteach.org.
GPL language teaching, with audio and all. And it does 900 words of spanish. And some German and others.
get 7 free Japanese lessons.
Learn Japanese for nerds part 1:7
4
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/26/175722/72
Part 2:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/25/32218/182
--Robert
It has some 900 words and sentences in Spanish, English and German with audio, and you can go any way you would like to go (Spanish->German, English->Spanish, or whatever).
It has many more Languages that have only written content and no audio.
It's XML based, so you can add your own content, and it uses OGG Vorbis for sound encoding (so it does not use patented stuff). It has various modes to learn, to test yourself and to practice as well as plugin capabilies.
It comes in
(sorry for the redundant post, but this one is better.)
get 7 free Japanese lessons.
JWPce is an open source Japanese word processor for Microsoft Windows. I first started using it back in 1996, when I was living in Japan but only had English Windows.
One of its most useful features is the ability to highlight a Japanese word and get not only the pronunciation but an English translation as well.
All about JWPce
Avoid * like the plague * sites that tell you that you can learn Japanese from Anime and Manga. This is not possible if you want to speak with any amount of seriousness or authority.
There are two ways you will probably speak like if you do this: like an old Japanese man, or like a young Japanese girl. For the confused, neither of these are desirable unless, of course, you are one.
For the serious Japanese student, unfortunately you will have to fork out some money for a decent book with some sort of audio suppliment. Besides the grammar, vocabulary, written systems, and cultural differences that affect speech, the pronounciation is very difficult to master, and actually hearing it is required for proper imitation. For a language this complex, it is quite nearly required to have a proper teacher for the more advanced grammar and situations. For instance, there are about 10 different ways to say "you" in Japanese, none of which are used most of the time, and each with a very different connotation that a book can't effectively explain.
Continuing without a teacher is inadvisable, however, there are some interesting places online to check out. http://wikipedia.org should always be your first stop. http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/afaq/afaq.html has a faq from a newsgroup that is decently helpful.
http://www.narnarnar.com
To learn how to write your chosen language, check out the University web sites for your language. For example USC has an excellent Mandarin links area USC Chinese Language program , mostly pointing to free stuff. Fortunately, many Chinese teachers in the US have started using the Integrated Chineses Program ICP , an amazingly easy way to learn Chinese, if you do the homework. As the man in the parent post says, "dedication and commitment" are required.
I am having such fun that I have enrolled in evening Mandarin classes at GMU which does use ICP. It's my new way of gaming, learning how to read, write and speak Chinese.
Have fun, Lao Xuesheng (Old Student)
ps. I am not sure but there may be a Integrated Japanese Program, USC Japanese Language Center. I found it at the " USC Japanese Dept. page . Have fun.