Slashdot Mirror
Advice on Learning Japanese?
Piroca asks: "During the last years, a huge amount of (modern) Japanese culture has invaded the Occident, mostly in the form of anime, video games and TV shows. Part of that content can't be understood completely due to the complexity and subtleties of the Japanese language. Due to that, it seems the interest on learning Japanese is steadily growing, specially for anime addicts. Much of the problem stems from the fact that Japanese is not an easy language, being classified as very difficult by most standards (of course, this depends on one's native language). I'm searching for courses and material that can help me to learn Japanese without attending to classes or hiring people to teach me. I've found things like Pimsleur and japanesepod101 but I wonder if other people in the Slashdot crowd have not passed through this process before and have useful hints to share."
Do not try to learn anything from games or anime.
What if your primary reason to learn it _is_ games and anime?
Also - I find it is quite probably a good idea to pump tons of conversations (by native speakers of course) through your brain _before_ you start learning any foreign language. Reasoning - you will have quite certain idea how that language _should_ sound and in case of Japanese things like tonal stress will come very naturally. Otherwise you will obtain your own very wrong ideas about rhythms and sounds (probably through transliterating the words to your native tongue). Then you will need to relearn everything not even from zero level but from negative or otherwise your language "knowledge" will be wasted. And relearning is hard. I speak from my experience with English (not my native language). So in short - I think "parroting" the sound of Japanese is a good idea (even from anime as it is the most available source of Japanese).
pretty biased piece of crap.
speaking to japanese is much like speaking to english people. they're polite. therefore they avoid touchy subjects. but once you've built trust, they'll speak about things like anyone else.
learning japanese is anything BUT useless, for several reasons:
a) you learn how to communicate with people who communicate differently from what you're used to. you'll learn a lot about people that way. people skills are useless... since when?
b) you learn a language that works differently from your own. compare that to learning a pure functional programming language when your work requires object oriented programming only. you learn to think outside the box.
c) japanese might think it odd that you want to learn japanese, but most japanese are pleased at your effort. while that might not be the case with executive-type people, the average japanese will like you if you stammer a few japanese words and concede that you tried but failed. then switch to english because it's easier for both of you (don't persist). this goes for any culture, some more, some less. (interestingly enough, especially english speaking cultures seem to _expect_ that people speak their language)
d) learning a language as complex as japanese (and it isn't really complex, just different, as i pointed out it a previous post) will make it somewhat easier to learn other languages, because you've understood more completely _how languages work_.
e) if you're really that much into anime and manga and all that, you can't understand it unless you understand japanese.
japanese people are anything but socially inept. it takes a socially inept person not to recognize that. they communicate differently, altogether more subtly, but they communicate.
it's true that japanese want to speak english, and the reasons given for that are probably true as well. as for the rest of the post, i wonder where all that "information" comes from.
yeah, i had to vent a bit, now mod me down if you want.