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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."
How do people type on a computer with Japanese? The language has 7000+ characters... that has to be one large keyboard
The Rosetta Stone. Language learning software that is based on the way you learn a language naturally. I've used it for a couple of months to teach myself German,
it's fantastic.
Pimsleur and other courses of the like teach you through memorization; TRS uses photographs and the language, without ever translating anything. You have to match up each photo with the words given to you, and the connection is something you actually learn, not just memorize. verstehen Sie?
1) Anime is not a good place to learn Japanese. A useful anecdote for this would be to imagine a Japanese person learning English from episodes of Simpsons and Family Guy. While such thoughts are no doubt filled with hillarity, they do prove just how silly Anime-bin Japanese would seem to native speakers...
That said, I'm not totally ripping on Anime. Watch it if you want to, but mix it up with some live action Japanese films (Ringu is one of my favorites).
2) If you're into video games, I suggest downloading an Emulator and some ROMs of old Japanese video games. Ones that have a decent deal of text (SNES era RPGs), but not ones that require to much reading. Also, pick games that you may be somewhat familiar with. I'm a big Front Mission 3 fan, so I got the Japanese SNES (or should I say Super Famicom) ROM of the original. Fun times!
3) Get a good dictionary. You'll need it for everything.
4) Also, get a Grammar guide. Japanese Grammar is crazy compared to English, and is, IMHO, comparable to some programming languages.
Well, formal Japanese grammar may be difficult. Casual Japanese is more forgiving when it comes to particle usage.
Othe rthen that, all I can recommend is taking some actual Japanese classes. It's a hard language to learn, but not impossible. It will take a great deal of time before you get any good at it, but after 2 years of studying it myself... I'm still learning, but I have no regrets!
I know you said "without attending to classes", but I'd suggest you reconsider. I'm taking a class at the local community college and finding it well worth the time and money. (A class at a community or commuter college may be much better suited to the part-time student - the intro Japanese class at UMCP is six credit hours, which would be difficult to fit into my schedule, while the one I'm taking is only three.)
I was motivated to finally take a class after my second trip to Japan last fall. After meeting one Spanish woman who spoke four langages, and a Polish woman who was there teaching English and studying shodo, I was embarassed that after twenty years of karate training in a Japanese style, and shiatsu training, and two brief trips to Japan, I knew only enough Japanese to say "thank you", "excuse me", and "please bring me a beer". (Well, and "roundhouse kick to the neck", but that's not a phrase that comes up much in polite conversation.)
The class is sociologically interesting, though - a bunch of 18 and 19 year old anime fans, and me at 36.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
So while it's always good to learn another language, A) you're not going to learn Japanese anywhere but in Japan, and B) you're never going to be that good at Japanese (I'm at least at the point where I can tell the gaijin personalities on TV who may even know more about Japanese culture speak with strange accents and have strange word usage).
On a side note, I loved anime in America, but coming here, it really is rather obvious how childish it is. If you're caught watching it here, girls will be screaming "AKIBAKEI!" and shit at you. A gaijin even saying the word "anime" here makes me feel hiku (umm.. like embarassed, sorta).You are about to learn a difficult language. The basics, and even the way of thinking can be quite different than English. I studied for about 3 years, took 2 years off and forgot a lot of it, then studied another year, and now I work a tech job in Japan.
:). If you can't take a course, try and get "Communicating in Japanese" by Hiroyoshi Noto. Make sure you get the tapes, too. It's an excellent book, and will take more time but teach you more than, say, "Japanese for Busy People."
At the same time, don't let Japanese scare you. The best asset for learning a language is confidence. If you don't have any confidence, you won't be able to communicate or learn any language.
1) If you can, take a course at your University. This is the best way to start learning. If you're lucky, you'll get a rigorous course. If you're unlucky, you'll get a very easy course that uses romaji. The key to learning the language is to push yourself. I learned at University of Chicago, which has one of the best (and most difficult) Japanese programs (I did terribly
2) Learn Kana right away. You will be sorry if reading kana doesn't come as second nature to you after a year. Make sure you begin at least studying Kanji, too. The sooner you start learning Kanji, the less scary it will be later. (check out the book "Kanji and Kana"!)
3) Be prepared for a long road. You should ideally spend at least 2 years studying the language before you can even think about being "fluent." Then, if you want to be able to speak the language, you should spend a good amount of time in Japan. Maybe you'll learn faster (some people have a natural ability for picking up languages), but you might learn more slowly, too. If you have the time and resources, there are many schools in Japan where that you can study Japanese for anywhere from 4 weeks to a year.
4) a) If you want to learn Japanese because of anime, don't worry about it. Getting interested in learning a language just because you enjoy something that country produces is no worse than getting interested because you want to make money, or something. Just make sure you realize there are other interesting things about Japan. Get involved in really learning about the whole culture. I find talking with Japanese people is much more revealing than reading about it somewhere.
b) If you want to read manga or watch anime, first off, realize that ou need a very strong Japanese base to understand them in the first place. There's a lot of stuff you're just not going to get unless you really have a strong background in Japanese. It'll probably be a year or two (at least it was for me) before you'll actually be able to use the simplest anime or manga for practice. But if you do use it to study, don't worry about ruining your skills somehow. Major universities use Miyazaki films to teach courses. Just be aware that they do use some words or phrases that will get you laughed at in everyday conversation. For example, you may end up sounding either like a little girl or a stupid high school kid.
So other than that, the most important advice is of course, Practice, Practice, Practice. If you do go it on your own, I wish you best of luck, and I warn you that you will need much self-motivation to get anywhere, because it will take a lot of time.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
I learned some Japanese 30 years ago while stationed in Japan in the Navy. I was mostly self taught originally and took some courses after I got out, and have been back for several month long vacations since. My biggest problem as a tourist is that it takes several days to get my accent back and remember the body language, and then somewhere in the 2nd or 3rd week, I remember them too well, and the locals assume I know more than I do about social norms in general.
:-), and I got so used to my dictionary that I could open it to within 5 or ten pages of the kanji in question. But I was forgetting kanji as fast as I was learning them, and evetually gave it up. 500 kanji is probably around 4th or 5th grade level. Not very impressive.
There's a book which I unfortunately do not have with me now, Tuttle Press I think, possibly called Basic Japanese Grammar. Looking around the Amazon web site, I found a book, ISBN 0804819408, which looks close, but I won't swear it to be what I have at home. If you respond to this and leave a request, I can look it up this weekend and post it. It is not perfect, but it is an excellent cheat sheet. It is almost like a tech sheet for hardware, a basic summary of grammar rules with simple explanations of how to use them, when, and why.
OK, the good. Japanese grammer is incredibly regular, almost mathematical. I believe there are only three irregular verbs in the entire language, and then only in how they form their root for further conjugation. The verb you find in the dictionary is the familiar present tense. There is no distinction between singular or plural, first second or third person. Purists will cringe, but the dictionary form is perfectly acceptable for starters. Natives will be so surprised that you are even making an attempt at their language that the lack of politeness will not matter a whit.
I believe that anyone wanting to get along as a tourist can learn real Japanese, not pidgin, in a week of nightly study with this book. You will have crap pronunciation and almost no vocabulary, but you will be able to speak complete sentences, slowly.
I recommend this as the initial course, a week, a month, not to master it, but to see if you can grok it. The grammer may be very regular, but it is different, and you will have to think differently to make any headway. If you persist in thinking in your native language patterns, you will make no headway and had best give it up. This book will give you an excellent background in seeing if you can rewarp your mindset. You will not learn any useful reading or writing. Forget those for now. The purpose here is to introduce you to the thought patterns behind Japanese. Nothing else matters at first. If you can't get your brain into the Japanese mode, there is no point going any further.
If you want to continue, take college courses, community college courses, private school courses, or whatever you can. Here you will learn reading and writing, complete grammar including politeness levels, etc.
Reading and writing is both easy and hard. There is a pattern to the kanji, and there are only (I think) 212 basic kanji. All other kanji are built from those, and dictionaries are organized around them also. This will help considerably in memorizing them and in possibly (possibly!) understanding the meaning of kanji you have never seen before. Pronouncing kanji is another matter. There is almost no clue in the characters themselves as to their pronunciation. Here you rely on dictionaries and rote memorization.
I got to the point of around 500 kanji before I stopped trying to learn more. I was only going to class twice a week, it took me an hour to read a single page in a book (including waga hai wa neko de aru for you who snicker
On the other hand, once you get into the pattern of kanji, you can draw them in your hand for natives, and you can make a lot more sense of maps and bus signs. Traveling is a lot easier when you can memorize kanji long enough to find
Infuriate left and right
I think people are overestimating the effectiveness of immersion.
I'm bilingual. I speak English, and French. Why? Because I have spent my entire life in Quebec, a province in which the primary language is French. I've taken innumerable French courses (since they're mandatory by law), and graduated from "french immersion" schools (This is where the government forces English speakers to take things like geography and history in French).
Can I speak French? Yes. Can I understand it? Yes. Can I read it? Yes. Can I write it? Horrible grammar, but yes. Am I good at it? Hell no! After having had French education since kindergarten, and being immersed in a French culture my entire life, I am still nowhere near fluent. People talk about taking a few years to become fluent. Now, maybe I'm just not good at learning languages, but my 20 years says that's unlikely.
I'm sure there are mitigating factors. There are differences between living in a French province, but an English community (where most of my friends speak English), and living in Japan where you have NOTHING but Japanese to communicate in. For me, French is just something that I am exposed to daily, not something that I need to use on a daily basis. My verb conjugation in French is still guesswork. Thank goodness so many verb endings in French are pronounced the same, so that I can speak French much better than I write it!
So what am I trying to say? Well, immerse yourself and take lessons all you want, chances are the best you can hope for even after decades is merely to be able to communicate with relative ease. Forget about fluency.
I'll be honest, I'm interested in learning Japanese as a third language. But what has stopped me so far is a nagging voice in my head that says "If you've spent your entire life taking French courses and living in a French culture and still suck at it, what makes you think you can ever learn Japanese, idiot?".
Maybe I just suck at learning other languages.
Gee a topic about which I can speak with authority.
Japanese is the easiest language to learn. Also the hardest.
The grammar is extraordinarily simple. You can learn most of the basic grammar you need in a few weeks of intensive memorization.
Pronunciation is so easy for an English speaker you hardly even have to work at it.
Vocab works the way English works: combine some parts to make a whole. So once you learn a core set of words you can generate new ones relatively easily.
The writing system is extraordinarily difficult. Kana - you can memorize the entire hiragana/katakana system in a day if you really want to. But kanji! Count on spending years working at it.
Colloquial, socially appropriate speech - extraordinarily difficult. You can get the basic concepts from a book or class, but this level you can only really learn in-country, from native-speaker informants, and even then you may not get it completely.
In sum, you can learn enough J to communicate effectively verbally, and to understand manga, etc. pretty easily. Practical advice: find a Japanese bookstore or website - I'd bet there's more good printed material for students of J than for any other language. Memorize, memorize, memorize, and actually make the sounds. And find a native speaker to help you. And don't be intimidated. And don't waste your time if you're not serious about it. And if you _really_ want to learn the language, plan on a stay in Japan of at least one year. There's no other way to do it.
(I've studied J for years, Japanese wife, etc. but gave up trying to really master it since I've not lived in Japan. If you want to try a *truly* difficult language, try Arabic. I'm pretty fluent - 2+ years in Egypt, not enough. *Everything* about Arabic is *very* difficult. Makes Japanese look like a walk in the park.)
good luck.