I'm wanting to learn japanese?

"DarkAkuma" wrote:
This is something I've worked on off and on over the years. I'll start by at least saying, don't expect it to be remotely easy. I'm not assuming you do, but just stated that because it's very true.

Now I guess have to say it depends on what you really want to learn. Just speaking and hearing the language? Just reading/writing? Or both?

I've been trying to learn both. I'd imagine just speaking/hearing would be a ton easier. Mainly because you run into a huge slow point with Kanji. Japanese uses 3 different alphabets, Katakana, Hirigana, and Kanji. There Romanji too but that isn't really used outside of learning. You can learn Hirgana and Katakana fairly easily. Rough guess off of the top of my head is there being like 30-40 characters for each. But Kanji? Over 4,000! I've hit huge road block in learn stifling my motivation due to not being able to apply what I've learn often enough with material I would care about. To me a huge part of that is there just so much Kanji, and it's used in everything.

That all said, if you want to feel like you're learning and making progress, Rosseta Stone is fine. Although I found myself subconsciously cheating as the multiple choice lessons went on, by picking the right choice purely based off whats physically seen (if the sentence is something like "the horse is running fast", and there's only 1 picture with a horse, you can pick that pick without reading everything just based off the one word "horse" even though your supposed to be learning to use "running". This may not be the best example of what I mean though, sorry.)

For learning Kanji, I recommend Anki and downloading the Kanji package. Its a flash card type learning utility. Flash card really do amazing, even as i get older! I wrote myself a flash card script when learning Katakana/Hiragana too, and it speed things up a ton!

For more complete all around learning material, you should check out http://www.nihongoresources.com/.

I've tried other things too, but its less easy to recommend them. Like "My Japanese Coach". It's a NDS game. It's a game, so its obviously going to be more fun. You're going to feel like your progressing, but in reality it won't be as much as you think.

Pimsleur Japanese, well. It doesn't do anything for me. You may be different though. It's one of those audio learning methods.

Whatever route you go, I can say, you got to use it or you will lose it. Same for a lot of skills. But as I said before, I found it hard to "use" what I've learned. I may know a 500 hundred words, a couple hundred Kanji, basic sentence structure, etc. But I'm lucky if I can even get the gist of an entire sentence in any sort of game I play or anime I watch. You'll can pull words out here and there. It's like "blah blah blah. Hai", "blah blah blah. Honto", "blah blah blah Oppai blah blah blah", "Anata wa blah blah blah".

Also. Don't be like me. Learn with a partner. I'm certain it would go a TON easier with one.

very informative! Thank you very much for this. Yes I do plan on learning the entire language (reading, writing, speaking. ect.) how ever I'm going to be learning reading and writing first before I learn conversations (it'd be easier) but I know Japanese isn't a easy language "Due to it having 3 alphabets" which doesn't bother me at all, and no language is easy to learn. Every language is hard to learn (because of the grammar) which is the trickiest part in a language, and again, thanks for this information. Will help a lot in the future! And about Pimsleur I've heard they sort of don't work and do work. I heard that Rosetta stone is better (which could just be a load.)

~Kindest regards.
Johnny.