Learning Japanese?

[Agawa]

I'm planning on - in other words, trying desperately - to get into an exchange program in Japan for an additional year of high school. However, I'd like to have the best base in the language that I can before I leave. I'm putting up signs for a tutor around a local university, but until then - and after actually, I'm studying alone with books.
Obviously, this isn't the ideal situation for learning a language, but I haven't found any lessons nearby that will work for me. So far I've been using:
Utimate Japanese/Beginner Intermediate/LIVING LANGUAGE - Hiroko Storm
Let's Learn Hiragana - Yasuko Kosaka Mitamura
Let's Learn Katakana - " "
A Guide to Reading & Writing Japanese/Tuttle Language Library - Compiled by Florence Sakade (This is a guide to something like 1000 essential Kanji, and 1000 general use kanji)

Basically, what I'm looking for here are good exercises and sites on the 'net, or any good texts. Suggestions are also fine. I've already started, and I try to do some every day, and I think I'm doing good so far, but any additional ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!

(In addition, texts and webpages on Japanese culture would also be much appreciated!)

Thank you all, and sorry for the rather unusual request!

[PrettyGirlJean]

I've taken a few intro courses and I definitely recommend the "Japanese for Busy People" books. They come with cassettes to help with pronunciation and there are also Katakana/Hiragana workbooks to help with learning to read and write the language. The Japanese is really polite and proper in it since its main purpose, I think, is for business people; I found the lessons to be easy but informative.

[Kizyr]

I started out with books and the like, so I've been there and can probably offer some advice.

For starters, could you say how familiar you are right now with Japanese? And also, how long will you have to study until you leave? That'd give a good idea as to what you can cover in a reasonable time-frame.

Also, if you're at a beginners level, the Tuttle kanji books won't help any. They might be counterproductive if you try to study straight out of those. KF

[Scorpioeyez]

I use knuckle's in china land to build my vocabulary, kana, katagana, hiragana and kanji and I get daily kanji sent to my email to work on that.

I dunno what to do about sentence structure though until I can order some basic grade school text books.

[Agawa]

I started out with books and the like, so I've been there and can probably offer some advice.

For starters, could you say how familiar you are right now with Japanese? And also, how long will you have to study until you leave? That'd give a good idea as to what you can cover in a reasonable time-frame.

Also, if you're at a beginners level, the Tuttle kanji books won't help any. They might be counterproductive if you try to study straight out of those. KF

Right now, I've finished a hiragana workbook and fully memorized hiragana, and I've started the katakana workbook. I'm not planning on touching the kanji anytime soon, and I'm looking around for any other kanji instruction books. I got the Tuttle one because it looked like it would be useful later and as a reference, and it's often difficult to find Japanese textbooks in stores here. I can order online through my high school, it's just a bit more troublesome. I may try getting the third in the Let's Learn... series for Kanji, the previous ones have been great.
As for vocabulary and grammer, I've been using Ultimate Japanese from the Living Language library, and so far I've found it to be thourough. Then again, it's harder to judge language teaching tools when you aren't all that familiar with the language. Anyway, it introduces a variety of new elements (particles, sentence structures, adjectives....) each chapter, with examples and explainations. There's a word bank at the end of the chapter, and a two page quiz to make sure you understand everything.

I've been studying for about two months now, although I didn't have all of my books for some of that period, so I was stuck doing just hiragana for awhile. My departure - should I be accepted into the program - will be next August or September, so this isn't a crash course so much as me trying to be as prepared as possible. Plus, I feel the more I know the basics by the time I go over there, the easier I'll pick it up.

Jean, as to your recommendation, Japanese for Busy People is by the same company as my fantastic Let's Learn...books, and they also seem to have something called Japanese for Young People. The latter sounds like it's more for those with time, so I may give that a shot as well. Thanks!

And, uh, sorry for the lenghly post, and thank you for the help.

[YoshiMars]

I'm taking a japapnese course as part of my semester load this time around and I've found my textbook to be rather useful. The book is called "Genki: an integrated course in elemenary Japanese"which can be found on places online such as ebay (which is where I got mine as these books are waaaaay too expensive at the university). But its not for you if you're not up for paying about $90 for the bundle (college textbooks.. yay!), which comes with the book, workbook, and CD. 'Course it might not be all the textbook with me as my professor has been really good. *shrugs* That's all I've got in regards to learning Japanese.
If you're already two months studying you might be farther along than I (maybe) as I have finished hiragana, katakana (though I really, really suck at writing in katakana) and we've begun kanji *shudder*, but just numbers in the latter.
Are any of your books good for grammar and vocabulary? Just curious.

[Alunissage]

This isn't really relevant now, but just wanted to comment on the Japanese for Busy People Kana Workbook... I didn't care too much for it. For some reason they thought it was helpful to put all these lines and circles in as guides, which just made things more complicated to me. I liked another one much better; it had the characters handwritten and the various charts and illustrations and all were clearly written individually, so you could see what natural variation might occur in one person's writing, rather than seeing the One True Way to write each character. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name or publisher of the book... uh... it's red. Oh, I just found it on Amazon: Guide to Learning Hiragana & Katakana, by Kenneth Henshall.

Otherwise I can hardly be of help, as I've been strictly a dabbler. I really liked the look of the textbook Japanese for Everyone, but without the CDs -- which for some reason were published only in Japan -- it's not nearly as useful as it could be. It takes a functional approach, so gets into grammar pretty quickly; it also uses kana rather than romaji.

[Kizyr]

Whoops. It occurs to me that I neglected to get back to you on this...

Now then, first things first, 90% of self-study books are crap. I'm saying this after a lot of trial-and-error and plenty of wasted resources. You want to avoid anything like "Learn Japanese in your Car", "Learn Japanese in 30 Minutes a Day", and "Learn Japanese in 6 Weeks/Months/Hours/Fortnights". Also, in general, shy away from stuff that uses entirely roman characters; you really do need to get used to reading in at least kana, if not kanji, eventually.

Anyway, let's start with reading...

Kana is very easy to learn. The trick is with retaining it. I'd say learn hiragana and katakana, practice writing them frequently (write out new vocabulary words, that's usually good practice), and practice reading them a lot. One good way is to get the Lunar: Walking School game (see the Lunar WS walkthrough for that -- LINK) since older games use entirely kana.

Kanji is something you'll need to go ahead and learn eventually. Since you just have a year, concentrate on getting down the basic and most common characters--the First Grade and Second Grade levels are a good stopping point for now; that's just about 100 or so, I think. Use them frequently... very frequently. Eventually it'll get easier and easier to memorize new characters (though you compensate by learning more at one time).

The best way to pick up new kanji is to learn them as part of words, rather than sitting and memorizing all their different readings. For example... don't learn all the readings of 生 (there are maybe 10-11). But learn it as part of 学生 (student), 生きる (to live), 生まれる (to be born), etc.

Second, resources...

I strongly, strongly recommend Power Japanese from Transparent Language Inc. (Amazon Link). It's $50.00, but really worth the money. It's a very good tool for learning and practicing reading, gaining a basic vocabulary, and especially for learning the basics of Japanese grammar. It's a very good springboard onto other methods.

Besides that, it's hard to narrow it down to a couple of books you should use (it's been a long while since I was in the market for them). Some of the things you want to look out for are:
- does it teach useful, day-to-day vocabulary?
- is it organized logically so that you can teach yourself?
- does it have periodic quizzes throughout the book, so you can test yourself?
- is it actually designed for self-study, or is it meant to go along with a class (like a workbook)?

I recommend against Japanese for Busy People. That's designed to be used with a course, and pretty poor for self-study.

As for where to get practice... The best way is if you know anyone who speaks Japanese you can converse with. Also, some TV and movies will help, but not all. I recommend not learning any Japanese from anime--dialogue in anime gets exaggerated and you risk speaking horrid Japanese if you start out learning new words and sentences from anime (however, it can be useful for seeing if you understand what's being said--in other words, as a proving ground for what you've already learned). J-Dramas are actually quite good, and while the dialogue can get dramatic, you can pick up on facial expressions and tone-of-voice a lot better to understand the context behind what's being said. The best practice from media tends to be Japanese variety shows. They'll usually contain a lot more everyday language, and are pretty fun to watch at that.

Anyway, does that give you some good direction so far? If I think of anything else, I'll add onto this. But let me know what you think and I'll see if I can't offer anything else. KF

[Agawa]

Wow, thanks Kizyr - that's a great help.

My book right now doesn't seem to be all that bad; it does have regular quizzes, and a portion of each chapter is dedicated to new (useful) vocabulary. It's also definitely meant as a self study book, which is good. Still, I would like to have more than one text to rely upon with something as complicated as a language. I'll definitely check out the program you mentioned - is there any way you could give some detail on the teaching structure? Either way, I read your review on the link, and it sounds like a great buy so I'll try and order it soon.

Playing LUNAR: Magic School is a fantastic idea, thank you for the link. I'm quite comfortable with hiragana, and learning katakana currently, so it should be a great reading exercise. I was considering trying to import a game, but most seemed to have quite a bit of kanji, so this is perfect.

That definitely does give me some good direction; what I needed most were some other resources to practice what I'm learning. Your help is much appreciated since I was sticking to resources in local stores here, I wasn't prepared to order online without recommendations on what to use.

Thanks a lot for your help, it was very useful.

EDIT: Hmm, I do have one more question that you may be able to help me with. Can you recommend a good Japanese-English dictionary? I do have an English - Japanese one, but the other way around would be useful. Also, since I know very little about how a Japanese dictionary functions, how would I look up words that I haven't learned how to read in kanji, or that would usualy be in kanji but are in kana? Really, any information on Japanese - English dictionaries would be useful, since I don't know much about them.

Once again, thank you very much!

[Kizyr]

I'll definitely check out the program you mentioned - is there any way you could give some detail on the teaching structure?

Sure. As I recall, it's split into four main chapters. It teaches you hiragana and katakana through a set of interactive games and the like--they're actually pretty good, and do a good job of speeding up your recognition. There are also similar 'recognition games' interspersed throughout as they introduce new vocabulary words.

As for the chapters, the first one teaches hiragana and basic vocabulary. The second focuses on sentence structure and basic grammar (as well as continuing to introduce new vocabulary). The third teaches you more on sentence structure and particular grammar rules. (The fourth is a supplement that focuses on katakana.) I'd say pace yourself for maybe a week per chapter, to make sure you're retaining everything--after this, it should be much easier to start picking up and using new things you learn about the language.

Playing LUNAR: Magic School is a fantastic idea, thank you for the link. I'm quite comfortable with hiragana, and learning katakana currently, so it should be a great reading exercise.

I learned hiragana entirely so that I could start playing Lunar: Walking School.

Old NES, Game Gear, and early SNES games will have all or mostly kana (the Japanese version of Vay for the Sega CD has mostly kana and first-grade kanji characters only). Actually, if you can find the Labyrinth game for NES, it uses entirely katakana. Chrono Trigger for the SNES uses a moderate amount of kanji, so after a year you might be able to handle some of that.

EDIT: Hmm, I do have one more question that you may be able to help me with. Can you recommend a good Japanese-English dictionary? I do have an English - Japanese one, but the other way around would be useful.

Whenever you have access to a computer, Jim Breen's WWWJDIC is the standard pretty much (LINK - UVA Mirror). You can look up English, Japanese, or romanized Japanese (you can also copy-and-paste in characters).

Otherwise, the standard J-E dictionary is Random House's Japanese-English / English-Japanese dictionary. It's organized by roman characters, so you have to know the pronunciation of a Japanese word you're looking up.

For looking up characters you don't recognize or know yet, that's another thing altogether. The most common method is the multiradical method. You'd really have to learn a few characters before that begins to make sense--it involves breaking the character down into radical components and looking it up in a dictionary based on the radical used, and the number of strokes in the character. The standard hardcopy dictionary for that is the New Nelson Japanese Character dictionary--Jim Breen's WWWJDIC also has a multiradical lookup for kanji.

Personally, I use an electronic dictionary I bought in Tokyo that recognizes handwritten characters. I don't know how to get ahold of that in the US, however, but I do recommend learning the other methods of character lookup regardless. KF

[Agawa]

I sorry haven't had a chance to get back to you, but I've (finally!) gotten around to ordering Power Japanese and Random House's dictionary, plus an additional book on kanji from the same person who wrote my hiragana and katakana books.
Power Japanese was a bit of a hassle, since Amazon won't ship it out of the country and neither Amazon.ca or Chapters had it available, but I've found someone in the U.S. who can ship it up here for me.

Anyway, once again, I'd like to thank you for all the help you've given; it's been immensely useful. Even if I don't get into my exchange programme for next year, I'll try again in university, and I'm sure this will all be useful stuff. Learning another language can never hurt!

[chance]

The best dictionary I've found for reading and writing is on the DS. See if you can put your hands on a copy of Rakubiki Jiten Sono Mama Kanji. You can look up words by kanji or by kana, and it offers both J-E and E-J filter options (you can also search the entire dictionary).

On top of that, the software and DS price together are cheaper than most electronic dictionaries. Kanji utility alone is worth twice what you pay.


Other advice: once you learn basic structures, use them everywhere. It's easy if you're here, but if you are stuck some place significantly less Japanese-y, find a friend who wants to learn, too. Speaking is crucial.

[Maiku]

I sorry haven't had a chance to get back to you, but I've (finally!) gotten around to ordering Power Japanese and Random House's dictionary, plus an additional book on kanji from the same person who wrote my hiragana and katakana books.
Power Japanese was a bit of a hassle, since Amazon won't ship it out of the country and neither Amazon.ca or Chapters had it available, but I've found someone in the U.S. who can ship it up here for me.

Anyway, once again, I'd like to thank you for all the help you've given; it's been immensely useful. Even if I don't get into my exchange programme for next year, I'll try again in university, and I'm sure this will all be useful stuff. Learning another language can never hurt!

That dictionary should prove useful. I have it too ^_^
And I thought I had it bad trying to learn this stuff... Now I just feel plain stupid in comparison

[Kizyr]

The best dictionary I've found for reading and writing is on the DS. See if you can put your hands on a copy of Rakubiki Jiten Sono Mama Kanji. You can look up words by kanji or by kana, and it offers both J-E and E-J filter options (you can also search the entire dictionary).

On top of that, the software and DS price together are cheaper than most electronic dictionaries. Kanji utility alone is worth twice what you pay.

I didn't know there was a program like that for the DS! Does it have handwritten kanji lookup? Might you know some of the other unique features that sets it apart from a standard dictionary?

The main benefits of the electronic dictionary that I have is that it allows handwritten lookup, it has a Japanese dictionary (i.e., with definitions), and it has very low battery consumption. But, it was about $100 - $110 (I think it was 12000 yen, but I can't recall exactly). The next-best thing I saw were Blackberry/PDA programs that had better software and more accurate handwritten interface, but ran you up about $300+. If there's a DS cartridge that does similar things, it could be well worth it. KF

[Agawa]

The best dictionary I've found for reading and writing is on the DS. See if you can put your hands on a copy of Rakubiki Jiten Sono Mama Kanji. You can look up words by kanji or by kana, and it offers both J-E and E-J filter options (you can also search the entire dictionary).

On top of that, the software and DS price together are cheaper than most electronic dictionaries. Kanji utility alone is worth twice what you pay.


Other advice: once you learn basic structures, use them everywhere. It's easy if you're here, but if you are stuck some place significantly less Japanese-y, find a friend who wants to learn, too. Speaking is crucial.

I've heard of that program, but unfortunately I don't have a DS. If I ever get one, that will probably be the first thing I pick up for it.

As for practicing? Luckily, I know a few people who are either currently learning Japanese in university, or who have taken a course in it and trying to retain knowledge. I'm going to see if I can get a livejournal account going for us, so we can practice posting horrible Japanese back and forth to each other, and correcting eachother.
...Retaining the hiragana and katakana has been easy for me, and vocabulary isn't too hard, but remembering grammar I find very difficult. So, practicing writing on a frequent and casual basis should help a bit! Thanks for the suggestions, by the way!

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

http://www.amazon.com/Rosetta-Stone-Jap ... B000077DD5

[Kizyr]

http://www.amazon.com/Rosetta-Stone-Jap ... B000077DD5

I don't know anyone who's gone through any Rosetta Stone software itself, but from what I've seen of its approach, it looks rather ineffective for learning Japanese. It's probably good for Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, etc.) and others in which sentence and thought structure are similar to English, but it looks like it's lacking.

As far as "immersion" programs go, the Pimsleur course is much better for Japanese. That was my first exposure to Japanese. The only one down side is that the full course is expensive. KF

[exigence]

theres a japanese forign exchange girl in my studyhall shes pretty cool do you know any good pick-up lines Kzy F? can you spell them how they sound since my pronounciation is abaut az god az my speelling?

[GhaleonOne]

I dunno if that's such a good idea. If Kiz decided to be a prankster, he could tell you something to say something else. Reminds me of Chris Tucker trying to flirt with some Chinese girls in Chinese and butchering the hell out of what he was saying in Rush Hour 2.

[Alunissage]

Heheh, that's exactly what I was thinking.