Hey everyone! I am new to the forum and am very interested in learning the Japanese language. The only thing is, I dont know how to go about doing this. Traveling to Japan is out of the question for now, and it is not offered at my school. So, I was thinking of using software of some sort, but am unsure on which to buy (I want to make the right descision because they get quite expensive). Any suggestions?
How to Learn?
- Thread starter HeroXL
- Start date
Welcome to the forum!
If you are gonna self study, get the following:
A textbook called "genki" is useful for beginners. Purchase this using Amazon Japan (or other book websites).
If you like what you learn, get a made-in-Japan electronic dictionary. This should cost you around $300-$400
Get a learner's paper dictionary (ones by kodansha are quite good), so that you won't feel overwhelmed.
If you are into Japanese popular culture, try exposing yourself to some of them. But if you don't like them, don't bother.
Good luck!
If you are gonna self study, get the following:
A textbook called "genki" is useful for beginners. Purchase this using Amazon Japan (or other book websites).
If you like what you learn, get a made-in-Japan electronic dictionary. This should cost you around $300-$400
Get a learner's paper dictionary (ones by kodansha are quite good), so that you won't feel overwhelmed.
If you are into Japanese popular culture, try exposing yourself to some of them. But if you don't like them, don't bother.
Good luck!
well,I'm getting a interactive cd program from my library for free,tons of books you can get from the library.
If you like J-pop,listening to it will help. Personally I like mangas,so my first minor goal is to be able to grasp the general sentence in the mangas.
If you like J-pop,listening to it will help. Personally I like mangas,so my first minor goal is to be able to grasp the general sentence in the mangas.
Homerduff
ケビン
- 2 Jan 2007
- 382
- 11
every language consists of 4 main pointers that a learner should master: reading, speaking, listening and writing. To succeed in these pointers, you should have a good vocabulary (kanji and kana) and grammar knowledge. There are a few good detailed websites out there dealing with vocabulary and grammar:
As for reading, you will first have to master hiragana and katakana atleast to be able to read books for children or manga which has furigana (these are little kana written on top of kanji, to my knowledge all manga have these). I don't know if there are any websites that could help you on your reading, and buying japanese books on ebay may be expensive. In Japan manga books are very cheap though.
As for speaking, if you don't have a japanese friend it will be hard for you to practise. Try to learn the pronounciation first (which is pretty easy) and try to speak yourself and maybe record it to listen to yourself.
As for listening, I can advice you to watch some japanese drama's online. They are far more better for you to listen to Japanese than any anime out there or music. Go to Japanese Drama Home :: jdorama.com. They have a great database of Japanese drama's. Just enter a title of one of the more popular drama's in youtube or dailymotion (www.dailymotion.com) and you will definetely be able to watch some complete drama's. I can recommend some very good drama's to you if you are interested..
And finally for writing, you can easily practise this yourself. First practise how to write the hiragana and katakana symbols (you find tons of information on how to write hiragana and katakana on the internet, remember that google is your best friend.). As for kanji, you will also find enough websites that have all (useful) kanji but it may be harder to find a site that also deals with the correct writing. This is one site I found which is perfect for you to study the writing but it only has 300 kanji (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~kanji/index.html). Anyway, maybe you shouldn't worry about the writing part too much cause with computer nowadays you don't need to have any writing skills. Of course recognizing kanji is still vital.
So my opinion is; internet offers tons of information for you to start with. It would be a shame for you to buy books and maybe in a few months you realize that Japanese isn't your thing. I personally have always used websites for my studying and im really happy with the improvement I have made so far.
Best of luck !
As for reading, you will first have to master hiragana and katakana atleast to be able to read books for children or manga which has furigana (these are little kana written on top of kanji, to my knowledge all manga have these). I don't know if there are any websites that could help you on your reading, and buying japanese books on ebay may be expensive. In Japan manga books are very cheap though.
As for speaking, if you don't have a japanese friend it will be hard for you to practise. Try to learn the pronounciation first (which is pretty easy) and try to speak yourself and maybe record it to listen to yourself.
As for listening, I can advice you to watch some japanese drama's online. They are far more better for you to listen to Japanese than any anime out there or music. Go to Japanese Drama Home :: jdorama.com. They have a great database of Japanese drama's. Just enter a title of one of the more popular drama's in youtube or dailymotion (www.dailymotion.com) and you will definetely be able to watch some complete drama's. I can recommend some very good drama's to you if you are interested..
And finally for writing, you can easily practise this yourself. First practise how to write the hiragana and katakana symbols (you find tons of information on how to write hiragana and katakana on the internet, remember that google is your best friend.). As for kanji, you will also find enough websites that have all (useful) kanji but it may be harder to find a site that also deals with the correct writing. This is one site I found which is perfect for you to study the writing but it only has 300 kanji (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~kanji/index.html). Anyway, maybe you shouldn't worry about the writing part too much cause with computer nowadays you don't need to have any writing skills. Of course recognizing kanji is still vital.
So my opinion is; internet offers tons of information for you to start with. It would be a shame for you to buy books and maybe in a few months you realize that Japanese isn't your thing. I personally have always used websites for my studying and im really happy with the improvement I have made so far.
Best of luck !
- Thread starter
- #5
Brilliant thank you everyone I really appreciate it. As a total begginer I am having a little trouble understand what all the words used in reference to the language are e.g-katakana, hiragana, etc...I went ahead and ordered the book Genki and got it for a pretty good price. I like the idea of using online resources, but everything seems so overwhelming. Is there a specific website or way that I should start learning?
katakana, hiragana and kanji are the writing methods for japanese. Romaji can be used.
You might find all 3 types of writing in one sentence,so you'll need to learn them all. There was a nice article on this section of the site that explained this better than I can, might wanna go look for it.
You might find all 3 types of writing in one sentence,so you'll need to learn them all. There was a nice article on this section of the site that explained this better than I can, might wanna go look for it.
michaelkane
Adnan desu.
- 31 May 2007
- 9
- 0
I would advise to explore the Japanese culture a little before starting to learn the language. The reason is it would be easier for you to learn if you find something passionate about the country. Once you do that you won't have to push yourself to know the language and definitely will become easier for you.
Haruspex
先輩
- 30 Aug 2007
- 2,324
- 96
Well im just using my intuition but i think there are not truly difficult languages, only unusual ones, i mean every language is mostly (not in every aspect) logical, the pointless things get discarded with the years. But this is all compared to other languages, i don't want to say that the process of learning a language is easy, no, but if you can find motivation and you're not seventysomething years old with the right mindset you can learn a language about as easly as any other language. Just find motivation.
