Japanese Pimsleur Progress Report

[vartotojas]

Well, i do learn Pimsleur's French and am at the 26th lesson of the second course (i usually take one lesson a day). I am also interested in japanese, mostly because of anime, but that's another story.
Anyway, the course is kinda too long. It's ok that it repeats words and this makes me remember, but it's getting really boring. I get two or three new words every lesson now, which is not hard to remember. I don't feel content about waisting 30 minutes for learning 3 words. And plus, it almost doesn't explain any grammar. This sucks. I know about that 'learn like a child' and etc crap, but I've got Michel Thomas French Course and in less than 3 hours I've repeated the same and even learned more, what I learned with the whole Pimsleur's I-st course.
Another thing that the course is made like for a tourist (there is that street, how do i get to the bulovard, etc). I want to learn the language, not to waste time.
However, i've started the course and am not going to end it in the middle. It will teach me some french, but i don't feel that i'll achieve sufficient level after these three courses (even though it's more than 35 hours of learning, after all).

 

[myrrhine]

well haven't touched pimsleur for a while now (tsk tsk) but i've been doing quite a bit of work in my japanese for busy people... which makes me appreciate pimsleur all the more. i'm with vartotojas in that it spends way too much time on some things - but! i've realized that over time that it has successfully led to my retaining the knowledge! whereas jfbp has not to the same extent. i'd say sum total they've both taught be about as much, though i've progressed further in the jfbp.
sigh, revision time... ah language learning!

anyone looking at this trying to decide how to begin chipping away at japanese, pimsleur's great, but i found it much more helpful once i started using it in conjunction with a more standard textbook. it's especially helped my understanding of the particles. oh those particles...

righty-ho, particle time!
particle man, particle man...

 

[Fantt]

does the things a particle can!

 

[BrownCow]

I have done the first 4 lessons an then pritty much gave up... because I was busy 'n' stuff.

I will try my dangdist to complete it next year though!

 

[hayashi]

I just finished lesson 90 last week, which I think is everything Pimsleur has to offer. I wish there were more lessons because it is very helpful listening to people speak. I don't have anything negative to say about the series except that I wish I had notes on each of the lessons. Sometimes, they revisit things learned in earlier lessons and I can't remember all of it.

Living in Southern California, I spend a lot of time in the car so it was pretty easy to just listen to one lesson a day. Overall, it took me about 9 months to get through all 90 lessons because I listened to every lesson twice. Stick with it and you'll learn a lot.

 

[vartotojas]

Hontoni?
And can you understand ex. what is said in animes, etc?
Like, watching an anime (if you do watch them) app. what part (percents) you can understand?

I have finished my french course a while ago, but i don't feel like having learned a lot. I just can barely understand it and i am not satisfied about the course. Dunno, maybe the japanese course is better?

 

[hayashi]

After completing Pimsleur, you will NOT understand everything that is said in anime. You will understand bits and pieces but you will still need subtitles. Pimsleur provides a pretty decent INTRODUCTION to Japanese but it really just scratches the surface. This is not a criticism of Pimsleur, which I enjoyed and think was worthwhile, but more of a comment on how much there is to learn. 90 lessons of 30 minute length is only 45 hours of learning and a lot of that is repetition to make sure it "sticks," so there's only so much you can learn in that amount of time.

Pimsleur's 90 lessons do not ever, for example, get into the plain verb forms but instead stick to the polite forms. When you watch anime or Jdoramas, most of the grammar you hear uses the plain form. Also, as in real life, people don't always speak in complete sentences in animes and doramas. Plus, there are lots of idiomatic expressions in Japanese (and in every language) that you just can't pick up in a 45 hour course.

I would highly recommend Pimsleur for what it is, but you should look at it as a introductory tool rather than something that is going to give you the degree of proficiency needed to understand anime.

 

[oc_sportbiker]

transcripts

I have 3 scanned Reading booklets (pdf) that are about 30 pages each.
cannot attach them. this is a 12 meg rar file. if somebody would let me upload to a site that will host it, we can share it.

 

[Fantt]

If those are the ones that come with the Pimsleur discs they're probably copyrighted and if so we can't freely share them (or least not talk about it here).

 

[oceanfr]

you can try yousendit.com

 

[cheapshot]

Good stuff... I wasn't aware that there was such a following of Pimsleurs Japanese, I feel like I've been slacking seeing the progress of Mr. Fantt..!

I'll have to catch up.

I'm only on lesson 15 :emoji_frowning2:

I'll use this thread to post any problems I have..!

:emoji_laughing:

 

[razen]

Hello ppl!!

I am so happy to find many people using Pimsleur. I'm not alone.

hey I was wondering if someone can direct to where i can download the the transcipts of the japanese dialogues. there are some words that I'm not so sure if i am hearing it correctly. knowing how a word is spelled would really help. romaji only, I don't know kana.

 

[Ben W Bell]

I've only got to lesson 16. I must say I don't do it every day, and sometimes I do other things. Flicking through JfBP, All About Particles, A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns, Japanese Core Words and Phrases: Things You Can't Find In A Dictionary, trying to get my Hiragana mastered and some other bits. I'm progressing slowly but feel I'm getting a better grounding in the language. I do like the Pimsleur though, but the transcripts are very useful.

 

[DaMaNiAc]

I've been trying to do the pimsleur tapes as well as I am visiting Japan in September. It's just trying to fit the time to actually sit down and listen to them. Currently up to Lesson 16

 

[Juice]

Just do them while on the toilet like I do. It really gives you some quiet time to concentrate

 

[Ben W Bell]

Just do them while on the toilet like I do. It really gives you some quiet time to concentrate

And some really strange looks from people who walked by while you were in there I bet.

 

[cacawate]

Yeah, Pimsleur does get a bit repetitive, but it sticks no doubt. I'm doing Pimsleur's Norwegian right now and all I hear in my head all day is 'Forstår du Norsk?' 'Nei, jeg forstår ikke Norsk.' Oh man, it's getting to me... 'Hvordan har du det?' 'Bare bra, takk!'

Oh, on a side note. I think we should have a Scandinavian section here; headed up by the one and only Twisted Mac.

Back to Pimsleur! 'Snakker du Engelsk?' Ahhhhh...

-Jeff

 

[Vinylhoer]

I just finished lesson 18. Sometimes I take a lesson everyday, but other times I don't do any lessons for a week or so. Then I have to go a few lessons back because I forgot the newest things.
I'm glad I have the notes for level I, because they are very helpfull. During the lessons I can check the way the words are written which helps me with my pronounciation. And after each lesson I can take some time to check what new grammar was introduced exactly.

 

[cheapshot]

I just finished lesson 18. Sometimes I take a lesson everyday, but other times I don't do any lessons for a week or so. Then I have to go a few lessons back because I forgot the newest things.
I'm glad I have the notes for level I, because they are very helpfull. During the lessons I can check the way the words are written which helps me with my pronounciation. And after each lesson I can take some time to check what new grammar was introduced exactly.

where did you get the notes from dude..?

 

[Bramicus]

I don't think it would be a big problem. I think that all the Pimsleur stuff is about 30+ years old and deal with fairly universal stuff. I still find it very amusing that you spend the first 10 lessons or so learning how to hit up Japanese women. Maybe that's a bit dated.... nah...

If you listen to his other languages, you'll find that he teaches almost exactly the same things at the same times, in each language. Pimsleur's taught me how to hit up women in four different languages already -- and be turned down in each of them!

I'm currently listening and re-listening to the first two discs (four lessons) of the second volume of Pimsleur Japanese. I had the same frustrations as [someone mentioned above] in not knowing the written versions of what was being said; the transcriptions you (Fantt) sent me for Volume 1 were a tremendous help -- thank you, thank you!!! I only wish I had transcriptions for the second (and third) volumes as well, so I can be sure of exactly what is being said.

To see what other progress (or lack thereof) and frustrations I am having, see my other post in this forum, Computer reading/speaking program needed | Japan Forum

 

[Fantt]

As soon as I get done going through the Genki texts (both volumes), I'm going to work on creating transcripts for Pimsleur II and III. I'm only on lesson 5 of Genki (out of 23), so it will probably be 4 to 6 months before I begin. I may actually create a seperate document for each lesson that I work through and post that so people can help me correct any errors that I introduce. We can also work on getting the proper kanji where they belong and maybe I'll figure out how to through in the furigana too. It should be an interesting excersize. Then at the end, I'll combine everything into one giant document and get sued by Pimsleur.

Actually, I'm not sure what the legality of it is, but I'd never sell it, and I'm not sure how useful it would be outside of the audio.

 

[Bramicus]

I've seen it, and I don't think there's any copyright problem with what you're doing. You're not copying the audio tracks, you're not doing a word-by-word transcription, you're not doing it for profit, and you're doing it to help people who are studying from the legitimately purchased Pimsleur recordings. So I highly doubt it runs afoul of copyright, and in any case it would be fair use.

 

[slider]

Hi folks Im using the Pimsleur Japanese dictation and have reached chapter 20 however Im finding it difficult hearing the ga sounds in the following sentences and similar 'nanin kodomosan ga imasu ka' anyone else have trouble with hearing them...i cant hear the g in ga at all.....

 

[Bramicus]

Yes; they speak quickly on purpose (so you can learn to understand actual conversation in real life), and often swallow sounds, for often example when "g" follows "n" and vice-versa: the two merge sometimes.

 

[slider]

doumo arigatou !!

Thanks for clearing that up for me.