Learning new language!

SuperTronNarwhal

SuperTronNarwhal

SuperTronNarwhal

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28 Jul 2011
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Hello im wanting to learn a new language mainly just for something new but also for when i finish Sixth form if i get in i was hoping to go to Japan for at least a year, though I want to learn the language now for when i do go.

But i wanted to know to people who have learned a new language what did you use an what tips do you have to share? I dont mind paying for books but hell no will i pay for tutors or a lot of money for a DVD that shows someone talking ect..!

Thanks ;)
 
Some universities do evening courses (Oxford university do them, I get their bloody course guide every month near enough through the door! :)) and they didnt look too expensive.

Rosetta Stone comes highly recommended but its very very $$.
 
I paid £150 for a years worth of Sunday-classes in Mandarin with our local Chinese community centre. Every Sunday for two hours we'd get some great tuition and practice, it's a lot easier to pickup a language when you get a chance to practice it with fluent speakers.
 
I can assure you home books, dvds and courses done over the Internet will be a huge waste of money, it has to be evening classes if you are serious about learning.
 
ristac said:
I can assure you home books, dvds and courses done over the Internet will be a huge waste of money, it has to be evening classes if you are serious about learning.
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Im pretty much want to as if i do go to Japan as a year away or for fun its pretty important to know how to speak it atleast :P Though as for classes there are non around me and closet one which is in London and that isnt conventet for me! and doing Online seems the best for now!

But my Gosh Rosetta stone is expensive :P But would you say its worth the money?
 
There really is no substitute for classes and learning in a classroom environment - books etc are all great but then when you get to actually using the language you get stuck.

I'd recommend JapanesePod for podcast lessons on the virtue that ChinesePod (the one I use) is excellent. I was a bit naughty with it though and downloaded all their lessons when they had a weekend free trial so I didn't pay a penny for mine :p I also did classes at the local Confucius institute which was very cheap and the classes themselves were excellent; I imagine there must be something similar for Japanese!
 
I've done this very thing with Japanese. Picked up learning on my own for a while, then enrolled in evening classes at the local uni. Starting 2nd year of classes in October, with aim of passing JLPT4 next year.

I've used a lot of different methods, and I try to do at least some Japanese everyday. It's been a real struggle, especially with the limited sound system, large number of homophones, and remembering vocabulary items that differ by what seems at first an insignificant single syllable. Take for example: tsukeru, tsukaru, tsuku, tsukau, tsuru, tsureru - each of which is also a homophone! Ugh!

It's now falling into place through increasing familiarity.

Rosetta Stone is ok. It is a big help in the very early stages just to give you a basic familiarity with the sound system and some working vocabulary. It is, though, in my opinion, an extremely inflexible system, and I found that by the time I'd done two units I wanted something that would allow me more flexibility. I haven't used it again since. I wouldn't recommend anyone spend the money it costs.

My favourite resources are websites, podcasts, books and Android apps.

I really like the JapanesePod101 podcasts, and am working my way through them.

I like Tae Kim's guide website, and this About page on Japanese verbs helped a lot.

I'm a big fan of the Kodansha books, especially All About Particles, A dictionary of Japanese Sentence Patterns, Core Words & Phrases, and Basic Connections.

I loved the old 80s/90s video Let's Learn Japanese Basic (with Yan-san). You should be able to seek it out.

I would completely lost with Wakan (freeware) for my PC and AEDict for my Android phone. Both are useful electronic dictionaries. I also am a huuuuge fan of Obenkyo for Android - the kanji drawing test is awesome! JLPT flashcards for Android is also good.

I'm also making my own flash-cards with kanji on one side and compound words on the other.

Other than that, just immerse yourself as much as possible. Get into the habit of whipping out your phone to practice kanji/vocab whenever you're waiting around for anything. I've exchanged my music for Japanese podcasts and videos on my mp3 player for bus/train journeys and walking around town. Try to read any Japanese text you can. Or even Chinese - try to identify the kanji, and then learn to draw it, and learn some compounds that use it in Japanese.

I agree that classes are the best option, but all of this will really boost your learning. I went into my evening class a bit behind because I'd enrolled in a more advanced class than the amount of prior learning I had. I was ahead of the class after a month or two, though. Not because I'm smarter or more "gifted" at languages, but because I filled my empty time with Japanese as often as I could.
 
Jedeye said:
Japanese is HARD.

Learn cockney.
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It's not that bad actually, I've picked it up fairly quickly. obviously still a beginner, but it sinks in and makes sense. Its like a lot of things. easy to learn, difficult to master. 1 sentence can mean various different things, depending on the situation. So its more than a vocal and written language, its situational.

My main recommendation to you OP is learn hiragana and katakana aswell as trying to pick up the common sentences.

A website I read and enjoyed was

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/

The guy who wrote the blog started out just where we are, wanting to learn the language, but its grown to be much more, and its a nice read.

The first book I read was - Berlitz Essential Japanese which comes with an audio CD, and step by step tests as you go through the book.

Keep at it!! Try and do some every day, as if you dont keep learning the language on your mind, you'll find you drift away from it and end up having to learn parts over from scratch.

Good Luck
 
Yes that All Japanesse at All time was slight boost in motivation :P Gettting around to changing stuff to japanesse but would you say its better to learn Kanji before you go on to how to say stuff? So Read before speak?

And thanks for Anrdiod app recommendations :D Dl'd them and Ill most likely buy that Berlitz Book ;)
 
You need to learn at least hiragana before kanji otherwise you'd not be able to read/pronounce any kanji properly. Japanese has a very different sound system to English, and none of the renderings of the sounds into English is exactly perfect (though you can make do with them, I suppose). You're better off trying to learn the pronunciation of each mora really, and then you can build from there. Also readings of kanji are usually given in both hirigana (for the kunyomi or Japanese reading) and katakana (for the onyomi or Chinese reading), so you'd need to know these really in any case.

I didn't learn any kanji until I'd been learning Japanese for about 8 or 9 months, and then I started introducing them gradually. I'm currently up to about 250, which is a fairly slow and gradual pace.

I think learning kanji early is likely to be a great help because it gives you insight into how words are made up of basic units. For example, knowing that the kanji for "up" can be read as "jou" suddenly makes learning "jouzu" (skilled = up + hand), "joumen" (surface = up + face), "joukyou" (heading towards Tokyo = up + capital) make sense!

So, I don't think you can really learn kanji very well before you can speak, but there's a lot to be said for trying to incorporate them into your learning as early as you feel comfortable doing so, imo.
 
I think Pimsleur is way better than Rosetta Stone. As said above, learn the hiragana and katakana as soon as possible, as learning to read/write using proper Japanese characters will really help your pronunciation of the language vs using transliteration.

Break it down into segments and don't get overwhelmed. I remember I nearly had a heart attack when I learned there were over 32,000 kanji...
 
strumpusplunket said:
I think learning kanji early is likely to be a great help because it gives you insight into how words are made up of basic units. For example, knowing that the kanji for "up" can be read as "jou" suddenly makes learning "jouzu" (skilled = up + hand), "joumen" (surface = up + face), "joukyou" (heading towards Tokyo = up + capital) make sense!

So, I don't think you can really learn kanji very well before you can speak, but there's a lot to be said for trying to incorporate them into your learning as early as you feel comfortable doing so, imo.
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I can see slight sense in this! so Its almost like add one word one word and the other together (obviously must makes sense) but as you say with

Up + Capital
Jou and Kyou and that mean Towards Capital? Cause if its like that then i guess is makes sentence creating slightly more easier-ish, if correct though (and obivously some words dont all work like this though)
But i will try to do what the Blogger dude did cause i think that would be slightly good as i can familiarize my self with words i see most of day!

Dam this is so overwhealming but will stick!
 
Rosetta Stone every day of the week ;)

I did the first course (or phase 1 or whatever its called) of Japanese... imo you can't beat the immersive way they teach you :)
 
SuperTronNarwha said:
I can see slight sense in this! so Its almost like add one word one word and the other together (obviously must makes sense) but as you say with

Up + Capital
Jou and Kyou and that mean Towards Capital? Cause if its like that then i guess is makes sentence creating slightly more easier-ish, if correct though (and obivously some words dont all work like this though)
But i will try to do what the Blogger dude did cause i think that would be slightly good as i can familiarize my self with words i see most of day!

Dam this is so overwhealming but will stick!
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's not like you can just stick any two kanji together to make a meaningful word. And this is a completely separate issue from syntax and grammar, which you need to make a sentence.

You don't just jam words together in Japanese to make a sentence (some people say Chinese works like this, though?). You need to learn about particles and word order to make even simple sentences. The examples I gave are just words on their own - but many words are made up of multiple kanji whose meaning can help you at least remember them, and sometimes guess.

I mean, if you didn't know what "joumen" meant, but you knew that "jou" is up and "men" means face, what would you guess? In Japanese, "up" and "down" are often used in abstract senses, so if you have to guess, this could mean a lot of things (happy face? high face? skilled face? superior face?). But if you know both kanji on their own and their readings, it makes it easier to learn the new word than if you had no kanji.

That was the point I was trying to make. Sorry it's not clear, maybe it's harder to express than I first thought.

Sometimes you can guess words from their component kanji. Like, the kanji for drink, eat and shop together can be read as "inshokuten", which means... restaurant (the shop where you eat and drink!).

However, whether or not this works, knowing kanji and their readings is really useful in making vocab learning more meaningful and easier.

Now, making sentences... that's a whole different kettle of fish!! :)
 
i started learning on my own a few months ago, so i'll run through what i've done so far.

1. Bought a few books.

Japanese for Everyone
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Japanese-Everyone-Functional-Approach-Communication/dp/0870408534

A Guide to Remembering Japanese Chracters. (AGtRJC)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Remembering...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314201917&sr=1-1

I learnt all of the hiragana first, then all of the katakana, then started on kanji. This is the order that Japanese children learn the language.

Learning all of the Hiragna and Katakana is pretty straightforward, you should be able to memorise them in a few weeks at most.

I'm slowly working my way through AGtRJC, i sit down each night with a little notepad for an hour or so and write out the Kanji and their readings repeatedly. Works for me, and i just make sure i learn a few more every other day. The books works its way upwards from the characters taught in the 1st grade.

This is the same method i used to learn the hiragana and katakana, and repetition really is the key to becoming fluent imo.

http://japanese-lesson.com/ is also a really handy website for learning the basics, and it has some very handy drill exercises that you can run through.

The book Japanese for Everyone is made up of a series of lessons that run through basic conversational skills to get you buy, how to ask for directions, where something is, what something is etc. It's a good book.

I've also signed up for a Japanese Beginners course at a local college. You can learn to read and write yourself with enough determination and commitment, but learning to speak really requires you to be in a group situation.

- Get yourself to some evening classes or other situation where you can speak with others in the same language.

- Learn the Hiragana/Katakana and Kanji early, you're shooting yourself in the foot otherwise.

- Repetition, Repetition, Repetition.

hope that helps.
 
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