Recommended

[thomear]

Hey all

I'm 16 and learning Japanese, as I have for several years. My class (well all classes) don't seem to go at much of a speed. I know there are several threads on learning Japanese and so on, but going through many pages of unfamiliar kanji and phrases is not my idea of learning. I would rather be able to make my own sentences suitable for a conversation than to be spitting out memorised phrases :P. So I was wondering if anyone either knows of good websites or workbooks which demonstrate grammar patterns, decent sized lists of useful verbs, adjectives, conjunctions etc.

I've been learning for 5 years now and know katakana, hiragana, like 20 kanji (not going to get me far, hey? :(), not a huge amount of verbs and adjectives. Know several polite form grammar patterns and only a handful of plain form patterns.

So I would be greatly appreciative of anyone who can link me to anything useful.

Thanks

[stillbornsinger]

Your best bet is to sell all of your posessions, move to Japan and take up a job as a private english tutor =)

oh yeah, your 16... so that probably wont work to well... umm...

Check out the Japanese for Busy People (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/4770018827/002-4876471-8412041?v=glance) series of books, I've got a bunch of them. There is the lesson book and a workbook that corresponds with each volume. They are pretty excellent. They teach you how to read and write it at the same time as teaching you usefull words and phrases. But while they teach you the phrases they explain the reasoning and grammer behind them so you can swap out words and make your own sentences as necissary...

If you get it, make sure you pick up the work book as well.


I need to study more... my Japanese sucks...

[Pierrot le Fou]

Depends.

Best: Total immersion in Japan coupled with daily classes on the language for several months at least.

Second-best: Classes coupled with conversation practice on a regular basis.

Third-Best: Conversation practice with self-learned Japanese from books that you can go over with the person you do conversation with if you don't understand something.

Fourth-Best: Class with no conversation.

Worst: Book learning.

[Kass]

Moving to "All things Japan." enjoy!

[thomear]

Yeh I have 3 lessons a week. But we don't progress very quickly. I want to build my vocab, as I said before, so lists of verbs, adjectives, nouns and conjunction/prepositions (whatever they're called, the words like therefore) would be nice. Same deal with grammar patterns. I can go to my teacher, but they don't want to really give me much to go ahead with, although if I find stuff myself they will answer my questions

[Pierrot le Fou]

www.kanjiaday.com

Honestly, it may seem like a waste, but if you keep at it, it will make learning vocab INSANELY easy because of the amount of shared characters, as well as learning sounds to apply to new words you hear, and turning them into kanji to guess the meaning of words you've never even heard before.

[悲しいパンダ]

www.kanjiaday.com

Honestly, it may seem like a waste, but if you keep at it, it will make learning vocab INSANELY easy because of the amount of shared characters, as well as learning sounds to apply to new words you hear, and turning them into kanji to guess the meaning of words you've never even heard before.
Dead link =(

Hm...I wish I could take Japnese classes but sadly I can only take it at a nearby community college, thats if they have the course.

[Pierrot le Fou]

http://www.kanji-a-day.com/index.php

[Scott]

Flash cards. Just go to a place like Jim Breen's JDIC, (http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html), look up simple, everyday nouns, and put them on flashcards to memorize. This can backfire, though, if you get a word that doesn't mean what you wanted.

A more realiable way is to buy a few textbooks online - they usually have good grammar breakdowns and vocab lists for learners. I'd recommend the Japan Times ones - they're very clear, concise, and have large sections of exercises written in kana for your edification. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/4789009637/qid=1128436917/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i3_xgl14/002-2311076-6228826?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)

[thomear]

I can borrow the Pimsleur CDs from my library. I heard that they are good. What do you think, is it a good idea?

[Pierrot le Fou]

My mother learned a bunch of Japanese from said CDs before she came for a 10 day visit. It's good for pronounciation and phrase memorization at any rate. As a supplement, it can't hurt.

[Henjin]

I've been using the 「どんな時、どう使う日本語表現文型」 books I bought from Asahiya. I went through the beginner-intermediate 200 phrase book, and that was a great help. Still a good reference, even though I've been through it a few times. I bought the advanced 500 sentence pattern book, which is written entirely in Japanese. Haven't gotten very far, because I have to look up a lot of unfamiliar words. (at least there's furigana) Still, I think they're pretty helpful. Mostly because they provide a lot of example sentences that let you see the sentence patterns/expressions in use.

[Bissrok]

Hey all

I'm 16 and learning Japanese, as I have for several years. My class (well all classes) don't seem to go at much of a speed. I know there are several threads on learning Japanese and so on, but going through many pages of unfamiliar kanji and phrases is not my idea of learning. I would rather be able to make my own sentences suitable for a conversation than to be spitting out memorised phrases :P. So I was wondering if anyone either knows of good websites or workbooks which demonstrate grammar patterns, decent sized lists of useful verbs, adjectives, conjunctions etc.

I've been learning for 5 years now and know katakana, hiragana, like 20 kanji (not going to get me far, hey? :(), not a huge amount of verbs and adjectives. Know several polite form grammar patterns and only a handful of plain form patterns.

So I would be greatly appreciative of anyone who can link me to anything useful.

Thanks

...5 years! we've learned katakana, a little hiragana and enough japanese to hold a decent conversation in 5 weeks. i'd say find a better class to get into. i've looked at a few sites, but for me it's a lot easier to learn with an actual teacher.

[Scott]

At 16, I'm guessing that it's a bit hard to find better classes... I'd graduated from high school at 16 and didn't decide to take Japanese til after my freshman year of college when I had settled in.

In any case, your own determination will be your best asset (or worst liability) here. It's the same way in college, with good courses. You can go to class all you want, but how good you get at Japanese depends on how much grunt work you want to do in rote memorization of vocabulary and kanji.

[Henjin]

...5 years! we've learned katakana, a little hiragana and enough japanese to hold a decent conversation in 5 weeks.

You can not hold a conversation w/ a native speaker in 5 weeks. I just don't believe it. At all. lol

[Scott]

If you're learning from Jordan, it's something like:

A: Nomimasen desita ka.
B: Iie, nomimasita.
A: Soo desu ka. Takakatta desu ka.
B: Iie, takakunakatta desu. Yasukatta desu.
A: Wakarimasita. Yokatta desu nee.
B: Soo desu nee.

If that.

Typing in Jordanese hurts my head.

[Henjin]

What do you mean, 'learning from Jordan?'

[Scott]

My bad - Jorden.

Eleanor Jorden and Mari Noda wrote a very influential Japanese textbook series called "Japanese: The Spoken Language" (with a written counterpart with the stunningly creative title "Japanese: The Written Language") taught from a linguist's perspective. It was (and continues to be) very influential at many major schools. I believe Princeton, for one, still uses it - but I could be wrong.

In any case, Jorden teaches very slowly, focusing on grammar over vocabulary. It's only at the end of the first book that you learn to ask common things, like "Where is the bathroom?". For the first few lessons, you have short, almost one-word sentences.

Not only that, but Jorden's romanization is atrociously hard to read and is made for learning to speak - not write. For example, 'ou' is 'oo', 'ei' is 'ee', 'shu' is 'syu', 'ja' is 'jya', etc. A lot of people I know have had trouble writing in Japanese because they really don't know how to spell, thanks to Jorden.

Maybe I'm just a little upset with the series, though.

[Henjin]

Hmm... I think I read some of the Spoken Japanese book. Got it from the library. I remember having trouble trying to figure out where the upper dorsal ridge of the central palate was, and which section of my tongue should be placed there to precisely pronounce 'tsu...' :p

And yeah, if I'm thinking of the same book, the romaji was terrible. I think the one I got used to and use now is 'Modified Hepburn' or something. I like it because it's so easy to pronounce. Not that I use romaji for anything other than the IME.

[thomear]

...5 years! we've learned katakana, a little hiragana and enough japanese to hold a decent conversation in 5 weeks. i'd say find a better class to get into. i've looked at a few sites, but for me it's a lot easier to learn with an actual teacher.

Yeh well we learnt katakana in the first 2 years (this is when everyone was 11 or 12). I already knew it because at my old school I had done Japanese (I came in halfway through though). Then another year on katakana and basic sentences (I eat dogs. How creative!) before getting onto further uses of polite form eg negative, past tense. Then て form, which took a couple of months =\. Finally, in the last 6 months or so, dictionary/plain form, and about 5 uses apart from converting polite form sentences.

Languages at my school was compulsary until last year, but still there are some strugglers. When I asked for more work, I was told to wait, given nothing pretty much.

So yeh, I could get a private tutor, but money can be better spent elsewhere. I will get a Japanese tutor for my last year of school, lots of people do, to work on the oral component for the exam.

[Chinpokomon]

I find it very ironic that when kids are younger, and more adept at learning new languages, the pace is very slow, but when they are older (college), the pace picks up.

I'm sure that if the teachers really tried, they could do a little bit better than just Katakana in 2 years. I mean, it's 46 characters, right? If you do one per week day (which is a pretty leisurely pace, if you ask me), you still finish in 3 months.

Then again, getting the opportunity to take Japanese at age 11-12 is awesome. When you finally do get into some real classes, you're going to have a real advantage. Keep it up!

[Bissrok]

The Jorden/Noda romanizations start to hurt my head after awhile (let's disregard pronounciation and common sense and just use random letters instead!) we usually avoid that book whenever possible. it is a lot of work though. 4 classes a week, have to listen to the tapes every night, and we all have to see a tutor. not a bad class though, the teacher's funny as hell. but it would have been nice to start learning at 11

[Fallen Angel]

I wish we could choose a language to study here... >_>;;;

[Whothefuckispink]

So what are your opinions on self-learning? Is it at all possible?
I tried to learn french, spanish and german, but japanese is the only language i've only actually learned somewhat good (and english, but i don't really count that), and that i do all by myself. Im gonna begin som real classes in a few years, so i reckon i have engough time to bould a base until then, plus i get to do it my own pace.
But then again, i keep a pretty high pace , so perhaps i woulda gotten further on my spanish i might have been able to speak it by now (3 years and i can say "hay un hombre encima de esta casa?") had i kept this pace then...
Ah well, self-education rules!

[Henjin]

Well, it's hard to judge yourself, but I'd say I'm doing okay for only 2yrs of self-study...

[Bissrok]

i never tried it, but as long as you have tapes to hear how it's pronounced correctly, you probably wouldn't do too bad. but a lot of my motivation comes from knowing that she's going to call on me several times and i don't wanna look like an idiot.

[Henjin]

I have MP3s (of Pimsleur), but I don't use them. For the most part, the pronuncation comes pretty easily to me, but I do learn alot from the news and movies that I watch. I also do have some Japanese friends, but I don't often talk to them.

[Xenotrauma]

Hen, you're far and away the most literate person I've ever met from pure self study with virtually no immersion... so I consider you a total pro on this topic :)

The one thing I'd like to hear how you did, is off the basis of learning without a "lesson" format. Personally I "self studied" before classes, but it never got me anywhere because it was like I was trying to clean a really messy room.. I just didn't know where to -start-, so I never made any progress.

Nowadays I've always kept myself self-studied ahead of my class, and I've learned infinitely more than I did while self-studying, but it's strictly because I have a path that builds on what came before it. I have to learn what I'm looking at in at least X amount of time, and then we start learning something else, and that movement is something that is usually lacking in self-study people. Especially since with self-study, your motivation limits you.. and it's so easy to skip the hour of Japanese practice you -swore- you were going to get in every day :D

[Henjin]

Hen, you're far and away the most literate person I've ever met from pure self study with virtually no immersion... so I consider you a total pro on this topic :)

That's sad, and probably not true. lol

Well, let's think about how I got where I am... I started out one day, listening to the Pimsleur MP3s because I decided on a whim that it would be cool to know some Japanese... About a month after that I met an older Japanese woman who was teaching two other kids in her home, and she invited me too. I started learning hiragana about a week before I got there, and while I knew most of them by then, it took a while, and I had a lot of trouble reading the simple children's book they were going over. But each week we'd meet, read from that children's book (all hiragana) and some magazines w/ furigana... We would talk a little bit (but not much), and we'd watch a historical dorama. I did that for about a year. During the same time, I would read magazines and go through the 「どんな時どう使う日本語表現文型」 book. Probably studied a total of 3/4 hrs a week, if that.

It really wasn't until a few months after we stopped meeting that I started to be able to form sentences. That was unfortunate, since that would've been the perfect time to actually get some conversation practice. But the one year I spent w/ those guys did form a good basis, I think. Anyway since then, I haven't been studying much at all. I bought the next level of the 「どんな時どう使う」 books, but I haven't gotten past the first chapter. Aside from posting on this forum, I don't do too much besides catching a few Japanese movies or news shows every now and then. That's why I don't feel too bad about where I am right now. I really haven't been putting a lot of effort into it. So if I can have a simple conversation w/ a Native Japanese speaker in Kobe after 2yrs of admittedly shoddy studying, that's not so bad. And I just know I could get pretty good if I were immersed for an extended period. That doesn't seem possible right now, though. But what are you gonna do? I really need to force myself to work harder at it.