can someone help me learn japanese?

[ebi]

i know this is all about kendo, but i really need to learn japanese better then i have been (a tourist book, self-tought), if anyone has any references, books to go to, online, anything, or if you can be a sparetime tutor across computes, that would be great also, anyone have any ideas?

[Khabbi]

take it in highschool or college ?

take japanes lang cours ?

[litige]

the berlitz method works very well, you can take course at berlitz centers (like everywhere in the world) or buy the book. It's working great for me (the book).

[Eldritch Knight]

I'm not a fan of the Berlitz language tapes. They taught very basic Japanese that's only useable for businessmen, etc who don't intend to stay in country. College courses and other extended educational resources take the time to teach you the basics of the language strongly because they have people who truly want to be fluent, and not merely people who want to speak the language (even to a survival level). Naturally, the best option is to simply live in Japan and be as immersed as possible(that's what I did - got semi-fluent within 10 months).

[ebi]

ive always known that the best way was to immerse, ive heard that from everywhere, and i've done it with french already, but i did have some education in it, although i am working on getting over there, i doubt that there is anyway i can stay for 10 months, maybe like...2 weeks tops, which is obviously not enough. when i get to college, i also know there is a japanese course available, but the problem with this, is that im working to get to both japan, and college, so both are a little ways off, im not sure where to purchase these tapes, or books, maybe you can help with that?:confused2

[Hattori Hanzo]

http://www.barnesandnoble.com maybe?

[Kaoru]

Hi!

Here are a bunch of sites I have found that are really good. I hope they will help!

Kaoru


Hiragana quiz

http://www.okayama-u.ac.jp/user/int/study/gakusyu/hiragana2.html

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Excellent site, even though it's for kids, but who cares? It's useful!

http://www.jinjapan.org/kidsweb/language.html

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Has a lot of listening comprehension quizzes

http://www.klbschool.org.uk/interactive/japanese/index.htm

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Has some cool games. Awesome site, has other cool language resources on it, too.

http://japanese.about.com/bltoy.htm

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Some cool dictation stuff.

http://sp.cis.iwate-u.ac.jp/sp/lesson/j/

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Another cool Japanese language site.

http://www.genki-online.com/

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Fun site all in hiragana. This is a hiragana game where you have put the character that is given together correctly(The one that is spit out...you'll see if you watch it long enough., and click on the correct character below that matches it to make a word.

http://www.nekopy.com/game/kana/f_kana.html

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A good place to begin to learn to listen and understand Japanese.

http://www.japanese-online.com/LANGUAGE/index.htm

[ebi]

thank you so much Kauro!!!, i love u!!!:wink:

[ebi]

Kaoru**, sry@!!

[nodachi]

A good language program on CD's is the Pimsleur Japanese program. I've used it and it does work. It's expensive, but you can get it pretty cheaply on ebay if you are lucky. Good to start from if you know nothing, and have more advanced series for those who have progressed a bit. Even if you know some stuff on the CDs, the listening practice is good and it will fill in the gaps with some new stuff you might be missing.

You can also look for Japanese bookstores. They sometimes have flyers on boards with people who are looking for people to have language exchanges with. You speak your language with them for a bit, then you switch over to Japanese for a bit, and with some studying on your own, you can learn quite a bit this way too. It's worked for people I know.

[sal]

If you're looking to be able to read & write in Japanese as well;
http://www.teachyourself.co.uk/lbegJapS.htm by Helen Gilhooly is very good for kana & basic kanji (don't know if it's available in the US but you should be able to get it from amazon.com/.co.uk)
http://members.aol.com/writejapan is a good online site with kana & kanji

For speaking Japanese, i've found a lot of software is aimed more for business/ holiday use but Linguaphone Japanese in Action V2's quite good - lot's of content & activities but not particularly well organised. As for books, have a look through them, see which one looks like you can understand it easily but get one with audio cassettes/ CD's.

[nodachi]

A good book series to learn from is Japanese for busy people. And if youre serious, get the kana version and you will learn to read and write much better too. It may be slow at first to get through all the hiragana and katakana, but its worth it. It will build you to reading some kanji and avoid the whole syndrome of being able to speak awesome but only be able to read romanji. It's fine if it gets you started, but don't stay in romanji land because it will limit you somewhat. Be well rounded in your language ability, i say. Get all aspects of the language.

[yukiko]

Language is always difficult to learn. I second nodachi's opinion for Japanese for busy people. I am not sure if it is the best or not, but I know that it is used widely in many International Schools which runs International Baccalaureate(IB) couse. I, myself, am Japanese, so i've never used it, but I know that my school teacher for Japanese for IB used it for Japanese B standard level, which aims to get student level zero to about 4th grade or 5th grade in primary school in two years, so should be good.

Or, if you are in English speaking country, why dont you buy teach yourself Beginner's Japanese?by Hodder&Stoughton Educational. I've got their Dutch version, and it is kind of good, though the only downside is that you may not get the pronounciation right...that's my problem with my dutch at the moment....so, but there are other ways to learn Japanese, like chatting on the net. If you do need anyhelp, my msn is always on, so just add me to your list.

just for a reference, what nationality are you?

good luck

[ebi]

im canadian, i think my background is poo english, or some slave scottish, im not sure. i prefer to say canadian though. i thank you all very much in attempting to help me learn japanese, i never thought i would have so many replies


DOMO ARIGATOU GOZZAIMASE!!!

[ebi]

also, how do u set up personal customized avatar??, i t won't let me do it.

[chidokan]

Yukiko,
one thing puzzles me about your avatar.... how come the Japanese have a thing about cute looking cats but I've only ever seen one cat in Japan? (and that was in a westerners house!)

[nodachi]

You've never seen a cat in Japan?????

Wait for night fall, walk around your local Jusco and you'll see lots of strays looking for food. They do hide better than cats in other countries, but there's tons! They have major problems with stray cats. Or go to Ueno Koen and read the sign that says "don't feed the cats". Trust me, Japan has got plenty of cats. Maybe not in the middle of a city like Tokyo, but everywhere else probably does, unless maybe weather in places like Hokkaido kills them off.

[Musha]

When I went to Kyoto there was a small picnic area and hundreds of cats looking for food. I think they came every day because they knew people would feed them :D.

:cat: ﾆｬｰｰ

[chidokan]

I went to Saga, Kyoto, Tottori, Oyama, Matsuyama and Ozu so got the whole range from inner city to mountain village....still never saw any cats outside, in fact I think I only saw a couple of dogs getting walked as well... lots of huge disgusting insects, snakes, and some nocturnal mini racoons were in abundance though.

[JSchmidt]

Huh?..I've always seen plenty of cats when I visit Japan. More so than in Europe.

[Musha]

Sure you went to the right place Chikan? Didn't go to China by mistake? :D.. I think dogs are band on the streets there. And the parts of Japan I went to the insects weren't much different than in the UK, dragonflies, crickets etc. No really strange ones..

[nodachi]

I didn't see too many creepy insects until I went for walks near woods in more rural areas. Then I saw the angular type of spiders that you see on the nature shows instead of the rounded furry ones here so they look all scary and all. The developed areas seemed to be more bug free but the woods were icky. Damn bugs...

[watanabe2k]

Yukiko,
one thing puzzles me about your avatar.... how come the Japanese have a thing about cute looking cats but I've only ever seen one cat in Japan? (and that was in a westerners house!)
come to my parents house in Fukuoka, stray cats screaming all night............... hard to sleep, so annoying.........

[kageXkaze]

There arent many high school courses that teach japanese (although i think there should be more of a variety of languages in schools) and if your from california (like i am... the surf isnt taht great here... i dont surf though) it is practically impossible to make it into a summer college course unless your some kind of green-eyed-left-handed-photographic-memory-has-strait-A's-in-all-classes-and-all-of-them-are-honors-AP-subjects-tennisplaying-journal-writing-artist-model-student type of person (that was a long one). Here's what i did (im still in high school).
Self Study! (dedicate atleast an hour a day [or if your lazy 30 minuets every so often in the day])
Get books! It doesnt matter wether you already have a kanji review book! you should always have different refrences
Learn to read first then speak
The Berlin method is very bussiness and conversational. I only recommend this if you intend only to "speak" Japanese.
Get a kanji dictionary... You may not need it now but having it will add new kanji to your vocabulary (i have The learners kanji dictionary by Spahn and Hadmitzky $30 US)
Get yourself a Japanese dictionary! (well obvious enough)
and here are some books I highly recommend (and recommended to read in this order too.)
Teach yourself Bigginers Japanese SCRIPT (very important detail on SCRIPT)- This book is very very basic... Although a lot of the stuff is bussiness it teaches basic kanji every begginer student should know, hiragana, katakana, how to use a kanji dictionary, oyonomi reading etc
Essential Kanji by O'Neill- Builds you up with a lot of kanji (even has self-testing method!)
Master the basics: Japanese by Akiyama and Akiyama- very good book. Teaches you about the particles and stuff more indepth than Teach Yourself begginers japanese script
250 Japanese essential kanji- More common and bussiness stuff (the bussiness stuff is really really important)
Shaums Outlines: Japanese grammar- Very good review method after reading previous books.
Berlitz method: (Nihongo) Japanese: Very very convesational. It tries to teach you through point and memorize and focuses on "speaking the language" rather than "merely describing it."
and thats it!
Right now im can understand japanese for the most part however, im still studying (build up vocab very important!) butif you dedicate yourself enough then your on the road to success! (Ugh... That was really corny... Sorry about taht but happy studying!_

[ebi]

well, ur right that is a lot of books, for the longest time even, i hadn't even realized that there was a second page to my post i was amazed, and thank all of you once again for trying to get me on the right track, i will definetly see about purchasing those books, and i do dedicate a lot of my time to study, but poor resources make for bad examples, so i can't say i have gotten very far. however much i try. hopefully though, ill get through this, and one day will speak it fluently, thank you all once again for helping so much, it is very appreciated!

[xvikingx]

Directed towards ebi and kageXkaze,
Why not ask around a local Japanese community centre for a tutor? That's what I did when I lived in L.A. I don't know about where ebi lives but in California you have a huge Japanese population.

[ebi]

well ur right, i could just go to one of those centers, and ask for a tutor, it was one of my first ideas, but in order to do that, i have to move to toronto. and i already planned this for next year (when i finally go to college), now, starting next year will also be great, but then my college has the course (and sum helpful internships in japan) so really, when i can finally make access of it, ill already be doing it, but thanks for the suggestions:smiley:

[gsx1100s]

I looked up the sites for the Japanese courses. thanks for that. I also found that there were a few ways to count to ten. A must for Kendo warm-ups:wink:
The number 7 is "nana" as well as "hichi" could anyone help me with this ?


cheers michael

[norio]

Try this: www.hesjapanese.com (http://www.hesjapanese.com)
I like this site :)

[nebosuke]

If he hasn't learned anything since 2004, I don't think your link will help.