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[Wonder83]

Hi Guys

Im coming to Japan in May and am trying to learn some basic Japanese Im so excited about this and happy to be learning a new language, especially Japanese.I bought an Essential Japanese book and am also looking for some internet sites that may give me some audio as Im unsure on how to pronounce some of the words. If anyone knows of any decent websites please let me know.I was on a few of them but Im not sure how trustworthy they are.

Any other advice/tips on learning Japanese will be greatly appreciated!!!

[MrCAPiTUL]

http://www.thejapanesepage.com

Great for beginners~

http://www.japanesepod101.com

Also pretty good for beginners~

AND, if you are on Facebook, check out the application called: Kanji Box
It is a great flashcard series that is a bit more productive than Happy Farm! XD

[mhard1]

Well I guess it depends on how much you want to learn. I suppose that relates to what ends you want to learn Japanese for. If you just want to speak a little bit, and make some friends I think you can get by with any general survival Japanese book and a friendly smile.

If you want to really learn Japanese I suggest you review the JLPT standards and then get ready to apply blood sweat and tears.

For beginning to advancing your study:

pick up a copy of Japanese the Spoken Language by Jorudan. Download the audios from the digital learning lab. Also pick up the first set of Kanji Cards from Tuttle. Couple that with the Japanese basic kokugo (国語) text book starting from 1st year (1年生）. Practice speaking Japanese whenever you get the chance while in Japan. Set goals to complete your books and achieve those goals.

another good text I can suggest is Minna no Nihongo both 1 and 2.

[lenoreelux]

[Wonder83]

Thanks to every1 for the replies the book I bought was
Berlitz, Essential Japanese should I return this lol dont want to waste my time reading it....

[natsume]

I second the Genki recommendation. Extremely clear and concise.

[Glenski]

Everyone learns a language differently. First thing, do you want to know the spelling/alphabet? You've got to get katakana and hiragana out of the way (easily enough done in a couple of weeks).

Kanji is a lifetime endeavor, but there are books and sites that help. Key is to do a little often.

Next is the grammar. Keep in mind that your J textbooks provide what your English textbooks provide -- textbook grammar. Many people will not speak that. You still have to learn the basics. Perhaps setting a goal (JLPT level?) will help direct your studies.

Pronunciation can be a case by case phenomenon. Do what you can, but the best thing is to ask a close friend for his reaction to your pronunciation.

Self-study is hard. Plain and simple. You have to be disciplined to do it, even if you have a private tutor or language exchange partner. You have to ignore the coworkers who want to go drinking, the students who want to take you skiing, etc. much of the time. You have to forget the Terminator 4 video that is suddenly 100 yen at the rental shop, or the walks in your neighborhood sometimes. Setting aside study time is the hardest thing to doing this overseas. I don't care what people say about immersing oneself in the culture. You can stand in a wading pool but never learn to swim unless you apply yourself.

Do a search for more people's experiences. It has been mentioned a lot!!

[fluffyhamster]

You can learn something from any book, and although I'm not that familiar with it, I do have a copy of the Berlitz floating around somewhere and recall that it at least won't be too daunting for a beginner...but you'll need to get something more ambitious sooner or later (e.g. that helps teach and/or utilizes the kana).

Regarding JSL, I'm a bit surprised at the negative comments.

It uses its own romanization system, generally very similar to native-Japanese-developed romanization systems, and these all have an advantage over Hepburn romanization in that they require no spelling changes/exceptions in representing the various verb forms, and therefore merge better with the native orthography (kana, and kanji), the language's moraic structure, and its pronunciation generally; romanization is at best an approximate representation, so it is best to try to make that approximation as close a one as possible to the language it is meant to be representing, which systems like JSL seem to achieve better than Hepburn say. But that isn't to say that one can't learn well with materials written in Hepburn, and hey, that's what mass-market bilingual dictionaries use. [By the way, if you are wondering what bilingual dictionary you should get, I would recommend that you get the Langenscheidt, because apart from being a good dictionary generally, it has an index (arranged by total stroke count rather than radical and residue - and counting strokes is a skill that should only take a few days, or a few weeks at most, to master) of all the Joyo kanji (Officially-promulgated list of "Chinese characters for everyday use" in education, newspapers etc) and their common pronunciations, so you will be able to look up characters that you meet and may not know the pronunciation of; all other bilingual dictionaries AFAIK don't have anything like the Langenscheidt's kanji index (meaning you would only be able to look up items you knew the pronunciation of, in the usual A-Z alphabetical listings). The Langenscheidt thus can assist not only the study of "the spoken language" but also serve as a modest kanji dictionary for use in reading/decoding signs, bills, leaflets, letters, i.e. a variety of not-too-ambitious shortish printed texts].

Anyway, I quite liked its short exchanges (long dialogues can get tedious to study, especially at beginner level), and found them reasonably representative of the sort of quick functional exhanges that (still!) occur in workplaces.

But I do have to mention that there are a lot of (oral) drills in JSL, and these can get a little boring (I sometimes think that less is more, or that more sometimes only produces diminishing returns...if one is getting not so much overloaded as tired, performance can start to suffer).

[Apsara]

[naujokaitis]

i like smart.fm, they have rather good lessons
right now i am learning hiragana, i am done with katakana and know it pretty well, it took me 3 days, so it is not difficult.

also a little program called ikana is good (but this is for macs, i don't know if they have it for windows, but i'm sure something similar you can find). but definitely check out smart.fm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zxuy6eojZY&NR=1

the above link is a good way to learn pronunciation, it's the japanese alphabet song. check it out.

http://www.learn-japanese.info/

also i have found the above website useful, with many different resources and aids, check out the downloads section for hiragana and katakana charts, as well as worksheets for both to practice writing.

http://www.freejapaneselessons.com/

use the above website for planning out your "curriculum" if you can call it that

http://www.youtube.com/user/KaxyzKoi

this girl has videos about good/interesting way for learning the kanas

http://www.kanjisite.com/html/wak/index.html

above is a good site with information behind the kanas and kanji

http://edufire.com/classes/japanese

this is online live video learning

http://www.tofugu.com/2009/06/09/why-you-should-use-a-mac-to-study-japanese/

and for those of you who have macs, go to the above site



my plan:
- katakana (finished)
- hiragana
- vocab on smart.fm,
at the same time start in on kanji, one or a few each day

later when i have some vocab under my belt:
- watch anime on youtube (even if you don't undersand 99% of it, you are - still exposing yourself to the spoken language, and you will be able to pick up on the words you do know, which is nice)
- download emulators for games like pokemon, old final fantasy games, and such in japanese and try to play through those
- read manga online or download
- go to japan (can't wait) haha


hope this helps!!

[ShioriEigoKyoushi]

--

[rikai]

Berlitz essential Japanese is not very good imho, but it might be useful as an introduction to the language. I suggest you shoot through it while you're learning kana and then get onto a serious text like Minna no Nihongo.

For listening I recommend JPod101 (just the basic membership though). Smart FM core 2000 is very good too but I recommend you use it in conjunction with a program called Anki. In fact I recommend doing pretty much everything in conjunction with Anki - check it out. I do not recommend YesJapan.

Finally I wouldn't worry about kanji for the time being, but when you do come onto it the best flashcards are the White Rabbit Press ones. You might want to check out a book called Remembering the Kanji, although it's not everyone's cup of tea. Kanjibox is good too, but it's more of a review app.

Also, check out the forum here for useful tips: http://forum.koohii.com/

Good luck!

[lenoreelux]

[lenoreelux]

[quote="rikai"]

I do not recommend YesJapan.

[shostahoosier]

A lot of books that teach Japanese are absolute JUNK...they will teach you some useful phrases, but not necessarily how to say what you want to say (does that make sense)? I really recommend initially learning from a textbook and not one of those phrasebooks or "learn in 10 minutes" books. I think they are better later after you understand the grammar and structure.

"Japanese: The Spoken Language" is a great book! I HATE the confusing romaji that the book uses (and it is ALL romaji...no Japanese characters are used at all in the book), but if you know grammar well, then JSL can give you great insight into speaking patterns. Otherwise, the book is boring, as it is speaking drills and core conversations to infinity! I thought the book was a little painful when I used it, but now I really appreciate what I learned from it.

I also agree that the "Genki" series is great too, and easy to fit in your pocket so you can study it anywhere. The book integrates reading quite well and gives useful vocabulary. I think that it moves a bit slowly though and might be too basic for even the lowest level of the JLPT.

Personally I liked the "Nakama" series...which I consider somewhere in the middle. I think it does a great job of explaining grammar, giving vocabulary, and including reading exercises. The Nakama books can be a little tough to tackle on your own though...especially in the later chapters.

All 3 are great in my opinion, some are just better than others depending on how you learn.

Of course...I started in High School with the "Kimono" series...

Anyway...this website gives a pretty good list of textbooks:
http://www.japaneseteaching.org/projects/textbook/list.html

I recommend a college textbook if you are serious about learning Japanese or plan to take the JLPT, or a secondary textbook (which will all be repeated in the college textbook anyway) if you dont pick up languages well but want an introduction.

Good luck either way!