Re: Help with learning japanese
I'm still learning, but I've been studying for 2 years, but I tell people I've only been studying for 12 months since that's when I moved to Japan. I've completed 6 courses and heres what I've picked up to help.
Whiterabbit Hiragana/Katakana cards, these are awesome. If you're serious about learning Japanese I'd plow through memorizing these right away. Depending on your time it is not unrealistic to grind through Hiragana in two weeks, and Katakana in two weeks. As practice, just translate a bunch of katakana/hiragana to romaji and vice versa. Pick up on the nuances of ~ou (~oo), は(ha/wa), を(w(o)), etc.
They also make kanji vocab flashcards for the JLPT.
Want to build up your vocabulary and kanji? ANKI is an amazing flashcard tool, you can easily import flashcards from text files. Also, a lot of people will learn incorrect stroke order, learnign the correct stroke order from the beginning greatly helps in the longrun when you're learning similar structures. Also, I dont' focus too much on onyumi vs konyumi. Not sure what others think, to me it makes it stick alot more seeing it in context. A lot of times if I see kanji in a sentence i'll be able to guess, 大切 (tai-setsu, important), 大きい (oo-kii, big), 大学 (dai-gaku, university). Even though 大 can be read as tai, dai, oo your mind figures it out based off of the kanji around it. Also a lot of times you'll just simply add a dakuten if it's the 2nd character, ふくろ becomes ぶくろ if you add 紙 in front of it, or 手. There are a lot of these little nuances you'll just pick up on your own, just as you did your mother tongue.
Personally I base my self study off of the JLPT to supplment what I learn in the classroom. I use classroom study to drill in grammar, but it only goes so far. The JLPT has 5 levels currently, and is offered every 6 months. If you choose this route you can set goals for youself, such as learning 20 kanji a week + 50 vocab, etc. It just tests grammar, reading, writing, listening. But not speaking, so from a translator view, this is good to get started.
Want to build up vocabulary? As you go throughout yoru day, think of words youd like to say in japanese, write these down in a little notebook, at the end of the day look them up in a dictionary.
ゆめ dream, 死ぬ die, かっこい cool, etc. you get the point. When I got to Japan I started a journal at night. I would write what happened that day, but write in as much Japanese as I could, and what I didn't know I would look up. Of course there was and still is are a lot of errors but I'd have local Japanese people read it and correct it.
KUMON, cram schools that japanese kids goto, they let international students go to. There are schools all over the world and they offer correspondence classes. I really like their kanji and reading books, coz they base it off of levels. Even though the books I'm on are 3rd, 4th grade reading levels, I don't feel bad reading them coz they'll have stuff in them about nature, etc. So I am learning stuff and I'm 28. You have to start somewhere.
Textbooks, I have used all 3 levels of Japanese for Busy People including the workbooks. These are good for people who don't have much time, I'd suggest supplementing though.
Japanesepod101.com is great, signup for a month, download their whole archive, and then cancel. Thats what I did. I burned a few books fo cds to listen to in the car.
Want to improve your reading speed? Karaoke will force you to read faster.
The japanese/kanji in mangland series isnt bad, ive got all of those books, not great workbooks by themselves but nice supplements to real texts. They have interesting notes on colloquial japanese that you won't find in a textbook which is geared towards teaching you business japanese.
A lot of people above mentioned all sorts of online references that I had not even thought about trying to delve into. I've burnt myself out lately on grinding japanese, that I'm trying to get into translating manga for fun which is how I found this site. I'm hoping the ropes from the translators here, and once school in complete here try and get a job as a translator either in Japan or somewhere in America like California.
I've made a lot of progress in a year, even though I still feel like I have such a long way to go. I think a large myth is that you can't learn a new language coz you're past the "language window" of when you were 4. This is bullshit, I live around a lot of foreigners who speak very very fluent Japanese and its just from "passion". I think it's more passion, than god given talent, age, etc. With passion comes a lot of time to devote, I mean hours a week. It'll drive you nuts, but its well worth it. Japanese is a beautiful exotic language.
