Now, I don't have any experience with gap years, but I wanted to make this post because I have been planning my gap year to Japan! In two years when I am 18 is when I will be going, so it is a long way away, even so I'm extremely excited!
The benefits of taking a gap year are pretty obvious (immersion being the biggest one, total immersion) so i won't go into them, instead I'll post a few things to help you.
The first thing is, Japan is a part of the Youth Mobility Scheme, so if your country is too (if your country needs to be, I'm not 100% sure) then you should definitely check it out, the UK is.
If you are considering studying there here is a link to a university there that deals well with foreign students: http://www.global.tsukuba.ac.jp
If you have a bachelors degree you should consider going with the JET programme http://www.jetprogramme.org/ It's very good its worth reading about!
The last thing i will say is find stuff that you like, stuff that you want to to, the kind of lifestyle you want and work out your time in Japan according to that!
Sorry i didn't have much to say on the topic but it's something I wanted to cover!
This posts random Japanese is: 好き - Liking/love (Note that 好き is an adjective in Japanese rather than a verb), pronounced 「すき」 Or to the romaji users "suki".
Everyone hits a wall every now and then, it's only human. If we feel like we are making no progress or we are seriously stuck on something, it's only natural that we get disheartened and may want to give up. However, even if you want to give up now, do you really want to give up in the long run? The answer to that is no, no you don't (I hope) so how can we get past this "motivation slump"? Well if there is no will, there is no way, for starters, so you have to want to continue to begin with.
Next just try some of the following:
Review why you want to learn Japanese.
Imagine the feeling and benefits of becoming proficient at Japanese
If you're into it try to read some manga or watch some anime (in Japanese)
Listen to some Japanese pod casts and watch Japanese shows
Get a Language exchange partner (more info here: http://theroadtojapanese.blogspot.com/2011/10/language-exchange-partners-and-how-to.html)
Try to make your methods of learning more fun!
They are but a few things you can try to get yourself back on track, but remember everyone's different, these are things that have worked for me!
This posts random Japanese is: 僕 - I/me (Sounds masculine so is mainly used by males ), pronounced 「ぼく」 Or to the romaji users "boku".
This is a video made by a friend of mine on youtube, this video serisouly is a goldmine for Japanese Learners, he also has a lot of other really good videos on his channel, you should deffinately check this video and his other videos out, and subscribe for more content! (He also has music on his channel if your into that).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZp1nraUPPs&feature=bf_play&list=FLUOiVNaIMHgB86KR3zGXqGw This posts random Japanese is:
何で - Ｗｈｙ？ (Not to be confused with 何で whic his what wit hthe particle 「で」 ), pronounced 「なんで」 Or to the romaji users "Ｎａｎｄｅ".
Vocabulary... Expanding your vocabulary is a very important and time consuming task when learning Japanese, it will allow you to understand more. There aren't just one way of saying things, in most cases there are more, if you only know how to say something only one way, your understanding of Japanese will suffer. Just think of how many ways you can say "I went to the shops and bought a rubber", I can think of lots, for example; "I travelled to the store and purchased an eraser". These two sentances mean the exact same thing, the only difference is the second one has four words that are different to the words in the first. This is why you must learn vocabulary.
Now the big queston, "but how?!" Well, let me help you there, I suggest getting yourself a beginners Japanese dictionary (if you don't already have one) and to carry it around in your bag with you, through out the day. As you go about your day, always think "how do I say this in Japanese?" If it is a single word then use your dictionary to look it up, the act of doing this will help you remember the word as you actively experience it and then manually look it up. If it's a whole sentence, go for it! Although you will need to have at least basic grammar down.
Of course you can also look words up and write them down when you are studying too. Whatever floats your boat!
And now for a new section to my posts, "Random Japanese". Here I will psot a random word, or gramatical point etc. in Japanese, who knows you might learn something!
This posts Random Japanese is:
日本語 - Japanese (As in the language), pronounced 「にほんご」」 Or to the romaji users "Nihongo".
Language exchange partners are an excellent resource, why? With them you can improve your spoken abilities, you're written abilities as well as learning more colloquial terms and casual ways of speech to make you sound more like a native, rather than a formal robot. As well as begin a great way of improving your Japanese (or any other language for that matter), you may also make a valuble friend and might even be able to send things over to each other from your home land, things like magazines, books, even food are fun things to send over that can actually help your language learning.
However finding a language exchange partner is not always easy, first where do you find one? Then how do you get people to accept you? Well to find one I recommend going here or here. Both are great ways to find, language exchange partners, foreign friends or pen pals.
Ok so now you're on the site you might have found a few people you would like to approach but now what? Simple, explain a little about yourself, but don't go into too much detail, include your name, your age, your country of residence and basic interests and likes. Try to sound friendly and inviting but not obsessive or like your looking for a relationship. I have heard that Japanese girls in particular are afraid of western males adding them and looking for romance, I have actually seen on some of their profiles specifically stating "no romance". Not I'm not sure why you would want to go on a penpal website looking for a girlfriend anyway, but regardless it seems to have become an assumption about western men, so try to sound like a friend and not a pervert (not that that will get you anywhere with any girl anyway, but y'know what I mean). After you have sent a message all you can do is wait, don't pester them, just wait for a reply, if they don't reply move on, you should send out quite a few messages to increase your chances of getting a reply. Good luck :)
First off let me apologies, I haven't posted in a long time, you see I have recently started college so I've been busy! Don't worry I'm still here though and today I have some excellent Kanji learning videos to share with you! They are in development and their aren't many out yet, but i really enjoy doing them and I find Kanji EASY to remember after watching the video and writing it out just once ( and then the stroke order too) and writing the meanings and readings next to it ONCE, in other words i love them. The only bad thing is, as i said before, there are not many out so you can't use them to learn from purely, just as a supplement (at the moment to this date). Anyway here is the link, I also suggest subscribing to this guy and his multiple channels as they are great, giving you news about Japan and it's events as well as teaching some of the language. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM2rTzjAr2I&feature=feedbul Enjoy!
I saw someone post this on a website today "Hey im 16 and learning Japanese, i love it and im finding it fun but my friends just make fun of me for it and its making me want to stop, what do it do?" This angered me when I read this, not only at the people making fun of that person but also at him.
Since I've started learning Japanese, I've been called every name under the sun related to being obsessed with Japan, "Otaku", "Weabo", "Wapanese", "Wannabe Asian"; But did I let any of these get me down? No and I certainly didn't stop because of it. This one time, one of my particularly supportive friends said this to me; "Why bother learning Japanese you won't get far, I guarantee in a few weeks you will have given up", now actually this hit me hard because he's a good friend and he obviously wasn't very supportive but I carried on and its been a good few months since he said that (take that!) use their doubt as fuel for you to improve, prove them wrong.
Whatever they say, is it really going to do anything bad to you? Forget about it and move on, then laugh at them when you reach the title of bilingual, No one said it would be easy but giving up because of a few words is unthinkable!
This is something I have been doing a while now, as you probably know by now you should immerse yourself with Japanese things as much as possible, watch Japanese tv shows, listen to Japanese podcasts, read Japanese articles etc. Well when you are looking over these, I'm sure you will come over a whole bunch of vocabulary and phrases that you don't know (if you are a beginner then you will come across far to many to do this but I'll go into that later.
So what do you do? You write down all the phrases and vocab (even grammar points you have to look up) into your special vocabulary book! If your a beginner and you come across too many alien words or phrases then just pick out the most important and useful words and phrases. This can really help your Japanese and will extend your vocabulary, depending on what you are reading/watching/ listening to, you may even learn colloquial terms to help you sound more native. Give it a go, it will help you LOADS!
Ok so yeh, I borrowed the idea for this blog post of Textfugu so you should definitely read their article on it here, but hear me out. This is something that really made sense to me, if something is your passion, you want to do it all the time, am I right? If you really love learning Japanese then you really will stick to it, you really will learn, you really will become fluent!
Of course I'm not saying that you can learn Japanese with passion alone, hard work along with multiple other thing come into the equation, however with passion, that hard work, those spent pennies will all seem worth it, even fun to you, if you don't enjoy doing what your doing, it will be harder to accomplish. I know some people learn Japanese, or other languages for that matter, because they have to, for work, or because they have to move their, but even if you have to, find some way to make it your passion, relate it to things you love, incorporate those things you love into your studying!
Passion is the key to faster, easier success, so why not give it a try!
みなさん こんにちは！ So I recently got this comment : "hey! what is your studying method? you are in also on grammar? or stopped on hiragana e katakana? i need to know because i have to much things to study and i dont know what is better to do! STEVEN" and I thought a nice new thing to do was to start this new... section. Basically it's called Post Bag and if you have any questions, just post them as a comment and I will answer them, even if I don't know the answer, I will research them, then I will learn something also! So of course, let those questions roll on!.
As to the question above, this is my answer: My studying method? I have lots, but for each part of learning Japanese, my study methods vary, allow me to go into more detail.
First I'll go a little into the order of which I have done/am doing things, if you have been following my blog, as you may already know I started off learning hiragana and katakana, this gives you a good foundation for learning Japanese, as some of the best kanji resources give pronunciations in kana and some of the best grammar recources use kana in examples, in fact for learning grammar I'd say that knowing kana is vital, why? Well because all particles and grammatical points should be in kana, why change that? As well as this, the particle は in romaji is written as wa, but it is written with the hiragana for ha, which will only cause confusion when you convert! Now what I am doing is, at the same time, learning Kanji and Grammar, now my kanji studying method has changed a lot since my last post, as in the end Heisig's method wasn't for me, but that doesn't mean its bad. Once I have the grammar and kanji down, I will just work on my vocabulary and phrase knowledge, maybe learn some colloquial terms and of course practise what I have already learnt! I will watch Japanese television shows, this will help my listening and pronunciation as well as my vocabulary, I will read Japanese books and manga, to make sure my Kanji and kana skills don't dull, and another thing that I will do is translate books from English into Japanese and vice versa! I actually got this idea from PathogenProductions from Youtube, he mentions it in this video. Basically I will do lots to immerse myself, improve myself and to make sure my skills don't dull! Now onto my actual methods.
For kanji, again I have already made a post, but as I said above my method has changed since then, It's too much to go into in this post, as it's already long enough but expect this method tomorrow or the day after! You can check out my old method here, it's really good, it just didn't fit my learning style!
For Grammar I am mainly using Tae Kim's Guide To Learning Japanese this is an amazing recourse and I really can't fault it in any way. However let me warn you now, all the examples are in kana and kanji, although if you hover over the kanji it shows you it in kana. If you don't know kana you won't be able to use this effectively, of course you could translate it all into romaji using a chart, but that's time better spent actually learning kana. It also has exercises after each section to secure your knowledge on what you have previously learnt.
Also for Grammar I have a pocket grammar guide called BARRON's Japanese Grammar, this is a nice little book for reference and it's very affordable, my only complaint is that it is all in romaji, but its not meant to learn from only as a reference and such so I like it anyway.
As well as all of this I regularly watch, people on Youtube who blog in Japanese, I watch Japanese television shows, I listen to some Japanese music and try to read what Japanese I can. Also one of the most important things to me is that I practice everyday, stay in a habit of practicing, the one day you miss might turn into two days, three days, a week, a month and before you know it you've given up, don't let that be you! Study hard and don't give up, forget about the haters and embrace this chance to learn a wonderful language, at some point in your life you just won't have the drive or time to do it, so do it now!
I signed up to this while learning Katakana, it's a e-course that is supposed to teach you all the kana in two weeks and is made by http://nihongoup.com/, however it didn't prove much use to me because it sends you one lesson a day so I couldn't access the parts I needed to learn. However I do think it's a good course that can prove beneficial to anyone learning kana, so, in order to bypass the one lesson a day limit I have all the links to each lesson here in one place for you all!
I know most of you probably drill and drill and drill vocabulary, kanji and all the other vital aspects of Japanese that you need to learn, I'll be the first one to tell you that it isn't cutting the mustard, it's just not effective (for the most part) and their are easier, less boring ways of going about it. So what am I preaching about this time you ask? ANKI! yes, Anki, I decided that it was so good, so vital, such a time saver that I would dedicate a whole post to it.
Anki is a free "spaced repetition flashcard program" that is designed to help you memorize... anything, as effectively as possible, and my gosh does it work! Basically you have a deck of virtual cards, you go through them one by one and click a buttons to tell the program how well you remembered the card and depending on how well you memorized it the time that the card next comes up is changed, if you did well it comes up later if you did badly it comes up sooner, simple yet effective.
There are lots of shared decks of cards available to download that spread across many fields of study, including Remembering the Kanji, Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese and many more (not just Japanese based) and to add to that you can create your own!
One thing that I do a lot is while I'm listening to a Japanese podcast, or watching a Japanese show, any new and useful words I come across I write down on a notebook I always have handy. Later on I then put this vocabulary into an Anki flashcard deck ready to review later, you can also add in sounds in case you want to put in the pronunciation and also pictures. This way the new vocabulary really sticks in my mind and next time you hear it, you will be able to understand just that bit more! There are endless possibilities to Anki study methods, so I invite you to try it out and find out what works best for you! If you have time, please post a comment on your favorite Anki study methods!
With around two thousand kanji to learn, it may seem like a daunting task and I'm not going to lie, it is. However with these tips you will be on you way to becoming a kanji master in around six months, maybe, actually I can't really predict that as it is entirely down to how much work you put in. And you will have to put in work, lots of it, regularly but it will be very rewarding in the end.
Learning kanji should be the next thing you do after learning Hiragana and Katakana, which you should learn first , a lot of kanji dictionaries use kana to tell you how to say the kanji. Kanji although being a big task will improve your Japanese ten fold, why? The answer is simple, you will be learning around two thousand kanji, that's two thousand new words that you will learn, as well as achieving a higher level of understanding of the Japanese language, the benefits of learning kanji are obvious. As well as this without learning kanji, your Japanese writing will always be at a six year old Japanese child's level, you can do better than that, can't you?
There is no one way to learn kanji, and my way might not be perfect for you but it works for me and may work for you, you should try it out if you have no idea how you should learn them, or adapt it to suit you better! When I first started experimenting with learning kanji I steered clear of Heisig's methods, this was a mistake in my personal opinion, after finally giving it a go I found out the wonders it presented to me! So I will explain all about this and before you leave this post because you don't want to buy the book STOP, because I have a way around it!
Of course I recommend buying the book but if that isn't an option for you I will show you a way around this, being the nice person I am :). First off, if you have the book do the same as I explain but you wont have to use the extra website I present and you will get the warm feeling of supporting the author and having the book!
The website that you will be using is http://kanji.koohii.com/ and the extra website is, a personal favorite of mine, http://www.google.com
This is how I do it;
Go to The first website sign up and click on study, type in 1 in the start box or if you are using the book open it up to the first kanji, the kanji One.
On paper (squared is preferred, even better if the squares are divided into four, it helps you ballance the character) write the frame number (eg. 1) next to it write out the kanji as neatly as possible and next to that the Heisig keyword (eg. one). Note: If you don't have the book you will have to copy the kanji from the first website and paste it into google search and after that write stroke order and you will come to a page like thisand click (usually) the first link, this is how you will find out the kanji's stroke order, this is VERY important to learn perfectly! If you have the book it shows you.
Next go to the first website, sign up if you haven't already, go to study and in the search box search for the frame number of the kanji that you are studying. Scroll down to favorite stories and pick a story that you find memorable, you see the Heisig method is all about relating a kanji to a keyword and being able to draw it from a story so this step is important. Write it down next to the kanji and its keyword you have already written.
Do this for another 10-20 kanji per day, yes everyday and don't you dare go breaking the chain!
Once you have done this for all the kanji that you are going to learn on that day practice writing out each new kanji three times (and only three times no drilling!). Whilst you are writing them out pay attention to the stroke order and go through the story for the kanji.
Now we move onto the magic part, using possibly my favorite computer program to date, ANKI!What you want to do is download the Remembering the kanji deck from the shared decks in anki, set anki to give you the amount of new cards you will study per day, so if you chose ten put in 10 and then review! As you review it will give you the keyword, think about the keyword and try to write the kanji that goes with it, remember to use the correct stroke order and go through the story in your head!
Do this everyday until you can recognize and write all the kanji in the book!
That's all for now, part of the Heisig method is that you first learn how to write and recognize the character before learning all the meanings and readings of the kanji. Don't shun it until you've tried it! This will take a while but if you dedicate yourself to it you could do it really fast and don't forget to review! Once you have learnt them all you can then move onto the meanings and readings, Heisig has a follow up book on that too.
That's all for this post, I hope you've benefited from it, it took me ages to write! Subscribe for more Japanese learning tips and resources, さようなら！
I'm back! And as promised here are some tips and resources for mastering those katakana! Remember to return to this blog tomorrow for some great tips on learning those challenging Kanji!
You can learn these really quickly but make sure you secure it in your mind, I recommend doing a column a day and doing the last three columns all together (ra, wa and nn columns) but of course first off of course you need your faithful katakana chart, courtesy of http://www.textfugu.com! And this will do as a stroke order reference. Now all you need is a notepad or paper and a pen!
Ok now you're all kitted up lets start learning Katakana! It's not hard, really it's not! Write down the romaji for each symbol in the column(s) you are learning like so:
a
i
u
e
o
Once you have done that write out the correlating symbol next to it, take your time, try to remember it and pay attention to the stroke order. Once you have written the symbol once next to each romaji cover it with paper and write it again, from memory, again take your time and pay attention to stroke order, repeat this process of covering up the symbol and writing them out across the whole page.
Wait five minuets and without looking at the symbols write out all the Katakana you have learnt so far so say you got up to ko you would write out: アイウエオカキクケコ. Do this until you have learnt all the Katakana, it's really that simple!
Note this method also works well with Hiragana, of course you will need different resources for Hiragana for those resources please visit this link
こんにちわ！I have a few things to say in this blog post, so lets get started!
First off, a new book I bought, it's called Read and Write Japanese Scripts and its a part of the Teach Yourself series. Now, I haven't had very long to look over it, but what I have read is pretty good. Basically it teaches you hiragana, katakana, 170 single kanji and 230 compound kanji words. It's a good start, it shows you the origins of the kanji, the stroke order, stuff about radicals and gives you real world scripts and extracts for you to read! It also briefly explains the history of each script and the rules behind them. It's a pretty good read and will get you started off with kanji, great!
Next up is my goals over the next two weeks, but first a bit of background explanation is required. I will be going on holiday to France, so this will probably be my last blog post for two weeks, but don't worry! I promise when I get back I will have lot's in store for you! Tip's and tricks for learning katakana and maybe even kanji for example. You see, as you read above I have a new book, using this book over the next few days I will learn katakana, it shouldn't take me more than 5 more days. After that I will start kanji, am I dreading it? HELL NO! I'm actually quite excited about it, this is where I jump up to the next level of Japanese reading, sure I can read hiragana, that's great and by then I will also know katakana, but when I start learning kanji that's when I really start advancing! And no, not just in my written skills, but my over all Japanese, with the learning of kanji comes the learning of a lot of vocabulary and a deeper understanding of the language! That is why I'm excited. I figured out dreading kanji won't do me any good, I won't enjoy it and will probably make slow progress, so I looked at the good points and realised that I'm actually going to really enjoy this!
こんにちわ
So, today marks the day that I have fully learnt hiragana, the 46 basic ones as well as dakuten and combination hiragana, which if I'm not mistaken adds up to a total of 119 sounds! Of course I still need a lot more practise, I'm still pretty slow at reading them and on the rare occasion I might need to reference my hiragana chart (but I probably won't!) but, I do know them! Let me tell you this now, if you are learning them, do not, I repeat, do not give up! The buzz and sheer thrill you get off this accomplishment is amazing, you will feel really good about yourself, believe me!
So It's time to share with you the full list of learning resources I used to learn hiragana! Enjoy! (Note that just because this worked for me doesn't mean it will work for you, but I'd give it a shot! I found it to be an amazing method!)
The List:
A pen and a notepad/paper (I found a notepad better because you can easily keep all your practise sheets together and see your progress)
My anime-junkie friends always ask me how to use and for what purpose are Japanese honorifics used. So in case anybody needs to know (and happened to come across this blog rather than one of the other multiple sources for learning this information), I thought I'd explain a few that you are likely to come across.
Chan - This is used for babies and children as well as teenage girls but with teenage girls it's more of a term of endearment or used if you have a higher status than them.
Kun - This is used for males who are lower status than you, and also young boys.
San - This is the general term and probably the one you will hear the most out and about. If you don't know the person you should probably use this. It is sort of the equivalent of Mr/Mrs.
Sama - This is a very respectful suffix used for people with much higher status than you, probably the head of the company you work for or someone you have great respect for.
Dono - An extremely respectful suffix that you will probably only hear in animes, it is similar to my lord.
What are they used for? Well they are used as a sign of respect for the most part, it would be rude not to use someone's title when addressing them if you are not close friends with them and it would also be rude to called them chan or kun, as a general rule use san.
Dakuten is actually really easy to learn once you've learnt the basic hiragana, you just have to remember which groups change really, the sounds that they change too are also generally similar to the original sound for example sa, si, su, se and so change to za, zi, zu, se and zo, very similar if you ask me, you just have to remember if its the speech mark like things that changes the sound or the dot (or both). It's pretty simple really!
It took me a while (I haven't been overly dedicated with it), but finally I have learnt all 46 basic hiragana! It turned out to be pretty fun, not at all as hard as I first thought. However now I'm facing the thought of learning all the combination and dakuten hiragana, which if I remember correctly, including the basic hiragana, sums up to 119 different sounds (and their symbols) to learn. I better get started!
I'm always looking for ways to improve my Japanese and why just practise at your desk? You can learn and review your current knowledge anywhere and in fact it can be extremely useful, it enables you to see the gaps in you knowledge, what you don't know and what you need a smidgen more practice.
Realising this I have started doing a few things through out my daily happenings in order to secure my current Japanese knowledge and practise my oral skills a little more. To begin with I have a few rules I have set out for myself around my house, I only speak to my cat in Japanese (who doesn't want a bilingual cat anyway?), I also, much to the annoyance of my family, only say numbers in Japanese and of course the basic speaking Japanese when you can method.
I also do these kind of things while out and about to (although usually in my head so as to not turn heads) but one thing I found myself doing today, which amused me quite a lot, was due to the fact that I work as a part time volunteer at a nursery near where I live, I started to join in with the children's activities but I would translate it all into Japanese and do them in my head! It's great because only simple language is used, language that I know (on the most part) in Japanese.
To conclude, you should really start doing these kind of things through out your daily routine, it really is great for seeing what you know and don't know, if you really want to get into it bring around a notepad and write down what you need to learn, the possibilities are endless!
Here's a quick tip; always look back and study what you have already learnt! Secure it in your mind and practise it regularly! That way you wont forget the basics and beyond, there's no point learning new material, only to forget what you previously learnt!
Every so often you may find yourself on a low, you feel as if you have made no progress, you lack motivation, you "don't have the time". Well it's time to give yourself a little bit of a pick-me-up.
It's always nice to realise how much you have really learnt, so try to look at basic Japanese text and read it, even if you don't understand it being able to read it is great and that should give you a more positive outlook on your Japanese learning experience.
Why did you start learning Japanese? For me I loved how the language sounded, I didn't want to follow the common, arrogant attitude of native English speakers "the rest of the world will learn our language so why bother to become bilingual" and I also want to study, or at least take a gap year there. Remind yourself of these reasons, chances are that it will reignite your passion for the language.
Watch some Japanese shows, listen to some Japanese podcasts, or something along these lines, it's always nice to be able to understand the odd word they are saying but are also interesting to watch!
I just wanted to point you in the direction of an app called Kotoba! (Japanese dictionary). It's a free multilingual Japanese dictionary application, it does the job very well, it has a built in Japanese keyboard so you can look up kana/kanji and romaji is also supported, it's very good and also free, I'd recommend you get it if you don't already have a Japanese dictionary!
Today I bought an ipad! When I got it I immediately went into to app store on a hunt for apps that would help me learn Japanese, this is what I found;
Hirigana and Katakana - Complete Basics of Japanese This is a good free app for learning Hiragana and Katakana
Study Japanese for iPad This is another good app for learning Hiragana and Katakana, this is however better than the last one in my opinion, for example you can draw the characters in it. This is not free.
Learning Japanese (It's easy to find by searing for Tae Kim) This is an amazing free app. It is basically a boo kand it teaches you about Japanese grammar.
Learn Japanese Vocabulary - Free Gengo WordPower This is a good one for expanding your vocabulary, there is a also a better paid version of it.
Japanese Language Guide This is free and gives you lots of little phrases that are nice to look at and learn.
One thing that I would say has helped me a lot is trying to immerse myself as much as possible. I've been watching Japanese TV, listening to Japanese podcasts and other things like that. It has helped me a lot with pronunciation and helping to remember words I've already learnt, not to mention the moral boost you get when you actually understand some of what they are saying, it really helps in keeping me motivated! I recommend that you try this out!
It's been a little over two weeks since I started learning Japanese now, so I thought that I'd make this post to give you my experiences so far, this could be useful to you if you're just starting to learn Japanese. I thought I'd write this post in a list format so here goes!
Learn Hiragana first! I didn;t start off like this but I wish I did, I have now changed my course and have began learning Hiragana and recently got serious about it! Learning Hiragana has helped me with pronunciation, remembering words and other things like actually saying the words, before I stumbled on a lot of words but after learning the basic sounds on their own it has become a great deal easier.
learn those particles! before I took a more in depth look into particles I didn't get them at all, of course now I'm not a master with them, very far from it but with a deeper understanding came greater ease with constructing my own sentences in Japanese. The ones that have popped up the most for me so far are は (wa) and の (no). Just as a side note yes は is usually pronounces "ha" but as a particle it is pronounced "wa".
Take a look at basic Japanese sentence structure, again this is needed to start constructing your own Japanese sentences.
Learn some more vocabulary, so you know that こんにちわ is hello but do you think that is the only was of saying hello? No. of course not, think about English, we have hello hi and many more, the more way you have of saying things the more you will sound like a native speaker and the more you will understand!
Well that's my list, it's not much but what can you expect from someone who has only been learning Japanese for two weeks. I'll add to this list (in other blog posts) as I learn more. So please follow me!
On the bus, in the car, on a plane or anywhere else, JapanesePod101 is great for studying Japanese! It has many audio lessons and resources to help you learn Japanese for all levels of skill. Each lesson comes with a pdf that covers what has gone on in the audio lesson, in great detail and it also has other stuff too like a kanji sheet. It also has a paid option where you get a whole bunch of new useful resources but in my opinion the free version is good enough and will serve you as an excellent tool in your journey to learning Japanese!
Watching anime is a very popular pass time but it is not the way forward to mastering Japanese. I don't know how many times I see people say this and yet people still insist on doing it! Yesterday I was talking to my friend on skype, he explained to me how he had starting learning Japanese too. Of course, I got excited, finally I'd have a friend that I knew in real life to practise Japanese with (all the others take on the ignorant attitude of "I'm English, other countries will learn my language, why bother becoming bilingual?"). So, I asked that all important question; "So how have you been learning it?" to which he replied "I've been watching one piece (a popular anime) with subtitles and copying what they say". I decided to hear what he could say, for a laugh and what came out was awful. He called me an idiot every 5 seconds, referred to himself as sama and sounded like a frog on helium. Obviously this is not the way to go!
Watching anime is fine but for the most part don't copy what they say, a lot of it is unacceptable to come out with, calling yourself sama for example and whatever you do, don't copy how they say things, it's extremely over exaggerated and if you actually talk like that, you will look like a total moron!
Learning to write Japanese is one of the hardest aspects of the language, with Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji making up their writing system, all with more characters that the Roman alphabet, it is a very daunting task!
Once you have got the basics down of all three (or just Hiragana) you can start practising writing properly. Lang-8 is fantastic for this, basically you write journal entries in the language you are learning and then natives (or people fluent in the language) correct what you have done wrong! It's a fantastic tool and you should definitely use it! You can also correct other peoples journal entries that are in a language you know, to help them out and be a good person and all.
So I'm still learning hiragana, I practise for maybe 30 mins every two days. Now I personally dont feel that's enough but I have other things to do too and I do use Rosetta stone for one hour+ everyday, so it can't really be helped. But then I stumbled upon my new best friend (inanimate friend of course), Hiragana and stroke order charts, I have them next to me on my desk when I'm on my computer surfing the net, I have it next to me at the breakfast bar when I'm eating my morning bowl of cereal, hell I even take it with me on the toilet! That way I can constantly test myself and go over Hiragana and trust me, I can really see improvements in not only my hiragana recognising skills but also in my ability to write them! They are very useful in my opinion, you can get some from this website. I love this website, I found it recently and I've been finding it really helpful, the guy that runs it is pretty amazing to have all of this set up and readily available! You should really visit it and browse around I am sure you will find lots of useful tools for learning Japanese!
Japanese is going well, with all the extra help of a Japanese friend to talk to its been allot easier to understand some of the concepts and rules in he Japanese language! Although I keep making the odd embarrassing mistake! For example the other day I was talking about food to my Japanese friend and I wanted to say I like eggs but some how I managed to come out with I am an egg! Oh dear, another example is instead of saying I have to pee I said I need to pee on you, now that was embarrassing! Well, at least I won't make those mistakes again!
Ok so today this post isn't about language learning. However today I saw something that really surprised me, basically a man illegally walked into a school, wielding a kitchen knife. The school teachers "surrounded the man and held him in place using the weapon", the weapon being a sasumata. Now that's some pretty courageous behaviour, I can tell you that this wouldn't have happened in the UK, no way. Our teachers would probably hit the deck and do as the man said and as this guy was obviously a psychopath he would of stabbed them anyway. I applaud these teachers!
Recently I sought out to find a Japanese friend to talk to, guess what? I found one! Apart from him being a really nice guy and fun to talk to, he has cleared up all of the questions I had about Japanese (and Japan) so far, I really recommend finding a friend from the country of the language you are learning as it can really accelerate your language learning progress!
For example he helped me understand counters, in Japanese when you want to say 2 dogs you have to put what I can only describe as an extension on the end of the number depending on what the thing the number is representing, so for two dogs it would be ni-hiki no ino.
Konnichiwa! So today I thought it would be a good idea to start learning (properly) hiragana. I'm not going to lie, it's a hard task for me, it's not like anything I've done before and it's just not what I'm used to looking at but I soldiered on and have at least learnt a i u e and o (I've started learning others but got interrupted, so I don't know them well yet).
Despite it being hard it's also been fun, it's a whole new aspect of the language and I've enjoyed it. To learn hiragana I have been using two websites, first I used this website to learn to write them, it shows you what it is in romaji and hiragana, an example of it in a word, how to say it and (what I liked the most) the stroke order and how to draw the character. The other website I used was this one, this I used to teach my self to quickly recognise the characters so that I can read them fast. Simply select the group of hiragana you are learning (also if you aren't learning katakana at the same time go onto the katakana tab and turn them off) and then simply go onto practise and practise away! You can also go onto options and select which fonts you want it to display, I recommend selecting them all so you can recognise the characters in their different forms!
And remember if you want to follow my journey in learning Japanese, as well as helpful info and advice on how to learn the language (or others) please, follow this blog and subscribe to my RSS feed (the link can be found at the bottom of the page). Arigato!
Japanese isn't the first language I've tried to learn, I've also tried to learn french and German, but these were just compulsory lessons at school, I never had the intention of becoming fluent in either of them, however i did decide to take French as one of my options, so I had to learn it as best as I could for my exams in order to get a good mark, these are the top five ways I found that helped me learn a language.
5.Write it down!
When going over new phrases words and grammar, take note! Writing it down can really accelerate the time it takes for your brain to digest an remember the new information you're throwing at it. As well as this is it scientifically proven that when you write stuff down in colour (either in coloured pen or highlighting) you are more likely to remember it, so do it!
4. Listen to yourself!
This is something that can not only really help capture the knowledge but also help you dramatically improve your accent, it's all very well knowing what to say but if you're not saying it correctly people won't understand you anyway, a good accent is vital!
3.Always take the opportunity to talk!
Whenever you get the opportunity speak in this foreign language, for one thing if you can recall what to say at anytime you know it's really sinking in, this will make it sink in more and as well as that give you a useful moral boost as you know you are making progress.
2. Stimulate your senses!
Different people learn in different ways, so take advantage of that, whether you're a visual learner, an audio learner or an active learner, stimulate your senses, make flash card, listen to sound files, make up and play games, maybe even get your friends and family to play them with you. Your imagination is key here, see what you can come up with!
1. Immerse yourself!
This may not be an available choice for everyone but it is definitely the best, surround yourself with the new language, watch TV shows and movies in that language, read books and magazines in that language, if you're lucky enough to know native speakers of that language, try to spend time with them and ask that they speak in that language! However the best immersion method is simply to go to that country, stay there for a while, then there is not escaping the language, it will become part of you and you will pick it up in a much shorter time!
And the worst...
I've heard of people who buy a book, or find an internet page and just read and read and read vocabulary, this really isn't going to help you much, you should at least say it out loud or even better write it down, don't be lazy! Remember learning a new language isn't easy and I won't pretend to you that it is, you just have to stick with it like I am.
Do you have any tips for learning an language? I and I'm sure many others would love to hear them as they would be very helpful!
To learn Japanese I have been using Rosetta Stone, I have found this software to be very useful! It teaches you the language via immersion, which basically means you are surrounded by it, there is no English presented to you whilst learning with this software, it links pictures to the words, just how you learnt your first language!
Rosetta Stone makes learning Japanese fun, I have been really enjoying it and to up my moral even more I have been watching various Japanese programs, such as anime and game shows, it really gives you a buzz when you understand some of what they are saying, even if it isn't much.
I have now completed unit one of level on Japanese, which is the language basics! My progress appears to be fast, I can't wait to start my next unit. I also plan to start learning Hiragana soon (one of the Japanese writing systems) How ever I don't think that I will be using Rosetta stone for this, I found this website that seems to be good, I have also found an Ipod/Iphone app called JPhrases, it's free and very useful (there is a paid version, however I think the free version is superb!) it has built in flash cards and lessons on lots of subjects, one being Hiragana , it also shows you how you should draw the symbols and the stroke order, it's an amazing app! If you have any suggestions as to what helps you learn please post them, I'd love to hear them!
