Need to learn Japanese.

[FernandoV]

Let's just be real here, you're not going to learn the language, you'll speak to them in a loud voice because the louder you speak the English, the better they understand, they'll pretend to understand you when you speak in your broken 20 word japanese that you learned a few weeks before the trip and when you leave there all you'll know about Japan is video games and noodle bowls.

 

[Hummmy]

No, thankyou for your essay, the more information the better!
Like I said, I'd love to be able to get an actual teacher but where I live (In Australia by the way) there isn't anyone that offers a class.. Hell, I don't even know anyone who speaks Japanese, meaning I won't even be able to practice with anyone.. I'll just have to talk to myself to get it down.. So with that I always figured the pronunciation would be a bit of a battle for me..

After getting a bit of an understanding on the language now, it's not really that important that I be able to read and write fully, just the basics should do me for things like you said trains, menus, signs etc. I just want to be able to have a conversation with someone and be able to understand them as clear as I can with someone in English.

 

[Gunner 51]

You could always look it up in a college near you. Or you could find some Japanese fellows near you. Failing that, look on Amazon and purchase a few books.

Learning a few words from another language is fairly easy - but to truly learn it takes years. Hell, I'll bet there's quite a few people over in the land of the rising sun who know how to speak English to some degree. I salute your good manners in wanting to learn the lingua fracas of there, but I think you'd be OK even if you didn't.

 

[Jwyrd]

Australia you say? Depending on the location, you may or may not have access to more resources than you think. Some good friends live in Brisbane and the Gold Coast and they are good at speaking Japanese (some are more fluent than others) but what they also have in common is that they have a few stores and even church groups that have Japanese speaking clients/patrons/worshipers that helped them practice their skills and gave advice. It is always an option, especially if you are respectful and explain your reasons for asking.

And I would like to suggest dorama - soap operas basically, and subtitled anime (instead of dubbed) either through youtube or licensed vendors such as crunchyroll - while it is a subscription service, its only to view brand new episodes, the older episodes are free to watch. This is recommended to get a feel of it being spoken. I have been able to pick up a little bit of the spoken context by listening while reading the subtitles. Also, using the words translated (which is often done contextually, so may or may not be of great help) and looking them up in an English to Japanese dictionary may help somewhat. Though a fair bit will fluctuate between very polite phrases, 'baby talk' and adult phrases - and depending on the show being watched, may include a bit of slang thrown in.

There is another bit of advice that I wish to impart, actually, two bits of advice. One, rather complex Japanese kanji or signs are often accompanied with simple letters or characters above them. This is because some words are harder to pronounce than others, or would be misunderstood or even lost on younger readers and the two or more characters super scripted above the symbol are clues as to how to pronounce it. It is not some new strange super symbol and will unlikely be in your dictionary. I make mention of it, because I felt rather foolish after looking for almost three hours only to find out what the characters above the kanji were trying to do... (always re-read the intro to any dictionary - that is where I finally found the answer.)

Lastly, while this will not entirely be super helpful immediately, it will come in handy.

http://www.seekjapan.jp/

Its combination resource database and magazine similar almost to the escapist, and is very useful in finding information on all aspects of Japan. From learning the language, surveying the complex social structures and to even finding a job. And, most importantly, it is geared towards helping people understand what they are getting into before going to Japan.

Especially this part of the website: http://www.seekjapan.jp/resources-article/36/Language

Actually, just ignore a lot of what I said and focus on this part ^^^^^^

After scrolling further down the page, I re-noticed that there are a lot of resources and guides and free software for dictionaries, language software, and even links to pen pals and foreign services. That sums up everything else I could suggest in a neat package.

 

[WalkableBuffalo]

In my Japanese classes we use the "Obento" workbooks http://www.obento.com.au/, which are okay, but learning from a book is nothing compared to learning the real thing. I really don't know what advice to gives you, it takes years to be able to have a proper conversation with someone in Japanese. I don't think you can buy these textbooks, but just so you know

I'm in Year 10 and my Japanese is the equivalent of pre-school child who just learnt how to say where things are (The book is on the desk). Many Japanese folk who are older than 14 should know quite a lot of English. I went to Japan last year and I hardly had to speak a word, if they know you're a foreigner most will be very accommodating and will try to speak English for you. Of course most are really good at it, they learn from when they start school pretty much.

Basic things I think you need to know how to say which aren't that hard; greetings, asking how someone is, where something is or what something is, saying you don't understand or you do, descriptive words, perhaps saying where you are from.

A lot of words are borrowed so they are easy to find out or memorise because of their uniqueness, fyi all borrowed words use katakana, such as borrowed words. While hiragana is the main 'alphabet' of the Japanese language many words or symbols can be easily exchanged with kanji, so it's a good idea to know what some of the most common look like.

Hope that helped or gave you some idea

 

[Altorin]

you won't learn to speak japanese until you NEED to use it to communicate. You could study it for years and only get as far as a month of full immersion

 

[Risingblade]

My Japanese classes used/use Nakama

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618966285/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0669275832&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0DQMGQC6R0MC8EQKC0R5

They did me well enough. Good luck.

So did mine! So many people failed that class and/or dropped xD

 

[Rodrigo Girao]

Just one year to learn Japanese? I'm on the 2nd semester of French - no doubt a far easier language - and I can't have a reasonably fluid conversation yet.

 

[LeafofStone]

You probably ought to know that Kanji, one of their main alphabets, has over a thousand characters that you'll need to know to read, say, a newspaper. Learning it is apparently the most difficult part of any language to learn except Chinese, which is essentially the same but harder. The highest-level Kanji exam requires you to know 6000 different kanjis, so bear in mind that there is a shitload of them out there. Learn Hiragana and Katakana first, then get working on Kanji as soon as you can.

Dont get freaked out by this guy. Yes there is a lot of kanji to learn but for a year of study you could easily learn 500-600. And you only really learn kanji once you have learnt hiragana. And if you have the right attitude to it kanji is actually quite easy to learn.

Also dont give up, you will be confused at first at how sentences are constructed but once you get the hang of that japanese is actually a really easy language to learn (especially in comparison to european languages).

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I've been studying Japanese for about 7 years now.



I started with a personal tutor for over a year, then proceeded to study by myself and eventually tried the Genki brand of textbooks in a college classroom for 4 semesters, which I was quite beyond at the time. I mainly used it to gain experience with speech and as Kanji practice, so I ended up being the teacher assistant while being officially just another student.

Taking a class is too slow IMO, the teacher taught us basic Hiragana and Katakana throughout the entire first half semester, while I mastered it after two weeks of tutoring through studying it by myself for 2 hours a day every day beyond the 5 hours a week of tutoring.



My advice is this, you need to be immersed in the culture and language. That's how you learn a language. My native language is Greek and I have studied French and English (obviously lol) beyond Japanese so this has been my life's experience. You need to be really really really into the stuff, you need to derive high levels of enjoyment out of learning it. The moment it becomes anything close to "work" you've stopped learning and you've started subconsciously trying to escape as much work as possible, which is a horrible way to retain esoteric linguistic intricacies.




My advice is this: Find something Japanese you like, learn all about it, live and breath it for a week, once you feel you've maximized your knowledge of it jump to another such thing, keep doing that and you'll be fine.

 

[LeafofStone]

Btw. DONT GIVE UP!!!

I gave up japanese in year 8 and did italian the next year, biggest mistake of my life so far. After a few years (in year 10 to be precise) I decided that was a mistake and decided to catch up 3 years of japanese classes is about 4 months. The next school year i was taking japanese again. If I can catch up 3 years in 4 months just imagine what you can do with a whole year.

 

[Vhite]

http://www.japanesepod101.com/

Its not free but it is best what I found. You can try it for free for 1 week. After that its still rather cheap.

 

[TheVioletBandit]

Let's just be real here, you're not going to learn the language, you'll speak to them in a loud voice because the louder you speak the English, the better they understand, they'll pretend to understand you when you speak in your broken 20 word japanese that you learned a few weeks before the trip and when you leave there all you'll know about Japan is video games and noodle bowls.

Your being overly pessimistic. If he's not lazy and actually puts in the work needed to begin learning a language; I see no reason why he couldn't. You really can do most anything with sheer unrelenting persistence, will, and a single-mindedness akin to obsession.

 

[YuffieV]

Like a whole bunch of people here have said, Genki is a good beginners text book. In my opinion, first thing you're going to want to know is the hiragana and katakana; learn how to read and write those, have them memorized.

I'm currently in Japan as a exchange student and studied Japanese for year before I came. I've been here for about two weeks now and have picked up on quite a lot. There is nothing like learning a language by living in a county that speaks it. However, my Japanese is still quite...not good; I'm not able to have fluid conversations with people. It's a lot of broken Japanese and English most of the time.

Though, if you have a year and you really dedicated yourself to learning the language, you'll get by just fine once you come here.

 

[Xaio30]

I've studied it for a year and from what my teacher told me of Japan, you can get by perfectly fine with a few phrases (like "Where is the..." and "Excuse me" for instance).

They will notice you're a foreigner and won't care at all about your grammar but will compliment you when you say something correctly.

If you're like me, you would learn fastest by getting together with a friend and try to have Japanese conversations with different scenarios. Getting a pocket translator before going might also be a good idea.

 

[Ben MacGougan]

You can survive in Japan with just one word: douzo. Literally it means 'by all means' but it can be interpreted in many different ways. If you want to order something just point to it and say douzo.

Don't bother learning the written language. Only a few Japanese people can read a newspaper.

 

[Kalikin]

I don't want to discourage you, but unless you devote all your spare time to studying the language, you're not going to be able to read, write AND speak competently in Japanese within a year.
The Genki books are what my university uses to teach the introductory courses, and while I've found them great, you may want to focus more on the spoken aspect. Genki focuses on all four skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking). They will teach you basic grammar well (as I'm guessing you're a complete beginner), but you'll possibly want to find something that augments your vocabulary and fluency, rather than being loaded down trying to learn lots (and lots, and lots and lots...) of kanji.
I mean, I'm finishing up my second year of Japanese study, but I couldn't hold any kind of intelligible conversation (mostly because I suck at speaking and remembering verb conjugation patterns is hard when most of your study is on paper).
Basically what I'm rambling about is to prioritize speaking practice if you need to learn that quickly.

 

[Rblade]

is it hard?

yes

very

really if you have a knack for languages you'll probably be able to get a feel for it and know how to order a sandwich. But like with any language I doubt you'll really get the pronunciation and sentence structure right until you acctually live there. Unless you have the whole day for a couple of weeks maby

 

[efAston]

The most useful resource I've found for any language are the "Teach Yourself" books with accompanying CD's. They're not learn-while-you-drive things, they require a fair bit of attention and repetition, but they have you learning SENTENCES rather than words, so you can actually say things at the end of them (and understand how they go together).

Other than that, private tutoring is the best option, though you said you're having trouble finding that, so the other thing is getting varied opportunities to use it. Drilling is also handy for vocabulary, and Rosetta Stone is one of the best things for that, and watching DVD's (where you have the option to turn off subtitles) offers a little help too.

Japanese is hard to learn for an English speaker, because there aren't many common threads, but it's not as difficult as Finnish and there are piles of resources for it.

 

[Fanta Grape]

you won't learn to speak japanese until you NEED to use it to communicate. You could study it for years and only get as far as a month of full immersion

True dat. I'm Japanese and the best way to learn is to go to Japan and listen to what people are saying. Your brain is smarter than you are.