Wanting to learn Japanese?

[KingDrool]

I wanted to resurrect this thread to give a bit of an update and pass along what I've found over the last 10ish months.

I've kept at studying Japanese pretty steadily this year, getting in at least a bit of time each day. I've tried a few different methods and think I have finally found a routine that works well for me. Currently, I'm working through the Genki book at least a bit each day, as well as checking in with the Duolingo app on my phone every single day for between 15 minutes and an hour, depending on how much time I have. I've also supplemented this by watching live-action Japanese shows nearly every day just to have more exposure to the language and how different people speak it.

Here are the materials I've used and my thoughts on each:

Japanese Hiragana & Katakana for Beginners: First Steps to Mastering the Japanese Writing System - This is also known as the "Tuttle" book. This was an invaluable first step for me, and helped me memorize both Hiragana and Katakana quite quickly. It emphasizes stroke order and gives really good tips for memorization by using pictures to associate with each character. In addition, this book provides some vocabulary, as well as some very basic grammar and Japanese reading/writing information. I highly recommend starting with this book.

Hiragana Pixel Party - I mentioned this app previously, but it's a great supplement to the Tuttle book as you're looking to memorize Hiragana. The chiptunes are great, and it's a fun way to learn how to quickly recall Hiragana characters. The app is free up to a certain level, but I bought the whole package because I found it so helpful and fun.

Rosetta Stone - I got a crazy deal on this through my work, and I really couldn't pass it up at the price. That said, I've had mixed results. I get why they immerse you completely into the language, without any English guidance. However, because of this, I found myself not understanding why things are written/spoken a certain way. It doesn't do a good job of explaining, "Hey, in these situations you say or write this, while in others you write this." It causes a lot of frustration, so I've decided to pull back on this for a bit, until I get more of a handle on things. Which leads me to...

GENKI I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese 2nd edition - I love this book and read it every day. I actually just got it a week ago and it's already done so much more for me than Rosetta Stone ever did. Yes, there's English in the book (seems to taper off the further you go), but it does a great job of giving me the explanations I was looking for in Rosetta Stone. And now that I can read Hiragana/Katakana fairly easily, I'm getting so much out of it.

Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese Workbook I - This is a companion to the Genki textbook, and also highly recommended. I can't say enough good things about this series.

Duolingo - I love this app and, like I said above, use it daily. It has some flaws, sure. But for daily practice it's really nice. And it's free! The app sorta "gamifies" learning, earning you EXP, in-game currency, counting your daily streaks, etc. I wouldn't recommend using it on its own, but it's a nice supplement and a good way to keep yourself at it on a daily basis.

Future planning...

I plan to keep plowing through Genki, and eventually grab Book 2. Also, as I get more into Kanji, I plan on picking up the Tuttle Kanji Guide, since I had such a good experience with the Hiragana/Katakana Guide. Eventually, I'll pick up Rosetta Stone again because it's good for listening and speaking.

So that's it. How about you guys? Any experience you'd like to share? Recommendations?

[Arkhan]

I found that Genki sort of sucks in a way because the practices are lost on you if you're not in a classroom environment.   It's like OK YOU BE PERSON A, NOW ASK PERSON B STUFF.       Talking to yourself isn't useful.

So you buy this kinda pricey book that you can't fully utilize.  It does give good explanations of grammar, though.

Japanese From Zero worked better since you can be alone, and it's cheaper overall.

Rosetta Stone was kind of garbagey.  It just barfs things at you with no real context.   You can get free shit on a phone instead to get the same effect of brute force memorizing.   The bright side to the phone apps is you can learn while you poop.  At least you didn't waste a ton of money on RS.

I recently bought a book called 80/20 Japanese because people were going nuts over it.

It's written like shit.  He spends self centered time explaining how lucky he was to get to live in Japan as a kid and pick up on stuff.   Cool story.  That's not helping anyone reading, lol.   

Regardless, it rambles too much and isn't very concise/terse when explaining stuff.  You end up getting lost in a paragraph that could be shorter if he'd shut the hell up.   The book layout makes me itchy.   He should read a book on how to write a book before he writes his own.


All of this being said, the hardest part is always practicing speaking/hearing.   This pretty much requires immersion (IE: Go there).    Everyone I've ever met that took Japanese in college was all on top of it until they stopped taking classes, and then they basically taper off because practicing that in USA is kind of a pain in the ass.   They become rusty and go UHHHH.    Even my Half Japanese coworker tards out because he doesn't speak it constantly.    It's a little depressing/discouraging.

Watching with subtitles doesn't help alot either, because your brain will subconsciously betray you.  You'll read the subtitles in English, and then halfassedly process the Japanese.

You can get Japanese subtitles going, but if you aren't good at Kanji, this only goes so far.


So, where I'm going with this is, you have to kidnap Japanese people and trap them in your house and talk to them.

EDIT: Oh, and be careful using music as a learning tool.  People go OH I JUST LISTEN TO MUSIC AND READ THE LYRICS.

Music lyrics are often poetic and nonsensical.

If you learn Japanese from Spitz lyrics, people are going to think you're a f*cking wackbar.   lol

[KingDrool]

I found that Genki sort of sucks in a way because the practices are lost on you if you're not in a classroom environment.   It's like OK YOU BE PERSON A, NOW ASK PERSON B STUFF.       Talking to yourself isn't useful.

So you buy this kinda pricey book that you can't fully utilize.  It does give good explanations of grammar, though.

Tip: If you look online for a few seconds, you can get this for free... But yes, you're correct that it does give great explanations of grammar, and I've found it very useful because of that.

Japanese From Zero worked better since you can be alone, and it's cheaper overall.

Yes, after your previous recommendation of this book I put it on my Amazon wish list. I'll be picking it up at some point, too. Thanks!

Rosetta Stone was kind of garbagey.  It just barfs things at you with no real context.   You can get free shit on a phone instead to get the same effect of brute force memorizing.   The bright side to the phone apps is you can learn while you poop.  At least you didn't waste a ton of money on RS.

I also took your advice on this earlier, and wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't gotten such a steep discount. And I see exactly what you meant. Like you said, it's brute force with no context, and that makes it super frustrating sometimes.

Watching with subtitles doesn't help alot either, because your brain will subconsciously betray you.  You'll read the subtitles in English, and then halfassedly process the Japanese.

Yep, I do this mostly for enjoyment and only partially to work on Japanese. I'll read signs in the background, and pick up the occasional bit of dialog. But it's not really to "teach" me the language, other than a few words here and there.

Thanks for the perspective, Arkhan. I've read through this thread a number of times throughout this year and have found all of the opinions and resources here really valuable.

[Arkhan]

Another thing I've found invaluable is disregarding other roundeye trying to correct me.

My friend does this often when he sees my Japanese tweets or comments.   He's like self taught and thinks he is fluent.

He often misunderstands what's being talked about and will call things out for corrections.   and then my Japanese friends end up telling me "disregard that, he's wrong".


basically, if you encounter other non native speakers, and they spit things at you that you don't understand, don't worry.   They probably don't fully either, lol

[xelement5x]

Everyone I've ever met that took Japanese in college was all on top of it until they stopped taking classes, and then they basically taper off because practicing that in USA is kind of a pain in the ass.   They become rusty and go UHHHH.    Even my Half Japanese coworker tards out because he doesn't speak it constantly.    It's a little depressing/discouraging.

So true, this is me to a T (J?, I dunno).

I can still read relatively well, but that's about it.  My spoken language is very bad, though I can understand more basic spoken stuff, but just forget about me trying to write anymore.  The only thing that's kept me on top of the reading is games and other JP media I interact with. 

[Arkhan]

The only thing that's kept me on top of Japanese is my

wait are we talking about the language or the ladies now?

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