The Origami Forum

roseta stone

Japaneses caracters seems to be more complicated than they are. Nevertheless pronunciation and the basics caracaters are so easy. I guess there are more sounds in English or Spanish than in Japanese. So I'm going to start with the basics.

I´m too interested in this language... But anyone meets a "forum" about japanese langage? I think a Forum in Japanese is a escelent idea for practing Japanese (especialy when you don't have a friend that knows Japanese)...

There are a number of good resources out there.

I would recommend the Genki books. For example for starters you could get Genki 1+2, the 2 associated workbooks and the answer book. There are also CD's which provide pronunciation help.

A good Kanji dictionary might help too.

Also, make use of free resources such as http://thejapanesepage.com/

Ive never had any tutoring in Japanese (really want to learn though), but I recently got into japanese music. Through that Ive learned a few phrases and words from titles of songs and english translations. Also, it trains my ear so that the dialect doesnt sound so weird. For example:

well i guess there are various ways of learning a language im studying linguistics and since japanese is an isolated language (not related to nay other language)
the best way is to really want to learn, not trying to find shortcuts, no software or anime, which i only recomend to enhance sound perception, is going to make you learn unless you apply yourself and this doesnt mean hours and hours of study, im an intermediate student of japanese and i study about 20 minutes a day I know about 500 kanjis and have studied for 1 year i just make the most of 20 the minutes.

here is a page i strongly recommend to understand everything you need to know at you pace
but you are going to need a teacher

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/

try to get some jiday geki movies and watch - or hear - them with the original sound. that's a good way to get a feeling for the sound of japanese language. with a good movie you'll probably get the spoken difference between man and woman.

It would be kool to learn and become fluent in japanese. Right now I am just going to memorize all of the hirigana and katakana characters by heart then rent a few books of how to actually speak it correctly.Then I will move on to the more basic kanji, then all of the common kanji.Of course another kool way to learn, I think, is to be an english teacher in Japan where you learn and teach, of course you would have to be able to speak japanese fairly well.

Well, you may already know this, but the spoken language is the first set of language that they teach elementary students in Japan, starting with hiragana, and katakana. Although they may know how to speak it already, they still learn the spoken language, then kanji, the written language. the website i use to practice hiragana, and katakana is http://www.realkana.com/ I hope this helps you as much as it helped me so far.

The best way to learn Japanese of course is total submersion. You could just live in Japan for a while =). And fold-it-all suggested being an English teacher in Japan, which would be even better. Contrary to what you might expect, you don't actually have to know any Japanese to be an English teacher in Japan.

A couple years back I wanted to learn Japanese so I got Rosetta Stone and enrolled in a class in college. Rosetta Stone is good and the class was great for learning the hiragana/katakana. The best way to learn those is to use mnemonic techniques.

The only thing anime is good for is learning what the language sounds like and pronunciation. You won't learn many words, especially if you're reading subtitles the whole time.

Another thing people have suggested is get a Japanese friend. I got a penpal (or should I say email pal) and we ask each other questions. Although after a while, we have become closer friends and just talk in English rather than working on our language.

I learned a bit of Japanese from watching anime.......