No offense, but i'd say a proper Japanese tutor would be miles better than just finding a regular Japanese person and trying to impose upon them to learn the language. I think that's what Tat2 is referring to, the utter rudeness of just waltzing up to someone and going 'hey, teach me your language' when they may not even be qualified to teach at all — or interested in the first place.
That said, Rosetta Stone teaches a different method of romanization than I learned from the books and research I did on my own, so it's kinda useless to me. Total immersion was the only thing that truly worked in my case — being surrounded by a language you don't know entirely kinda forces you to sink or swim, y'know? if you're not willing to shell out for proper classes or to take a trip, you've gonna hafta make do with what you've got, even if you don't think it's good enough.
BEST THREAD EVER future of NL >:3
[16:43] James: I should learn these site rules more clearly
[16:44] LztheBlehBird: James doesn't know the rules? For shame!!!
No offense, but i'd say a proper Japanese tutor would be miles better than just finding a regular Japanese person and trying to impose upon them to learn the language. I think that's what Tat2 is referring to, the utter rudeness of just waltzing up to someone and going 'hey, teach me your language' when they may not even be qualified to teach at all — or interested in the first place.
That said, Rosetta Stone teaches a different method of romanization than I learned from the books and research I did on my own, so it's kinda useless to me. Total immersion was the only thing that truly worked in my case — being surrounded by a language you don't know entirely kinda forces you to sink or swim, y'know? if you're not willing to shell out for proper classes or to take a trip, you've gonna hafta make do with what you've got, even if you don't think it's good enough.
Ok I must apologise for the confusion because that's all I meant - the best way to learn Japanese is total immersion. That doesn't mean you need to up and move to Japan. Just go make some new friends.
watching subbed anime is the way to go I learned lots of useful words that way like kero kero, wan wan, nyan and countless other animal sounds, well actually those 3 are all I know but its a start.
I bought the Human Japanese app for my smartphone (Android market, but I'm sure it's on the others as well). It's really cheap and obviously you can carry it with you wherever you go. It's structured just like a book and is just like learning from a book, but with added interactive and audio elements.
Passing on a message from someone who swears by this for the poster:
can you recommend to a beginner student of Japanese in the general discussion of the forums an awesome program called 'Human Japanese'? It's a neat language-teaching program for beginners learning...Japanese.
it's $10 for the full version (in the App Store anyway), and there's a 'lite' demo for free that i've been skimming through for the past few minutes. the text rambles a bit, but seems pretty solid and geared toward getting you speaking the language, not just reading/writing it. i may wind up buying it myself, thx for the heads-up, mysterious acquaintance of waltzy's :3
BEST THREAD EVER future of NL >:3
[16:43] James: I should learn these site rules more clearly
[16:44] LztheBlehBird: James doesn't know the rules? For shame!!!
This is exactly why I hate online forums. You say "Nobody here speaks Japanese" and they say "Go find a Japanese person". Nevertheless, my advise would be to find a course book that they use in a Japanese course and go loan it from your local library. If they don't have any,you might want to buy one from a book store or online. I don't guarantee anything about this book, but it looks like exactly what you're looking for. http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Demystified-A-Self-Teaching-Gu... It's not a book they would use in a class but according to the comments it is perfect for you.
This is exactly why I hate online forums. You ask for the best way to learn Japanese and then proceed to tell everyone that you're not interested in the best way to learn Japanese at all.
But what would I know? After all, it's not like I've learned Japanese and learned through hard experience what the best way to do that is.
Oh wait.
... Going back to the original poster's question: if you want to learn Japanese wait until you're in a position where you can associate with Japanese or, even better, spend substantial time in Japan. That is the best way to learn the language. Using books, free websites or almost anything else is just going to be frustrating, and quite likely teach you the wrong things. I had to unlearn a lot of book learning when I started using Japanese in conversational settings.
For the record, I never once said that I wouldn't be interested in learning from a Japanese person, or living in Japan for a while to study abroad. But you must have missed the part where I said I was 16, and my school doesn't have a program of the sort. As for taking lessons in a class or privately, I challenge you to find someone who speaks fluent Japanese in a small town in the middle of Nebraska. It's not the ideal location to learn anything, honestly. And since I can't drive and won't have a job until mid-summer, I was just asking if someone knew of a low-cost way to begin learning. I'm sorry if I implied that I wanted to master Japanese for no money at all, as I'm well aware that this is nearly impossible.
Back on topic, thank you both for your suggestions. I think I'm going to go with Japanese Demysified and Human Japanese. I've had experience with the Demystified books, and they're pretty good. Human Japanese also looks like a great way to learn, plus I can hear proper pronunctiations that way.
Nintendo - Where even first person shooters ooze creativity.
Try Live Mocha, you have the option to talk to other users who speak the language you are trying to learn... Plus it's free and web-based.
I should also note that I don't have a microphone or web camera, so those options are not here for me. And to posts about smartphones, I don't have one of those either.
Nintendo - Where even first person shooters ooze creativity.
This is exactly why I hate online forums. You say "Nobody here speaks Japanese" and they say "Go find a Japanese person". Nevertheless, my advise would be to find a course book that they use in a Japanese course and go loan it from your local library. If they don't have any,you might want to buy one from a book store or online. I don't guarantee anything about this book, but it looks like exactly what you're looking for. http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Demystified-A-Self-Teaching-Gu... It's not a book they would use in a class but according to the comments it is perfect for you.
This is exactly why I hate online forums. You ask for the best way to learn Japanese and then proceed to tell everyone that you're not interested in the best way to learn Japanese at all.
But what would I know? After all, it's not like I've learned Japanese and learned through hard experience what the best way to do that is.
Oh wait.
... Going back to the original poster's question: if you want to learn Japanese wait until you're in a position where you can associate with Japanese or, even better, spend substantial time in Japan. That is the best way to learn the language. Using books, free websites or almost anything else is just going to be frustrating, and quite likely teach you the wrong things. I had to unlearn a lot of book learning when I started using Japanese in conversational settings.
For the record, I never once said that I wouldn't be interested in learning from a Japanese person, or living in Japan for a while to study abroad. But you must have missed the part where I said I was 16, and my school doesn't have a program of the sort. As for taking lessons in a class or privately, I challenge you to find someone who speaks fluent Japanese in a small town in the middle of Nebraska. It's not the ideal location to learn anything, honestly. And since I can't drive and won't have a job until mid-summer, I was just asking if someone knew of a low-cost way to begin learning. I'm sorry if I implied that I wanted to master Japanese for no money at all, as I'm well aware that this is nearly impossible.
Back on topic, thank you both for your suggestions. I think I'm going to go with Japanese Demysified and Human Japanese. I've had experience with the Demystified books, and they're pretty good. Human Japanese also looks like a great way to learn, plus I can hear proper pronunctiations that way.
Then my honest suggestion to you would be to wait for two or three years, and then move somewhere where you have the opportunity to properly learn Japanese.
From experience. Entirely from experience - it's harder to unlearn bad self taught Japanese and relearn the right way to do things than to learn the right way from the start. The potential for things to go wrong when you teach yourself is huge.
That's just my advice, take it or leave it, but I have learned Japanese, and I tried just about every method when I was learning. Japanese is a very difficult language to teach yourself. They have multiple alphabets, a different sentence structure to English, and a whole lot of cultural stuff that determines when it is and isn't appropriate to say something, and those rules are different to the west.
This is exactly why I hate online forums. You say "Nobody here speaks Japanese" and they say "Go find a Japanese person". Nevertheless, my advise would be to find a course book that they use in a Japanese course and go loan it from your local library. If they don't have any,you might want to buy one from a book store or online. I don't guarantee anything about this book, but it looks like exactly what you're looking for. http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Demystified-A-Self-Teaching-Gu... It's not a book they would use in a class but according to the comments it is perfect for you.
This is exactly why I hate online forums. You ask for the best way to learn Japanese and then proceed to tell everyone that you're not interested in the best way to learn Japanese at all.
But what would I know? After all, it's not like I've learned Japanese and learned through hard experience what the best way to do that is.
Oh wait.
... Going back to the original poster's question: if you want to learn Japanese wait until you're in a position where you can associate with Japanese or, even better, spend substantial time in Japan. That is the best way to learn the language. Using books, free websites or almost anything else is just going to be frustrating, and quite likely teach you the wrong things. I had to unlearn a lot of book learning when I started using Japanese in conversational settings.
For the record, I never once said that I wouldn't be interested in learning from a Japanese person, or living in Japan for a while to study abroad. But you must have missed the part where I said I was 16, and my school doesn't have a program of the sort. As for taking lessons in a class or privately, I challenge you to find someone who speaks fluent Japanese in a small town in the middle of Nebraska. It's not the ideal location to learn anything, honestly. And since I can't drive and won't have a job until mid-summer, I was just asking if someone knew of a low-cost way to begin learning. I'm sorry if I implied that I wanted to master Japanese for no money at all, as I'm well aware that this is nearly impossible.
Back on topic, thank you both for your suggestions. I think I'm going to go with Japanese Demysified and Human Japanese. I've had experience with the Demystified books, and they're pretty good. Human Japanese also looks like a great way to learn, plus I can hear proper pronunctiations that way.
Then my honest suggestion to you would be to wait for two or three years, and then move somewhere where you have the opportunity to properly learn Japanese.
From experience. Entirely from experience - it's harder to unlearn bad self taught Japanese and relearn the right way to do things than to learn the right way from the start. The potential for things to go wrong when you teach yourself is huge.
That's just my advice, take it or leave it, but I have learned Japanese, and I tried just about every method when I was learning. Japanese is a very difficult language to teach yourself. They have multiple alphabets, a different sentence structure to English, and a whole lot of cultural stuff that determines when it is and isn't appropriate to say something, and those rules are different to the west.
Memorizing the alphabets is the easy part, for me at least. And believe me, I'm not going to take the whole language from one source. Details can be left out; that's why I would prefer to have at least 10 sources to learn from. That way it's easier to know when things are appropriate or not. Plus, I will be able to get more details this way. But regardless, I will go to Japan at some point, of course, just to make sure I absorb everything
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Topic: I'm attempting to learn Japanese, but what is the best way to do it?
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