Question:
First of even though it wont really make up for it, I would like to apologise for asking this question even with the knowledge that this has been asked before. As the title says "How do I learn Japanese." I only know the very basic like colors,animals random nouns (Very little), adjectives (very little) and phrases like: I don't understand japanese or Do you understand english, Can you help me... :(
Im nowhere close to holding a real conversation unless that said 'conversation' consists of saying hello, good evening, and goodbye >.< Im in the process of learning Kana and only committed 10 to memory of Hiragana (I just started today trying to learn to write.) Im 14 years old now and would also like to know if am at a good age to start or should I wait till im older. I would like to take classes at school but I've already started spanish and Japanese isn't even available until high school. Please provide me with any tips, websites, suggestions or your personal experience on learning the language. Anything will be of great help!
Thank you in advance!
Answer:
Actually you're on the right track, and I would say that it's actually a lot easier to pick up languages while you're young. So if you have the resources, I would start learning more now instead of when you're older. You're very lucky that your high school offers Japanese for you to take. When I was in high school, the only language we could take was Spanish haha. So I had to learn on my own for the most part. And yes this question has been asked before, but I'm just going to give you the basics of what I've told the others. :)
Sometimes websites are a tad unreliable as the people who post lessons usually are still learning themselves, and there's a higher chance that you could just be studying wrong information.
I always recommend books and a combination of software or even cds so you can hear exactly how words are pronounced. :)
Obviously there is the infamous Rosetta Stone, but I think it's a bit too expensive.
Even Japanese Coach for the Nintendo DS is minimally helpful at best.
I started off with workbooks like the 'Japanese in 10 minutes a day' It is like a children's workbook and it has pictures that you can easily correlate stuff to. I mean in no way will this book make you fluent, but it helps provide some basics like colors, furniture, numbers, days of the week, basic verbs, basic nouns, and basic adjectives. It even includes a CD-ROM and flashcards that are very helpful.
It doesn't help with writing which is it's only downfall, and usually you should find a book that has writing next to the words as you learn it and not romanji/romaji .
I know I learned a lot of words from a Japanese-English dictionary. I would pick out a page a day and solely concentrate on what the words were and how to write them Then I would make flash cards and go through them. I would obviously keep the old flashcards, and I eventually built up a giant stack of notecards that I went through everyday.
When I was learning Japanese writing I started of with Kanji first, but I know there is a lot of argument that goes around when people say what writing to learn first. I used this book called Essential Kanji to help me out, but I can't for the life of me remember who it was by.
Kana is also a great start to, and it's also a whole lot easier than Kanji. There's over 2,000 Kanji which is defiantly overwhelming at first.
Some great basic books that helped me:
Situational Functional Japanese Volume 1:Notes by Tsukuba Language Group
Beginner's Japanese with 2 Audio CDs (Hippocrene) by Joanne Redmond Claypoole
A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar by Seiichi Makino
Let's Study Japanese by Jun Maeda
I'm not saying that "oh if you go out and buy these books you will so know Japanese" This is what helped me, but every person is different. Don't be frustrated if it takes you longer to learn Japanese than you thought. I've been teaching myself Japanese for 2 years and I still mess up a lot, but that's bound to happen. I even stayed in Japan for a bit, and though that helped me heaps, I still had a hard time when it came time to actually have a conversation in real life. You can't prepare for this at all until you come face to face with a person. It's really hard to sound natural, if the only way you ever learned was through books and watching conversations through CD ROMs. The only thing I can say is that you will defiantly get better the more you talk to people, and sure you will mess up but everything is a learning experience. :)
Also I learned that if you find software (doesn't have to be Rosetta Stone), I recommend you use it as the visual and audio does help a ton when first starting off. I know there are some old software that people sell on ebay all the time, especially college students who take Japanese and drop it and then sell their stuff online. It's a cheaper way to get it other than going to the store and spending $200 plus on a CDROM.
All I say is that I wish you luck and practice every day even if you just learn a word or two :)
Tips: Be patient and don't get stressed out if you reach a road block here of there. And yes there will be many times where you just simply look at a word in a sentence and turn your head to the side going 'ehhh? What does this mean?'
If you're really interested in visiting Japan while you're still young, you should defiantly talk to your school counselor about study abroad programs that you could be eligible for. I recommend this more for when you're in high school though, and have more of the language down. Also talk to your parents about it too of course. :)
