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Japanese - where to start? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| ericspinelli Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5782 days ago 249 posts - 493 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Italian | Message 33 of 36 05 June 2010 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||
Why do you need to be SURE? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| RedBeard Senior Member United States atariage.com Joined 6101 days ago 126 posts - 182 votes Speaks: Ancient Greek* Studies: French, German | Message 34 of 36 05 June 2010 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I studied Japanese for a short while in approximately 2005. I did A LOT of online research before buying a text. I purchased two books and did the short course of Pisleur to jump start my pronunciation. [*vague memories of 'Shinjuku Station' and 'drink a beer with me' float through my mind*]
The two books that I bought and recommend: ~Remembering the Kana: The Hiragana / The Katakana by James W. Heisig. I think you said that you already. Great book. My daughter could even remember some of the characters (after helping me with flashcards) without reading the book at all. ~Japanese For Everyone, A Functional Approach To Daily Communication by Susumu Nagara. Hiragana & Katakana from the beginning, Romaji gone by about lesson 5, Kanji characters introduced early and often. A tough, but good book. Prepare to spend several days (even weeks) per lesson - 27 lessons total. The audio is available somewhere, but it was too expensive for me. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6948 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 35 of 36 06 June 2010 at 5:13am | IP Logged | ||
I disagree (one reason being because I myself was sure without having consulted a grammar). How are you SURE about these kind of rules/subtle distinctions in your native language? I'm sure you were able to figure it out by yourself before you could even read a grammar! Intuition and inference are powerful things. Regarding study materials, I think that 'getting a jump start on pronunciation' from the beginning like RedBeard did is a wonderful idea. Many Westerners don't have a natural feel for Japanese pronunciation like we do for the popular European languages which we've been exposed to so often, so pronunciation and intonation end up being way off, even though it seems deceptively simple at first (with no exotic phonemes, only 5 pure vowels, etc). Common pronunciation mistakes that beginners make include transferring the 'stress' system of their native language onto Japanese (Japanese doesn't use stress at all, so at first we have no idea how to pronounce everything 'flat' with equal timing on each syllable) and doing some weird things with their intonation because they seem to think it sounds 'Asian' (rising intonation, really stacatto pronunciation, etc). So if you don't have a clear mental image of what Japanese sounds like, a period of heavy input only should help you start off on the right track. Edited by Lucky Charms on 06 June 2010 at 5:38am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| aurickandrien Newbie Australia Joined 5279 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Studies: Japanese | Message 36 of 36 12 June 2010 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | ||
That's a bit of an over-generalisation there. With cartoons you're pretty much restricted to the action and comedy genres, but with anime that's just a subset (popular though it may be) and if you don't restrict yourself to those genres and go for a bit of variety then you should be alright. I'd suggest going for the more realistic/slice-of-life stuff and look out for those aimed at people who have actually graduated high school (probably those based on Seinen manga). An added bonus with anime is that the majority of them have an associated manga series that they've been based on and I think that if you're lucky you'll happen across a decent two-pronged combination dealing with both your listening and reading comprehension. Not to mention that learning from manga has it's own advantages such as the fact that you have pictures to aid your comprehension and that most of the written component is conversation based. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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