LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5768 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian
| Message 1 of 4 28 April 2009 at 4:26pm | IP Logged |
Hi,
I've decided that I'd like to at least look into learning Japanese. Now, this might just turn into a case of wanderlust, but I will eventually get around to learning it one way or another. I am wondering about resources for learning Japanese, predominately. I know that Japanese will have a very different grammar from that of the languages I already know well already (English, French, German, Russian and my Italian is now not too bad). I am aware of alljapaneseallthetime. Now, I know that central method around the concept is to do "fun stuff" while learning Japanese. So, I am here to ask about Japanese bands (anything will do) news websites or anything I can use to listen to the language. I am very interested in the Final Fantasy games which are produced by a Japanese company - fans of that will know that the characters did not actually physically use their voices until recent game installments (Final Fantasy X) - my question there is whether I could get a Japanese version of the game, perhaps on PC, to actually function in the UK?
I will have a look around now for some websites to use to learn Hiragana and Katakana. I realise Kanji will be a full time job for likely years, though.
Thank you for your replies. Any resources you can tell me about would be great.
Jack
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hoseline Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5691 days ago 10 posts - 11 votes
| Message 2 of 4 28 April 2009 at 7:53pm | IP Logged |
http://speak.econtrader.com/japanese
they have hiragana and katakana charts as well as a short exercise test for reading it. The rest on the site covers vocabulary and basic sentences. It should be quite entertaining animations and fun activities can get you going. However theres more room for improvement.
Edited by hoseline on 28 April 2009 at 7:54pm
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alunap Newbie Scotland Joined 5725 days ago 15 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Latin, French
| Message 3 of 4 21 May 2009 at 3:51pm | IP Logged |
http://japancast.net/ has a podcast, and I know some people like japanesepod101 (but I find it intensely irritating).
If you look on iTMS there are other podcasts there for learning Kana and Kanji. If you like the style of
japanesepod101 then the initial 6 lessons from Rocket Japanese are available for free.
And of course there are anime on youtube which can be subtitled (or not, as you prefer).
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jondesousa Tetraglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/Zgg3nRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6266 days ago 227 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Mandarin, Spanish
| Message 4 of 4 21 May 2009 at 4:32pm | IP Logged |
I have my own opinions as to the best ways to learn Japanese, but I would like to recommend two resources to take a look at that are both quite effective, I believe.
One is www.alljapaneseallthetime.com. At this blog, Khatsumoto-san explains his method to learn Japanese, which I follow and as I said is quite effective. Also, you may want to view a youtube video produced by Moses McCormick where he reviews materials that he has used to learn Japanese. The video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JirluCJiQs&feature=channel_p age
Hope that helps.
Jon
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