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Better than Pimsleur for Japanese? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| fivesquare Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4821 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: French, Japanese | Message 1 of 13 26 December 2011 at 1:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Question here for everyone - is there anything better than Pimsleur for learning
Japanese? What I really need is an audio course the drills you on vocabulary (and at least some grammar), similar to Pimsleur, but preferably one that is less horrible. I'm halfway through Pimsleur II and the only thing that they've said so far is formal Japanese. My understanding from what my girlfriend's father says is that you basically always use the casual form, so basically everything I'm learning here is nearly useless. Even many of the nouns seem to be polite nouns. Frankly, I'm sick of this attitude of only teaching the "highest" and "most polite" forms of language. For example, as soon as I started speaking French to people who actually speak French, I was admonished for using ne, and I didn't even bother using vous, since no one I ever met really use it. And yet, Pimsleur ONLY teaches you these things. It seems even worse in Japanese, because with French, the tu form is usually the same as the je form, and it's not much to drop "ne" and switch from "n'est-ce pas" to "non", but in Japanese it's a whole separate set of verb forms I'm going to have to learn, and these verb stems seem very malleable. Is there any audio course available that takes this sort of attitude? As an aside, what is up with language learning courses and the insistence on this rigid formality? You're a non-native speaker, you're very unlikely to sound like a hoighty- toighty aristocrat in the language, much better to learn the casual stuff and at least sound like a normal person and not a weird formality robot. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6469 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 2 of 13 26 December 2011 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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The simple forms are very easily deducted from those taught, the simple past is morphologically the same as the -
te form except that it uses an -a instead of an e. If I recall correctly you cannot staple the -masu forms in the same way as the -u/-ru forms, so someway along they have to be taught no matter what, so you’ll eventually see them… Just not as frequent as they’re used among people in daily conversation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5345 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 3 of 13 26 December 2011 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can't speak for the Japanese version, but in Pimsleur Korean much of the dialog seemed to be aimed at someone working in a business environment there. In that scenario you would use quite a bit of more formal / more polite language.
Most of Pimsleur Korean used what was known as the "informal polite" level of speech. It wasn't casual, but wasn't completely at the formal polite end either. Converting most informal polite speech back to the casual form in Korean (and it sounds like Japanese is similar based on Hampie's post) is not really difficult (for most verbs you simply drop the "-yo" from the end). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4844 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 4 of 13 26 December 2011 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I finished the Japanese 3 phases, and it is very useful for grammar (structures, adjectives, particles).
From the different languages I have learned, the default is to teach polite language first no matter what language that is. There are classes and books for informal and even vulgar (rude) language, but that is not what you will find in Pimsleur or indeed most basic language instruction. Pimsleur can't teach you everything, and that isn't one of its goals. Warp3 was correct, too, that a lot of the content in the Japanese is for a business traveler. It isn't claiming to be a business course, but several of the scenarios are for such. fivesquare, I am surprised that you are sick of polite language. It's just the considerate thing to do, especially when embarking in someone else's language and culture. Yes, it will be obvious that one is a foreigner, but is the first impression you want to give that you are ignorant and rude? I'm not saying you are that way, but it could certainly happen with a speaker who automatically prefers to speak the plain form of the language and doesn't even know social manners. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4940 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 5 of 13 26 December 2011 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know of a single language course that doesn't teach the formal before the informal. Is there one?
That said, I'd much rather start off with formal, then progress to informal, because that's generally how our interactions with people go. If you're looking for another drill-type program, I would suggest FSI, but it looks like they only offer the FAST text. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fivesquare Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4821 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: French, Japanese | Message 6 of 13 26 December 2011 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, here's the thing. I personally do want to be as polite as is necessary in the new language, but I know that for myself and for at least one other person I know, when you run around using really formal language in French but then make a bunch of grammar mistakes, they yell at you. They are like, "No, it sounds too weird, talk like a normal person." To some extent, using polite forms all the time is also not polite, it's inappropriate. The rule of thumb is generally that you can't be too polite, but you still have to read the situation. If someone runs around calling everyone Sir and Ma'am in America, some people are going to be offended because you're basically calling them old. When someone is learning your language, you are much more accommodating, because they are making an effort. Like, for example, if some Turkish guy comes over here and buys something from me and struggles over every word, then at the end of our interaction he says, "Thanks... mother... f**ker?", I'm going to assume that some jerk taught him that "Thanks, motherf**ker" is the way that people say goodbye or something. I'll probably tell him that he really shouldn't be saying goodbye like that, but he at least gets a pass to start with. In general, when you are first learning a language, you're going to butcher it so much that if the speaker thinks it's cool that you are learning their language, it doesn't matter what forms you use, and if the speaker thinks they'd rather not talk to someone who butchers their language so much, you're on the outs no matter what you do also. However, if you speak like a casual, normal person during your early interactions with them, they are much more likely to think that you are doing well with their language. Then, as you progress to the point where you would normally learn the informal stuff, you'll instead learn the formal. Oh, and the final thing I would say about this is that for some people it is the business interactions and such where you first use this, but honestly, if you are doing business interactions with someone based only on what you've learned in Pimsleur, you're not going to get very far and you'll switch to English/use a translator if you want to get anything done soon enough. However, for me and I imagine for many of you, the first live interactions in your target language are going to be language exchange buddies on the internet or locally. They are going to skew towards being your age and being the sort of people that you have casual, friend-level conversations with, which is why I'd much prefer to learn basic, casual conversation first (even if you personally always use the polite form, the other person is almost certainly going to use casual forms, and you'll be caught off-guard trying to understand them). The one advantage I can see of drilling so hard on the formal at the beginning is that it seems to me in French and Japanese, when you actually go and use the language, you will almost never use the formal, so you likely won't pick it up as readily as you would pick up the informal from talking to other normal people. Edited by fivesquare on 26 December 2011 at 8:04pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fivesquare Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4821 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: French, Japanese | Message 7 of 13 26 December 2011 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, and besides the discussion of the merits of formality and Pimsleur - which I
definitely see the merits of, my French learning program (which I think worked quite well) was based around a combination of Pimsleur and Anki for core vocabulary building - the question at hand is is there anything (audio-wise) that is better in this dimension? I would also like to know if there's anything to expand my vocab beyond Pimsleur. I think Pimsleur generally serves as a nice head-start in a language, but it really won't take you all the way. My problem is that my best time to study would be on my commute to various places or if I'm at work, doing chores, exercising, that sort of thing. I tend to do much better at keeping up my study if it's something I can listen to and practice that way. The only even mildly decent thing I've found for this sort of study is Pimsleur, but that only gives you a pretty small vocabulary, I would estimate 150-300 words or so. If there were phases 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 of Pimsleur I'd jump on them in a heartbeat. Do you guys have anything that serves that role? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4844 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 8 of 13 26 December 2011 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
That's an imperfect comparison. I live in Louisiana, and people DO talk like that all the time. ;-) It's seen as strange if you don't. That's actually one reason why I immediately understood honorific speech in Japanese. I was just being pedantic there, though. I understand your main point. In fact, on a different board I was chatting with a man who said the Hindi course by Pimsleur is full of antiquated language that makes someone sound very old-fashioned. I don't know if we have that much to worry about for Japanese as that politeness is essential. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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