Learning Japanese
Update 2021
Learning language via Comprehensible Acquisition (search for that).
Listening to sentences where the context (usually visuals) makes the meaning apparent.
eg. This is my hand (points to hand).
If you can find/watch or make a list of recordings where there is audio along side obvious meaning visuals you can start acquiring language in the natural way that babies do.
Jumping straight into videos or watching the news is taking on a language at a very high level; you will struggle to keep up, be dealing with complex grammar constructs and focusing on topics that may not be off interest.
Starting with basic phrases that deal with the personal body, actions, foods will get you started to communicating your needs and feelings to others.
Learning language via Comprehensible Acquisition (search for that).
Listening to sentences where the context (usually visuals) makes the meaning apparent.
eg. This is my hand (points to hand).
If you can find/watch or make a list of recordings where there is audio along side obvious meaning visuals you can start acquiring language in the natural way that babies do.
Jumping straight into videos or watching the news is taking on a language at a very high level; you will struggle to keep up, be dealing with complex grammar constructs and focusing on topics that may not be off interest.
Starting with basic phrases that deal with the personal body, actions, foods will get you started to communicating your needs and feelings to others.
Firstly my most used links:
Glenn Rosenthal's Free Japanese Word Processor
I highly recommend this software (hopefully still works) as it allows one to create Japanese characters, kana and Kanji on an English PC and provides convenient methods for looking up English words, Kana and Kanji. Whilst most OSes allow one to write via installation of language packs this software lets you do so without. It's all internal to the program. The addition of the internal dictionary is the added blessing - you can just highlight some text and search that word. So you can create your text/story/practice phrases as well as quicky lookup/insert the meanings. Without being connected to the internet! crazy.
Reading Japanese Kanji involves a huge amount of study, having hiragana added to pages can make reading a little easier as you would only have to know the two phonetic alphabets (see below).
I use Hirigana Megane to get hiragana text added to kanji text.
To get webpages or text translated try babelfish
My basic Nihongo study tips:
I have provided some examples of Japanese both in Romaji (Roman letters) and kana/kanji (Japanese letters) but you will need a browser capable of viewing Japanese characters if you want to view those pages.
To speak Japanese efficiently one must understand the verbs and their conjugations. To learn any language this is so but in Japanese many comments or questions are of only one word, a verb, with a conjugation that supplies intent/potentiality/condition etc.
When you start learning a new language you know next to nothing. *Every* word is an unknown. So each verb, though you may know a few, will sound totally foreign when conjugated in some form you have not mastered.
Owning a good book on Japanese verbs is your key to getting this language under your belt. You can try my link to verbs to get you started.
I recommend that you take the first few verbs you are taught and drill yourself through all the possible conjugations and their meanings.
There are three groups of verbs which follow three conjugational rules. Take a verb from each group and perform all the conjugations. This will allow you to use that verb in all it's tenses, past, future, passive, conditional etc and make it easier for you to then understand the Japanese spoken to you. For I found this to be my largest problem. Whilst I had a growing vocabulary I still found I couldn't quite decipher what was being said to me as my knowledge of the conjugative possibilites was too limited.
Glenn Rosenthal's Free Japanese Word Processor
I highly recommend this software (hopefully still works) as it allows one to create Japanese characters, kana and Kanji on an English PC and provides convenient methods for looking up English words, Kana and Kanji. Whilst most OSes allow one to write via installation of language packs this software lets you do so without. It's all internal to the program. The addition of the internal dictionary is the added blessing - you can just highlight some text and search that word. So you can create your text/story/practice phrases as well as quicky lookup/insert the meanings. Without being connected to the internet! crazy.
Reading Japanese Kanji involves a huge amount of study, having hiragana added to pages can make reading a little easier as you would only have to know the two phonetic alphabets (see below).
I use Hirigana Megane to get hiragana text added to kanji text.
To get webpages or text translated try babelfish
My basic Nihongo study tips:
I have provided some examples of Japanese both in Romaji (Roman letters) and kana/kanji (Japanese letters) but you will need a browser capable of viewing Japanese characters if you want to view those pages.
To speak Japanese efficiently one must understand the verbs and their conjugations. To learn any language this is so but in Japanese many comments or questions are of only one word, a verb, with a conjugation that supplies intent/potentiality/condition etc.
When you start learning a new language you know next to nothing. *Every* word is an unknown. So each verb, though you may know a few, will sound totally foreign when conjugated in some form you have not mastered.
Owning a good book on Japanese verbs is your key to getting this language under your belt. You can try my link to verbs to get you started.
I recommend that you take the first few verbs you are taught and drill yourself through all the possible conjugations and their meanings.
There are three groups of verbs which follow three conjugational rules. Take a verb from each group and perform all the conjugations. This will allow you to use that verb in all it's tenses, past, future, passive, conditional etc and make it easier for you to then understand the Japanese spoken to you. For I found this to be my largest problem. Whilst I had a growing vocabulary I still found I couldn't quite decipher what was being said to me as my knowledge of the conjugative possibilites was too limited.
The Written Language
Whilst Japanese uses Kanji - the Japanese name for Chinese Characters which the Chinese call Hanzi (and in Mandarin, it sounds a bit more like hanzu or hanze) - making it a difficult language to learn to read and write, they also use a phonetic alphabet called Hiragana, and also an aural duplicate called Katakana. When writing words of a foreign origin they use katakana rather than hiragana although the two sets of alphabets contain the same sounds.
Sound like a waste of learning/time? Maybe so but alas it is the way of it in Japan. So learning Hiragana at least will allow you to read and write the sounds of Japanese and so make many more books for studying available to you as well as making the possibility of studying with a Japanese person more constructive. Hiragana also break up strings of kanji which in itself is handy. There are no spaces in the Japanese writing system.
Learning Katakana, being used for foreign words or as onomatopoeias, will help you with most bar & restaurant menues.
My pages mostly contain study notes in only romanji (Roman letters) as well as Hiragana. I am also trying to add some basic Kanji as an intro/teaser to the fascinating world of Kanji. Although I currently lack a computer with a Japanese OS on it so progress is not the word of the moment. :)
Pictographic language systems are, I believe, a little too cumbersome for practical use, but as many of us specialise in studies that fascinate us so too may Kanji fascinate you enough that you devote the large amount of time needed to memorise the 1800 Kanji you would need for "daily" use in modern Japan. There are *many* more combinations of Kanji than 1800 but this would give you a workable level of comprehension.
How many Kanji are there? I read recently there are some 50,000. More considering that these can still be combined with themselves to create new meanings. I think a good Japanese dictionary may hold 3,000 to 6,000. A Chinese dictionary quite possible double that. But please email me if you have better figures. I read these figures some time back and I didn't write them down at the time. Apologies.
You need just under 2,000 to be up with a Japanese at the end of high school.
Many students in Japan are losing the ability to read and write Kanji. Computers make it easier to write Kanji by providing the possible Kanji characters when the Hiragana sounds are typed in. The typist merely selects the desired Kanji. But the typist may not recall correctly which Kanji to use, especially if the meaning is sophisticated.
Excepting this downward turn in the memorisation of Kanji each Japanese person you meet IS a specialist in a pictographic language. They have spent at least 2 years of their lives, during their schooling, studying the national language. If they go on through University to study another specialty they need to study more Kanji to keep pace with the new knowledge base.
Tires me out just thinking about it. g'luck, have fun ;)
Sound like a waste of learning/time? Maybe so but alas it is the way of it in Japan. So learning Hiragana at least will allow you to read and write the sounds of Japanese and so make many more books for studying available to you as well as making the possibility of studying with a Japanese person more constructive. Hiragana also break up strings of kanji which in itself is handy. There are no spaces in the Japanese writing system.
Learning Katakana, being used for foreign words or as onomatopoeias, will help you with most bar & restaurant menues.
My pages mostly contain study notes in only romanji (Roman letters) as well as Hiragana. I am also trying to add some basic Kanji as an intro/teaser to the fascinating world of Kanji. Although I currently lack a computer with a Japanese OS on it so progress is not the word of the moment. :)
Pictographic language systems are, I believe, a little too cumbersome for practical use, but as many of us specialise in studies that fascinate us so too may Kanji fascinate you enough that you devote the large amount of time needed to memorise the 1800 Kanji you would need for "daily" use in modern Japan. There are *many* more combinations of Kanji than 1800 but this would give you a workable level of comprehension.
How many Kanji are there? I read recently there are some 50,000. More considering that these can still be combined with themselves to create new meanings. I think a good Japanese dictionary may hold 3,000 to 6,000. A Chinese dictionary quite possible double that. But please email me if you have better figures. I read these figures some time back and I didn't write them down at the time. Apologies.
You need just under 2,000 to be up with a Japanese at the end of high school.
Many students in Japan are losing the ability to read and write Kanji. Computers make it easier to write Kanji by providing the possible Kanji characters when the Hiragana sounds are typed in. The typist merely selects the desired Kanji. But the typist may not recall correctly which Kanji to use, especially if the meaning is sophisticated.
Excepting this downward turn in the memorisation of Kanji each Japanese person you meet IS a specialist in a pictographic language. They have spent at least 2 years of their lives, during their schooling, studying the national language. If they go on through University to study another specialty they need to study more Kanji to keep pace with the new knowledge base.
Tires me out just thinking about it. g'luck, have fun ;)
Reading Japanese characters
Japanese written in Hiragana
(or Katakana and Kanji)
Hiragana and Katakana Syllabary
Basic Numbers in Hiragana & Kanji
Interrogatives, Indefinites, Distributives, Negatives
Kanji, basic
Verb Groups
Phrases in Hiragana
(under construction :)
Japanese written with Romaji;
(or Katakana and Kanji)
Hiragana and Katakana Syllabary
Basic Numbers in Hiragana & Kanji
Interrogatives, Indefinites, Distributives, Negatives
Kanji, basic
Verb Groups
Phrases in Hiragana
(under construction :)
Japanese written with Romaji;
Counters: Numbers; Minutes, Days & Months
Verbs: Groups & Forms
Other unsorted links:
Glenn Rosenthal's Free Japanese Word Processor
I highly recommend this software as it allows one to create Japanese characters, kana and Kanji on an English PC and provides convenient methods for looking up English words, Kana and Kanji. This is a pretty old piece of software, not sure about any support or how well it runs on the latest OSes.
Tokyo PC users group
Verbs: Groups & Forms
Other unsorted links:
Glenn Rosenthal's Free Japanese Word Processor
I highly recommend this software as it allows one to create Japanese characters, kana and Kanji on an English PC and provides convenient methods for looking up English words, Kana and Kanji. This is a pretty old piece of software, not sure about any support or how well it runs on the latest OSes.
Tokyo PC users group
