こんにちわ。おす。
なにおしていさすか。
かいています。
I've always enjoyed learning new languages. From my five years of Spanish (which I'm still not very good at) to a quick stint with Latin, I have been taking languages courses for almost seven years straight. One language I've always been interested in learning is Japanese for a few reasons, the main reason is to be able to read all of those cancelled Manga that never made it to the States! Another reason is just out of shear necessity. With my family living in Japan for six years, we have acquired quite a few Japanese items and traditions. From almost eating rice with every meal and making Christmas Cakes to the wedding kimono that hangs in our hallway, we have integrated a lot of Japanese culture into our lifestyle. We even have a sign on our front door asking people to take off their shoes before entering and we often answer questions with "はい" instead of "yes". I finally decided to buy some material and learn the language after I spent three hours trying to translate a traditional Japanese recipe. Out of the different books I've picked up, I've been using two main resources in my adventure to learn Japanese.
We have all probably seen the TV ads for Rosetta Stone, they seem to show them every commercial break on every channel. I've always been curious about this program that promises fast results and is used by a lot of different businesses and agencies to teach a language quickly. Even with their stellar track record, I was still skeptical about Rosetta Stone considering that Japanese is one of the harder languages to learn. I was just going to buy the first program (there are three levels of Japanese in total, five levels just for Spanish) but I ended up being surprised by the whole set for my birthday. I've been going through the program for almost a straight month now and I'm almost done with the first level.
Let me say this, if you want to learn how to read and write Japanese, you're going to need some supplementary resources. Rosetta Stone focuses more on conversational Japanese rather than teaching all about grammar and those other important facets of a language. It's complete immersion, no translations or anything. They say a word or phrase in Japanese and then associate it with a picture. It works great for basic vocabulary but when trying to build phrases, it doesn't work quite as well. Main reason being that Japanese uses particles, which don't really exist in English. Another down fall of the program is its assumption that you can already read Japanese. There are three ways to write Japanese: Kanji (or Kanji with Furigana), Kana (Hiragana and Katakana), and Romaji. You can actually change the writing style of the lessons on the fly in Rosetta Stone which is helpful but the program itself has no teaching tools to help you learn all the symbols. Considering how difficult Japanese is, Rosetta Stone works surprisingly well. There are some lessons that make no sense (like the lesson on how to make things plural since there is no plural form in Japanese) and other lessons were taken from a cookie-cutter layout from another language. I definitely recommend it if you want a crash course in Japanese for a trip and want to be able to ask "where is the restroom". It's pricey though so you have to figure out which is worth more, time or money. Because Rosetta Stone does teach you the language at a surprisingly fast pace and even with this fast pace, it is still easy to learn and retain everything that is thrown at you. Once I'm finished with the full Japanese program, I'm considering picking up Spanish or another "Western:" language since I feel that Rosetta Stone is more conducive to western styles and might work a little better.
Since Rosetta Stone couldn't help me learn how to read and write the different styles of Japanese, I turned to another resource - The Manga University. Their series "Kanji de Manga" and "Kana de Manga" teach how to read and write the various Kanji and Kana in a unique way - through Manga. This technique makes it fun and enjoyable to learn and memorize what could be found as tedious in other materials. From stroke order to examples of words and definitions, they present all the information in an organized manner. Then to help cement what you have just learned, they give you a short Manga with dialogue. With around a month of going through the books, I can now fully read and write both sets of Kana. With just a week of studying Kanji de Manga, I already have around thirty Kanji memorized. I definitely recommend picking up the Kanji de Manga and Kana de Manga series (I believe there are 8 books in total) even if you just want to figure out what your Japanese candy wrapper says. They teach you the material in a fun and unique way that will surely keep you interested longer than traditional teaching books.My goal is to have the knowledge of a "middle-schooler" in Japan by the time June rolls around. We'll see how it goes, with these two tools at my disposal as well as a variety of other resources, I'm excited to see how far I can get. Now, I just have to work on translating the rest of that recipe.
