I’ve been keeping a record of my Japanese progress since the end of October 2009. It’s been a very good motivator, and also good to see where I devote my time. Or where I don’t. I may be (am) weird, but I enjoy trying to reach my goals and beat them in this very visual way.

With that said, I want to set some over all goals for the new year. So that I can kick them in the butt! Or fail miserably…

Let’s see…

GoddessCarlie’s Goals of 2010!

• Have a large passive vocabulary in Japanese and be working on turning that into an active vocabulary.

Vocabulary. It feels like my biggest weakness right now. Has been for a while. And there are many problems with learning vocabulary. For instance, it never seems like a fun thing to do. The results can be rewarding, for sure, but the act itself is never fun. Right now I’m using smart.fm and I’ll continue to do that until that method becomes tedious and I’ll find a new way.
Another problem is that there isn’t really a good way that I’ve found for me to get things into my active memory. I have to come across words in several different ways before they really stick. Sometimes words are easier than others, but other times I find myself looking up words that should be easy again and again. The only thing I can do is to just keep exposing myself to the language and when the words stick they stick…
As for a specific number, well I figure as I get closer to that elusive number it wont matter so much – the number is the number I need to understand what I want to understand. However, a specific number gives me something solid to aim for, so right now I’d like to aim for a passive amount of words – 10,000. We’ll see how I go!
As for a starting point – right now I’d guess my number of words known is about 3000.

• Work on my listening skills

My listening skills have definitely improved since moving to Japan. I want to further take advantage of the situation I’m in right now and really work on my listening skills. I plan on working from books/CDs, as well as from “real” Japanese – podcasts, tv, movies, and people. I hope that by increasing my vocab and developing my listening skills I’ll be able to work my way up to understanding 99% of simple dramas like My Girl, and hopefully 75-80% of fast speaking dramas like Tokyo Dogs.
As for something quantifyable – I hope to build my listening skills up so that I can understand JLPT level 2 dialogue. I’m secretly hopeful I can exceed that but at the same time I don’t know if I am asking too much in a year or not…

• To be able to read fantasy novels for adults

It’s my favourite genre in English and I love drams like this too. I want to be able to read novels aimed at Japanese adults, even if they are only light and fluffy (hell, they are the best kinds of books!) I don’t know what else to say about this… this is one of my ultimate goals in learning Japanese and I hope that I can fulfil this wish in 2010!

As for non Japanese related goals:

• Live healthily. Live happily
• Live with no regrets. Most people regret the things they didn’t do rather than the things they did do, so do everything I get the chance to do!!

Talk about your goals in the comments area! Remember, aim high! Expect more and you never know where you may end up!

Some of you may know nanowrimo – an event which takes part in November where you attempt to write 50,000 words in a month. My goal of November was something similar, I wanted to see if I could attempt to study for 100 hours during November. The outcome is I’ll probably just be a little short of 70 hours, but I’m pretty happy with that! Next month I’m aiming for 80 hours – it might be a bit harder because it’s the holiday season but we’ll see how I go!

What follows is a long breakdown of what I’ve been up to during November!

Listening

My listening category includes watching tv/movies as well as other education specific audio. My main source was watching tv, I only include it when I am actively listening and not when I’m multi tasking or have background noise. I think when I have a larger vocabulary I will do more level specific listening to try and improve my listening skills. One TV show I do recommend to beginners is “My Girl” staring Aiba Masaki – the dialogue for the most part is spoken very slowly and simply as the main character is a young girl. Yeah, it’s a bit… but it’s easy study material!

There is one more day left in November, but it’s not like I’m going to drastically increase my study hours… With that in mind, in November I watched/listened to about 15 hours of Japanese.
December’s goal: 20 hours.

Reading

Breakdown:

• Grade 3 (primary school) short story book
• Grade 1 and 2 (primary school) short story book
• Manga
• Novel for 10-11 year old girls

Reading is a skill that I really want to improve. One of my goals of learning Japanese is to be able to understand Japanese books in their native language easily. This month I did more purchasing of books that actual reading. It’s actually a bit strange, but out of all the different types of study activities I do, I find reading the most tireing. It may be the times of day that I read – usually on the bus on the way home from work or in bed before I go to sleep, but I always find after a page I need to close my eyes and go to sleep. This is frustrating!! But I am hoping with time it wont be so taxing on my brain or I will find time to read at different times and I will see a difference.

I started out with a reader for grade 3 (primary school) Japanese children. It is actually a pretty good book for learners because it is full of short stories, all kanji have furigana and at the end of the short stories is a short little quiz on the content of the story to see if everything was understood. There are also little dictionary type meanings under some words that must be knew/unknown to most 3rd graders which was helpful! My method of going through this was to first look up any unknown words and write them down in pencil next to the word. The words in the book are big and have large spaces between the lines, so it was perfect for this. The problem is that my vocab knowledge is so low that it was hard to infer anything and had to look up a lot of words. And I found the first story a bit unsatisfying. My problem is, I think, that I don’t like short stories in English, I like getting to know the Characters and going on a journey with them… So perhaps I shouldn’t expect to like them in Japanese either…

Still, I felt my first foray into reading Japanese literature a bit of a failure, I went and bought some books that are full of short stories for grades one and two (at the time I was thinking my main problem was vocab and perhaps something very simple would fill me with a sense of accomplishment). So far I’ve read a couple of short stories from the grade one book, and I have to say it does make me feel good when I can read through something and understand maybe 70% of it. I can infer meaning from the pictures and sometimes there may be a sentence I don’t undertand but it doesn’t bother me. I haven’t felt the need to use a dictionary yet even if I don’t fully understand something. There is also a cute poem in the grade one book that I liked. But yes, over all the stories are… a little strange and a bit confusing because I guess they are meant for young children – it’s satisfying in that I can read but what I’m reading isn’t satisfying, I hope that makes sense!

Manga. I have been reading a book for young teen girls, a high school relationships manga. Your everyday sort of stuff, nothing remarkable about the story line. I bought this book at the wonderful Book Off when I first got to Japan and started it then but didn’t get far. This time it was nice to open the book and understand more than what I did then. I am improving!! Yay I haven’t finished it yet (reading is slow!) and again, I think I’m getting too old for the school girl stuff, I want to move onto something more my age – damn I feel old sometimes! The problem with moving on is vocab/kanji with a lack of furigana etc. So again with the yay for reading but the story isn’t grabing me type stuff. Yeah, if I was at the stage I am now half a year ago I would have been over joyed but it’s a case of the grass is always greener – but I guess in a way it is motivating me to keep going.

Next: Today I bought some books that as far as I can tell are for girls about 10-12 years old. I’m expecting them to be tough. However, I feel like I’ll be more satisfied with them. Sure, they are still for young girls, but they are fantasy stories about (I hope!) strong female characters – these are my favourite type stories to read in English so I’m hoping that they will be more staisfying. So far I read the prologue of one, it was really easy! It was the main character introducing herself (introductions are about the only thing I’m good at in Japanese!) and about her history. I did it infront of the computer to quickly look up a couple of words in the dictionary (no writing down) but for the most part it was exciting that I was reading a “real” book. We’ll see how I go as I get into the story line more. I’m sure I’ll be complaining about it at the end of next month. It’ll either be too hard to read or the story line is too simplistic or something!!!

November Hours Reading: 5 hours
December Goal: To finish a book!

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Grammar

I’ve been using:

• Kanzen Master JPLT 3 Grammar book
• JET program language course – intermediate level
• review book for beginners/JLPT 3 level

I’ve been spending my time learning/reviewing JLPT level 3 grammar, using Kanzen Master JLPT 3 grammar guide. This is a good book, mostly all in Japanese with a little bit of english to explain the grammar point. I would have to say with JLPT level grammar, about 90% I already “knew” – knew in that I had encountered it before. A lot of it, however, still isn’t firmly in my head, like giving and recieving (I don’t know why I have trouble with this!), passive and causatives. Also transitive and intransitives. Much work to be done! There were a small amount of points I hadn’t learnt before but I think these ones will be quite simple to master.

Over all I do recommend Kanzen Master JLPT 3. I have no intention of studying the JLPT at this stage, but I like the way everything has been grouped into like forms, there are example sentences that are going to be at my level and there are quizes to check if you understood. Now, some of the quizes are easy in that “Oh, I just learnt that this grammar point you need the verb to be in the “te” form, so I’ll just choose the only option that is in the “te” form, even if I have no idea what the sentence means.” – I haven’t tried the exercises yet futher in the book so I’m not sure if they get harder than this.

My method of study sofar has been just to copy out the “formula” and then to copy a couple of the example sentences. It hasn’t done much to stick I don’t think, so now and into december I plan on paying a bit more attention into and really nailing down those passive etc forms. I’m hoping to have really got a solid foundation by the end of December – enough to move onto JLPT 2 level, even if I haven’t completely mastered them.

I do have a concern that with the JLPT 2 level, because I am (I imagine) not familiar with the grammar that it will be harder for me to actually understand what the grammar points are trying to address only through example sentences. I am planning on buying Kanzen Master level 2 so I guess I’ll see if it’ll be enough or if I need to supliment it somehow.

I have also been “studying” haha with the JET course. Now, a lot of bad things have been said about the course, and I believe last year they redid it alll. I think it’s not so bad really… but it isn’t really what I want to do with studying, if that makes sense, I would rather prioritise and do other things. Also the first book has been easy in that I am familiar with most of the grammar covered. So what I did is I wrote out all the grammar points and an example sentence, like what I did with Kanzen Master. Then I did the review exercises near the end of the book, compared it to the answers. I did fairly well, so I just went ahead and open book test style did the test. I still have to send it in, but I am satified that the JET course gets me studying and doesn’t seem so bad. I’m scared about the Dec book though – the dreaded transitive and intransitive verbs!

Last but not least, I’ve been doing this quiz book that tests kanji, vocab and grammar for JLPT 3. I did it back in Sept/Oct and scored fairly well. I picked it up again a week ago to see if I’ve improved. Happily I have improved. This time around I’m going to focus afterwards on the things I fail to see if I can really nail my short commings.

November: 15 hours of study
December goals: Finish Kanzen Master JLPT 3.

Kanji/Vocab

Yeah… Smart.fm has turned a bit to shit in my opinion, but I actually finally started using it. They have been upgrading a lot which has been frustraiting (it usually goes down for maintenence when I want to study) and I don’t use the new study program at all, but I have been spending every night studying vocab at smart.fm.

Vocab is a huge weakness for me, so I want to make a mass effort to really get my vocab up there. My goal of November was to study 1000 words, and right now I’m just short of 1500 – I’m hoping to reach that magical number tomorrow. Already I can notice the difference through reading my manga. There are shortcomings to smart.fm but I am enjoying (for the most part!) using the “iknow” interface. Once I master some lists I plan on upping my listening skills and doing the dication – I did a couple already but I think I’ll get the most benifit from that and the brain speed aspects of smart.fm once I have “mastered” the lists.

November: 31 hours, (hopefully!) 1500 words
December goal: to get up to 3500 words studied (+2000 words)

Writing

I get a lot of “writing” practise mainly through copying out my grammar books, but in this case writing corrosponds to when I physically create my own writing. I was planing on writing at 8lang regularly, but then I decided not to. I am going to save focusing on output (writing and speaking) when I am a bit futher into my studies. That being said, the small entries that I’ve done at 8Lang have been most helpful and I think it really is a fantastic resource. In the future I hope to keep a daily type log there.

November: half an hour
Decebmer goal: I don’t really plan to focus on this in December.

What’s Missing?

One noticible aspect missing from my log is speaking. For one, I think it would be hard to measure speaking unless I was to get up and say a monologue of some kind… At any case, right now I don’t feel confident in my speaking. Sure I can give one word responses and I can ask questions at stores if I think about it first, but I am not up to the level where I can have a conversation with people. I may add this to my spreadsheet at a later date, but for now I am not so worried about speaking and have no intention of measuring it in an “hours” format. At any rate, as my vocab and listening skills increase, I have found I have been more confident to speak, in particular to my students, and that has been satisfying/enough of a measurement for me. I can feel I’m inproving and that’s the main thing!

If you can think of something else I’m missing from my studies, feel free to leave a comment! Also if you have any questions or comments on my methods I’d love to hear them from you. I feel like, right now, I’ve never been so determined to get good at Japanese, and I feel like I’ve never gone this gung-ho at studying. Let’s hope I can keep up the momentum! (but still find the time to post… eep!)

Assimil is different from other texts in that the bulk of it is dialogues which you listen along to with the provided CDs. While it does have explanations, called “まとめ　－　Revision and Notes”, a grammar enthusiast will be wanting more. The idea is to learn through assimilation. While it doesn’t really provide a totally authentic immersion environment, I am impressed at how much is covered in this beginner’s text.

Assimil has a pretty lengthy introduction which is quite good at introducing Japanese to someone who has only just come to the Japanese language. From pronunciation, how verbs and adjectives work, the writing systems… Then it says:

Ugh! Don’t panic. You don’t have to worry about about all of this right away.

Assimil works in two stages, passive and active. I only have the first book, so can only really comment on the passive stage. This is where you don’t really worry about trying to learn kana, kanji, What you do is just go through the lessons, reading along to the tapes. The idea is learning through assimilation. With enough exposure it will all sink in.

Every lesson is a dialogue. On the left page is the Japanese, the right in English. The Japanese has kanji with furigana, a phonetic guide and romaji. The first thing I did was get a black texta and got rid of all that romaji and pronunciation.

It is important, I guess, to note that I came to this book as something to reinforce what I had already learnt. So I already knew how to read hiragana/katakana. When you are just starting out romaji is good for a guide. But after a couple of lessons I still think you should black out all that information. It gets confusing, and you shouldn’t rely on it. Hell, this book makes it easy, you don’t even have to learn how to write if you follow this method to a t, but rather only recognise them. Any fool can do that!!

The English page is also great. It has an English translation and also a word by word translation so you can work out how sentences are put together. Down the bottom are little notes that help you understand the dialogue better. And every seventh lesson isn’t a dialogue but rather a “revision” lesson which explains all the major things that are happening in the dialogues you just studied.

The audio is good but not great. It provides almost 2 hours worth of audio in Japanese. Each dialogues are fairly short, most are around 2 -3 mins worth. The bad thing is that for the first few dialogues the pace is painfully slow. Perhaps this is good for absolute beginners, but I was not an absolute beginner when I started this. Also, the dialogues never reach a native pace. To a certain extent, this is good for a beginner if you realise it isn’t full speed. It is a good intermediate step. Even myself, sometimes, I find the pace just right when I am trying to read aloud and my tongue gets twisted. I imagine as my reading speeds up, I could modify the audio to also speed it up slightly.

At the end of the dialogues are some exercises which are essentially useless. It consists of reading along with short phrases, and fill in the blanks that are entirely in romaji. I looked over these but largely ignored them. One feature I liked is that it has the page numbers written out in Japanese. Would have preferred them to be in kana, as they are in romaji, but it is still a neat feature for those learning their numbers.

I am quite impressed how far this book actually goes. For just over 300 pages, it covers a lot. I was impressed that the last dialogue starts off with a poem which was a bit tricky to get my head around at first. I haven’t encountered that in any other beginners text and so it was a nice surprise.

I am not sure if I personally would be satisfied to learn from this book, as you may know I like to learn by having things broken apart for me, and then some how I put the pieces back together. In this book you have to work out things for yourself, or perhaps not even work things out, you just go along with the flow and have faith that things will come together in the end.

However, as a revision tool I am quite impressed. In the second book you start the active phase, and I am keen to pick it up and see if it lives up to the first.

Purchase Japanese With Ease: Assimil

I’ve finished Japanese for Everyone (awesome textbook), and as here in Australia the kids are going back to school for the new year, I’ve decided to kick myself into gear and do a bit of my own formal study. So today I bought an exercise book and I’m going to get the show on the road…

I’ve pretty much already done chapter one, so this week I’m going to take it easy and review it. Then it’s down to business. I’d like to ideally do a chapter a week. I think this means I will sacrifice how many new kanji I can learn in a week in my quest to complete Heisig . But while I love the progress I make with it, I feel like I need more, hence doing this text book.

会話 – Conversations

First in the text book is a page in English with some culture notes. These are fine, interesting, but a bit of a waste of space. I will, of course, give it a glance before I move on to the first bit of meat in a chapter – 会話. There are three conversations, one super polite, one polite and one casual. To get through the conversations, I plan to do something like:

• Listen to the dialogue and read along
• learn the vocab I don’t know yet
• read along as the dialogue is being spoken. Repeat this until I can say it at the same speed as the audio. My aim isn’t to memorize but rather just to get my tongue around talking as fast as the audio does. I’m not sure if they have done anything to the new version of audio is any different, but for my version it is pretty good, sounds almost as fast as real life (compared to other audio I’ve listened to!).
• If I could be bothered, I would also like to do something like “scriptorium”. Take a look at this video as an example:
  
  You can read more about it on Professor Arguelles’ website, but here’s a quick run down:

  1. Read a sentence aloud.
  2. Say each word aloud again as you write it.
  3. Read the sentence aloud as you have written it.

  I think it would be awesome writing practise, a chance to pay attention to the nitty gritty (it’s all to easy to understand something as you read it or listen to it, but when you go to say it, sometimes you are left wondering “what was that particle again?”). I also feel that I learn better when I write things down. Writing down the sentence will help me cement the vocab I have learnt.

To be honest, I’m not sure if I will start with 会話 even though it is at the beginning of the chapter. I think that I would listen to it while reading it, but do the rest of my study after I complete the rest of the chapter, or at least go through the grammar points. Listening is one of my poorer skills – I’m a good listener if you need to talk to someone, but I’m not good at learning something through listening. So this may end up being something I do later in the chapter. But, at this stage, this is what I want to do with the 会話 section of An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese.

• Japanese Readers for the Middle Years


An interactive website designed for children (perhaps high school?). The Japanese here is very simple, however it is a bit of interactive fun. If you are new at Japanese it has visuals and audio to help you along. For those who are a bit futher along, it’s just a bit of fun for five minutes.


• News of Japan

Short news stories from Japan. You can chose if they are displayed in romaji, kana or kanji. There is also an audio file you can listen to as you read. Again, it’s all very simple and I think a great resource for those of us who are trying to jump into reading actual Japanese. It also refers to the book 2001 Kanji Odyssey (what numbers the kanji are on the website in the book), for those using that resource.

• Kansai Ben

An awesome reference on the Kansai Ben/Kansai Dialect. This is the best page I’ve seen on it yet! I haven’t even scratched the surface of this site, but it has audio and video examples, and is set out clearly with tables comparing Kansai Ben with standard Japanese.

• Japanese Onomatopoeia – Algorithm March

A post about onomatopoeia in the algorithm march. I was so disappointed when I saw the algorithm march on TV that it had no ninjas in it while I was watching (that I could see, anyway). I love the algorithm march!

That being said, I tried to maintain my Japanese study, even if I didn’t want to touch a lot of what I had to do with a ten foot pole. Some of my activities included the following:

• Manga Reading.

I’ve been reading manga for the first time in Japanese, and I enjoyed it a lot. It was a huge motivation booster, being able to read it, even if I couldn’t understand all of the words, I could understand the story as a whole. My next step will be to go back through it and look up the words that I didn’t understand.

• Anki

Last month I had 619 cards in my Anki deck. Now I have 441. I totally changed my focus in Anki from sentences to mainly Heisig with some vocab thrown in.

However, again, I have barely touched Anki in May. I plan on deleting all the vocab words from Anki and then just using it for Heisig for the time being.

• Drama Watching

In April I watched about 26 hours of Japanese tv. This month it was down, mainly due to it being the end of the university semester. I watched a total of 15 hours and 37 mins.

In May I really focused on listening and understanding. I tried to repeat out loud sentences. I am finding that I can understand more and more, with, again, vocabulary seeming to be the biggest problem I am having.

• Vocabulary

I am experimenting with many vocabulary acquiring methods at the moment. I’ll talk more about this as I explore more about this

Overall, not the best month, but not the worst month. For June, I’d love to focus a lot of Heisig and vocabulary building, as well as keeping up watching lots of TV for enjoyment and to practise my listening/speaking skills.

I know more than what is in Genki I. Way back when, Genki was the original material that I bought to learn Japanese. This time last year I was probably not much past the first couple of chapters. Now I know all the kanji from it, and all the grammar points.

I’m 3/4 of the way through Japanese for Everyone, and I will be finished by the end of the year. In terms of grammar, I think that Japanese for Everyone gets you right into an intermediate level. It is really good and has a lot of bang for what you pay for it. I have started reading some books and I so far understand (most of) the grammar, even for longer, complicated sentences.

I am still getting through learning all the Kanji. Because of university I have had to utilise many different methods of learning the Kanji. If I could start again, I would have completed Remembering the Kanji before I started at university. I hope that I can get through this book by the end of the year.

I am understanding more and more of what I hear. Watching a lot of dramas definitely has attuned me to the language.

The biggest let down for me is my lack of vocabulary. I don’t have a large vocabulary which makes it hard to read or listen and actually understand what is being said. I am at the moment experimenting with some vocabulary learning exercises.

My speaking is also probably not very good. I haven’t had an opportunity to speak much Japanese besides following along with tapes and talking to myself aloud. I am going to Japan in November which will be my first real test of speaking and conversing.

I am very happy with my progress, I don’t think that I could progress any quicker. Even if it is not possible for me to be in All Japanese All The Time enviornment like some people can be, I engage myself in a Japanese language activity every day. It is very much a part of my life now and I will get to Japanese fluency. If you want a more “slow and steady” approach to Japanese learning compared to the AJATT method, I recommend my method: Procrastinating and Looking At Japanese Boys. It seems to be working for me!

iSpeak Japanese is an affordable audio program, specifically designed to work on an ipod and other portable mp3 devices. It comes with a CD containing 1,300 phrases, and a booklet with all the phrases written down. Phrases are seperated into categories, such as “Travel”, “Food”, and “Occupations”. Each phrase is on a seperate mp3. First the phrase is read in Japanese, next an English translation. This is followed by the Japanese again. Tracks of just words or short phrases also include a full sentence demonstrating how that word/phrase is used. All for the low price of $10.36 (currently at Amazon, or $AU19.95 in the stores where I got it.)

Sounds great right? Too good to be true? Well, it is.

The booklet has a little introduction then a list of all the phrases in their categories. The “Japanese” is all in romaji, which I can forgive because of the price. (To be honest, it was what I was suspecting). Flicking through you begin to notice a couple of things. Firstly, a lot of phrases are repeats of the previous phrase, but with a different word inserted. For instance:

I’m here…
      … on vacation.
      … on business.
      … for a conference.
      … with my family.
      … on my own.
from p.16

That’s ok too, I guess, because you are learning vocabulary, plus you’ll get to know the sentence structure really well through repetition. It does feel a bit like filler though… And, also, I haven’t counted, but I think the 1,300 phrases is a bit off the mark – as many of the phrases are repeated in different categories. Maybe they only counted these once, but I get the feeling they probably counted each phrase every time they appear.

On the CD themselves the mp3s are repeated. The voice is a woman who sounds robotic. I admit I didn’t listen to much because I couldn’t stand the robotic voice. No emotion at all. Just robot.

My friend brought the Spanish version at the same time as me – she told me that on her disk the speaker has a lisp! Lisps are fine, but hardly suitable for someone using an audio program to learn how to pronounce a language!

Overall, these CDs are a dud. Don’t buy it!!

However, if you are just looking for a CD with many phrases and don’t mind a robotic voice, this is cheap and the fact that everything is in individual mp3s can be handy. For instance, you may be able to incorporate this into your flash card program so you can read a sentence and hear it. I think that this could be an effective way for people to learn, especially if you are an aural learner..

However, that being said, with a bit (or perhaps I should say a lot!) of dedication, Japanese can also be quite easy. For instance the pronunciation for English speakers should be quite easy. With perhaps the exception of the “R” sound, we already have all the sounds needed to speak Japanese. The number of sounds in Japanese is really quite limited. Compared to English, with all the different vowel sounds, “th” and other difficult pronunciations, I feel sorry for the Japanese trying to learn English. I think they must have it a lot harder!

Another great thing about Japanese is I find the language very logical. English is a mash of other languages with lots of exceptions to the rules. Japanese has very few irregularities. If you can get a rule once, it is easy to replicate over and over again.

OK, so you want to learn Japanese?

Really think for a moment… You want to learn Japanese, right? But will you be able to?

Of course you will be able to. You can learn a language at any age, time, place, situation. What I mean is, will you put in the required effort? Will you keep it up for the rest of your life, as you will most likely have to (after all, if English is your native language, you most likely practise that every day in some form!). Do you have what it takes to learn this language?

First, work out WHY

Why do you want to learn Japanese? What’s the driving force behind this decision? Do you even know?

I’m not sure that I even know why I’m tackling this difficult language. First off, I know that I want to learn a new language. It’s a desire I’ve had for a while. I’ve half heartedly dabbled in learning German and Swedish, but never got much further than “Gutentag”. Over and over again, however, I kept coming back to Japanese.

There is this strange curiosity with Japanese and Japan. I know a lot of people feel it. I learnt Japanese for a couple of years in primary and high school. I wish I had taken it more seriously back then, and I would be light years ahead in my studies than I am now. But because I had this experience, I know it is one of the reasons why I decided to go all out with Japanese now. It’s a bit crazy, I know, but I thought to my self “I already know Hiragana, I already know how to pronounce all the sounds, I have a basic understanding and some vocab… so let’s do Japanese.”

There were other things as well. I got into reading Manga. I started collecting as much Manga as I could. I have had limited exposure to Anime but I (usually) always enjoyed it. Then there was the allure of the Japanese culture, so different to “Western” culture that it immediately becomes a curiosity.

Also, I’m a sucker for learning. I think some how subconsciously I chose such a difficult language to learn as my first second language because I enjoy (somewhat!) a challenge.

So, two years ago, because of all these factors, I bought myself a text book. Yet, it still took me two years to really sit down and become serious with my Japanese learnings.

What are your reasons for wanting to study Japanese? A desire to be able to watch your favourite dramas without subtitles? So you can read your manga? What is your driving force? Is it strong enough to keep you going for a long time?

What is actually involved in learning a new language?

So you have your reasons all figured out – well, as much as you can. I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who want to learn Japanese “just because”. I can relate to that. Why do I want to learn Japanese truly? Because I do…

Before you go out there and start learning, let’s see what is involved with learning Japanese. No, I’m not trying to scare you (much), rather trying to make sure you are making an informed decision, so that you know what you are getting yourself into!

With any language there are four areas of focus. They are: Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking. Reading and Writing seemingly go together, as do Listening and Speaking. One would think that because you can listen to something you should be able to speak it. However, the reality is this is not true. I like to think of the difference as between your “active” knowledge and your “passive” knowledge.

It may be different for different people, but I see reading as so much easier than writing. In English I can easily read most, if not all words. However, that does not mean when I go to write them, without any reference, that I would be able to spell them. The same goes for Japanese. Perhaps even more so. It can be easy to recognise a character, but difficult to write it down.

Also, I think that reading and listening can be developed easier, especially if you are not living in Japan. It is somewhat easy to get access to actual Japanese speakers and real Japanese text. With the internet, you can have access to Japanese text through their websites, as well as Japanese radio and videos. There are even resources aimed at the English speaking audiences with Japanese speakers, such as the Japanese Podcast 101.

However, it can be more difficult to learn how to write or speak as, unless you have a Japanese friend or teacher to correct you, you can never be sure if you’re doing it correct. Also it takes some confidence to speak a language you are learning out loud. It’s going to be a given that you are going to sound funny, and say things that don’t make sense.

So just what is involved in reading, writing, listening and speaking Japanese? What is it that you will actually be learning when you begin to tackle Japanese?

Reading and Writing

In Japanese there are three writing systems. I will be going through each writing system more in depth in other posts. The three systems are Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. All three systems are often used in a single sentence, so you can’t just learn one and get by, unfortunately!

Hiragana and Katakana each have 46 characters. They are really easy to learn, trust me with this! The characters are all simple and easy to write, it’s a piece of cake! The real challenge here is Kanji. There are about 2000 Kanji characters that you need to learn. Some are quite easy, many more are difficult with many strokes and are similar to other Kanji characters.

There are many resources out there to help you learn Kanji. There is also for each character a proper order of strokes. These strokes help you remember how to write them. Writing Kanji is really logical as well, so once you know how to write a character you rarely forget (or can easily guess!)

One problem with the Kanji is that unlike Hiragana and Katakana, you can not tell the pronunciation just by looking at it. If you have never seen a particular Kanji before, you will not be able to sound out the word to guess it. You may be able to work out the meaning from the context, but you wont know how to pronounce it. Luckily there are lots of resources (such as dictionaries) on the internet that you can use for free to learn these Kanji that you come across, and a good paper dictionary is probably a must too for those who don’t have Internet access when they are studying.

Overall, learning to read and write Japanese will take time, however once you’re grasped Hiragana and Katakana, and have a system to learn the Kanji, it can be quite easy. Some people can learn it all in a month, while others it takes longer, sometimes years. Take it at your own pace, and it can be quite doable. (If you have confidence!)

Listening and Speaking

Listening and speaking can be easier to a certain degree, but also just as difficult to tackle. As the order of words in sentences is different to English, sometimes when first listening it can be difficult to grasp what is being said. I’ve spoken more about sentence structure in my article Speaking Like Yoda – Japanese Sentence Structure.

There are also limited sounds in Japanese which can be both a positive and negative. The negative is that this means there are many words that sound the same or similar with completely different meanings. However, you should be able to understand what is meant by the context. It also means that you can pronounce everything somewhat easily.

Other Things About the Language

Another thing about the language that you should note is particles. There are no direct translation into English for these particles, which can make it difficult for a learner to understand. Often there is confusion as to which particle to use where. Particles are there in a way to “label” what is what in a sentence. For many sentence structures you will just have to memorize what particle is used there.

Here’s some good news for those thinking about learning Japanese. There are many English words that have had their pronunciation changed slightly to fit in with Japanese sounds. This means that there are hundreds of words that you already know to bring in to your Japanese Language learning toolbox. Listen to a Japanese Drama and I guarantee that at least one word in there will be from English origin. However, some words that have been borrowed from English have had their meaning altered, and sometimes it can mean a totally different thing.

You have to remember that learning Japanese will be a life long adventure. You’ll have to continually keep practising your Japanese or else over time you will forget. Imagine all your hard work going to waste! If you want to learn Japanese, you will have to be prepared to be learning it all your life.

Do You Still Want To Learn Japanese?

If you do, good! Knowing what is involved in learning the language helps you make an informed choice. If you know what’s involved, then you are more likely to stick with it cause you know what’s ahead. On the other hand, a lot of people charge ahead, not knowing what they are in for!

I advise you to go and write down your reasons why you want to learn Japanese. Make some goals. Be realistic, but don’t be too easy on yourself. Set a challenge to see if you can beat it. These reasons and goals will keep you motivated, so put them in a prominent space. If at any time you feel discouraged, have a look at your aims and goals, so that you can remember why you’re doing this!

Next up in this series I will talk about different learning styles that people have. Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses in learning (anything) can help you learn easier and more efficiently. Stop being frustrated that you can’t replicate what others are doing and focus on what you can achieve!

How about sharing your reasons, aims and goals in learning Japanese in the comments?

Now, I’m only on lesson eight right now, and while it has mostly been review for me with only learning maybe one word per lesson, I have to say I am quite enjoying the method, I think it will be very effective for me and I’ve learnt a bit about myself in the process.

Basically The Pimsleur Course is 30 mp3 lessons of about 30 minutes each. Each lesson begins with a short dialogue in Japanese. Following on from that you are asked questions and you respond in Japanese. You are mostly prompted as what to say in English. There will follow a pause, then a Japanese native speaker will say the correct response. There is then another pause for you to repeat what was said, and again the Japanese speaker repeats what was said. I’m finding it a great way to get speaking. Of course you are going to be far from fluent when the course is over, but it’s a great start. It’s good that you do not simply parot what is said but have to actively think yourself as to what to say.

One thing I immediately notice is that there is plenty of time to think of a reply and answer. For instance, with the Genki CDs I find that I barely have time to read and say the dialogue… However, I have found that, even though I know a response, it can take me a moment to process what to say and then say it. Pimsleur has pauses which I think are just long enough.

This has been a great learning experience for me. I know that speaking is an area I need to work on. Pimsleur is getting me talking and I’m confident that my response time will improve.

Another great thing about Pimsleur is that it uses repetition and builds on previous lessons. I am finding that this method is really working. I think it does help that so far what has been covered has be review. I think Pimsleur will work best for me as a review device.

One down side is that sometimes I worry that I’m not hearing the correct pronunciation on new words. Of course I get it, but I’m very much a visual learner and like to have documentation written that I can read as well.

Another minus for me is that it doesn’t exactly teach grammar. Now, of course that teaching grammar in this course isn’t really what it is, and that is fine. However, it does mean that it can’t be the be all and end all for me. I really do like to know the nuts and bolts of a language. For me at least, I need more sources to supplement my learning.

Big pauses so that my slow brain can process what to say. Lots of repetition. Builds on previous episodes. Great speaking practise which I really need.

I am a visual learner so sometimes it feels “hard” for me to learn effectively. It’s not a complete course in learning Japanese.

Overall I’m extremely satisfied with Pimsleur Japanese I. Oh, and if you see a girl walking a long talking to herself, it’s probably me listening to Pimsleur on my ipod.