Oct 08 2007
Nihongo wakarundesho?
I spent the better part of my childhood afternoons at a Japanese language class at the neighborhood Buddhist temple. Japanese School was the after school program of my generation, a place where parents sent their kids to keep them out of their hair for a couple of hours. If you learned a little bit of Japanese, well, that was just a a bonus. Even after attending classes an hour a day, five days a week for eight years, most Japanese School graduates are not fluent, but have a rudimentary knowledge of the language. Now, decades later, the use-it-or-lose it principle certainly applies. While I’m still fluent at reading and writing hiragana and katakana and recognizing a handful of common kanji, I am very hesitant to attempt to carry on a conversation in Japanese. On countless occasions, I have wished that I had continued in my studies of nihongo (the Japanese language) and lamented over my lack of conversational skills. So, when I discovered Mango Languages, it gave me a renewed interest in picking up Japanese again.
Mango Languages is a free Internet course that offers 100 lessons for various languages such as Spanish, Russian, French, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Greek. I am on lesson 4 (of 101) and have found it to be a good refresher. There are over 100 slides per lesson, but a lot of it is redundant information to help you review and check your knowledge of what you just learned. Especially helpful is the way the words are color-coded for easier translation, written in both English and Japanese hiragana. If you don’t read hiragana, hover your mouse over the characters and a pop-up box of the romanization appears. Each lessons starts with a short dialog and the slides explain the translations and grammatical elements to give you a good understanding of why the sentence is structured as it is. The dialog features native speakers, so that you can hear the proper pronunciation and practice emulating it.
Peeking ahead to the last lesson, I realized that Mango will provide a good foundation, but I’d like to continue to develop my skills beyond that level, so I started looking for more resources. In iTunes, you’ll find a ton of free podcasts you can subscribe to on virtually any topic you can imagine. In the search bar, I typed, “learn Japanese” and got a list of 46 podcasts. Surely not all of them will be gems, but keeping a keen eye on the “popularity” rating will generally give you an idea of who’s hot and who’s not. The most popular podcast listed was called JapanesePod101.com. I navigated to their website and found that it’s a company that backs the free podcast, offering free and paid subscriptions to their service. I immediately signed up for the free 7-day trial and will tour around and let you know what I find. If the resources are as comprehensive as they say, it may be worth the $8/month to subscribe. They also have a “premium” service which is $25/month. Of course, discounts are offered if you pay for the year up front, so I may opt to do that if I choose to subscribe.
Have you heard of JapanesePod101.com or tried the service? If so, tell me what you think!
If the service can keep me engaged and interested in learning Japanese, it will be a good investment indeed. Will keep you posted…
A 30-something Christian girl, blissfully wedded to her perfect match (the yang to her yin) of 14 years. Living life in Hawaii, less than 5 miles from her hometown, a slave to her mortgage payment, but seeking balance in her pursuit of family, faith, recreation, and rest.
I’ve subscribed to the JapanesePod101.com podcast in the past and found it to be a pretty good resource with a lot of fresh updates (and all for free too). Kirainet has a bunch of helpful links to learn Japanese with: http://www.kirainet.com/english/japanese-bookmarks/.
For myself, I found listening to J-pop (well, actually more than just listening but singing along with the songs too), reading manga and watching Japanese-language shows (fan-subbed ones are great) helped a lot too.
Ha! I went to a gakuen for a few years growing up, took a year of it in college (or no graduation) and still can’t speak hardly a lick. Two of my friends have been listening to the podcast of which you speak, and one is pretty high on it and has been learning a lot; the other lost interest
I also went to Japanese school for about 6 years…I can’t speak a word…I can read, and write…haha…K bought from costco how to speak japanese for the computer, but we never bothered to load it on to the computer yet…lol
Something else to check out: A-kanji-a-day dashboard widget: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/akanjiaday.html.
Ah~ I’ve been listening to JapanesePod101 off and on since it started. I find that it’s good for listening comprehension. They go slow on the points so it sinks in by the end of the episode then build on that concept in the following episodes. It may be a little slow for folks who already have a decent grasp on the language, but always good review. They even do some cool culture points like talking about the difference between Valentines Day and White Day in Japan.
I’ve been struggling to learn Japanese to some degree of fluency for many years - I went through about 5 years at Japanese school, then about 4 years in college. I learned the most grammar while on the mainland at Scripps and was pretty disappointed that I was still reviewing things in my second and third year at UH. (Although they focus more on situational/functional Japanese at UH rather than structure and kanji.)
I recently picked up a Nintendo DS game: Zaidanhoujin Nippon Kanji Nouryoku Kentei Kounin: KanKen DS to practice/learn kanji. Might not be what you’re looking for, as it focuses strictly on kanji comprehension, writing and onyomi/kunyomi reading for proficiency test taking. I have yet to actually start playing it though - been too busy. ^_^;;
Kitsy: that sounds like a fun game…good to learn, and practice Kanji..I have a DS as well maybe I should pick up something like that…where did you get your game from?
Shari: I picked mine up from Play-Asia (the link above in blue takes you there) - It’s a pretty reputable site for import games and prices and shipping is fair. Try look through the site for other similar programs - there’s quite a number of learning software available!
Try reading the blogs on this site: Naruhodo! - they seem to reviews Japanese learning software~ ^_^