So I'm self teaching myself Japanese. It's been a smooth process so far but requires a lot of self discipline. I decided to create this topic as a "journal" of sorts for my learning as it helps me keep everything in context and see how far I've come.
Introduction
Anyone looking to learn Japanese I highly recommend Remembering the Kana and Remembering the Kanji. The difficulty with learning Japanese (and I've experienced this when trying unsuccessfully to learn it in the past) is it's a sound based language; each character is associated with a single unchanging sound that also carries its own meaning. This goes against English where only a few letters have their own meaning, have multiple pronunciations, and pronunciation can change depending on the order letters appear. Japanese students learn the language through constant repetition and use because the mnemonic aids we used in English don't apply. In grade school we turned the alphabet into a song and associated each letter with a visual cue ('a' is for apple, 'b' is for boy, etc.). Many English speakers have trouble reciting the alphabet backwards because subconsciously we were taught one direction and one beat.
These two books teach the kana to English speakers in the best way possible: by providing a visual aid and attributing a sound to that aid. With 96 characters across two syllabries and several thousand logographic characters (1,006 are considered "basic" and must be learned by 6th grade), Japanese is a very intimidating language and the common process taught in schools simply isn't efficient for an English speaker. To give a learning example, the hiragana ku (く, pronounced 'koo') is attributed to the "cooing" sound of a baby; imagine the open mouth is baby Pac-Man as he coos while eating the pellets. Even difficult sounds to write and memorize, like the katakana for Ne (ネ, pronounced 'nay') is simple. Think of "Nay-val Accident": imagine the stroke at the very top is a captain standing on the bow of his ship. The stroke beneath the bow is a coral reef and the stroke sticking out the far right is a chunk of his ship breaking apart.
The books recommend the best way for an English speaker to learn Japanese is via self study. Classroom study is important to learn proper discipline in stroke order but they argue a traditional classroom setting is detrimental to an English speaker's learning process. I must agree: it took me 100 minutes to learn the ひらがな (hiragana) and 111 minutes to learn the カタカナ (katakana). I'm still studying the diphthongs and conjugation but such swift learning wouldn't have been possible without these visual aids.
Japanese Learning Resources
Some invaluable resources to aid in translation:
Rikaichan: This is a Firefox plugin that translates Japanese text as you highlight it. It's a very effective learning tool, basically serving as a dynamic dictionary.
Furiganizer: Adds furigana to kanji. In short, Kanji are Chinese characters that have both sound and meaning. Furigana is when hiragana sounds are spelled out. This aids the reader in pronouncing kanji as there are literally thousands children have to memorize and new ones are added/removed yearly.
Hiragana JP: Adds furigana to an entire web page. Very helpful when reading text heavy websites.
Introduction
Anyone looking to learn Japanese I highly recommend Remembering the Kana and Remembering the Kanji. The difficulty with learning Japanese (and I've experienced this when trying unsuccessfully to learn it in the past) is it's a sound based language; each character is associated with a single unchanging sound that also carries its own meaning. This goes against English where only a few letters have their own meaning, have multiple pronunciations, and pronunciation can change depending on the order letters appear. Japanese students learn the language through constant repetition and use because the mnemonic aids we used in English don't apply. In grade school we turned the alphabet into a song and associated each letter with a visual cue ('a' is for apple, 'b' is for boy, etc.). Many English speakers have trouble reciting the alphabet backwards because subconsciously we were taught one direction and one beat.
These two books teach the kana to English speakers in the best way possible: by providing a visual aid and attributing a sound to that aid. With 96 characters across two syllabries and several thousand logographic characters (1,006 are considered "basic" and must be learned by 6th grade), Japanese is a very intimidating language and the common process taught in schools simply isn't efficient for an English speaker. To give a learning example, the hiragana ku (く, pronounced 'koo') is attributed to the "cooing" sound of a baby; imagine the open mouth is baby Pac-Man as he coos while eating the pellets. Even difficult sounds to write and memorize, like the katakana for Ne (ネ, pronounced 'nay') is simple. Think of "Nay-val Accident": imagine the stroke at the very top is a captain standing on the bow of his ship. The stroke beneath the bow is a coral reef and the stroke sticking out the far right is a chunk of his ship breaking apart.
The books recommend the best way for an English speaker to learn Japanese is via self study. Classroom study is important to learn proper discipline in stroke order but they argue a traditional classroom setting is detrimental to an English speaker's learning process. I must agree: it took me 100 minutes to learn the ひらがな (hiragana) and 111 minutes to learn the カタカナ (katakana). I'm still studying the diphthongs and conjugation but such swift learning wouldn't have been possible without these visual aids.
Japanese Learning Resources
Some invaluable resources to aid in translation:
Rikaichan: This is a Firefox plugin that translates Japanese text as you highlight it. It's a very effective learning tool, basically serving as a dynamic dictionary.
Furiganizer: Adds furigana to kanji. In short, Kanji are Chinese characters that have both sound and meaning. Furigana is when hiragana sounds are spelled out. This aids the reader in pronouncing kanji as there are literally thousands children have to memorize and new ones are added/removed yearly.
Hiragana JP: Adds furigana to an entire web page. Very helpful when reading text heavy websites.
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