I want to start learning Japanese, but since I don't have Pimsleur money I need a method to hit it. Right now I have 'A Guide to Writing Kanji And Kana' Book 1 and 2, by Wolfgang Hadamitzky and Mark Spahn, and Living Language's 'Ultimate Japanese' (which is supposedly a VERY shitty book, but it was free and I'm using it for grammar/conjugation only.) I'm debating making flash cards as well.
So, how should I go about learning it? I'm sure just reading it won't be enough...
Name:
Anonymous2007-02-18 11:50
1). Learn to speak some of the language first before you learn to write it.
- Be able to give a detailed self-introduction including things such as name, age, star sign (useful), what nationality (as in which country do you hold citizenship, not what background your family is), where you live, what you do with yourself (for example, student - include major, builder, waiter, chef and so on, teacher/professor/lecturer - include specialty), your hobbies, and often it's useful to include a reason as to why you learned Japanese. While you'll never say a self-introduction this long, you're grouping together the main bits of information that make you who you are, and they're much easier to remember.
- Be able to express your likes and dislikes.
- Naturally, if you're a beginner you should also learn how to ask what a word is in English.
- Numbers/days/prices/times.
- Of course learn the cultural aspect in which the above points are used. For example, you almost never use the word hate, you need to determine who your ingroup and who your outgroup are. Learn some basic grammatical structures: wa + desu, object + o + verb.
- Learn basic tenses (desu/deshita, masu/mashita).
- Learn negatives (dewa arimasen/ja arimasen).
- ONLY LEARN DESU AND MASU. DO NOT USE DA OR RU FORM! As a beginner you won't know the intricacies of ingroups and outgroups, so just speak with everybody using the same level of politeness. Better safe than sorry.
2). Learn hiragana and katakana. Continue learning vocab and sentence structures.
- Learn the exceptions in hiragana (for example, "wa" topic marker is written with は and "o" object marker is written with を (type "wo" into the keyboard to get it).
- Stroke order is important. If you write these in an incorrect order you will probably write these incorrectly.
- Ensure everything you do now is in kana. Make sure you learn a lot of gairaigo (borrowed words) so you can also use them. But ensure you still use a lot of kango/jukugo/wago.
- Pick up adjectives. Enhance descriptions of things you do/see with adjectives.
- Learn に verbs. Verbs that indicate direction (iku/kuru/noru/hairu/etc).
- As with before, don't bother learning da/ru forms yet, stick with desu and masu.
By that point you should be able to read and write basic Japanese sentences that: describe fact, indicate action, add colour with adjectives, indicate direction of a person or a thing, describe yourself, write all of this in the two phonetic scripts.
While it doesn't sound like much, to master that you'll also have to pick up a large amount of vocabulary.
Once you've reached that point, you can go off and start learning kanji. You should also consult your textbook (the one you've been using to get all the info for the above from) and follow its instruction on grammatical structures from then on.
As for kanji and vocabulary? I suggest you get hold of the one hundred kanji that you're expected to know for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level Four (nihongo nouryoku shiken yon kyuu/にほんごのうりょくしけんよんきゅう/日本語能力試験四級). Take it, once you pass, move onto level three vocab/grammar/kanji and master those. Once you pass three there's a rather big gap between 2-kyuu and 3-kyuu. If you can pass 2-kyuu you're doing very well. If you pass 1-kyuu, you're a natural.