Getting your feet wet with Japanese

I got a question from a reader the other day asking for suggestions on how to learn Japanese slowly and casually.

The reader was straight-forward and said that he didn’t have enough time to spend hours everyday learning Kanji, and isn’t looking to become fluent anytime soon either. The goal is just to make Japanese not so “foreign”. That probably describes most people who are first starting out… So here is how I would do it.

1. Get a good basic textbook.

You’ll want to have a good textbook that will walk you through essential vocabulary, grammar points, and hopefully includes a CD so you can catch the audio as well. A lot of information for language learning is available on the web, but having a textbook helps a lot because of it’s more structured and paced approach.

We did a recommended textbook post on JapanNewbie a while back, and my opinion still stands. With the TheJapanShop.com sale this month you might be able to get stuff cheaper than on Amazon, so be sure to shop around.

I still recommend the Genki Series. Remember though, the CD-set for Genki is sold separately. (Why!?)

You can also get flashcards and workbooks and a super 200$ plus CD-set for Genki, but I don’t think anyone really needs all that unless they’re using Genki to teach Japanese…

New years is coming up, great time to start new things (that hopefully will continue past February!), also, it’s a good time to take advantage of the 10% sale off everything at TheJapanShop.com.

2. Get a lot of media.

If you don’t have tons of time it will also probably be difficult to motivate yourself to put in the 30 min or so that you hope to daily. School, work, YouTube, and Scrabble on FaceBook will all be competing for those last few minutes of useful brainpower remaining before you go to sleep, so the Japanese study component of your day has got to be entertaining.

There are a lot of subtitled and fun, Japanese movies available that are a great supplement to a regular study scheme. Anime is OK, but anime alone is dangerous because conversations about fantasy worlds, magic, and space travel just don’t happen often enough in everyday Japanese conversation. I’ll bet it won’t show up in Genki either, so it’s best so spend your time watching something that uses more everyday vocabulary. Shall We Dance is a great starting place. It might make you cry.

 3. Find a language exchange partner

I thought twice about making this my 3rd recommendation… But やっぱり, I gotta list it. It’s not always easy to arrange a language exchange partner… But I think for the casual learner it will really help. You can not only exchange language tidbits, but cultural information as well. Even if you can’t find someone who lives in your area, try to get some kind of pen-pal online. If you can keep it up I think it will help a lot. For advanced speakers I actually wouldn’t always recommend the language exchange thing, because most native speakers don’t know how to teach Japanese… For a beginner though, the extra language and culture contact itself is worth it.

Extra stuff: Hardware! 

If you can afford it, a good electronic dictionary is also a good thing to have, even for (especially for?) beginners who are just slowly introducing themselves to the language. You all know what my dictionary of choice is (the GW9600, more power!), but for absolute beginners maybe the less expensive Canon G55 will suffice.

That’s a wrap. Get the books. Get the audio/visual. Get some native speaker time. If you can afford it, get some technology to back you up… Stir and repeat. After a while Japanese won’t seem like such a “foreign” language after all.

Actually recently I have been  casually studying Korean. I have a great textbook, I listen to KoreanClass101.com religiously, I have a Korean dictionary for my GW9600, and I meet with a language exchange dude weekly. (He’s a PhD student studying how Kansai-dialect remains with elderly Koreans who were forcibly taught Japanese under occupation by the Japanese military during WWII. Apparently most of the language teachers in Korea were from the Kansai area!)

The only thing I’m lacking is some good subtitled Korean media to watch or listen to. If anyone has any recommendations of Korean dramas or movies that I could watch over and over I appreciate any recommendations! Also, any Korean music with easy to understand lyrics would be great as well.

Happy learning!

- Harvey