Learning a new language

[Mizuchi]

Hi. Recently I started to learn the japanese language but have found some obstacles and am wondering if anyone who is learning or has learned another language has any tips.

I bought:
Japanese for dummies (it's a good book because it explains things very easily and clearly but I don't like the fact that it has no work for you to do to practice what you've learned)
A couple of books on hiragana/katakana/kanji (am not planning to learn until I am decent in speaking japanese)

And I also bought the Rosetta Stone learning software. I heard it was really good but I tried it out and it has me very confused. It shows me pictures and says what they are in japanese and I have to memorize and match them. I really don't understand because some of the pictures they show I am not quite sure what they are showing, and the program doesnt give a translation of what it is.

If anyone has any experience with this software, am I doing something wrong? It feels more of like a workbook rather than a learning software, because its popping up sentances at me and im not sure whats a verb and whats a noun or even what the picture is saying.


I can't take classes as I live in a small town and am only 16, and there aren't any classes around me so i'll have to wait till college. Does anyone have any tips on how to learn this language a little easier?

[darkshadow]

Rosetta is actually pretty good, it has a structure to it that makes you kind of match the words with the pictures, so you understand what is what, you'll start to understand what i mean when you get a bit further in, though i stopped at the colors cause i got lazy ( should pick it up sometime again)

[Mizuchi]

yes but see my problem is understanding what the picture is showing. For example, i dont know if they are saying if someone is jumping or landing. Or if theres a picture of a boy under a bunch smiling, and theres like 8 diff little words, idk what means what, and some pics i dont even know what the pic is about.

[darkshadow]

Well I dunno, there are like 4 pictures I think, and about one sentence, and the software doesnt just drop you in the sentences, first you get single words to match with the pictures, then you move on to combo's and very simple sentences, it gets harder also with the colors.

So unless you somehow jumped in right away to the sentences, you are either incompatible with the teaching method, or its too hard for you atm and you need to go back a lesson, or do the same lesson a couple of times, that helps a lot.

[Mizuchi]

im on lesson 1 and 2... ill give u an example:

it starts out easy, with just 1 word like otokonoko and onnanoko, and thats obvious that it means boy and girl. but later on it gets to things like:

uma ni notte iru onnanoko (this is still the very first lesson).

now i dont get if that means the girl rides the horse or if the horse is being ridden by the girl or if the girl is riding the horse.

another picture has a retarded-looking boy smiling under a table, and it says:

teeburu no shita ni iru otokonoko.

.... i have no idea what any of those words are talking about except otokonoko. Maybe teeburu means retarded and shita means looking, and ni iru means under the table?

[darkshadow]

Well teeburu means table and shita no iru is under the, but that aside it comes down to the rest of the pictures.
When you find out that teeburu no shita ni iru otokonoko is linked to the boy under the table, the teaching method requires you to kinda make the link that boy = otokonoko and teeburu = table.

Then you move on and see a boy on a table, which changes the sentence by one word.
This is kinda how the teaching method works, it wants you to make the link between the words and the pictures yourself, so it sticks better i guess, instead of just making you rehearse a list of words and translations.

It tries to make you think "logical" i guess.

[Mizuchi]

What about tenses though, when it shows a girl riding a horse. Is the sentance saying the horse is being ridden by a girl? or the girl is riding the horse? or the girl rides the horse?

Do you know japanese? If so, what methods did you use to learn it?

[darkshadow]

Nah like i said i got lazy and stopped learning it, so yeah I do know a LITTLE, but not enough to really advice you on that matter, the tenses are adressed in the software too though, the first few lessons just focus on expanding your vocabulary in a very clever way.

And the methods I used where rosetta stone and raw anime watching , which helps too but very little if you don't know some japanese already.

[Mizuchi]

I think im going to learn grammar first before learning vocab from rosetta stone. I'm using japanese for dummies which is great for explaining structure, but its hard to practice what i learn. Do you know any good workbooks or ways to practice the rules that i learned?

[darkshadow]

Hmm not really, I think Psyke is the best to ask that, or Masa, since he is learning japanese himself atm.

[Assassin]

mizuchi, i think you're focusing too much on the order of the words in english....not being a native english speaker, i can tell you there is a big difference with where nouns/verbs/adverbs/adjectives etc are placed. I can say "i am riding a bike" in another language, and even though the words are 'literally' the same it, if you translate it as is, it mite say "the bike riding i am".....just because each language has its own unique method/order.

That being said, i think as long as you can understand that "uma ni notte iru onnanoko" indicates that a horse is being ridden by a girl (as opposed to a camel being groomed by an elderly man), thats what the software is trying to get accross. As DS mentioned, some later lessons will probably cover the grammatical aspects of the language, but for now they just want you to have a basic understanding of whats being shown/said.

Ps: i think someone like Kitkat mite be able to shed more like on the various differences in languages and thier grammatical orders, since she's studying that stuff. And also, you should get on #tradersnetwork on rizon and talk to masa, since he's currently learning Japanese too.

[Mizuchi]

not quite sure how to work IRC, i used to use it for counter-strike but i completely forgot how, i have the program mIRC, could anyone explain how exactly i can get on the channel?

[Assassin]

Take a look at the IRC:FAQ thread.

[David75]

Hi there.
I'm starting japanese with Tell me More from Auralog.

I have to say that their speech analysis seems great, that helps you having a nice pronounciation. Maybe not top notch, but at least clean engouh for being understood.

What is a let down to me is that too few kanjis are available in the method:1000
and there's nothing that helps you knowing the stroker order. It also seems they don't show you the basic "kanji keys" or whatever.
For that kanji problem, I'm currently trying KingKanji for 30 days. it has 2100 kanjis, but at least you have stroke order and you can write them and the soft tells you your wrongs with simple hints. It works on palm and other things of the sort, on windows too, but then you need an appropriate input device (pen+tablet around 50$) because the mouse isn't your best friend in that case.

The image+text methog is called "Global method" in France.
I escaped it by a little when I entered school. And all the friends that learned with it
are just so bad at writing French Eventhough some became engineers, their writing
is so crippled.
Anyways, this method isn't for me. At least I can't have bare kanjis and pictures+audio.
I need more than that.
There's still a kind of dictionary with pronounciations and so on, but it's a bit too long to start this way. And no stroke order again.

So Rosetta is the same...
At least I know I made no mistake in my choice.

[Psyke]

Assassin is correct. You need to break free of your English language mental models in order to learn a new language. It's not easy, but the more lanuages you pick up and the more you speak, it gets easier breaking free of these mindsets.

Anyway, just to help you out in the 2 sentences above.

uma　 ni 　notte iru 　onnanoko
馬　　に　乗っている　女の子。
horse (particle) riding girl.

'Uma' means horse, 'ni' is the particle, 'notte iru' comes from the verb 'norimasu', which means ride. 'Notte iru' means riding. 'Onna' is woman, 'onna no ko' means girl.

teeburu 　no 　shita ni iru 　otokonoko
てーブル　の　下にいる　　　男の子
Table (particle) under (particle) boy.

'Teeburu', written in katakana, means table obviously. 'No' can be translated to 'the', 'shita' means under, 'ni iru' comes from 'ni imasu' and refers to the place the person is at. 'Otoko' means man, 'otokonoko' means boy.

Japanese isn't easy, but you get satisfaction when you can understand anime without the need for subtitles, or go shopping in the Japanese section and understanding exactly what's written on the packaging.

My advice is start with memorizing the hiragana and katakana first. Kanji is inevitable but there's too much to memorize so don't get confused by it. You'll be surprised at how much you can read just with the Katakana alone. And of course, don't give up!

[Mizuchi]

hey psyke do you have an AIM screen name so i can talk to you easier? I have a lot of ?s and you seem like u could really help me a lot. thanks for the help man i appreciate it, this language is pretty hard...

[Ryllharu]

Mandarin Chinese is hard (Cantonese is worse). English is hard (the homonyms and homophones get most ESL learners).

Japanese, not unlike most romance languages, has specific grammar rules, and specific forms. You can't just learn Japanese from the vocab, you need to understand the grammar first. That makes the learning easier and faster, as it is dramatically different from English with its utterly rigid sentence structure.

Assassin covered a lot of this already, but it is the method I was learning Latin in high school. From my own experience, if you combine the grammar rules with Rosetta Stone or something similar, it goes much faster.

[Psyke]

hey psyke do you have an AIM screen name so i can talk to you easier? I have a lot of ?s and you seem like u could really help me a lot. thanks for the help man i appreciate it, this language is pretty hard...

I think asking through AIM/MSN will only confuse you further. It's not easy explaining in person, and even worse explaining through text only. Try and search for a few Japanese ebooks online. I've got a few recently and thought they were pretty good.

[Mizuchi]

have you tried japanese for dummies? Its what im using now and its pretty good, i just dont like that it doesnt give you work you can do to practice what u learned..

[darkshadow]

Mandarin Chinese is hard (Cantonese is worse). English is hard (the homonyms and homophones get most ESL learners).

Japanese, not unlike most romance languages, has specific grammar rules, and specific forms. You can't just learn Japanese from the vocab, you need to understand the grammar first. That makes the learning easier and faster, as it is dramatically different from English with its utterly rigid sentence structure.

Assassin covered a lot of this already, but it is the method I was learning Latin in high school. From my own experience, if you combine the grammar rules with Rosetta Stone or something similar, it goes much faster.

with latin and greek we did vocab first, translating little stories and such.