The Plotted Course

When I decided to start learning Japanese, I had no clue on where I should start or how. I was working full time and had no idea if the interest would last long enough to justify college instruction or not. So I tried to grab a couple of different resources for self study. Among them I picked up Rosetta Stone Japanese, Pimsleur Japanese, a number of books, and even "My Japanese Coach" for Nintendo DS.

A lot of people seem to hold Rosetta Stone in very high praise for learning a new language. It left me wanting some more guidance after the first lesson. They associate words with pictures of what it means. This works...but sometimes I just want it to say, "this means that". It never does, so if you don't fully grasp the words associated with the picture you will have a problem. But this is all drawing off one lesson of experience. I will give it more of a shot a little down the road and report back.

Pimsleur was more descriptive than Rosetta Stone in my mind. It is a set of CD's that you can listen to with translations of words and sentences with focus on repetition. Eventually words stick and you can actually understand what the speakers are saying. I have learned a decent amount of vocabulary from the course but am only on lesson 5. I recommend these lessons for those looking to get a quick grasp on spoken Japanese.

My Japanese Coach for Nintendo DS. You're likely wondering if such a game could actually be informative. The answer is yes. I would actually go so far as to say at this point I like it more than Rosetta Stone. The structure is lesson based, and it teaches vocabulary, sentence structuring, writing, etc. It is a comprehensive course for only $30! The drawback is the integrity of the information. I know at least some of the stroke orders on the characters they teach are off. Learning the wrong stroke order is not such a good thing in written Japanese (or so I'm adamantly instructed).

I have a number of books, and at this point they are the ones guiding me through the blackness of ignorance. Remembering the Kana (by James W. Heisig) is hands down the fastest method of learning the kana writing systems. Remembering the Kanji (also by James W. Heisig) is what I am working on now, and it seems to show the same promise. I will go over them a bit more in depth later. I also have Kodansha's furigana Japanese dictionary. It has Japanese > English and English > Japanese dictionaries all wrapped up into one compact package. It has been a good dictionary so far for my skill level, I would recommend it. Be warned however...all Japanese words are written kana/kanji. Fortunately all kanji has furigana associated with it (furigana is tiny kana written above, showing how to pronounce the kanji).

Someone reading this might be scratching their head at this point saying things like, "Can-jee whut?". Being that I tackled learning to read and write the kana so efficiently, I am going to go over the written language first. My knowledge at this point is almost entirely comprised of kana anyway.

Any comments are welcome and encouraged. If you feel the need to e-mail me, you can reach me at nihonnotes [at] gmail [dot] com .