http://www.mangolanguages.com/

Has anyone tried these mangolanguage lessons? I was doing them during the beta, and they are pretty neat, and free. I just thought I'd tell everyone about them.

They are very similar to pimsleur, lots of repetition, audio clips from a conversation, and asking you how to say something in japanese, or alternately asking you what the japanese phrase may mean. It's got printed cards in kana, with english hover translations. There are a hundred lessons, so something for all levels I think, although I've only done fifteen or so. Most is quite functional, based on phrases for situations you might encounter.

I remembered and used some of it well in a moment of out-of-my-depth-ness, so I feel it's good. No kanji is the only drawback, perhaps some of the pay subscriptions provide that stuff. The biggest plus is that it's free, and provides lots of good repetitions. Each lesson takes about half an hour, and because it's card based, you can just do bits of it throughout the day if you like.

Anyway, check it out and tell us what you think. They have a lot of languages already and are planning more.

They already use pretty strange Japanese in the first lesson. Dealing with culture and customs might be troublesome in the beginning, but I can't recommend lessons that teach you to assault strangers with [kana]ogenki desuka? anatano nameaha nan desuka?[/kana]

They don't seem to be quite as free as I remember, either.

xaarg Wrote:They already use pretty strange Japanese in the first lesson. Dealing with culture and customs might be troublesome in the beginning, but I can't recommend lessons that teach you to assault strangers with [kana]ogenki desuka? anatano nameaha nan desuka?[/kana]

hahahaha... That combined with the slightly odd pronunciation of the male voice is leading me to believe that this site isn't made by native speakers. Over-familiarity with strangers and awkward conversations are par for the course in the majority of Japanese lessons I've seen though.