I have been learning Japanese with the AJATT method for about five months now, and I would like to start adding a little Spanish to my SRSing. I'm nowhere near fluent in Japanese, but I feel like I'm doing pretty well, so I'm looking for Spanish sentences with Japanese translations. If anyone here has made an anki deck with Japanese-Spanish sentences and would be willing to share it, or if anyone knows of any good resources, such as books or websites, for teaching Spanish to Japanese people, I would really appreciate it. A dictionary with lots of example sentences like alc.co.jp, but with Spanish translations, would be the best, but I can't seem to find one. Thanks for any help.

Interestnig, you are trying to do laddering right? Learning your "L3" in "L2"? hehe sounds pretty cool.

I think you could be the person who creates the first anki deck with Spanish to Japanese, since not many people (on this forum I assume) want to learn Spanish from Japanese. I was going to see if I could learn French from Japanese to not get my L1 and L2 (English and Spanish mixed up) but I am focusing on the Japanese till I feel comfortable enough to push in that direction.

What I can suggest, depending on your spanish level is to get Spanish movies with Japaense subs. This way you can follow the story in Japanese and listen to Spanish at the smae time. I watched a French movie this way.... following most of the story in Japanese without really speaking French and picking up some phrases along the way.

You could also search for "Reviewing the Kanji" in Spanish and see if you can find some forums in Spanish, where you will most likey have spanish decks.

Maybe google "Anki en espanol" or maybe "Anki palabras Japonese" and see what you can find. On the Anki online server there are literally thousands of people with their own decks, I am sure you might be able to find some sentences there from Japanese to Spanish, or vice-versa.

cheers

sirbootis Wrote:I have been learning Japanese with the AJATT method for about five months now, and I would like to start adding a little Spanish to my SRSing. I'm nowhere near fluent in Japanese, but I feel like I'm doing pretty well, so I'm looking for Spanish sentences with Japanese translations. If anyone here has made an anki deck with Japanese-Spanish sentences and would be willing to share it, or if anyone knows of any good resources, such as books or websites, for teaching Spanish to Japanese people, I would really appreciate it. A dictionary with lots of example sentences like alc.co.jp, but with Spanish translations, would be the best, but I can't seem to find one. Thanks for any help.

It's a very good idea, except I think it will be TOO hard to do it right now.

the whole philosophy of AJATT and RTK is that you make the process into the smallest and easiest steps possible, so that it would be fun and easy, motivational and effective.

I would recommend you to become fluent in japanese, and then learn spanish through japanese, because you won't have to concentrate on 2 foreign languages at once.

Despite what I said, I don't have any experience, so I'm not sure about all that, but you know it might slow you down a bit. Definitely try to experiment, as you might discover something.

Just my opinion.

akagisempai, that is a good idea about searching for Japanese Anki decks in Spanish. I haven't been able to find anything so far, but I will keep trying. Thanks.

jettyke, thanks for the advice. Japanese is definitely my main priority. I have always been interested in the culture and have wanted to learn Japanese for the past 10 years. But, living in the southern US, I hear people speaking Spanish all the time. Plus there are plenty of Spanish channels and movies with Spanish subtitles. I was planning on waiting until I became fluent in Japanese before learning Spanish, but with all the Spanish-speaking people in my area and all the resources available, I feel like learning Spanish would be much easier. I'm sure learning both at the same time might get a little confusing, but I think that overall it will help my Japanese learning, since I will only be adding a small amount of Spanish and I will be using materials meant to teach Spanish to Japanese people. It would be like using Japanese as my native language. I could be completely wrong, but it's worth a try. Thanks.

I think you can go for it, as long as you know your ultimate goals. The only difference between a "realistic" or "unrealistic" goal is age, or how you view yourself. Kids that live in areas with people that speak multiple languages, tend to always speak those languages, while learning them at the same time. Of course there is a primary language, but they still "pickup" the other languages situationally. I only mention this to say its not unrealistic to do what you are trying to do.

However, since I can speak Japanese and Spanish (not fluently, but decent) I can say it might be tricky to learn them at once, because you might initially confuse vocabulary. I was trying to learn Portuguese and Japanese at once and had to kill the Portuguese because I was mixing up vocabulary.

I'm not sure if you know about laddering...which is the idea that you learn a new language first in your native tongue, then learn your third in your second, etc. This helps to not get too mixed up.

So for me Native Language (L1) - English ---> learned Spanish (L2)

I also learned Japanese in English, but I experimented a bit with learning Italian in Spanish with cool results. They are very close (and ultimately confusing) so I stopped. But I feel I will start studying German in Spanish (while studying Japanese) to see how that works.

I don't think I have such a handle on Japanese that I'll be ready to study another language it yet. Alas, I feel like i'm rambling

cheers again

My first language is spanish,i've been studying japanese for about 3 months and have to say the vowels are the same as spanish,for me whenever i read something in japanese i read it as i would read spanish,same tongue movement,same lip movement,same everything.I think if you learn japanese first, spanish would be really easy, just read spanish as you would read japanese.Besides spanish has the same grammar structure as english.

I eventually want to learn Spanish using Japanese as well- and I wish I would have learned Spanish first, then Japanese. I think Spanish is a much better second language for a native English speaker. It will take you a far shorter amount of time to learn Spanish to a reasonable level and then start learning Japanese using Spanish than visa versa.

I'm around N2 level (though I think I just failed it) and I'm not ready to start learning Spanish using my Japanese yet. I think it'll be another couple years at least.

My two cents- take advantage of the Spanish resources around you! Learn Spanish and then move on to Japanese.

You are not going to be able to find as many good resources in Japanese to learn Spanish with as you will learning through English.