Hey guys,

I've been learning Chinese for about a year now, and I've finished volume 1 of RTH. I know you folks are more focused on Japanese here, but I thought maybe you could help me out.

I've been doing a lot of research into the best methods to learn quickly, because my progress is kind of slow, and it seems like there's more disagreeance than agreeance.

Basically, I put together a short survey to see what people are doing, and how effective they find it. I'd really appreciate it if you took a minute or two to fill it out. I just want to see what people are doing, how they rate their progress, and basically how they think they could improve.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/view...c6MA#gid=0

Not trying to promote one method over another, but I'll publish the results when I have enough data, so that everyone can benefit from it.

Thanks guys! If you have any advice, it would be appreciated!

one word: read!

Have you been there?
http://forum.reviewingthehanzi.com/

two words: date Japanese women.

@OP: People are keep on opening up such threads without realising that there is not perfect learn method that works for all. We are all different in how we think, perceive things and eventually learn and memorise. Try out different methods mentioned on the wiki here and find out what suits you best.

My impression is that a lot of learners here achieved a great deal of fluency thanks to SRS. Good luck.

warakawa Wrote:two words: date Japanese women.

yes, i think this would help for learning any language.

edit: hyperborea, i was joking. i didn't even mention the word count.

PS when i tell a japanese man that i want to learn japanese, it is not uncommon for him to immediately suggest i find a japanese girlfriend...

The best method is the one that doesn't make you quit; Quitting/infrequent studying is the only thing that will stop you from learning a language.

Hyperborea Wrote:One thing to be careful of with this approach is to avoid sounding like a woman when you speak Japanese.

My friend 由紀 thinks it's 可愛い when American men speak like Japanese women. Not sure that's a universal opinion, though. Or that your average American man wants to be 可愛い.

I always find the "date Japanese women" suggestion funny. What, gay men and straight women don't learn Japanese?

Tori-kun, I know that there's no single best way, the point is to see what people find helpful, what tools people combine to get the best results, etc.

Thanks to everyone that has responded so far! There aren't enough data yet to make any kind of statement, but I see a few trends developing (surprisingly few people using the big commercial tools like Rosetta stone)

earlobes Wrote:Thanks to everyone that has responded so far! There aren't enough data yet to make any kind of statement, but I see a few trends developing (surprisingly few people using the big commercial tools like Rosetta stone)

I was surprised at first, too. But it makes sense. You can learn more quickly using the resources on the forum than with any of the major commercial products.

Word of mouth is very important in this forum.

The reason why you won't hear anything about Rosetta Stone here is because the program was created to teach Spanish and not Japanese. Rosetta Stone works great for Romance languages but it falls apart the further you get from the English language.

If the makers of Rosetta Stone decided to spend some money and design a Rogers around Japanese, it might get more notice around here.

I think it depends where you ask. On this forum, core10k is the one true way, it seems, but on how-to-learn-any-language.com there are a lot of different methods suggested.

Furthermore, this forums consists of mostly Japanese learners which might not help you find out how learners of languages like Russian, Vietnamese, Swahili, Spanish on so on learn.

At least nobody endorses romaji here... and think kanji and kana is only for those who think they are "pretty" -- and that they should return to romaji when they are tired of the "pretty" kanji and just wants to "understand". To be honest, romaji is much tougher to understand as it is distant to both written and spoken Japanese.

If I were you, I wouldn't decide what to do based on majority vote. Read and listen about the methods used by successful learners and try whatever seems to make the most sense. And if all or part of that isn't working try something else.

there's a handful of polyglots on youtube who offer generally good advice.

Stian Wrote:To be honest, romaji is much tougher to understand as it is distant to both written and spoken Japanese.

No.

First of all, romaji is used in Japan too, in a variety of ways. Typing is the most everyday example, but there are tons of others, such as shop names, international companies, written slang/abbreviations (w, jk, ky, etc.). Any anthropologist, linguist or other professional studying Japan would say that Japan has at least four writing systems: hiragana, katakana, kanji, and romaji.

Second of all, romaji isn't any closer or farther from spoken Japanese than kana is. They are equally as close to spoken Japanese. After all, they are both symbolic systems that line up with each other one-to-one: chi=ち=(the sound).

but romaji assign symbols even to unvoiced vowels. kana are usually written in a long string which makes up a sentence. Romaji, however, use spaces. Also, kana represent a mora each*, whereas romaji uses 1, 2 and 3 characters per mora.

*Characters like きゃ and じょ are counted as one here.

Of course, romaji is used in Japanese, but kana and kanji are much, much more widely used. And in typing, I use ti to write ち and si to write し and so on.

Romaji is important to know, but you should use it as the only way of reading Japanese.

Both romaji and kana are just approximations. If you want a good accent you've got to listen a lot.

if you were to focus on listening comprehension and speaking ability it might be faster to focus on romaji at first because you can read it way faster. The problem I guess is finding enough interesting resources written in romaji. Eventually of course you want to learn kana though.

it's easy to take the ease of kana for granted after while. But a foreign script is a foreign script and it's damn slow to read at first. I've experienced this semi recently by learning hangul and bopomofo. You can learn either of these scripts in a couple of days but reading them at speed still requires a lot of practice.

I started to read kana from day one, so I find it easy. In fact, having less characters is easier for me due to my vision which causes my reading speed to be a bit slower than usualy. The fact that 志 may replaces 11 roman characters and 5 kana is something I find great.

When reading a kana I know what syllable I'm reading, so I always pay attention to the next kana, so I know if I should voice the vowel or not.. I know how to read romaji, and there is nothing to learn about it. I simply feel there is nothing to learn by reading romaji; you don't practice reading and you practice only a tiny bit of skills that are required for listening -- for instance telling homophones apart based on context.

Also, English is my second language, and I have nearly never had the chance to speak it, therefore I have relied on retaining my vocabulary by reading forums, websites and so on. Thus, I would prefer to know how to read it in order to keep my interest in Japanese. At least 95% of the English input I receive, is written, so naturally it will be the same with Japanese.

(Seriously, until a few months ago, I pronounced thoroughly as though-roughly :p)

Right now, at this stage, I pick up vocabulary whilst reading and practice understanding it in spoken context by listening. If there is a word I hear rather often, I just type it out in kana, and then check a dictionary to see what kanji are the most common (jisho.org) for instance.

I must admit though, that I did mess up ふ and ゆ for some reason, even though they look nothing alike. :p

Stian Wrote:but romaji assign symbols even to unvoiced vowels. kana are usually written in a long string which makes up a sentence. Romaji, however, use spaces. Also, kana represent a mora each*, whereas romaji uses 1, 2 and 3 characters per mora.

*Characters like きゃ and じょ are counted as one here.

Of course, romaji is used in Japanese, but kana and kanji are much, much more widely used. And in typing, I use ti to write ち and si to write し and so on.

Romaji is important to know, but you should use it as the only way of reading Japanese.

Kana has the same problem with unvoiced and voiced vowel sounds. The し in よろしく is devoiced, but the し in しぬ is voiced, but both use the same symbol. Likewise, they both use the same romaji (shi or si depending on the system).

The reason romaji uses spaces is incidental to the system. Romaji would be hard to read with no spaces. How does not having any spaces represent Japanese better than having spaces? It doesn't. (In fact, children's books in Japanese sometimes include spaces to make reading easier for the children)

Romaji represents a mora per vowel, rather than a mora per individual symbol, so it does the job just as well. I like how you think you can make an exception and say that きゃ and じょ are counted as one symbol when they are clearly two (you put them in separate boxes when writing on Japanese draft paper) , but you say that romaji is two or three symbols, even though they are used to represent one mora just like きゃ and じょ.

Your arguments are irrational and perhaps reflect a frustration with (or feeling of superiority over) learners, classes, or textbooks that don't deal with the real Japanese writing system. So somehow you're venting your frustration by saying that kana represents Japanese sounds better than romaji. It doesn't. The reason you have to learn kana and kanji is because they are the symbols that Japanese people use for the majority of their reading and writing. It has nothing to do with one of the systems better representing the sounds of the language. They both do it equally well. Romaji is not 'distant to spoken Japanese.'

よろしく (く is not voiced; "i" is not voiced)
しぬ (ぬ is voiced; "i" is voiced)
It's much easier when the relevant symbols are next to each other.

My main reason for preferring kanji/kana is because that's how most Japanese people write/type, and thus it is more important to learn that rather than to study using romaji alone.

And sorry for sounding fanatic -- I tend to be a bit like this at times...
I think it might be because some guy attacked me verbally when I proposed that the Japanese course we were doing should start using hiragana instead of romaji, and then he started to ask me if we should ditch the numeral system in Norwegian...

Stian Wrote:My main reason for preferring kanji/kana is because that's how most Japanese people write/type, and thus it is more important to learn that rather than to study using romaji alone.

I agree

Stian Wrote:よろしく (く is not voiced; "i" is not voiced)
しぬ (ぬ is voiced; "i" is voiced)
It's much easier when the relevant symbols are next to each other.

How are the relevant symbols not next to each other in romaji? U and i are devoiced when they are surrounded on two sides by consonant sounds that do not require your vocal chords. Or, on one side by a consonant sound that does not require your vocal chords and on the other side by the end of the sentence. The consonant sounds that do not require your vocal chords are, written in romaji, k t p h s (and ch if you choose to use that in your romaji system rather than t).

The first word in romaji is yoroshiku--the 'i' is between h and k, which are the relevant symbols that tell us that it is not voiced.
The second word in romaji is shinu--the 'i' is between h and n. N is a consonant sound that requires your vocal chords, so the i is voiced.

The two relevant symbols are right next to the vowel in question.

Of course, it is no big deal -- it is just easier in hiragana. The "h" doesn't have a sound by itself, so I need to know 4 (sh-i-n) to determine if it is voiced whereas in kana I need to know only two (し-ぬ). Kanji+kana usually cut down the character count by 50-60 %.
It's just a matter of what is easier to read _for me_

At this stage, I prefer furigana, because I can sometimes guess the meaning from the kanji (heisig keyword/other words using the kanji) and get the reading via furigana.

All this is a matter of preference though. I just find it annoying that on some forum, people demonise the kanji because they are so "inpossible" to learn.

the unvoiced vowel thing... I really don't think you need to learn that. I'm pretty sure 95% of ppl pick up on that quite naturally within a month or less of listening to japanese speech.

Imagine the situation of a learner who knows absolutely zero japanese and wants to get some basic listening comprehension as quickly as possible. Something like an bilingual audio book written in romaji would be awesome for that. You could also use phrase books and things.

First of all, people have different goals. Mine is to speak and use the language, others prefer to read; I can only speak for myself. Japanese was the 14th language I studied; it's the 5th language I can comfortably hold a conversation in.

To me, language learning should always focus on effective use. You could study forever without using the language, focusing on things that don't matter, on words you'll never use, on trying to cover X number of words on SRS, and you'd never get anywhere. Never lose sight of the necessity to communicate using the language and you won’t be wasting time learning things you’ll never use, or learning twice what you have forgotten because you don't use it often enough. Use the language whenever you can and create situations where you need to use it. Get a language partner and meet regularly. Let use dictate what you need to know -- this is the most effective way to learn.

‘The best’ probably means ‘the best possible results in the shortest period of time with minimum effort in a most enjoyable way’.

For me it’s always the same:
Massive comprehensible exposure = audiobooks + vertical side-by-side parallel texts (L2 + L1) + pronunciation. I use books I already know and love, if possible.
http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_m...ssages.htm
How good your learning results will be depends on (among other things):
1. how burning your desire to learn is
2. how much info you are able to process in a unit of time (info per second).
3. how good your general learning skills are.
People definitely differ in those three respects. Not everybody is an Einstein.