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Once you embark on the quest to learn japanese, you begin to look for other avenues to hone in on those skills -- whether its finding other people who speak it,

Once you embark on the quest to learn japanese, you begin to look for other avenues to hone in on those skills -- whether its finding other people who speak it, or in some people's cases, play on japanese gaming servers, or skyping/hangouts and converse with japanese people in full immersion. After that you want to start reading more literature, so you do what anyone would do and search for japanese books on Amazon. After a while amazon starts offering you remarkable suggestions based on what the majority of japanese speaking people are reading. You would be surprised how much you could learn on your own! My case it was german. I was so fascinated with the german language, and germany as a whole, in part I must sadly admit because I was such an avid fan of WW2 history. I actually tried to go the traditional route, and I hated it. I noticed one time some germans playing counterstrike and other MMORPG's I was playing. I got to know them better, in part because of their extreme delight in my ability to say a few things in german. Then it turned into ventrilo/teamspeak sessions, which then turned into me wanting to read actual german books, then it went on to learning about Otto Von Bismarck, German Reunification, the East/West cultural divide, watching foreign german films such as Der Unterfall, Das Leben der Anderen, Good Bye, Lenin!, effects German engineering such as Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler and von Braun, which led me down the path of looking into german businesses, especially the ones that are here in my own home state (which are many), it was so much fun! edit: I realize you qualified it with 'business' people, implying they won't see the value of learning the other things, but since business people is a large group (of which I myself can be considered a part of) I imagine there are others like me.

emodendroket 10y ago
Maybe they would, but I've attended Japanese courses intended mostly for businesspeople before college and they were almost universally focused on conversational Japanese -- which is fine but nothing like studying Japanese literature with a professor who is an expert in it. We're getting away from the claim that it would be "easy" to learn this on your own, to be sure. I've been learning some Korean in my spare time and I feel pretty confident in my assessment that being in a college course would both be easier and see me make more progress more quickly.
- treehau5 10y ago
  I see. I think maybe the difference is enthusiasm? If someone is going into it thinking "It would be really helpful for my work or business to learn Japanese" versus "Japanese is cool. I would really like to immerse myself in this language and learn how to talk to Japanese people" would merit different results. The business-focused person would be more inclined to trod those traditional routes of instructorship and classes, etc, but being a student of languages myself, as well as knowing 3 of them (sorry if this sounds like I am trying to argue by authority), I can say the latter is the only way you really ever learn a language. My good friend has a PhD in Chinese, (yes that is actually a thing), and he attests to the fact that he didn't grok the language until his travels and studies there, being immersed. Now typing this I realize we may be debating across each other, because even if you believe you can learn on your own better, or having structured courses is better, the real answer is none of it sticks unless you fully immerse yourself in it, self-taught or not.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    I too have studied several languages, both in high school and in college, as well as some dabbling on my own. The classes alone are not enough, no. But they are a tremendous resource and make it much easier to get where you want to go. You might be able to reach similar levels of language proficiency without the courses but the biggest problems are 1) finding hours and hours a day to drill writing characters and other mundane aspects of learning 2) guidance from an instructor who can tell you whether things that look/sound right are. And also I think a university course also gives you a survey of the literature and culture of that language and insight into it that would be hard to acquire on your own.
    - treehau5 10y ago
      But are you fluent in those languages? Sorry I am not trying to come off a presumptuous, I am just trying to emphasize the distinction because I think it is important to bear in mind. If the goal is fluency, do you think that traditional education has succeeded for you? Also how long have you been studying languages? I ask because I am curious if you think that the web, and later, apps, like Duolingo for example, can make a huge difference versus the pre-web era of language learning. Pre-web, I would agree with anyone that yes it would be extremely difficult to learn a language on your own unless you had traditional schooling. But today there is nothing a traditional course in German could give me that I couldn't get from Deutsche Welle, for example (but I also realize there isn't a 'Deutsche Welle' for every language). Sorry if this is going further than you wanted, I am just trying to get different perspectives and it seems like you have a good grasp.

emodendroket 10y ago

Maybe they would, but I've attended Japanese courses intended mostly for businesspeople before college and they were almost universally focused on conversational Japanese -- which is fine but nothing like studying Japanese literature with a professor who is an expert in it. We're getting away from the claim that it would be "easy" to learn this on your own, to be sure. I've been learning some Korean in my spare time and I feel pretty confident in my assessment that being in a college course would both be easier and see me make more progress more quickly.

treehau5 10y ago
I see. I think maybe the difference is enthusiasm? If someone is going into it thinking "It would be really helpful for my work or business to learn Japanese" versus "Japanese is cool. I would really like to immerse myself in this language and learn how to talk to Japanese people" would merit different results. The business-focused person would be more inclined to trod those traditional routes of instructorship and classes, etc, but being a student of languages myself, as well as knowing 3 of them (sorry if this sounds like I am trying to argue by authority), I can say the latter is the only way you really ever learn a language. My good friend has a PhD in Chinese, (yes that is actually a thing), and he attests to the fact that he didn't grok the language until his travels and studies there, being immersed. Now typing this I realize we may be debating across each other, because even if you believe you can learn on your own better, or having structured courses is better, the real answer is none of it sticks unless you fully immerse yourself in it, self-taught or not.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  I too have studied several languages, both in high school and in college, as well as some dabbling on my own. The classes alone are not enough, no. But they are a tremendous resource and make it much easier to get where you want to go. You might be able to reach similar levels of language proficiency without the courses but the biggest problems are 1) finding hours and hours a day to drill writing characters and other mundane aspects of learning 2) guidance from an instructor who can tell you whether things that look/sound right are. And also I think a university course also gives you a survey of the literature and culture of that language and insight into it that would be hard to acquire on your own.
  - treehau5 10y ago
    But are you fluent in those languages? Sorry I am not trying to come off a presumptuous, I am just trying to emphasize the distinction because I think it is important to bear in mind. If the goal is fluency, do you think that traditional education has succeeded for you? Also how long have you been studying languages? I ask because I am curious if you think that the web, and later, apps, like Duolingo for example, can make a huge difference versus the pre-web era of language learning. Pre-web, I would agree with anyone that yes it would be extremely difficult to learn a language on your own unless you had traditional schooling. But today there is nothing a traditional course in German could give me that I couldn't get from Deutsche Welle, for example (but I also realize there isn't a 'Deutsche Welle' for every language). Sorry if this is going further than you wanted, I am just trying to get different perspectives and it seems like you have a good grasp.