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How we invented new ways to teach Japanese

• _hao 9y ago
  From a pragmatic point of view Chinese would be much more useful, but there are a tons of good resources for that already, so dunno. Congratulations anyway. I've used Duolingo to refresh my German some time back.
  • baby 9y ago
    I still wish Duolingo would make a course on Chinese :( Currently my favorite app is "Decipher Chinese". I read one story a day, save words I want to remember and get quizzed on them periodically.
    • wolfgke 9y ago
      > I still wish Duolingo would make a course on Chinese :( What kind of Chinese? Mandarin? Linguistically Chinese is not a language, but a family of languages that is united by a (mostly) common writing system. The reason that these Chinese languages are called "dialects" is mostly political. A language geek I know, who taught himself various Chinese dialects and in particular Cantonese up to a very high level told me that Mandarin, though referred to as the "official" Chinese language that is used in TV, it is in his opinion rather an artificial language (he compared it with Esperanto). So when learning some of the Chinese languages he recommended that at least after some time learning the ropes (writing system, tones, common words), one should really consider for what purpose one is learning Chinese and learn the appropriate language of the respective province (he was really into electronics, so he continued his study in particular into Cantonese).
      • sswezey 9y ago
        Honestly, when people say they want to learn Chinese, they usually mean Mandarin Chinese. If they don't, they'll probably refer to the specific dialect they'd like to learn. Also, without any Chinese exposure, learning anything other than Mandarin is harder since their are so fewer resources. Calling Mandarin an artificial language is bogus, it is the native dialect around the Beijing area, and that is the reason it became the official dialect of Chinese. There are many people in China who only speak Mandarin.
        • accountyaccount 9y ago
          Being the 'official' language, is this also true for Chinese business — or is that dependent on the dialect of where an office may be located?
          • baby 9y ago
            I think by law they must speak in Mandarin. Check the law here and grep for "putonghua" http://www.gov.cn/english/laws/2005-09/19/content_64906.htm http://www.gov.cn/english/laws/2005-09/19/content_64906.htm If you travel in regions where Mandarin is not as predominant as it usually is, you will often see signs telling you "please speak in mandarin". The only exception really is Hong Kong.
            • accountyaccount 9y ago
              Interesting. So it seems like if someone wanted to do business with, or work in, China (not HK) — learning Mandarin would definitely be the most useful?
              • zhengyi13 9y ago
                Generally, yes. There's still places liked Shanghai where there's a very strong local language culture, but Mandarin should always suffice. I've travelled in parts of China (Xishuangbanna in particular comes to mind, in southernmost Yunnan) where they have truckloads of non-Han minorities, and Mandarin was the lingua franca, and got me around, but I frequently spoke it better than anyone around me on the street. OTOH, if you travel out to say, Xinjiang, I'm told you might be better off speaking Russian - the people out there are not Han, and really don't want to be part of China. Speaking the language of the empire out in the colonies might not make you many friends :)
        • wolfgke 9y ago
          > Calling Mandarin an artificial language is bogus, it is the native dialect around the Beijing area, Read https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mandarin_Chinese&oldid=779342675#Koin.C3.A9_of_the_Late_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mandarin_Chinese&...: Mandarin is a Koiné language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koin%C3%A9_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koin%C3%A9_language) of various Chinese dialects (as I wrote above: What is called "Chinese dialects" is rather "different languages"), which has been standardized "artificially" (just as Zamenhof took words from various European languages and created a new artificial language (Esperanto) out of them).
      • baby 9y ago
        > What kind of Chinese? Mandarin? The official Chinese language yes. Your story is really not representative of China, Mandarin is nothing like Esperanto. It's a real dialect and it became the official language of China a long time ago. People speak Mandarin everywhere now (except maybe HK).
    • TACIXAT 9y ago
      I have Du Chinese and I like it a little more than Decipher. I'm always excited when I get a notification for a newbie or elementary lesson. Chinese Skill and Hello Chinese are lesson quiz format and pretty interchangeable. Line Dictionary is cool cause you can draw in it. I also have Pleco for the Outliers dictionary which shows etymology, but it's still in development. HSK Magic is another one that looks decent, flash card style learning.
    • _hao 9y ago
      The closest thing I've found to Duolingo for Chinese is an app called ChineseSkill (Android and iOS). It's pretty good for the most part. My learning stack so to speak consists of HSK textbooks, Skritter, ChineseSkill and recently I've added ClozeMaster. This is all for Mandarin btw.
    • xiaomai 9y ago
      I also use and enjoy Decipher Chinese. Another thing I would recommend is reading the books posted at https://www.reddit.com/r/chinesebookclub/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chinesebookclub/. It's really difficult at first but I find that reading actual Chinese books (with frequent word lookups in Pleco) has helped me improve my Chinese rapidly. (I don't get through the books in a month... I'm actually only 70% through the first one I picked up several months ago).
      • xiaomai 9y ago
        Actually another service I would recommend if you want to work on your listening comprehension is http://www.fluentu.com/ http://www.fluentu.com/. They take various clips (music videos / dramas / youtube shows) and subtitle them in a slick player (you can add vocab words straight from the videos).
      • baby 9y ago
        The problem with actual book reading is that looking up words is too slow. I really wish there was an application like Decipher Chinese for longer texts, and also a bit better on the translations. I found this one on the web, but it is pretty limited http://justlearnchinese.com/chinese-reader-for-adult-learners-wan-jun-%e5%a9%89%e5%90%9b-1-elementary-to-intermediate/ http://justlearnchinese.com/chinese-reader-for-adult-learner...
  • garou 9y ago
    The usefulness of a language depends if you are going to use. I got your point, China is HUGE and extremely important at the moment and future. But at the same time japanese can be seen as very useful because: - its a very important ally of the USA; - introduce you to the ideographic writing system; - be very similar to korean grammar (and particle system).
    • SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
      Another thing with Chinese is that even though the writing system is universal the dialects very so much that someone from Hong Kong might not be able to understand someone from Beijing, Shenzhen, or Shanghai(not familiar with what dialects are spoken where). That said they're all fairly similar and can be picked up more easily once you already know one.
• netgusto 9y ago
  Where is the Japanese course on Duolingo ? I can't find it in their language list : https://en.duolingo.com/register https://en.duolingo.com/register ?
  • sapphire_tomb 9y ago
    Was just coming here to ask the very same thing!
    • apricot13 9y ago
      Its only available on ios at the moment https://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/ja/en/status https://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/ja/en/status hideki Japanese beta course available on iOS! 15 hours ago We are thrilled to announce that our Japanese course is now available on iOS. It's coming to Android in a few weeks, and web will be next! Find more details at https://www.duolingo.com/comment/22676285 https://www.duolingo.com/comment/22676285 http://making.duolingo.com/how-we-invented-a-new-way-to-teach-one-of-the-most-difficult-languages-to-learn http://making.duolingo.com/how-we-invented-a-new-way-to-teac... https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/6bxr2v/i_am_luis_von_ahn_coinventor_of_captcha_recaptcha/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/6bxr2v/i_am_luis_von_... https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurenorsini/2017/05/18/japanese-finally-comes-to-duolingo/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurenorsini/2017/05/18/japanes...
      • anomie31 9y ago
        Any simple reason why it's delayed for Android? Do the devs prefer the ios development environment? Do they have more iphones to test on? Are iphone users prioritized because they have a higher median income?
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
        • accountyaccount 9y ago
          In my experience iOS users are much more likely to pay for your app. Android apps seem to do better when they're ad supported. This is anecdotal, so YMMV.
• superasn 9y ago
  I don't know of a more useful app than Duolingo till date and This is just another feather in the cap. The only thing i don't understand about it is how it makes money? Yes, i read somewhere that they use it to translate news sites and documents but I've been playing it for almost 300 days now (uninterrupted streak) and still my French proficiency is nowhere near to make a worthwhile translation like any professional. This one really boggles my mind because it looks like they have a huge team and invest a lot of time and resources and so must have a lot of expenses.
  • Axsuul 9y ago
    They offer English certification and now serve ads after each lesson
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • dyukqu 9y ago
    There were optional in-app purchases and they have introduced Duolingo Plus recently - which enables users to download lessons for offline learning & removes ads. It's Android only for now and the price is $10 month. [0] [0] https://www.duolingo.com/comment/22202238/Introducing-Duolingo-Plus https://www.duolingo.com/comment/22202238/Introducing-Duolin...
  • borispavlovic 9y ago
    I've been learning French for years. After having finished the course on Duolingo you have no reason to come back to the application. Memrise, for example, offers numerous courses for French, other languages, and other areas of knowledge. The repetition algorithm is superb and the ability to add your own courses as community contribution is killing.
• wst_ 9y ago
  How can you measure which language is most difficult to learn? It is not an universal fact. It depends on many factors. Title is click bait obviously.
  • tallanvor 9y ago
    It certainly is subjective, but it seems that Duolingo focuses on reading the language, so from that perspective, Japanese (and related languages such as Chinese and Korean) will be more difficult. Unfortunately, I find learning the written portion of languages to be the easy part - learning to speak and hear the language is much harder.
  • purplethinking 9y ago
    The study they cite is for monolingual English speakers. They concluded that the easiest language to learn was Swedish/Norwegian IIRC, and the hardest was Japanese by a factor 10.
  • Nickerchen 9y ago
    Some of the ways to determine how difficult it is to learn a language is to compare how different the motherlanguage of the learner is to the language which is learned. In addition, you can compare how long it takes a person on average to reach a general ability to speak and write in a given language. The Foreign Service Institue publishes a ranked list if you are interested. http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang...
  • Tepix 9y ago
    Measure the average amount of hours to reach a certain proficiency.
    • wst_ 9y ago
      That is a false metric. Different for me, different for you - assuming we come from different countries.
  • accountyaccount 9y ago
• shawnps 9y ago
  I started learning Japanese around 8 years ago, and I've never been a fan of saying it's "the most difficult language to learn." It's like learning anything else, if you enjoy learning it and are motivated enough, you'll get better. Also I'm surprised when people assume the grammar is difficult - to me, the "flexible grammatical structures" as mentioned in the article are a good thing because it gives you more leeway to make "mistakes." If you're learning Japanese in school, or even if you're learning it on your own, I recommend the Genki I and Genki II books, and the corresponding workbooks. If you really enjoy it and want to come to Japan to use your newly acquired language skills, I'm confident that after getting through those 2 books you'll have enough Japanese to get by and you can have fun wandering around, reading signs, chatting with strangers, etc. Don't be discouraged by people saying that Japanese is so difficult to learn. Edit: also, I hope this comment didn't come off as too negative. I think it's great that Duolingo is doing this, and if it gets more people to enjoy learning Japanese then that's fantastic.
  • Grue3 9y ago
    It is worth saying it's an extremely difficult language to learn because most people are not prepared for what awaits them even if they learned another language before. Anyone can pick up how to read kana in a week or so, so it's easy to assume that you're almost there, and you'll be reading manga or whatever in no time. But it's just the beginning. The language is completely different. You must commit a huge amount of time every day and change the way you think. One must be mentally prepared to give up a chunk of their free time for the foreseeable future (years!), because it won't be easy. Also IME, you barely need to speak any Japanese to wander around Japan and read the signs (because they're all in English anyway). Definitely recommended regardless of language proficiency.
    • empath75 9y ago
      The katakana words are often English, but it still takes some time to realize that to-re is 'toilet'
      • hudibras 9y ago
• cantrevealname 9y ago
  I'm not criticizing Duolingo, but I'm wondering if language apps are like gym memberships -- people sign up enthusiastically but after the first month, 90% don't or can't continue. Learning a new language as an adult is an incredibly difficult undertaking; much more so than persevering with the gym. The dropout rate must be huge.
  • qwtel 9y ago
    I certainly dropped out of learning spanish with duolingo a couple of years ago (after maybe a few months). All that is left is how to order a beer, but with such a horrible german accent that at least one native speaker burst out into laughter when I attempted... Anyway, I went into it with a "let's see this works" attitude and looking back I'm surprised how far I even got. Low barriers to entry mean low barriers to exit. I guess without loss-aversion, say from investing in a private tutor, or some other form of skin in the game (distant relatives at the place, intense affection for the culture of the place, actually living there) it's hard to keep the motivation up. But I guess duolingo works for the later group.
  • mattnumbe 9y ago
    I've been living, working, studying, playing in Japan for the last 8 years. I came here with no knowledge of the language (except "ohayou" because of that Sesame Street where Big Bird goes to Japan). Learning katakana and hiragana took an afternoon of riding the train and reading signs. The first 3 years I didn't really study much, but talking to old men in bars and spending time in the hospital boosted my communication level a ton. By year 6 I had business level spoken Japanese but had never been able to get into kanji, so I was basically illiterate, but stilled managed to get hired by a Japanese company (with no use for my English skills). I've been using WaniKani for the last half year and it has massively improved my kanji level. It's definitely aimed towards native (american) English speakers, but if you want to learn Kanji, I can highly recommend it. It's actually the only online service (other than Netflix) that I've ever paid for ($50/year with a coupon). Most of the other free apps I've used have been like gym memberships, but for some reason this one sticks.
    • 9y ago
• adrianN 9y ago
  The guys at Language Log have a (series of) very interesting posts about how to learn Japanese and Chinese. The comments are a gold-mine as well http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10554 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10554
• Tepix 9y ago
  When I was learning to read and write Japanese, I used the iOS app "Learn Japanese with Tako" by Grogshot games. They use gamification to make it fun. Very cute, check it out! (I'm not affiliated with them) To improve your vocabulary while on the go (hands free) I heartily recommand the "Nemo" apps by Nemo Apps (e.g. "Nemo japanese"). They're available for both iOS and Android and for many languages. You can usually train the first 200 words for free.
  • shawnps 9y ago
    I'm a fan of the "Japanese" app on iOS for studying vocabulary - they have lists for each JLPT level. It's a great dictionary as well.
• theyarehere 9y ago
  A1 and 88 kanji. That's sad. I hope there are plans to develop it further to cover at least A2-B1.
  • andy_ppp 9y ago
    So they should have waited until they had more Kanji before releasing it?
• rootsudo 9y ago
  I learned hiragana and katakana using the "Kanji Study" app by Chase Colburn. On the google app store. I don't know the guy, but the app is simply amazing. Repetion, through fun methods, I learned hiragana as I rode the Tokyo metro and katakana too. (It also helped that everywhere was both Kanas) Since we're all talking about how we all picked up some Japanese, I thought I'd throw it out there. I normally never donate to apps, but this is one app that is amazingly well polished, has a beautiful UI and the UX makes me guility that I don't sit down and do it daily. Hell, thanks to it, I can transliterate japanese songs into kana and with the Kanji learning moudles I had fun translating last names into english and saying them. Nothing helped me more in making friends at random mixers or networking events then seeing someones Japanese name, properly addressing them and embarrassing myself by talking horrible Japanese. But, Reading it, it's amazing. The manga too, I can read all the manga now if it has nice usage of furigana. Hentai manga, does not, though. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwiste... Really, I don't know the guy, the app is great and, without it my time in Japan would've been greatly not as quality. I made friends, thanks to this app, that I know I will know forever.
  • agibsonccc 9y ago
    If you need audio I would also recommend: http://www.pimsleuraudio.com/pimsleur_search_result.php?lang_name=Japanese http://www.pimsleuraudio.com/pimsleur_search_result.php?lang... I've been using it in a similar manner on the train. 30 minutes per day and I'm holding my own ordering food, having basic conversation,.. (I live in tokyo)
  • mattnumbe 9y ago
    Looks like you went to the same hiragana/katakana school I did!
  • LSCanaan 9y ago
    Anything similar on iOS you'd mind to recommend?
    • TomSawyer 9y ago
• reustle 9y ago
  I've been learning japanese (and living in japan) for the past few months, and tried out duolingos new course when they released it yesterday. I've used quite a few different apps and books, and I must say I was pretty unimpressed. Their lessons give very little info on what you're learning, and with things like kanji it only teaches you the sound and not the meaning. I will experiment with it a bit more, but I've already done the first 6 or 7 lessons (chapters?) and am not impressed. If you want to see an incredibly well built japanese learning tool, look at Human Japanese http://www.humanjapanese.com/ http://www.humanjapanese.com/ - i am in no way affiliated, just a happy student
  • jim-jim-jim 9y ago
    > with things like kanji it only teaches you the sound and not the meaning Damn, that's precisely the opposite of how you should learn them. My Japanese ability pretty much exploded after I set aside two months to study the kanji divorced from their readings with James Heisig's method. Totally worth it. The readings come with time.
    • e12e 9y ago
      Indeed. It's my understanding that the success of kanji in China was exactly that some lord on the borderlands could write with kanji what he wanted to convey, and then, at the heart of the empire someone could read it back in mandarin. While the border Lord might only speak some local language. The parallel is to teach everyone Latin language and how to read and write Latin letters, rather than just teach everyone how to read and write kanji.
    • voidz 9y ago
      Who is James Heisig, and what is his method? I'd like my Japanese ability to explode too!
      • jim-jim-jim 9y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembering_the_kanji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembering_the_kanji
• GolDDranks 9y ago
  As the they say in the article, Japanese is classified among the most difficult languages for English speakers by Foreign Service Institute and this is widely cited as a fact. But interestingly, no research data on this was ever published. (The institute presented the facts as based on their internal research, but no methods, results or anything was ever published. Nowadays the original page has disappeared from the internet.) Bill VanPatten, a linguist that specialises on second/foreign language acquisition lamented this on his podcast, Tea With BVP. According to him, there isn't any published research that shows that one language as a whole would be more difficult as another one for speakers of some other language. (He is not speaking about writing systems but about spoken language there – Japanese has obviously very complicated writing system.)
  • Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
    Anecdotally, it seems true, even if only because learning Kanji is a gargantuan task.
  • e15ctr0n 9y ago
    > Japanese is classified among the most difficult languages for English speakers by Foreign Service Institute I briefly took Japanese lessons from someone who teaches full time at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, CA. She confirmed Japanese language's status as "most difficult for English speakers". She also said that DLI groups foreign languages into 4 levels based on how difficult they are to learn for English speakers: Level 1 (Easiest): Spanish Level 2: German Level 3: Russian, Hebrew Level 4: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic A more comprehensive listing is here: http://aboutworldlanguages.com/language-difficulty http://aboutworldlanguages.com/language-difficulty A hidden gem of a resource that I uncovered at that time: audio + textbook lessons produced by NHK World Radio Japan as part of their 50th anniversary celebrations. These lessons are in 17 languages, so they help those who are not native speakers of English too. http://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/ http://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/
• phr4ts 9y ago
  Check out Michele Thomas or Paul Noble Audio language learning - absolutely no reading or workbook required.
• GolDDranks 9y ago
  I shameless self-plug: As a successful Japanese learner (and since then, a Japanese teacher and recently a software engineer in a Japanese company), I was interviewed recently about learning Japanese: https://www.koipun.com/blog/learning-japanese-by-listening-and-reading https://www.koipun.com/blog/learning-japanese-by-listening-a... Why should you possibly be interested: because not only did I learn Japanese and taught it, I also did a fair part of reading about the research on language acquisition and neurolinguistics as a part of my master's studies, so I know what I'm talking about.
  • metaleks 9y ago
    Fascinating read, thanks for sharing!
  • pmoriarty 9y ago
    From what you say in that article about the importance of listening to language used in context, you might be interested in a method of language learning called TPR (Total Physical Response). I've written about it before here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13910080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13910080 It's been super effective for me at learning vocabulary and grammar (in context), and I much prefer that method over things like flashcards, Anki, supermemmo, etc.
    • csa 9y ago
      TPR has its strengths and weaknesses: 1. It requires a healthy ego. Some people feel like it's childish since it is more like playing games than language learning. Other folks don't like making mistakes all the time. 2. It is great for languages that do not already have documented grammars and/or dictionaries. I believe the Summer Institute of Linguistics uses this method in some areas. 3. It naturally caps out in utility at around CEFR A2 / ACTFL intermediate. While many Americans call this level of proficiency "fluent", it really just scratches the surface of a language. Regardless, I'm glad you found this method and that it works for you. Congrats!
      • pmoriarty 9y ago
• seren 9y ago
  I am still waiting for Mandarin, IIRC it was announced a few years go but still not available last time I checked. If they release Japanese now there might some glimmer of hope.
• fersho311 9y ago
  I started a project to be able to conjugate as many languages as I could and I'd love to accept Japanese if anybody is up for the challenge: https://github.com/llipio/conjugator https://github.com/llipio/conjugator So far, I've managed to understand enough korean, spanish, and french grammar to review merge requests. Its interesting reading stories of how HN community picked up Japanese, some of the suggestions are pretty helpful.
• max23_ 9y ago
  Finally. I am really looking forward to learn Japanese with Duolingo ever since I came across the site.
• hahamrfunnyguy 9y ago
  I studied basic Japanese at school. I've been waiting for this to refresh my skills. I didn't think the speaking and listening part of learning the language was that hard. Hiragana and Katakana are pretty simple and straight-forward. As for Kanji, I haven't studied the Kanji to deeply, but to me it comes down to pattern recognition and memorization. My wife is Thai, and I've been trying to learn the language on and off for a few years now. For me it's the complete opposite of Japanese difficulty-wise. The reading and writing part is straight forward once you learn the alphabet and the special rules. The part I have trouble with most is the speaking part since there are multiple pitches and using them correctly is important. For instance "khao khao" is white rice, "now" can mean either means either cold or disgusting. Luckily, if you don't speak or hear the pitch correctly, most of the time you can get by using context.
  • kanwisher 9y ago
    Thai is a really hard language to listen to in my mind, I've been learning for 3 years. Japanese I could start hearing words nearly immediately. Thai has far more sounds + tones.
• talkingtab 9y ago
  I highly recommend trying a Duolingo language, especially if there is a country you want to visit. If you set your daily goal for 10 points (maybe 5 - 10 minutes) and build a 10 day streak there is a pretty good chance you will be hooked on it. (Dutch level 16, French level 7).
• franciscop 9y ago
  Shameless plug: I made a small webapp to memorize Japanese vocabulary through spaced repetition and a Tinder-like interface: https://core.cards/ https://core.cards/ I made it for myself, but someone else might find it useful. It is the alternative of carrying a huge stack of cards as I used to do. Requires Github login though to syncronize through devices.
• panglott 9y ago
  "To show just how complex this can get, let’s take a simple English phrase – “I love you” – and dissect the many ways in which it can be said in Japanese. Spoiler alert: it’s not such a simple phrase in Japanese. One of our course contributors, Sho, estimated and found that there can actually be as many as 248,026 ways to say “I love you” in Japanese!" These kind statistics are a kind of lie in themselves. You can say something like "omae wo aishiteimasu", but that's no more a normal way to say "I love you" than "I'm bonkers for that shithead". That has nothing to do with the grammar, it's lexical. "omae wo aishiteimasu" has a different meaning from "anata ga suki da yo".
  • Naritai 9y ago
    This seems like a modern version of the old claim "Inuit have 100+ words for snow". I've found that's true for most of the claims of "X language has Y words for concept Z!!!" Inevitably it comes down to one of two things: -language X has a slightly different concept of 'word' than English does (such as allowing for conjugations to refer to past or future states) -The english word is question has a variety of context specific meanings or applications (such as 'love'), and each one of those meanings, even though their context-specific meaning would never be misinterpreted by an english speaker, has a different word in language X.
    • panglott 9y ago
      It's a widely known myth, but I'm pretty sure that Inuit absolutely has 100+ words for snow: it's just that's a meaningless and unsurprising assertion. The Inuit languages are polysynthetic and can say in a word what European languages need a sentence for, so Inuit can sidestep Zipf's law on word frequency. But also, English has plenty of words for snow, here's 50: https://www.thoughtco.com/snow-terms-types-3010117 https://www.thoughtco.com/snow-terms-types-3010117
      • Naritai 9y ago
        Yes, I think we agree. Thank you for the additional info / detail.
  • 9y ago
• jordigh 9y ago
  One thing about learning languages that works for me. Don't look at them as a bunch of rules to memorise. The article is talking about thousands of ways of saying "I love you" to indicate how complicated Japanese is. In reality, this complexity is somewhat artificial because you are considering way too many rules and variations, the vast majority of these combinations are almost never actually used. To use an crude analogy HN might be comfortable with, a Japanese language compiler could optimise away most of the language. I'm glad the course seems designed around this consideration. It's goal-oriented: talk about everyday human things, clothes, weather, food, family. It's never been helpful for me to memorise vocabulary lists without a context to say them in. Instead, putting myself into situations where certain things must be said or understood greatly improved my competence. After a while, your language instinct kicks in and you start to generate your own internal rules for the language, which will approximate or match the rules that native speakers have internalised. I suppose this is can all summarised as, well duh, of course immersion works, but I wanted to say it anyway.
• twoquestions 9y ago
  I took Japanese in college, and the worst thing wasn't the writing system, vocabulary or grammar. They were hard mind you, but far from impossible, nothing flash cards couldn't fix. What was (and is) very hard for me is how (in general) the bulk of Japanese communication happens in what is unsaid. Even trying to work through patio11's Stockfighter course, I found it very hard to 'read between the lines' in what he was saying to find out what I was supposed to do. I also have zero low-level programming experience, so that probably didn't help. I hope Duolingo mentions this and has training for "what do they really mean", as trusting what they say at face value seems like a good way to cause an incident. This may also be useful in understanding American Southerners or cop dramas, where direct communication is strictly verboten.
  • Cerium 9y ago
    I met my wife because sometimes I "can't read the air". We were pen pals and she wanted to tell me about a graduation trip she was going on across the country. I didn't know it at the time, but just to be polite she invited me on the trip with her, expecting that I would understand and decline. I didn't, instead I accepted! We went on an amazing trip and fell in love.
• it_learnses 9y ago
  I'm in Canada using Android. I don't see Japanese option yet. My app is up-to-date it seems.
• Dahoramano 9y ago
  Brazilian Portuguese is also an implied language. I picked it up rather quickly by just living the language---in Brazil. Culture is the shared context used to decipher the unspoken. Therefore best way to learn any language, and especially japanese and portuguese, is lots and lots and lots of conversation with a variety of Native speakers in diverse moments, environments, and social situations.
• laurieg 9y ago
  One thing that I notice is missing from most (all?) online language courses is wider context. Not cultural context, but basic grammatical context. Most of them on focus on learning words or sentences. This is fine for similar languages. When you learn French you can learn that 'the' equals 'le' and 'la' and apply some extra rules to smooth over the differences. It totally falls down on languages that have less in common. Almost all Japanese natives who speak English struggle with 'the' and 'a'. (this isn't a criticism, just a fact of life). I wonder if part of the problem is that most people learn languages on the sentence level. Read the following sentences: The man went to the store. A man went to the store. Which one is correct? Well, there's certainly nothing grammatically wrong with either, but depending on the situation one or the other could be very misleading, confusing and unnatural. Most people, at least in Japan, learn from textbooks showing examples like this. It tells you absolutely nothing about 'the' and 'a'! So they end up reading huge explanations in their native language and come away thinking 'Wow, foreign languages are hard'.
  • leojg 9y ago
    I agree, I think that an online course on its own is not enought to really learn a language, I view them more as a vocabulary and grammar source. The context or everyday interactions have to be learned in some other place like forums, conversations, movies, etc
  • sharp11 9y ago
    Great point! That's one of the reasons that I designed SuperCoco (app for learning Spanish) to teach in full context.
• lechiffre10 9y ago
  Been waiting for this one for a long time
• neves 9y ago
  I've been told by a friend of mine that speaks Japanese that the most difficult aspect is that how you speak changes due the social setting. It's not just the syntax, you must learn how to speak in each different situation. Here is Richard Feynman talking about the same problem: While in Kyoto I tried to learn Japanese with a vengeance. I worked much harder at it, and got to a point where I could go around in taxis and do things. I took lessons from a Japanese man every day for an hour. One day he was teaching me the word for "see." "All right," he said. "You want to say, 'May I see your garden?' What do you say?" I made up a sentence with the word that I had just learned. "No, no!" he said. "When you say to someone, 'Would you like to see my garden? you use the first 'see.' But when you want to see someone else's garden, you must use another 'see,' which is more polite." "Would you like to glance at my lousy garden?" is essentially what you're saying in the first case, but when you want to look at the other fella's garden, you have to say something like, "May I observe your gorgeous garden?" So there's two different words you have to use. Then he gave me another one: "You go to a temple, and you want to look at the gardens..." I made up a sentence, this time with the polite "see." "No, no!" he said. "In the temple, the gardens are much more elegant. So you have to say something that would be equivalent to 'May I hang my eyes on your most exquisite gardens?" Three or four different words for one idea, because when I'm doing it, it's miserable; when you're doing it, it's elegant.
  • wccrawford 9y ago
    I'm going to disagree with your friend. The hardest part of Japanese is reading it. You can train all that social stuff through usage and watching a lot of TV. But reading? It's a nightmare. The simple elementary school stuff isn't hard. But the highschool and college-level stuff? Ugh. Thousands of characters with multiple pronunciations each, sometimes with very tiny differences between them.
    • uberstuber 9y ago
      Heisig's book for recognizing characters worked well for me. Picking the right pronunciation on the other hand...ends up being totally reliant on if I know the vocab word or not.
  • 9y ago
• kazinator 9y ago
  I made a Windows application for drilling oneself in kanji meanings and readings. http://www.kylheku.com/tankan/ http://www.kylheku.com/tankan/ It is browser-based. It runs a tiny webserver, controlled by an icon in the system notification area. If you go through the license workflow, you get full use of the program for a limited period. Put in "hackernews" into the promo code field and I might provide a generous extension.
• scelerat 9y ago
  Huh, I've just started learning Japanese after spending several weeks there and looking forward to visiting many more times, and I would never characterize it as especially difficult. There are some challenges, but nothing mind-blowing. The kana and kanji may seem intimidating, but identifying fragments and context through repetition has been more rewarding and entertaining than frustrating. I understand there are many subtleties, but after having hung around some native speakers for a while and hearing the patterns and starting to pick up on pronunciation, rhythmic patterns and key words, conversation topics start to become intelligible and communication possible.
  • krrrh 9y ago
    I also found it fun to learn a few basics on a recent month-long trip, but the US State Department has rankings of language difficulty based on hours of instructions required for foreign service employees, amd puts Japanese in the most difficult category, with a note that it is the most difficult within that category[1]. Mastering it to a diplomatic level seems incredibly time consuming for native English speakers. [1] https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_...
• TylerH 9y ago
  Yeahhh get out, it's coming to iOS only you dirtbags
  • sctb 9y ago
    Please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• FrankBlack 9y ago
  I enjoyed the series produced by public television called "Irasshai". The lessons are available on the Georgia Public Broadcasting site and texts can be purchased from Amazon. For those who have fond memories of "French In Action", this will give you a similar vibe even though it isn't quite the same thing. http://www.gpb.org/irasshai http://www.gpb.org/irasshai
• thomastjeffery 9y ago
  I've been learning some simple Korean, and the biggest stumbling block is romanization. 한글 is so simple to learn that there is no reason to romanize it. To make matters worse, Korean vowels are very specific, and quite different from English vowels. My instinct is to find Korean children's books, and learn to read like a Korean. Either way, romanization is harmful. Japanese does not have the same problem per se. Romanization of Japanese is quite effective. All you need to understand are a="ah", e="eh", u="ooh", o="oh" and i="eeh". That being said, it is still very important to learn kana; else, what would you read?