4 ms·

"and here I am ten years later in Nagoya looking at a stack of bug reports filed against the university entrance exam administration system." So what would you

"and here I am ten years later in Nagoya looking at a stack of bug reports filed against the university entrance exam administration system." So what would you recommend as a course of self study in Japanese? ( I assume such a thing is possible. I could be wrong) Anything on the Internet is fine of course and I can buy any books available on Amazon, but I can't really go back to school or attend classes (no good Japanese teachers/schools where I live).

patio11 17y ago
Candidly, I wouldn't. If you put a gun to my head I'd say find yourself a copy of Japanese the Spoken Language with the CDs and drill them until your ears bleed. In particular, make sure you practice production (i.e. talk, talk, talk, if you don't sound like the CD keep talking until you do, then drill some more). The lack of somebody to tell you "You're saying everything... wrong" is one of the largest problems with self-study. The largest is that almost everyone gives it up.
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  "Candidly, I wouldn't. Thanks! What if I wanted (primarily) to read, write and understand (spoken) Japanese? (vs speak without mangling pronounciation) Would that be equally hard? Iow can self study get me to the point where I can watch a video clip or movie in Japanese and not have to look at the subtitles?
  - patio11 17y ago
    So can I level with you for a moment? Nine times out of ten, when someone in my social circles asks me how to study Japanese, it is because they have some vague idea of enjoying anime/manga/video games in the original. (Especially when they start suggesting "Well, I don't need to actually be able to read anything, I just want to be fluent" or the converse.) Without specific reference to you, approximately 98% of the people I know who went into Japanese with that objective gave up before they achieved any useful level of proficiency. (And one now works at SquareEnix, living the otaku dream.) Hobbies are nice and relaxing. Committing to studying a foreign language means blocking off nights and weekends for the next several years of your life because you'll have BLOODY HARD WORK to do. And make no mistake, it is going to be work. Two years from now, your fingers will bleed from writing practice, you'll know a few hundred characters, and this snippet from Wiki: 米国Googleは人類が使う全ての情報を集め整理すると言う壮大な目的をもって設立された。独自開発したプログラムが、世界中のウェブサイトを巡回して情報を集め、検索用の索引を作り続けている。約30万台のコンピュータが稼動中といわれる。検索結果の表示画面や提携したウェブサイト上に広告を載せることで、収益の大部分をあげている。 will still be mostly impenetrable to you. That is 6th grade Japanese. I strongly suggest you find your driving motivation to learn the language which will get you through moments of despair like that one. Which you'll have plenty of, because learning languages is BLOODY HARD WORK. (Obligatory disclaimer: I am fairly decent at Japanese. I can read 6th grade level Wikipedia articles. Yay. I can also give technical presentations to engineers and discuss outsourcing strategy with C-level executives. And you know what? I have a veritable mountain of HARD WORK ahead of me.) can self study get me to the point where I can watch a video clip Self study can get you to the point where you'd appreciate exactly how much you just asked to be able to do. (Here's a trivial example: I watched Monsters vs. Aliens yesterday. All of the military characters speak a cartoony parody of what Japanese translators think Japanese people would think sounds like what Americans think macho military types sound like. Were you planning on learning fake military Japanese? ) (Five second fake military Japanese lesson: 諸君 (Shokun) means "you", in the sense of a form of address used by a military officer to address his underlings as a body. An American writer might substitute "gentlemen", as in "Gentlemen, it has been an honor and a privilege serving with you. stirring music" This word has no practical use in Japanese aside from signaling that you're trying to talk like you're military (or nationalist). Because this little factoid is 99.95% useless, you are unlikely to ever encounter it in a textbook.)
    - plinkplonk 17y ago
      "Hobbies are nice and relaxing. Committing to studying a foreign language means blocking off nights and weekends for the next several years of your life because you'll have BLOODY HARD WORK to do. And make no mistake, it is going to be work." Great answer, thanks! Just for some context, I speak read and write about 7 languages (4 Indian languages - 3 contemporary, one ancient - Sanskrit) and 3 European languages (English, French and German) fluently, (fluently == I can read and write classical works, can be airdropped into a country speaking the language and be fine, but no one really speaks Sanskrit anymore of course :-D ) and can speak (but not read and write) a couple more Indian languages. From my experience of learning all the languages I do know, I know that they are "work" to learn and don't have any illusions of learning Japanese being "easy". I took 3 plus years of classes in both French and German for example, but I can imagine someone who puts in serious self directed effort (and knows a language in the "family" already - Sanskrit grammatical structures are close to the the ones in German, for example with the verb coming at the end of a long sentence,and several word "running together" and so on) learning either of these from instructional material (books + cds), listening to radio/mp3/videoclips/ newspapers + dictionary +grammar book + Internet discussion and so on, to the point where they may have strong accents, but they can read, write and listen to radio broadcasts etc. Now I've learned only languages within the Indo European (English, French and German) and "Indian" langauges (though the South Indian languages belong to a different family than Sanskrit and Hindi which are "North Indian"). I enjoy learning languages and was considering learning a non-European, non-Indian language "just for fun". So yes, the motivation was "for fun" but without the illusion of learning languages being easy, or with an anticipated "giving up" before a few years of effort. So anyway I was considering Arabic or Hebrew or one of Chinese/Japanese. Unfortunately I don't have teachers/classes nearby and I think Japanese/Chinese etc may have additional difficulties than say, French or German due to their scripts and tonality and general mind-bendingness(at least I think they are mind bending!). I was just asking you whether you think the combination of all other possible resources (books, cd, dvd, internet discussion, video clips etc) could get one to a point of reasonable, non-perfect-pronounciation-but-can-read-and-write-and-understand fluency in Japanese, effort over a few years being a given, for someone gifted at languages. I take it you are saying "no, not likely". Fair Enough! Thanks again! The great thing about HN is that it is so easy to tap into so many knowledgeable people.

patio11 17y ago

Candidly, I wouldn't. If you put a gun to my head I'd say find yourself a copy of Japanese the Spoken Language with the CDs and drill them until your ears bleed. In particular, make sure you practice production (i.e. talk, talk, talk, if you don't sound like the CD keep talking until you do, then drill some more). The lack of somebody to tell you "You're saying everything... wrong" is one of the largest problems with self-study. The largest is that almost everyone gives it up.

plinkplonk 17y ago
"Candidly, I wouldn't. Thanks! What if I wanted (primarily) to read, write and understand (spoken) Japanese? (vs speak without mangling pronounciation) Would that be equally hard? Iow can self study get me to the point where I can watch a video clip or movie in Japanese and not have to look at the subtitles?
- patio11 17y ago
  So can I level with you for a moment? Nine times out of ten, when someone in my social circles asks me how to study Japanese, it is because they have some vague idea of enjoying anime/manga/video games in the original. (Especially when they start suggesting "Well, I don't need to actually be able to read anything, I just want to be fluent" or the converse.) Without specific reference to you, approximately 98% of the people I know who went into Japanese with that objective gave up before they achieved any useful level of proficiency. (And one now works at SquareEnix, living the otaku dream.) Hobbies are nice and relaxing. Committing to studying a foreign language means blocking off nights and weekends for the next several years of your life because you'll have BLOODY HARD WORK to do. And make no mistake, it is going to be work. Two years from now, your fingers will bleed from writing practice, you'll know a few hundred characters, and this snippet from Wiki: 米国Googleは人類が使う全ての情報を集め整理すると言う壮大な目的をもって設立された。独自開発したプログラムが、世界中のウェブサイトを巡回して情報を集め、検索用の索引を作り続けている。約30万台のコンピュータが稼動中といわれる。検索結果の表示画面や提携したウェブサイト上に広告を載せることで、収益の大部分をあげている。 will still be mostly impenetrable to you. That is 6th grade Japanese. I strongly suggest you find your driving motivation to learn the language which will get you through moments of despair like that one. Which you'll have plenty of, because learning languages is BLOODY HARD WORK. (Obligatory disclaimer: I am fairly decent at Japanese. I can read 6th grade level Wikipedia articles. Yay. I can also give technical presentations to engineers and discuss outsourcing strategy with C-level executives. And you know what? I have a veritable mountain of HARD WORK ahead of me.) can self study get me to the point where I can watch a video clip Self study can get you to the point where you'd appreciate exactly how much you just asked to be able to do. (Here's a trivial example: I watched Monsters vs. Aliens yesterday. All of the military characters speak a cartoony parody of what Japanese translators think Japanese people would think sounds like what Americans think macho military types sound like. Were you planning on learning fake military Japanese? ) (Five second fake military Japanese lesson: 諸君 (Shokun) means "you", in the sense of a form of address used by a military officer to address his underlings as a body. An American writer might substitute "gentlemen", as in "Gentlemen, it has been an honor and a privilege serving with you. stirring music" This word has no practical use in Japanese aside from signaling that you're trying to talk like you're military (or nationalist). Because this little factoid is 99.95% useless, you are unlikely to ever encounter it in a textbook.)
  - plinkplonk 17y ago
    "Hobbies are nice and relaxing. Committing to studying a foreign language means blocking off nights and weekends for the next several years of your life because you'll have BLOODY HARD WORK to do. And make no mistake, it is going to be work." Great answer, thanks! Just for some context, I speak read and write about 7 languages (4 Indian languages - 3 contemporary, one ancient - Sanskrit) and 3 European languages (English, French and German) fluently, (fluently == I can read and write classical works, can be airdropped into a country speaking the language and be fine, but no one really speaks Sanskrit anymore of course :-D ) and can speak (but not read and write) a couple more Indian languages. From my experience of learning all the languages I do know, I know that they are "work" to learn and don't have any illusions of learning Japanese being "easy". I took 3 plus years of classes in both French and German for example, but I can imagine someone who puts in serious self directed effort (and knows a language in the "family" already - Sanskrit grammatical structures are close to the the ones in German, for example with the verb coming at the end of a long sentence,and several word "running together" and so on) learning either of these from instructional material (books + cds), listening to radio/mp3/videoclips/ newspapers + dictionary +grammar book + Internet discussion and so on, to the point where they may have strong accents, but they can read, write and listen to radio broadcasts etc. Now I've learned only languages within the Indo European (English, French and German) and "Indian" langauges (though the South Indian languages belong to a different family than Sanskrit and Hindi which are "North Indian"). I enjoy learning languages and was considering learning a non-European, non-Indian language "just for fun". So yes, the motivation was "for fun" but without the illusion of learning languages being easy, or with an anticipated "giving up" before a few years of effort. So anyway I was considering Arabic or Hebrew or one of Chinese/Japanese. Unfortunately I don't have teachers/classes nearby and I think Japanese/Chinese etc may have additional difficulties than say, French or German due to their scripts and tonality and general mind-bendingness(at least I think they are mind bending!). I was just asking you whether you think the combination of all other possible resources (books, cd, dvd, internet discussion, video clips etc) could get one to a point of reasonable, non-perfect-pronounciation-but-can-read-and-write-and-understand fluency in Japanese, effort over a few years being a given, for someone gifted at languages. I take it you are saying "no, not likely". Fair Enough! Thanks again! The great thing about HN is that it is so easy to tap into so many knowledgeable people.