Teaching myself Japanese

Atavan-Halen

Hi all, just looking for some advice/experiences. Japanese is a language I'd love to learn and seeing as I'm in 5th year I'm thinking of doing the LC Japanese course. Just wondering is it easy to teach yourself and Whats the book to get? Anything else I should look into? Thanks for replies

OxfordComma

atavan-halen wrote: »

Hi all, just looking for some advice/experiences. Japanese is a language I'd love to learn and seeing as I'm in 5th year I'm thinking of doing the LC Japanese course. Just wondering is it easy to teach yourself and Whats the book to get? Anything else I should look into? Thanks for replies

I didn't do Japanese for the LC, but I did actually attempt to teach myself it at one point, purely out of interest.

To be honest, I wouldn't advise teaching yourself a language for the LC. It'll require a massive amount of time, energy and self-discipline. Plus, I found Japanese to be a difficult language (and I'm good at languages - I got an A1 in French and an A2 in Irish in the LC!) The grammar isn't awful, but it is weird. Very weird (at least in my opinion :P). It's nothing like English, French, German or any other language you're likely to be familiar with. And the Japanese script is - I won't go into the details here, but it's incredibly complex, and made up of three distinct writing systems.

So, basically, I'd strongly advise you to find a teacher or competent speaker to guide you in case you get lost.

Atavan-Halen

Oh no, I won't actually be doing the LC Japanese exam, I just want to do the LC course

Seloth

I did it for a few months((As I stopped going to weekend classes)) and yeha you'll be fine.Just work hard enough at it,but dont take away from your proper school subjects.

Atavan-Halen

No, it'll just be on the side in my spare time. Anyone know what the best book to get is?

Drakmord

Nihongo Kantan is the leaving cert book. It's by Ursula Zimmermann.
Awesome language ^^
Much preferred it to German or Irish. Got my A1 :P

+ You only need 100 kanji or so, and kana doesn't take long to learn.

Atavan-Halen

Thanks. Yeah I've read a few books about Japanese and Japan and it seems like an interesting language to learn

FruitLover

If you're interested in learning the language for real, not just to pass an exam, follow the advice on www.alljapaneseallthetime.com

mink_man

very difficult to teach urself japanese!

clartharlear

mink_man wrote: »

very difficult to teach urself japanese!

You fail to do it before or something?

For me, languages are about communication, so it's weird to me that someone would learn a language alone. If you're in Dublin, there are opportunities to find study buddies. Check out the nihongo forum under soc->languages.
Exam-wise, it's not the most difficult of LC courses - why not do it, if you study it for a year or two? But don't worry about the exam for now - enjoy the language for this year, and if you get serious, it might turn out to be a very handy subject for next year.

Learn the kana straight off. It's surprisingly not that hard. There's nice websites like this to make a game of it. Once I knew those, I mostly used Minna no Nihongo to study.

MidnightQueen

Wow! Fair play to you if you do give a go at learning it. I heard from a friend that did try to learn it, it can be quiet tricky. Best of luck with it!

Seloth

Did anyone use Rosseta stone with LC japanese?

Drakmord

Rosetta Stone isn't very good, in my opinion.
It gives no grammar explanations and it's teaching method gets really boring after a short time.
It may be good for learning pronunciation though.

Seloth

Well I'm hoping to speed learn the first few chapters by using that and the back sections and the once when I'm back in japanese classes((Ugh saturday mornings))I'll be on track with the rest of the class.

elaine93

I'm a fourth year. I've been teaching myself Japanese since 6th class (with a year off in 3rd year because of the JC). At the moment my reading and writing are very good, my grammar is alright and my aural/oral is horrendous (because I have no-one to practice talking to. Learning Japanese requires a huge amount of dedication, between finding the right books,websites and actually learning the stuff.

However its a really nice language, great culture, tv shows/films/music, so its very rewarding. Also I find learning the Kanji very relaxing weirdly...:P One word of advice, don't use roman letters, even when you're just starting out. Learn the kana, in the scheme of things its better

I think if you're really prepared to do the work, then go for it, however I think if you're not going to take the exam then you're eating into valuable LC study time. I think 4th year would have been a good year to start.

Here are some websites I found really good

http://japanese.about.com/
http://ichi2.net/anki/
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/
http://thejapanesepage.com/grammar.htm

My favorite kanji learning book is remembering the Kanji by James W. Heisig. It comes in three volumes. The first one deals with the meanings, and gives you little stories to remember the kanji based on their radicals. The next book deals with their pronunciation and the third book deals with an extra 1000 kanji. Its the only book so far that has actually worked for me. You can download it online for free pretty easily if you look for it or you can get it in Waterstones for €30. He also did a learning the kana book, which is also available online

Niamhf

Where are the Saturday classses on?

elaine93

Niamhf wrote: »

Where are the Saturday classses on?

I second that..classes would be great

clartharlear

Notice Seloth's location in Co. Cork...

lou91

This topic comes up a lot

A lot of 4th years did the 5th year class, then do the 6th year class twice. Grand idea, but I just started in 5th year and got an A in the end. I enjoyed my saturday mornings in 4th year.

Seloth

It's a 6th year class.

Apparently one or two joined new this year and are cathing up fast and fair play to them.I need to catch up with the 5thyear work I missed out on and the 6th year so far as I've only been able to attend 3 classes so far this year

Fad

Niamhf wrote: »

Where are the Saturday classses on?

Dublin-St.Michael's College.