Rosetta Stone Japanese Level 1: A good but expensive program, and not without good, old hard work.
Since my kids are now in college and I’m left with a nice, clean empty nest, I thought I would take this opportunity to pursue some interests I’ve left on the back burner for too long. One of these pursuits is to learn enough Japanese to be able to go to Japan to visit with distant relatives. I am half-Japanese, and there was a point where I knew some of the language. This is what I learned as a toddler, but any knowledge from forty-plus years ago escaped my mind soon after I started school. That was coupled with the fact that my mother so embraced her new country, she rarely spoke Japanese at all in the home.…
Article comments
26 - Jared
I am an American who has lived in Argentina and currently lives in Japan.
Both Spanish and Japanese only have 5 vowel sounds, and they are the same.
It is easier to amass a large vocabulary in Spanish because of the Latin roots.
However, as English and Spanish speakers, our written and spoken languages are very similar. We constantly use idioms, metaphor, and even sarcasm. What Japanese people say on a daily basis is far simpler than their written language. How would you express that you are tired? Would you simply say: "tired" ?
This is how one can become proficient in day-to-day Japanese conversation without a strong grasp of the written language or a wide vocabulary.
27 - José
I'm portuguese and we portuguese can easily communicate with spanish speakers. That said, I'm a long way from speaking correct spanish, and this is due to two drive-you-nuts features, shared by all latin languages: gender and verb conjugation. These two are hard to get right. English is easy mainly because these got written off (and for good reason, IMHO). So, I understand why some people may find japanese easier, since, as far as I know, japanese has no gender articles and simple verb conjugation, although one has to learn a whole new vocabulary. Mandarin is a whole level harder to me, because of the tone thing.
28 - Will
I found it really surprisingly simple to grasp the different order of verbs, objects and subjects. It threw me off at first but I had it down within the first couple of lessons, and I didn't take notes or go back over lessons or anything. I don't mean to sound boasting, I just think it's easier than it seems if you really put your mind to it. What I did was repeat to myself aloud what the voice just said, and read the sentence of hiragana, trying to figure out which sound went with which syllable and it sunk in after a while. Also I made mental notes about some hiragana and what they resembled, ie the hiragana for 'chi' resembles a 5 to me. At least I think it was chi.