Is it possible to be self-taught in Japanese?

[Sitron]

Originally Posted by evanny

.
so...dont give us the BS that you or anyone can learn any other language (all aspects) soly by self training.

I understand German perfectly fine. I watch tv-shows dubbed in German evbery single day and I understand everything. I taught myself vocab by translating articles and books. And the pronunciation I learned by watching tv shows.

[yuriyuri]

Originally Posted by NanteNa

But SO many things go lost for those, who are cocky enough to believe that they can learn a language solely by watching anime and reading books.

I see what you are saying but, it does depend on what you watch and what you read etc.

If you stick to only watching Pokemon and reading Naruto of course you will miss out on a lot.

If however you actually broaden your reading/watching/listening materials and even go out of your way to speak with natives in the target language, then of course you can pick up everything that you would learn in a class anyway.

[NanteNa]

Originally Posted by yuriyuri

I see what you are saying but, it does depend on what you watch and what you read etc.

If you stick to only watching Pokemon and reading Naruto of course you will miss out on a lot.

If however you actually broaden your reading/watching/listening materials and even go out of your way to speak with natives in the target language, then of course you can pick up everything that you would learn in a class anyway.

That's not my point. I'm saying that you miss out on a lot of things by thinking, that it only takes a few TV shows and some basic reading to learn the language. There is a reason why some people study this for many years.. AND.. if you talk to natives of the language, it's not actually self-teaching ; D Also, natives don't think about how they speak their language - they just speak it. So your theory doesn't really hold water in my opinion..

I'd say it would only work if you ACTUALLY got your hands on grammar books, how-to Kanji/hiragana/katakana etc. Japanese (and any eastern Asian language) is not something you 'just' decide to learn, because you think you have the flair for any European language. Heck, if I wanted to, I'd probably be able to teach myself any European language - because they're easy for me, as I'm European myself. But the ground base for European languages (Latin, old Germanian languages etc.) are not to be compared to Japanese, Chinese, Korean or anything like it.

Originally Posted by Sitron

I understand German perfectly fine. I watch tv-shows dubbed in German evbery single day and I understand everything. I taught myself vocab by translating articles and books. And the pronunciation I learned by watching tv shows.

And no one ever corrected your translations?
I find that very hard to believe.. And dude, I understand pretty much ANYTHING in German said or written to me - but I still have a hard time figuring out the grammar. Translating articles and books doesn't do much unless you have a book or a programme that teaches you the grammar from end to other. There are SO many grammatical issues with the German language. What language is your mother tongue?

[yuriyuri]

Originally Posted by NanteNa

That's not my point. I'm saying that you miss out on a lot of things by thinking, that it only takes a few TV shows and some basic reading to learn the language. There is a reason why some people study this for many years..

Yes - Like I have been self studying for almost 2 years (Well... 2 years with a bit of a break in the middle)
And of course it doesn't only take a few TV shows and books; I would have thought that would be obvious to anyone.

Originally Posted by NanteNa

AND.. if you talk to natives of the language, it's not actually self-teaching ; D Also, natives don't think about how they speak their language - they just speak it. So your theory doesn't really hold water in my opinion..

So, as soon as you try to practice speaking with someone in their language you are automatically not self studying?
Strange way of looking at it...

Also, you seem to be referring to some kind of theory to do with natives thinking about what they are saying (Or something like that) which I never actually mentioned in any posts...

Originally Posted by NanteNa

I'd say it would only work if you ACTUALLY got your hands on grammar books, how-to Kanji/hiragana/katakana etc. Japanese (and any eastern Asian language) is not something you 'just' decide to learn, because you think you have the flair for any European language. Heck, if I wanted to, I'd probably be able to teach myself any European language - because they're easy for me, as I'm European myself. But the ground base for European languages (Latin, old Germanian languages etc.) are not to be compared to Japanese, Chinese, Korean or anything like it.

At what point did I say that you can't use grammar books and stuff?
I use them to speed up the learning process, but it doesn't change the fact I am learning by myself.

Edit:
We are obviously talking about 2 different things here.
I think maybe you think I am talking about picking up all of the grammar all by yourself with no grammar books or anything.
When I am really talking about using resources by yourself without going to a class or seeing a tutor of some kind.

[cranks]

The whole point of "learning" a language to me is to become being able to use it in real life situations, so even if your German is fraught with errors, you are done with "learning" once you have a good enough command of the language to function as an adult, i.e. work, in an all German environment, imo. After that, you just have to use it as much as possible, and do what native speakers do, like taking a writing class and/or a speech class.

Both in learning German and learning Japanese, I'm sure classes help to a certain extent. But German seems close enough to English that you can understand most of what a material for adults, for example a TV news show or an article from a paper, is saying by just replacing all the words with English ones. With Japanese though, you'll have no idea if you do the same. You can probably get around it by reading grammar books and doing text books on your own too, but getting to the level where you can somewhat understand basic Japanese materials would take hundreds of hours of study, so it seems to me you kind have to be really passionate or/and dogged. I feel like I can learn German or Spanish all on my own, but if I were to learn a language like Arabic, I'd take some classes. I can probably self-teach Arabic too, but it seems like too much work.

Whatever you do, expect to spend 4 times more time on Japanese than German to get to a certain skill level. It'll probably take 1000 hours to acquire basic skills like asking directions and talking about the weather, 3000 to 4000 for business level skills, over 10,000 to be native like. How you go about it probably does't matter that much at the end of the day.

[Shizu]

Almost all of you said, it's impossible to learn Japanese pronunciation...
I think this is depends on what's your own language...

I'm Hungarian, and Japanese pronunciation for us is far the easiest of any language, because theirs sounds...their letters pronunciation is almost the same like in my language.
Their grammar is a bit similar to ours, so...

For me is English pronunciation is hard not the Japanese...

So I think it's depends on the people.

Many people said in world's language my own language is one of the most difficult language, like Japanese, but I have a Japanese friend who started to learn Hungarian on his own. And he is quite good in it.

So I think if you can learn Japanese if you try hard and don't give up.

[steven]

I'm going to go ahead and say that if anything, reading and writing would require instruction while speaking and pronunciation does not. Have you guys ever seen kids born in another country come to your own and learn how to speak English like a native before or during kindergarten?

I think of pronunciation as being like rote learning or music... and reading could obviously be equated to reading music. Rote learning is something that those steel drum groups traditionally do. I'm pretty sure a lot of drumming groups work that way. It's a matter of learning each phrase and getting all the nuances down. As far as I know this kind of stuff is done without much speaking being involved, and there usually aren't any questions.

When you get teachers teaching pronunciation of a (second) language, they usually butcher it even if they're natives. Speaking slowly in English often produces pronunciation that is different from the real deal. All languages are probably like that... I know Japanese is too. Pronunciation shouldn't be learned from a book, it should be absorbed through listening. After you have that sound pallet in your head you are able to better approximate the sounds you are making with your mouth. Even if you can't make the sounds yet, you can train your muscles to get closer and closer. It's like knowing your pitch is off while singing and being able to make adjustments to correct it.

[dogsbody70]

I have helen gilhooly course with cd's on myipod. I also have a berlitz and a michel thomas system.

it still takes regualr listening and practice and the need to talk out loud

I expect the best way is total immersion by living with japanese people and not being allowed to speak ones own language.

[globetrotter36]

The answer to the question is yes you can be self-taught Japanese as I am albeit well and truly out of practice a number of years now. However, what matters is just how far you want to advance your studies; fine learning the basics from a text book which of course you will need as you will the hiragana and katakana script. As for fluency then that is a different ball-game, the problem being people don't talk like text-books. I notice when listening that Japanese not infrequently miss out verbs and of course use a few colloquialisms and expressions with which a foreigner may or not be familiar - no big surprise there.

For example the verb iru after the -te form of the word and the suru verb often gets missed out giving the impression, as far as I can deduce that a sentence has been left hanging in mid-air (people please correct me if I am wrong).

In addition the whole way of saying some things are so different that a foreigner would never ever think of saying it, here's and example from the Japanese drama 'One Liter of Tears;' Aya, the central character at one point says: 'when I put my hand to my heart I can hear it beating' (mune ni otte miru doki doki oto ga suru. The literal translation of what she says is; 'chest at it place hand when put thump-thump sound does' (well something like that)

How would you know that? The simple answer you wouldn't so you would have to do hell of a lot of listening but it's not impossible as I had a friend who spoke reasonably fluent Japanese without ever having lived in Japan which he achieved by mixing with Japanese people.. Just how 'fluent' he was I don't know - sorry to say I fell out with him rather badly so I guess I will never know.

Items of use: Microsoft word has a scratch pad on the language bar when typing in Japanese where you can draw a character select it to print and then you can copy paste it into an on-line dictionary (I use tangorin) where you can also build up a vocabulary list.

The comedy 'Attention Please' is available with subtitles in Japanese script and have used Word the way described above in conjunction - real hard work but for some maybe the only way. Beware the DVD series is horrendously expensive as so many materials you may use for more advanced and worthwhile Japanese learning are!

Do build up your vocabulary, although mine is only around 1500 words at present I find can recognize a good many words. The book I found most useful for vocabulary is 'Japanese but not so much for grammar is 'Japanese for Today' although it is only available second having priced itself off the market.

Much will depend on just how determined you are or if you can logically find the time as there is no doubt the demand of learning are greater than European languages where resources are more abundant and cheaper (I am assuming you live in Europe). Good luck and I hope you find my post of use.

Ps: To the OP: you may already realize good deal of what I have said since you have learned German and will no doubt know people don't speak like textbooks but in Japanese the difference is more profound, in addition I am considering those new to learning Japanese who may not have done any foreign language learning.

[NanteNa]

Originally Posted by yuriyuri

So, as soon as you try to practice speaking with someone in their language you are automatically not self studying?
Strange way of looking at it...

Also, you seem to be referring to some kind of theory to do with natives thinking about what they are saying (Or something like that) which I never actually mentioned in any posts...

At what point did I say that you can't use grammar books and stuff?
I use them to speed up the learning process, but it doesn't change the fact I am learning by myself.

I never said that.. But as soon as you get help from others - to me, though - it's not really 'self-taught' anymore. Obviously therefore you can never be a good self-taught in ANY language in my opinion. You will always require some certain amount of help - unless you have crazy flair. Talking to natives of the language you wanna learn, gives you FEEDBACK and thereby boosts your learning.

I was pointing out that most natives wouldn't actually be able to give you a legit reason for why a verb changes in what direction depending on tense etc., while a teacher will be able to show you and explain to you EXACTLY why a word is used the way it is.

I never said that. lol. At what point did I say that I'd only comment on what you'd written?