What is the best method to learn japanese?
 

I can speak about 5 percent of the langauge. I really do not want to learn to write in Japanese cause that will take forever and I don't have much time. I am going to a japanese college and I need to learn this thing in 3 years. I am learning to write in korean and it is much easier than Japanese kanji but do you think they would accept a foreigner who knows how to write in korean, but not japanese?

If you are moving to Japan, why are you concerned about learning Korean.

To be honest, living in Japan, knowing how to write kanji will probably not be your top priority. Speaking and listening are more vital in the day-to-day life.

But if he expects to attend a Japanese university (presumably as a regular student, since that what it sounds like from OP), then if he doesn't know about 2000 kanji, he sure isn't getting accepted.

If he is going to a Japanese college in Japanese then 5% is about 95% short of what he needs to know to attend.

I'm pretty vocal about it and I think a lot of peopel disagree with me... but I'd say your best bet is to immerse yourself. It's not something that can be done in a matter of months, let alone even a year or two. I don't know where you pulled that 5% stuff from, but I'm not sure how vaild it is. I think language acquisition is something that is hard to measure on terms like that. Some people study as much as they can and never seem to get it, and then one day it clicks. That's what you're looking for -- the catylist that will make it happen for you.

Everyone is probably different, but what I found worked for me was watching as much Japanese TV as I could, as well as movies (sometimes the same movies over and over). I didn't find music to be too helpful. I had a learned some of the basics from textbooks by the time I started doing this, but to be frank, I'm not sure the textbooks helped too much (as a matter of fact, they are far from realistic). The order of things that you learn seems arbitrary to me. Sometimes I'd lay around in my back yard (on sunny days) just reading from a basic Japanese grammar book trying to recognize stuff I'd heard, or learn some new stuff from it. If you have japanese friends you can talk to, figure out which grammar forms are actually used in everyday conversation and mark those pages (or mark the bad ones). Also, talk to them as much as you can, as that will be more of a real life situation than watching tv or movies will.

Everyone talks about reading like you absolutely have to do it... I'm not so certain about that. I still can't read that well and I speak decent Japanese. Most of the reading you'll need to do will be train stop names/street signs... and it's not like you're gonna be studying that kinda stuff when you study from textbooks.

I got kinda confused by all that korean talk , too. I'd say set your priorities and decide which one you want to do. If Japanese is more important now, go ahead and work on that first. The languages are supposedly similar, so learning one will probably help in learning the other (but will probably also introduce false friends and the like).

I also feel as though having somewhat of a musical background helps with language acquisition. If you have the time, work on ear training as I think this will help you hear the nuances in intonation and things like that.

Another thing that I think is important: don't overanalyze everything. Just turn off your brain (the thinking part) and listen. The sounds will still enter your ears, and your brain will still do something... but don't try to hear every word. Listen to the rhythm and the flow of the language, as though you were listening to a really good album or something like that. Zoning out and doing that is something that no school will ever teach you. They wanna sell you books and tests and all that BS. Just relax and let it happen naturally.

I literally know zero people here who would disagree with your statement that the best way to learn Japanese is immersion. :)

One doesn't have to learn how to write. But one MUST learn how to read Kanji.

Kyle, I know what you mean, but I mean that there are people who disagree with my idea of what immersion really is. Some people think that immersion comes down to learning how to read and write kanji all day (that's a bit of an exaggeration), but I think that doing so is not NEARLY as important as some people make it out to be.

I've met and talked to people who have actually argued against immersion in that it is bad for your cultural identity, yada yada yada. If your ego goes as far as your cultural identity, there's a good reason immersion isn't for you-- it'd be quite hard to handle! A big part of the language is how and when to act a certain way. Even if you understand the spoken language, if you can't act normal (this is from the L2 perspective), then there's something missing. It's the idea that language goes WAY beyond words.

So my idea of immersion is using your ears and eyes the best you can. If you're worried about your cultural identity, then don't learn another language, because once you get far enough it will affect the way you think. Immersion, I think, is the only way to get beyond perfection. You want to understand how and when to say things, and how to act when saying them... then you want to get beyond that and loosen it up a bit.

Written language and especially kanji is a completely different world. I do agree that kanji is good in that if you know some kanji you can start to understand words you've never even heard before just based on the kanji that you THINK it is. I think the fundamentals of everyday conversation should be covered before you try to delve deeper into the kanji which you will hear only once in a blue moon when you're talking to someone.

It's my opinion that the learning process of second languages is essentially backwards. I'd think the first thing you'd want to do is get rid of your "cultural identity" and start building a new one in your new language. Only then can you start to fit in.

If you've ever been told "hen na nihonjin yori ii ne", (which I assume a lot of the non-Japanese on here have), then you probably know what I mean. You can be the token gaijin if you want (as it's a blast sometimes), but you should have an on off switch so you can fit-in in any situation.

I learned the language to the point that I was able to attend university (ie. pass the JLPT1 to be applicable for resident classes, and not as an international student) in a year of being in Japan.

I never took any real classes, and I don`t recall studying. The closest I got was looking up kanji or words I didn`t know in a dictionary while reading books. I think I can count on one hand the times I directly asked "what does such and such mean?" to a person once I was past the stage where I could look it up myself or pull it out by context.

Unfortunately, I have yet to figure out this amazing learning method to be able to recommend it in detail to anyone... If I had, I am sure I could be making tons of money off of it. *sigh*

The best suggestion I can make is to go for a frequency oriented learning pattern, ignoring kanji and the like for a while. THIS is what I think steven was saying people tend to disagree with. I don`t think anyone needs to know kanji until they are pretty far along in their studies - I fall into the "learn as close to a native child`s learning process as possible" camp, which is NOT all that popular as adults want to speak like adults - however limiting that may be - from day one. That`s simply not good for learning, in my opinion.

Wow... Nyororin, we have more in common than I thought. I think we see eye to eye on this one.
I teach English here, so I often think about my learning process and how I went about learning Japanese. I spent years trying to learn from books, but eventually just gave it up and tried to make my mind as blank as possible when I went into learning Japanese "for real".

I've done a lot of research about it and I've read books about it. I have a terrible memory so I can't say where I read what off hand, but I have read of this phenomenon. I've heard about it from other people who speak a second language fluently, too. There is a point where something happens-- it's like clarity. One day you find yourself understanding what people are saying to you. It is from that day that you can learn gradually day by day as a native speaker would in their first 10 or so years of life.

Some books talk about it as though it is this mysterious power that only certain people have-- something like 5% or some bullhonky like that. I've read books that say some people have some "inate ability to learn a second language". That "inate ability" exists within everyone. I believe that is how we all learned our first language.

All you have to do is refine your approach. In other words, stop approaching the language as an adult in that you want to learn things "appropriate" to your age, etc, etc. The key is that you have to take everything AS IT IS. Don't try to think about what "this" word or "that" word means. Just let the sounds enter your ears and your brain will do the rest. If you have visual cues and a little bit of common sense, then there's no reason why this should not work other than stubbornness.

I say all this from first hand experience... I was such a terrible language student. I always wanted to "translate" every stupid little nuance that I had in my English into Japanese. You can't simply try to color another language with your native tongue... for they are completely different primary colors. It's like taking yellow and trying to make red out of it.

I've heard adults make all kinds of excuses as to why this can't work... That's all it is, is simply excuses. If you look at it as Nyororin put it, which is how I think I see things... why should you be able to translate portions of books in your 4th or 5th year of your second language learning. That's what they do to Japanese kids in high schools. It's like asking a 4 or 5 year old to read some novel and understand it. It's impossible. Not only that, the amount of exposure to a language is vastly different when you compare someone who is learning a second language in their home country vs someone who has acquired their native language in that language's country. Teachers don't get this concept... therefore students don't get this concept.

I suspect one of the reasons this method is not popular is because of what Nyororin said... it's not something you can explain very well. It's like asking someone to explain how they learned their mother language. It's not and SHOULDN'T be a very concious experience. The problem with all this is... try making a book about this- then try selling it to educators. Good luck with that. There's no money in this. Why not let people struggle with learning a second language. Let them take all the bullshit tests they want-- the test makers get money that way. They make the study books too. I want to get in on that someday! Sound like a good business.

In all seriousness though, I want to propose to the board of education a new method: Instead of having some half baked English lesson by a teacher who couldn't give a rats ass about English-- or who isn't qualified to teach English teach Elementary school kids once a week, why not just have the kids watch an episode (or two, as that would take up 40 minutes) of a TV show once a day... I bet it'd work after 6 years of elementary school.

Here's the problem with that: The cuvetted "cultural identity". There's a certain amount of brainwashing that goes on in ALL schools, and I think some people would be opposed to doing this simply because it goes against the grain a little bit. As it is right now, I believe there are a lot of tax dollars going to waste.

But it's getting late and I digress...

That it is a limited ability is indeed true. There is a limited window for learning a language both as a "first" language, and another limited window for picking one up as a naturally fluent second (or beyond) language. Some people have a wider window than others for the second. The first language generally ends around 6 or 7 - as in children without any language exposure and development before that age are never able to pick up a real first language. After puberty, they usually are unable to pick up any functional language at all regardless of effort or time invested.
The window to pick up a naturally fluent second + language tends to narrow and close in the mid teens to late teens. Some people have a longer period, some shorter.
Of course, passing this window doesn`t make it impossible to learn a language or to speak it well. It just puts it into a different space in your brain, making it a bit harder to be natural in your speech.

The biggest way to explain this difference would be amnesia. Languages picked up after the window disappear if you get total amnesia - your first language and others that were acquired during the open window period stick around just like other normal life skills. Otherwise, it is stored with the rest of your knowledge - things that you can lose with time or memory damage.

This, this, and this.
If you connect words directly to their meanings - not as in "ねこ" means "cat" but as in that furry thing over there with a tail and pointy ears is a "ねこ" - they tend to stay in your mind MUCH better. Instead of thinking of something as "how to say something in Japanese" you should file it away as "another word for something". There are countless ways to say something in English and countless items have multiple words for them - people do not have too much trouble linking these words to the items without thinking "Kitty? Oh right, that means cat in my everyday speech!"
There are many things that I know in English, and know in Japanese, but there is no link between the words. I`ll stumble across the words next to each other and there will be this little epiphany. I never knew that *** meant ***! Even though I know both the words, they`re not connected to anything but the meaning itself.

I say all this from first hand experience... I was such a terrible language student. I always wanted to "translate" every stupid little nuance that I had in my English into Japanese. You can't simply try to color another language with your native tongue... for they are completely different primary colors. It's like taking yellow and trying to make red out of it.

Some of this is a bit skewed. Your second language should not take as long as your first because you have a framework of knowledge to build it over. You don`t have to learn what something is, does, what it looks like, etc at the same time as the words. At least not for the majority of things. All you need to do it put a new language set over that knowledge, with some tweaks to account for culture and foreign items.
The problems in Japanese schools (and really in US high schools too regarding second languages...) is that there is very little time dedicated to the language to begin with. You can`t pick up a language in a few hours a week. It doesn`t matter how many years you`ve been studying it.
I WOULD expect a 4th or 5th year learner who has been immersed to be able to read, comprehend, and passably translate pretty much any standard novel tossed in their direction.
I would also expect a 4th or 5th year learner of a first language to be able to understand a book aimed at their level of knowledge and language skill.

I strongly disagree with this one.
Passive exposure is completely different than active exposure. This is why children even in native speaking countries who watch television in their native language, with native language interaction at other times are behind in language skills. Passive exposure alone does NOTHING. In fact, it will hinder more than help. Exposure to a language you do not know enough of to understand becomes background noise. Without interaction and reinforcement there is no progress. This is why people can watch anime for years and years and still have a vocabulary of about 10 Japanese words, half of which they aren`t using properly.

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