Learning program accuracy "101 Languages of the World"
 

Hello,

My name is Catalin, from Romania. I'm a nonstop learner, and now I reached the point on my list Japanesse language (culture comes later on, 'cause once you know the language, you understand at another level everything related). I have a program called Languages of the World, which has the spoken basics of conversation level in japanesse, but before i get into it, if someone used it, can tell me if its any bit correct?
I don't want to start with a wrong sense of the right language, because after you catch a habbit its hard to escape of it, same applies to learning (from what i saw until now).
I found a topic here, where there was a link to the written "letters" (if i can call them that) used, i will learn that, but at the spoken, besides watching (listening) some anime series, I don't have a refference point to compare the programs real "value".

Thank you in advance.

PS: Until now I just learned some easy languages Deutsch (german), francais, english so I'm not especting to be easy to learn this language, but something is making me turn in this direction and i can't help it.

Why don't you share a bit with us about what the book says? I can't imagine I'm going to go buy a book just to tell you it's (likely) not very useful.

You'd be better served by getting a kanji book, a school textbook (Yookoso! and Minna no Nihongo are two popular ones), and flashcarding a lot of vocabulary. It's more of an investment, but it's more of a return.

Memorizing "konnichiwa" and "douzo yoroshiku itashimasu" will not get you anywhere without further materials.

I suggest you first read Tae Kim's guide to Japanese grammar. It's free online. Once you've learned everything there, you will be able to speak Japanese conversationally.

michel thomas does a good audio course that helps build up a bit of your vocab but sadly its just an audio course so if you want to learn kana and kanji you'd need additional material like *points to the above post*

The program I'm talking about is this:
101 Languages of the World Review 2009 - TopTenREVIEWS
It's mainly a english to other language learning helper program. However, the fact that it is a 101 language pack, I'm a bit in doubt about the quantity to quality.
I attached 3 separate windows from the program, the one that helps reading, the other a conversation example one, and the last is activities (some play to gain type learners).
What I'm interested the most is the audio part of it. If that's wrong it doesn't help. I will try to find one audio file, or try to record one conversation example, to send it to someone as a sample. If it says it's ok, I'll continue.
The type of learning is based on sound to written fonetic match.

Anyway, thanks for the advices, I already bookmarked and looked up the sugestions, I've printed the "letters" and if I'm not disturbing too much, can someone guide me to some hand writting examples of the exact symbols used by nihongo (i assume thats how it's called the j. language from what i saw on another topic here).

Thank you,

C.C.

It spoils the window of the forum if there's more than one attachment per post, so i post the other photos one by one.

The last photo.

It is not in Japanese.

And regarding your comment "culture comes later". Japanese language and culture are essentially inseparable. The language will make a LOT more sense if you understand the culture (i.e. culture of relationships) in Japan as you are learning.

And Japanese generally don't shake hands.

Agreed, even found myself learning a bit of a japanese history so far just to understand silly phrases

Any method of self teaching involves making mystakes, better ask before proceeding. That was mainly why I opened this topic, not to make a mystake with the program i choose, the methods I aply.
The starting point of what I was thinking, seems it was alot off track. So I'm gathering all your advices and changing the way I will learn.

Already donwloaded the Japanese grammar guide in PDF format to print it, for easier reading, and checking in the same time the link from where i got it for audible examples and other essentials.

Thank you, it already helped me to avoid some lost time for nothing. Other advices are highly welcomed.

Best regards,

C.C.

I'm sorry for disturbing again, I am a bit confused about something. The 2 forms of writting (katakana, hiragana), can be or are they used in general in the same "sentence"?

Yes, and there are more than 2 types of writing. There's the two "kana" you mentioned, plus kanji. And then Japanese uses arabic numerals (0-9) sometimes, too. Hiragana and katakana are phonetic. Kanji is not. And then there's romaji, which means two things: (1) a system of writing Japanese using the roman alphabet; and (2) a group of characters used for certain things in Japan. For example, my name in Japanese, if you only use my first initial, would be Kゲッツ.

Here's a sample sentence using all three that you're not familiar with already as a Romanian speaker:
アメリカに英語が話せる人がいます。
アメリカ is katakana, 英語、話、人 are kanji, and に、が、せる、がいます are hiragana.
The sentence means "There are people in America who can speak English."

I suggest you read the Romanian wikipedia article on the Japanese writing system, since you apparently thought there are only two groups of graphs used in Japanese: Scrierea japoneză - Wikipedia

I can read enough Romanian to know the article explains hiragana, katakana, kanji, and romaji.

I know about the romanji meaning, the kanji (cuneiform writting adapted from chinese), I'm at page 30 in the Jappanesse grammar Guide, those were clear, but this wasn't, the use of both katakana and hiragana in the same one. They were explained separate, that confused me.
Kanji, I already understood that replaces words, meanings (and even more) in any written type, so that implies it is being used everywhere (except in romanji).

Romaji romaji romaji. There is no "n," and this is a big mistake nearly every noob seems to make. It is written romaji, and in Japanese ローマ字 (Rome characters).

I'm sorry, that was a typo mystake, not a intentional one. I know it is romaji, but kept writting that.

However, when it comes to something new, you're right, everybody is a noob, until it gets it. I am one of them, but evolving is one man's job.

I know I'm a pain in the.... like all the other begginers, but I thank you for all the advices.

My primary questions were answered, it helped me avoid already some bad choices, but now it's time to get to the learning.

See you in a few weeks, I hope, with a lot more in my head.

Best regards,

Catalin C.

One more nit-pick, sorry.

(emphasis added)

You really shouldn't use the word "cuneiform" either for kanji or for the Chinese writing system that kanji is derived from. Cuneiform only refers to the writing system used in ancient Mesopotamia, with its distinctive wedge-shaped marks; the very name "cuneiform" derives from the Latin for "wedge-shaped". (For similar reasons, "hieroglyphic" is also a bad choice; that term is normally used only for the ancient Egyptian writing system.)

A much better term for kanji and Chinese writing is "logographic".

In a logographic system, each character (or logogram) represents a word or word-element. Hence the use of the term "logogram", from the Greek for "word-character". The correspondence between logograms and words isn't simple; while some logograms may be pictograms or ideograms, others may be chosen for the sound of a word already associated with the character, and the characters can be combined in various ways. That's why the term "logographic" fits better than other terms.

End of pedantic lecture. :D

Thank you, new thing learned, alot more to come :D .

Well, if you want to get really pedantic, in Japanese, kanji do not always represent a word or specific sound, so "logogram" is not accurate, either. Further, since not all kanji represent an idea, "ideogram" is not correct, either.

"Morphograph" is better.

Now it's someone else's turn to out-pedant me!

Heh, I actually saw that one while checking "logogram" in Wikipedia (specifically, the section covering Chinese writing and its use in Japanese and Korean). I started to mention it, but then thought it better to keep things simpler, since the distinction seems most relevant to linguists, and we're not talking to a linguist. I then wondered whether someone else might bring up the "morphographic, not logographic" point. And you willingly obliged. :D

Protheus, don't worry too much about these fine distinctions. If you're curious, it's related to the fact that Japanese kanji have multiple readings, so-called on and kun readings, on being the word borrowed from Chinese which the kanji originally stood for, and kun the native Japanese word or words with the same meaning. If you want a bit more detail, check the links I included above.

The culture thing that MMM said is huge! I think there is no way of being fluent in Japanese without understanding the culture. Sometimes you run into Japanese people who don't seem to have a firm grasp on their own culture and they are pretty much grouped with hennagaijin.

I admit that I thought "romaji" was "romanji" for the first two or three years of studying Japanese. I feel like my first couple of teachers said it "romanji". Maybe it's referred to as "romanji" in a book somewhere?

"romanji" - Google Search
1,210,000 results for "romanji"

"romaji" - Google Search
5,970,000 results for "romaji"

Romaji is being mistaken for 1/5 of the time (at least according to google)!

Romanization of Japanese - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"romanji" also comes up on wikipedia (and the article says that "romanji" is indeed wrong)

Understood, history and culture lessons, between language lessons, but after katakana and hiragana tables memorized.

Maybe I seem easy to be understood just from some posts here, the logic conclusion would be something like : "an enthusiastic teenager that will calm down in a few months and go back to its usual and casual life", but I'm not "the logical conclusion". I always look for new "frontiers to cross".
Even though I don't have an University degree in language, I'm still interested about the real "name" given to the chinese writting and everything else related.