Re: New at this language!

m_gramkow123@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:

Hi, my name is Mathias and I've just started learning Japanese!

Welcome. It's a long journey but (to my mind) a fulfilling one.

I've been trying to get a lot of material to work with, including:
JIP(all the lessons), Rosetta Stone(Level 1), James Heisig's
"Learning the kanji", and a whole bunch other stuff including some
Katakana and Hiragana worksheets.

But what to start with? Eventually I'll need to learn it all but i
can't just start with the whole bunch can I?.

I would asvise you to separate the above material into: learning the
Japanese *writing system* (a fascinating journey but one that needs a
lot of study before you see tangible results) versus learning the
Japanese *spoken language* (a quickly-rewarding journey that benefits
from the unusually regular structure of the language). Keep these two
threads separate and progress each of them independently.


For the writing system, first learn the kana (the hiragana and
katakana). Try your best to learn the *sounds* associated with the
kana, and not the *romaji*; your existing preconceptions of how the
Latin alphabet is pronounced will mislead you into poor pronunciation
of Japanese. If you can access native Japanese pronunciations, in a
variety of voices, that will be a far better guide than any
English-alphabet rendition of the sounds.

This will give you the basic writing system elements, but will also
help you to "think" in Japanese sounds. Do *not* use romaji (Japanese
written using the English-language alphabet) for longer than can be
avoided: your preconceptions of how to pronounce the alphabet will
give you bad pronunciation habits that are difficult to shed. Invest a
solid block of time in memorising the kana both ways: writing the kana
when hearing the sounds, and saying the sounds when seeing the kana.
Immediately try to read only kana (instead of romaji) written forms of
Japanese, until your pronunciation habits are formed.


For the spoken language, there's really no substitute for having a
native speaker, or several, with whom to converse frequently. Ideally
you would have lessons at least weekly with a native speaker who is
also a teacher. Failing that, find some native speakers and find some
common interests with them so you can have an ongoing conversational
relationship with them.

You will also need a source of many conversation passages at varying
levels, written down. This should contain *no* romaji; instead it
should have kana throughout. Ideally the passages will be written as
normal Japanese text -- kanji-plus-hiragana-plus-katakana -- with the
addition of "furigana", small kana above every kanji that shows its
pronunciation in that instance. You will see this style in texts
written for learners, e.g. grade school texts, but less frequently in
text for adult native speakers.

These conversation passages will be a source of your study, but
practice of those passages will be best done with a conversation
partner, preferably native speaker, and preferably more than one.


Learning the kanji should begin as soon as you feel comfortable doing
so, but is generally more work with less reward initially. It is
useful to be aware that the kanji are more easily associated with
their *meanings* than with their *pronunciations*, since the former
were transmitted largely unchanged from the original Chinese symbols,
while the latter were applied in haphazard and ill-fitting ways from
both spoken Chinese sources and Japanese.

For this reason, I would recommend that your first steps at studying
the kanji should be to become familiar with them as a system of
symbols and meanings, ignoring their pronuncuations, and allow the
pronunciations to be learned as part of learning the language (instead
of learning pronuciations associated with isolated kanji). I would
recommend that you use the system in Heisig's _Remembering the Kanji_,
volume I; but I have many caveats on good and bad aspects of that
system, which you'll find in a search of this group's archives.

One advantage of learning writing-and-meaning associations
independently is that it is simultaneously the largest hurdle in the
writing system but also the one that is most amenable to solitary
study. Don't delay any of your other study of the language while
learning this aspect of the kanji; but also, don't go to any
particular effort to combine study of kanji with study of the spoken
language until the kanji themselves are familiar to you.


The work of learning to read and write will necessarily trail behind
your study of the language's structure and of the writing system. It
is here that you will learn the various pronunciations of the kanji
and their nuanced meanings. It may also be your major source for a
large amount of native Japanese passages: it is probably easier for
you to get ahold of a wide variety of written Japanese than the same
variety of spoken Japanese.

Hope that helps!

--
\ "If I haven't seen as far as others, it is because giants were |
`\ standing on my shoulders." -- Hal Abelson |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
.

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