once again im impressed by the expressiveness of the japanese language:) Since i have almost all my books at my kindle at least i dont have to dust them regulary:D
Japanese tends to be a lot more "conglomerative" than English, presumably because it has kanji—which are little self-contained nuggets of meaning—as one of its fundamental units. Many words are formed by cramming together smaller meaningful parts, with the result being still fairly concise.
In addition to the benefits for creating new words, this is a huge help in reading unfamiliar words: even if you don't know all the nuances, you can often get the basic meaning of an unknown word from the meanings of its component parts.
[This is true of kanji themselves as well... kanji are (essentially) conglomerations of simpler kanji, and you can get some (very rough) idea of the meaning and pronunciation of an unknown kanji by looking at its parts.]
Japanese is a really nice language. The grammar for plain speech is so consistent that I'm always tempted to try to write it down in BNF. The other nice thing about it is that it is economical. A noun by itself is a grammatically correct sentence. Copula and verbs are optional. Any sentence ending in a verb (or copula, as long as you change "da" to "na") can be used to modify a noun. It makes it so simple to say complex things. Finally, things that you would use tone of voice for in English can be expressed with particles at the end of the sentence. This allows you to be really expressive in Japanese.
If anyone is interested in learning Japanese, I have some advice:
- Do not learn polite forms until you master plain forms. Japanese is built on plain forms and polite forms are an extension of that. If you learn polite forms first, you are going to get wildly confused because everything you assume about the grammar will be wrong. People think they must learn polite forms in order to get along. Just do what all my Japanese high school students did: add "desu" to the end of all your sentences ;-). It is totally wrong and you will sound like an uneducated, hillbilly moron, but people will appreciate your effort ;-)
- Read http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar I don't think there is a better grammar guide out there. Memorize all the example sentences (if you use flash cards or Anki, then drill from English to Japanese only).
- Learn hiragana and kanji (hiragana first). Pick up katakana over time (it's not really very important). Hiragana and katakana are phonetic alphabets. Once you know hiragana you can read children's books with "furigana" (the pronunciation of kanji is written beside the kanji in hiragana). Kanji are the chinese characters.
- Do not avoid learning kanji. One thing that I discovered as I was learning Japanese is that I could learn vocabulary along with the kanji faster than I could learn the vocabulary alone. Kanji is a fantastic mnemonic and is constructed in a comprehensible way. "Remembering the kanji" by James Heisig is a great technique for learning kanji. I don't like his choice of keywords, though (some are arguably just wrong). I recommend reading the first section of the book and then deriving your own keywords. As it turns out, the publisher of the book offers the first section as a free PDF download: http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/files/2012/12/RK-1-6th-edition...
- Read manga as a way to learn conversational Japanese. Probably this is the best thing I ever did. Yes there are characters with weird expressions (datte ba yo!) or incredibly impolite expressions (ending every sentence with yagaru), but I really doubt you will fail to pick those up ;-) Obviously don't use them in real conversations if you don't want to shock people. Generally speaking the expressions -- and especially the contractions -- are the way normal people speak in Japan. You won't get this in a text book.
- Don't read textbooks (except for Tae Kim's, linked above).
- For introductory vocabulary, the JLPT vocabulary lists up to and including N3 are excellent. Don't bother past there because it is loaded down with vocabulary that you are unlikely to use, at the expense of vocabulary that you will definitely need in every day conversations. After you memorize N3 vocabulary, just get all your vocabulary from normal reading. By all means, if you just enjoy memorizing vocabulary lists, feel free to do N2 and N1 vocabulary lists -- it won't hurt you. I just think that it is an inefficient use of time.
I hate commenting on the internet, especially since it's going to go against almost every idea that the original commenter posted. That aside, here is my advice for studying Japanese. This is purely my opinion and one method that I've been using.
- Try to evaluate where you want to 'end up' with your fluency. If you want a full time job in a business environment then I highly recommend learning polite forms of verbs first. The more that your practice this form, the more comfortable it'll be to use. If you want to talk casually to friends and family, then learning just the plain form is ok. If you want the slow, long, methodical approach to learning Japanese and achieve a much greater fluency, learn the plain form and the negative form at the same time along with the polite form. I highly advise against using the plain form with people you've met for the first time or are dealing with in a business setting. It's very off-putting since it feels like you're talking like a child. I recommend learning the plain form and the negative form at the same time because of the structure of Japanese verbs. Learning both of these forms at the same time will give you an immediate hint as to how all of the other verb inflections should appear. This will become apparent when you're learning conditional, potential, volition and passive verbs.
- Tae Kim's guide is good for understanding many concepts quickly but the website I prefer the most is Imabi.net[1]. It contains more content and is constantly being updated and edited to improve its content.
- Learning katakana right after hiragana is vital if you want to live in Japan. Also, try to associate only the sound with the character, not a mnemonic. Use that time to focus on your pronunciation. Many borrowed words from other languages use katakana and learning katakana at the beginning will help you remember those words faster. For example, a common word used in Japanese is トレーニング. It sounds awfully close to "training" and since it's in katakana, it gives you a hint as to what the word might mean. While katakana words are not 100% borrowed words, it certainly appears to be above 80%. Related to this, do not learn romaji as a way of writing characters.
- I agree, do not avoid learning kanji. Always learn kanji with vocabulary. I don't recommend Heisig's book if you're taking the long, methodical approach I mentioned earlier. It includes a lot of mnemonics that I don't think actually contribute to the actual kanji's reading. Plus, if you do go through the entire series, then you'll still be behind in your kanji learning. There are a lot of words that you still don't know the meaning to! For example, 八百屋 and 海老 don't mean 800 shops and ocean's old. They mean produce market and shrimp respectively. My recommendation is to learn vocabulary and the kanji readings for that vocabulary.
- I don't read manga, personally, but another way to learn conversational Japanese is by watching television shows and mimicking them! (On the other hand, I don't recommend mimicking anime.) If you like manga, then go for it! Just go for your favourite entertainment medium. If you're learning conversational Japanese, then try to find a serious language partner. Find someone who is a native Japanese speaker trying to learn your native language. Allocate 1 hour or a half hour to go over Japanese and another equal block of time in your native language. Native English speakers will have the easiest time searching for a language partner but don't give up if your native language isn't English.
- Textbooks are good for certain circumstances. I believe textbooks are good for the long, slow methodical approach. It keeps you focused and gives you goals to work towards. If you don't like textbooks, then pick up a non-fiction book and try reading! It'll force you to pause, give thought to the meaning of the sentence and look up words/grammar. The non-fiction book method will probably take longer than a textbook though, especially if you're just starting out. Fiction books will be extremely difficult because they will sometimes make up words that won't appear in dictionaries.
- I actually prefer large lists of vocabulary. I get the greatest benefit from lists of nouns since I pick those up the fastest. As the original commenter pointed out, this is definitely not for everyone. Reading books or manga will give a more entertaining method for learning new words. It'll even give you the more nuanced meaning of words. The right and wrong places to use them, etc. Check out the Tatoeba[2] project as well for example sentences using the words you're learning.
For any language you're learning, try to use the language as you're learning it. Try to come up with new sentences based on what you've learned. Try to talk to people using the new verbs you learned. Try using Lang-8[3] for writing.
Japanese is really difficult because although I've been studying it for a year and a half now, I still don't feel like I'm 'fluent'. I can give you examples of things that I've been able to achieve using Japanese but I definitely wouldn't call myself fluent. Using the CEFR, I would probably put myself between B1 and B2 for certain circumstances and maybe between A2 and B1 for other circumstances. Learning Japanese will take time, don't give up.
For what it's worth, I studied Japanese for 3 years as part of a college minor but never felt fluent. Television and movies are great learning tools, because you learn the rhythm and cadence to Japanese, which is much faster than you might expect if you only read it, and even faster than in conversation (as conversation partners will consciously or subconsciously slow down to accommodate you).
Don't feel bad for disagreeing with me! I found your comments extremely interesting. Especially on the topic of language acquisition, there are people with deeply entrenched views, so I can understand your hesitation, but it's important for people to get a balanced view, I think.
It's hard to self-rate your fluency ;-) I find that I am very fluent in my normal every day life. Most people say that I speak normally and I really don't spend any extra effort to speak Japanese vs English. In fact, in many situations I find Japanese a lot easier. But, I lack proficiency (one of the beefs I have with CEFR is that it conflates fluency and proficiency, though it is arguably better than some other systems). I'm pretty sure I wouldn't pass JLPT N1, for instance. Sometimes there are things on the news that I don't understand. Reading books aimed at high school level and above has me reaching for my dictionary (although I use a Japanese-Japanese one now). That kind of thing. I think my biggest frustration is where I want to talk about science with someone and I just don't have the vocabulary.
I definitely optimised for fluency in my studies and my recommendations reflect that choice. I study vocabulary and grammar as I encounter it rather than from a list (though, like I said, the N3 and below lists are remarkably aligned with reality in my experience). Most of my effort is directed towards finding realistic language that I am likely to encounter and making sure I can understand/produce it.
Just due to life circumstances, I have the opportunity to chat with a lot of Japanese children of various ages. Studies show (in English at least, and I suspect Japanese is very similar) that children acquire about 1000 "word-families" a year. Which means that a 10 year old has a vocabulary of 10,000 words (plus all the related similar words, so police and policeman count as 1 word in English). JLPT N1 has a vocabulary list of about 10,000 words IIRC, so it is interesting to compare that proficiency with that of a real 10 year old child.
In my experience, the average 10 year old child lacks a very good portion (maybe 30%) of the vocabulary on the N1 list and does not understand any of the more complicated grammar (and can't produce any son kei keigo ;-) ). So if a 10 year old child has more than 10,000 words of vocabulary and only knows about 7,000 words on the N1 list, what are the 3,000 words that the average 10 year old knows that is not on the list? Also, a 10 year old is incredibly fluent in Japanese, but is missing quite a lot of the grammar in N1. If one wants to be as fluent in a language as a native speaker, will adding grammar help?
My personal experience has been that adding proficiency at the expense of fluency slows down the process. It's not necessarily bad, and if you like studying for proficiency you should not deviate from your path. As you mentioned, language acquisition is a long road. You have to do what motivates you because otherwise it is too easy to give up. But, having said that, I still feel that optimising for fluency will end up being the faster approach, on average.
