Learning Japanese 1: Today's post is brought to you by the letter あ

I thought I might occasionally write about how my Japanese language learning is going.

My thoughts so far:

1. I have realised that I want to know much more than conversational Japanese. I want to be able to read things properly. It has become clear to me in a way that I hadn't thought about before that it is quite important that I learn Japanese as neither my sister nor I (or my cousin) can speak or read Japanese and there are still so many of our family matters in Japan.

2. I am finding it hard to discover a suitable course to follow. At the moment I am using NHK for conversation and I am using a Kana workbook and CD in the Oxford University Language Library for writing and reading.

3. It is weird that there seems to be no proper selection of interactive Japanese courses - language learning games and so on. There are loads for people to learn English but I can't find many that go the other way - for people to learn Japanese. I guess perhaps the demand is not so high?

4. In reading and writing I have learned:

あ い う え お

which is: a  i  u  e  o

It is very pleasing that I can now recognise these symbols. I keep seeing them everywhere in Japanese text and thinking to myself 'ah ha! I know what that is, it is an 'a'' or whatever. It is a very different feeling from learning something like German which has the same alphabet as English.

5. I do actually feel I am making progress every day. I study for half an hour at lunch and then try to remember what I have learned on my cycle home after work.

6. It would be good if I could speed up my rate of learning.

7. Practicing the writing is very helpful in remembering the letters.

8. My father loaned me one of his textbooks (picture above) that he had found from when he was a kiddie in Japan learning at school. This is so advanced from where I am now!

9. I have this goal in my mind of being able to pick up a Japanese book or magazine and be able to read it straight through.

10. またね (that says 'bye!' in a casual way... well I think so anyway! :D)

Comments

[Kate]

Oooh, ganbatte-ne! (Go for it!) I learned Japanese for years and years, and would thoroughly recommend Japanesepod101.com. They have excellent podcasts, vocab, grammar sheets etc - lots for free download and some for payment. Really authentic.

Reading things though, like newspapers, really does take a long time. I know the first two alphabets (hiragana and katakana) and about 400 characters of Kanji, and I still can't read a normal sheet of Japanese. That's not to be disheartening though - it's just nice to know the realistic challenges as you go.

And I adore your Dad's old kanji books - they are beautiful! I used to find it so meditative to practice writing like that, You're inspired me to get mine out again :)

[Ali]

Mata-ne! My reading was never ever any good - even katakana. And it's a good deal rustier now, but go for it. I liked the study programmes for children (suited my attention span perfectly).

[ai]

がんばれ〜♪

your "あ" looks so cute that you'll get a melon-pan (or pain in french) from me. ;-)