learning japanese...?

Question

how long would it take me to learn to speak (not fluently, just well enough to go along) and read (at a level where i could read and understand something like yahoo! news) japanese if i studied for about +/- 1 hour a day? what are some good resources for learning japanese?

Answer 1

YOUR BEST THING TO DOIS TO GET THE ROSETTA STONE DVD TUTORIAL DVD.
The only foreign language program we've tried — and we've tried a lot of them- — that has generated enough internal motivation within our kids to keep them studying the language on their own is Rosetta Stone®. Why? Because it's fun! And not just fun, but almost addicting.

But beyond its amazing motivational powers, what has me hooked is its "natural" or "immersion" approach.

Rosetta Stone customers tell us the program is equivalent to two years of high school study or one year of college study. The publisher designed their product to encompass the material so that Level 1 is a beginner level, Level 2 is intermediate, and so on. Rosetta Stone does not guarantee your ability to learn the language, they do guarantee your satisfaction with the product. As the administrator of your homeschool you will determine the criteria for awarding credit hours, using your state's requirements for hours of study and the student's study time.

Let me note here that Rosetta Stone® is a computer program, so you need a computer: Windows (2000 or later), or Mac (OSX 10.2 or higher). If you don't own a computer and have no intention of acquiring one, then you can skip the rest of this summary. If, on the other hand, you own a halfway decent computer and/or you're at least willing to consider whether it might be worth getting one, please read on.

How Rosetta Stone Works
Here's how the program works.

Your computer screen is dominated by four photos, arranged in a two-by-two grid. Above the four photos, there is space to display written words and sentences in the language that you're trying to learn. On the right there is a small control panel with a running scorekeeper.

Answer 2

The Japanese government has issued a list of 1,945 common kanji that a person needs to know in order to be able to read news articles. Then you also need to learn hiragana and katakana (which contains about 46 each, minus those that come with tenten/other properties which alter the pronunciation).
That alone, even if you were to study an hour every day and actually have the memory capacity to remember everything you studied, would take years.

Conversation wise... probably by the time you know the 1/4th of the kanji you'll be good enough to go along with most spoken subjects.

Resources:
The Genki books
Japanese for Everyone
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/
http://www.thejapanesepage.com/

Answer 3

to learn to speak good enough to get a long it might take maybe 6 months to a year if you really studied about an hour a day and if you kind of have a knack for languages. but learning to read news is very difficult because there is a lot of vocabulary and kanji that you would need to know. that may take several years. but maybe after a year you may be able to read a lot of it and for the words you don't know use a kanji dictionary.

Answer 4

It took me two years to learn the little Japanese that i know. I have the level of a 10 year old. I had some great help from a computer program called Instant Immersion Japanese. The big one. Not the little 30 buck one. The 99 dollar one. It had 8 disc and it helped A LOT.
Mainichi kaku to joozu ni narimasu ( When you do it everyday, you will become more skillful)

Answer 5

Try taking Japanese classes on Saturday. Everywhere I've been always host Japanese classes. Check out your local community center. Watching Japanese shows, dramas and anime will probably teach you the basics if you watch enough. From what people tell me, they think its easy. But when they do speak it, they announciate it weirdly do to the fact that they don't have this Japanese accent.

Answer 6

YYYYYEEEAAAHHHHH...the answer is, a really really long time. Let us go through the reasons:

1) From your profile, you appear to be white. I know no white people that can correctly pronounce everything, as English is completely different sounding than Japanese

2) Japanese works in ideograms that can be arranged in who knows how many ways to make different meanings.

3) Unlike English, there's no single alphabet. There's hiragana, katakana, manyogana (for Chinese words), furigana, okurigana, and kanji. Fun stuff.

4) Memorization of those characters is especially hard.

I tried to teach myself Japanese once. I got through romaji and hiragana, cruising along fine. Then I hit a wall. I
will mention that I already had an advantage in that my native language works in the same way with adding parts of characters to make a whole, adding accents and stuff, but I still failed.

And one hour a day is not enough if you want to know basic stuff like hiragana by heart. I'm just hyping this up, as learning Japanese is not for the faint of heart

成功するために定められなければならない。
(You must be determined in order to succeed)

If you still have your Windows installation CD, put it in your drive and go to regional options to install Japanese as a language so you can type like I did.

Answer 7

The Rosetta Stone series is really good. Only thing better is getting a private tutor. I'm sure with an hour every day dedicated to learning you could pick it up in a couple months, quicker if you spend more time on it.

Answer 8

Took me a few months.