is there any books or audiobooks ect that anyone can recommend for learning Japanese?

by Beverly Public Library, MA

Question by hot_tuna60: is there any books or audiobooks ect that anyone can recommend for learning Japanese?

i want to learn some of the japanese language. particularly to read it, mainly so i can read untranslated manga books. can anyone suggest anything?




Best answer:

Answer by Anonymous Student
I heart the Michel Thomas Audio courses (you can download them for free online if you know where to look) :D The textbooks Japanese for Busy People and Ultimate Japanese (Beginner-Intermediate) are very good IMO and you can get them very cheap used on Amazon, the audio for both series can be downloaded for free online. If you're serious about learning to read in Japanese, get the Kana version of JFBP. (BTW Ultimate Japanese is in romaji the whole way through which totally sucks :/ still a good book though..)

Also, I've said this before but I think pasting it again couldn't hurt. I hope it helps ya :)
Smart.fm is a site designed to teach English speakers Japanese but eventually expanded with more stuff, but the Japanese Core 2000 and 6000 goals are great. It's got audio, pictures, example sentences (also with audio) and multiple quiz/study modes and it's free. You can select for the lessons to be in Romaji (romanticized Japanese), Kana (Just Hiragana and Katakana) or full natural Japanese mode.

So just try these out;
http://smart.fm/goals/19053 (Japanese Core 2000 step 1)
http://smart.fm/goals/24666 (Master Hiragana)

If you're serious about Japanese my advice for you is to learn to read in Hiragana, the basic syllabic writing system of Japanese, ASAP. It'll take a week or two but afterward, you'll be able to read most manga (with furigana). Also, study grammar a lot; you'll make quickly great strides if you learn the various grammatical constructions and sentence patterns. Remember vocab is no good if you can't arrange it meaningfully in a sentence ;)

http://tangorin.com/ is a very helpful Japanese dictionary site that also has a names dictionary and various example sentences you can use.

http://nihongo-dekimasu.blogspot.com/ You can download hundreds of dollars worth of Japanese learning materials for free on this site.

Here's a variety of great Japanese grammar sites;
http://rcl.pliable.us/J-verbs.html
http://rcl.pliable.us/J-adj.html
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar (Very good)
http://thejapanesepage.com/grammar.htm (Check this one out first. And don't let the kana discourage you, when you click on the lessons, there's romanticized Japanese beneath the example sentences)

Also check out the wiki pages on Japanese grammar :D

Erin ga chousen! Nihongo Dekimasu! (Erin's Challenge! I Can speak Japanese!) Is a video course (entirely in Japanese) designed to teach foreigners Japanese, they talk fairly slowly and cover Japanese phrases to use in a variety of common settings. You can turn on natural Japanese, kana, romanization, and English subtitles. You can also read the script with explanations for each word (hover over the word) there's also manga versions of the basic skits.

https://www.erin.ne.jp/en/ (English home page)
https://www.erin.ne.jp/en/lesson01/basic/index.html (Basic skit 1; check the boxes and scroll down to see the selected subtitles)

Once you get pretty good you can practice your Japanese on lang-8.com. It's a social networking site where you write blogs in the language you're learning (any language) and native speakers will correct your mistakes :) Also, as a native English speaker it's your obligation to correct people who are learning English. On this site you'll make a Japanese friend in like a day or two (if you write a blog) srsly. It's pretty cool, they automatically pair you up with Japanese people learning English and vice-versa :D

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