An Amerikajin Learning Nihongo: My Further Adventures With Japanese

Well, it's been five weeks since I started my quest to learn Japanese (Nihongo). I broke my rule of not buying anything to accomplish this goal, in that I decided to have one dedicated resource to practice with, and I do that with my Nintendo DS and the Ubisoft game/application "My Japanese Coach". In some ways I have learned a lot, but in other ways I fgeel like I haven't learned much of anything. According to the program I have mastered 175 words and 35 kana characters. Before you say that sounds awesome, that's the equivalent of a toddler about to go into pre-school (LOL!).

I realized that my biggest challenge is that I'm still to readily clinging to the western alphabet as a crutch to compile and understand what I'm seeing and reading. Because if this, I end up going through several steps process any of the things I work with. As an example, some Japanese texts use roman letters to allow western speakers to see what it is they are trying to say. This is called roma-ji, and it's exactly what it sounds like, Japanese written in roman letters. The problem is, most stuff in Japan is not writen in romaji and it gets quickly sidelined. The reason? just about everything written beyond instructional level is written in kana or kanji. The expectation is that the speaker and learner get up to speed on kana as quickly as they can so that they don't need to use the roma-ji.

At this point in time, my brain does a three step process to translate anything. First, I have to look at the kana letters (the one's I know, in any event) and my brain converts these to roma-ji. Then I look at the roma-ji and convert it to english to process it and understand it. Afterwards, I then craft my reply or response in English, then mentally sound it out and view it as roma-ji and then go through the process of writing it out as though it were kana.
Example:

English: "where is the bathroom?"
Roma-ji: "otearai wa doku desu ka?"
Kana: "おてあらい わ どく です か?"

Now, to make matters even more interesting, if you spend a lot of time learning kana, it's only going to take you so far. While the above is accurate, it's the long way to say something. The kanji would be much more compact and in some cases, many words can be combined into a single kanji character. I'm not even close to there yet (LOL!).

What I have been doing is spending a lot of time practicing my various kana characters, and my goals is to have them on immediate recall whenever I need to write them. Some of these I have down pretty well. Others I'm still trying to commit to memory. by way of comparison, here are the sounds I have covered directly:

a e u i o
ka ke ku ki ko
ga ge gu gi go
ta te tsu ti to
da de du di do
sa se su shi so
na ne nu ne no
ha hi fu he ho
pa pi pu pe po
ma mi mu me mo
ra ri ru re ro
n

and this is their corresponding kana (hirigana to be more accurate, as this is what is used for purely Japanese words):

あ え う い お
か け く き こ
が げ ぐ ぎ ご
た て つ ち と
だ で づ ぢ ど
さ せ す し そ
な ね ぬ ね の
は ひ ふ へ ほ
ぱ ぴ ぷ ぺ ぽ
ま み む め も
ら り る れ ろ
ん

What's interesting is that a lot of the characters repeat, but they use symbols called "dakuten", which are like quotation marks next to a character, or a "handakuten", which looks like a small circle in the upper left hand corner of the character. This is actually kind of efficient, in that it allows reuse of characters and ilustrates a slightly different sound (frankly, there are quite a few words in English where such a device would be very helpful :) ).

So as I stand here today with my barely pre-school age vocabulary, I have a much greater appreciation for the time and energy it will take for me to get to my goal of being conversant in Japanese by the end of this year. Still, all big goals can be broken down to small steps... and right now, I feel like I'm talking some mighty small steps, but I'm hoping I will be considerably farther along by this time next month. Wish me luck :).

My Take on "My Japanese Coach"

Well, it took me less than one month to go against my original statement, but based on the reviews I have seen and many of the comments that I have received regarding it, I decided it was time I bit the bullet and spent a little money on my quest to learn Japanese.

My first foray into the language was to get the book Japanese Step by Step, written by Gene Nishi, from my local library. It helped me to get a feel for things such as Hirigana and Katakana, and helped me to see how Kanji is constructed. It also showed me a number of areas that I could develop for formal speech. It was an intertesting read and worth it to get through the first five chapters.

My second resource was to use Marc Bernabe's book "Japanese in MangaLand", also from the public library. I quite enjoy this book, as it uses something I'm already familiar with (i.e. untranslated Manga panels) to put the language into situational context that I can actually see, and thus it has helped me increase my immediate understanding of some things. This is definitely going to be a repeat checkout item, and may well be a purchase later on down the road.

Both titles have drawbacks as I see itThe first is the fact that, since Hirigana, Katakana and Kanji are so foreign to me, that I started spending a lot of time writing down the characters so that I could hope to remember them and understand them. I am developing some ability to write and recall Hirigana and Katakana, but I have to admit it's going slowly. Additionally, while it's great to "read" the text and learn how to write it, I was missing a third element, and that was how the words should sound. Granted, the roma-ji and lower-case and capital case helps a little, but there are nuances that are lost when only text is available as a reference. Additionally,I wanted to have something that let me hear what I was saying and give me a chance to critique it. Short of finding someone who is fluent in Japanese (and has a lot of patience to sit with me) what's a guy to do?

An answer was shown to me when a co-worker suggested that I check out the video game "My Japanese Coach". This is a title published by Ubisoft and is made for the Nintendo DS (of which I just happen to have :) ). It has the ability to show pronumciation, allow the individual the ability to record their voice and compare it with the original pronunciation, and it has a writing tablet that lets the user practice writing Kana and Kanji as often as they wish. Each level has a variety of practice exercises and "mini-games" that must be cleared to earn "mastery points"; you have to earn mastery points before you can continue to the next lesson. There are a total of 1,145 "lessons", with various mini-games packaged with each lesson. I have gotten through just three of them so far, and with that, my master rank is that of "Baby"... as you can see, I have a long way to go (LOL!).

So what made me break down and get this title? First, I liked its interactive capabilities, and the fact that it allows me the ability to practice writing characters endlessly without having to use up reams of paper (environmentally sound, ooh :) ). Second, the pronunciation element is very helpful, as it lets me hear how the words are supposed to sound, and the ability to record and compare my voice with the game voice is neat. The mini-game aspect is cool, in that it gives me several ways to master the material and it does so in an engaging and fun manner. The real kicker here, though is the replay value and the total time per dollar of purchase. If we look at each "lesson" and say that each one will ultimately average an hour of my time at minimum (currently, I think that is possibly an understatement, but it may be more accurate as I become more proficient), then this is a game that has, at minimum, 1100 hours of play time. Take some time to think about that... that's a lot of replay value for $30.00.

Does the program have its drawbacks? According to a number of native speakers, yes. There are some isses with stroke order on certain characters (and yes, that can make a difference in how the words are pronounced or accented, I've discovered), so this most certainly will not be my be-all and end-all or definitive source. Still, with what it offers, and for the price, I felt it would make for a good investment.

No matter what method is employed, the user ultimately has the best chance with the tools that work the best for them. I'm intrigued to see how this program holds up in the days, weeks and months ahead.