Alright, Joe.
If you're interested in Japanese, here are some resources. Some of you guys not learning Japanese may also want to read it because some suggestions carry over for anyone trying to learn a language, particularly on the srs section.
1. Get Heisig's Remembering the Kana
You can get a copy from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kana-The-Hiragana-Katakana/dp/4889960724/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1370056128&sr=8-2&keywords=remembering+the+kanaDo hiragana first, then katakana. You can knock this book out in 6 hours for all 92 characters. You can do this in a day, or two days with each part separated for individual days, whatever.
2. Look into study methods.
Currently the current top study method for Japanese self study is srs.
Here's information on what SRS is:
http://www.fluentin3months.com/spaced-repetition/Basically, it's a memory retaining system for long term memory. Writing a bunch of stuff repeatedly has been said to not only be boring, but not really helpful in terms of maintaining long memory. SRS is a system where you truthfully tell the program how well you know the word, sentence, or whatever and it structures itself to flash the word again right when you're going to forget it to help increase memory.
There are a bunch of srs programs, but the most popular is by far Anki which is what I use. With Anki you can make flashcard decks or download premade decks (which is what I do). Anki supports a bunch of languages for learning ranging from Japanese to Spanish to Arabic to whatever. Just go here:
https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/There is even an Anki phone app, so you can sync your progress on the go, get home, and continue and vice versa.
In order to make srs work, you have to do this every day. But it's easy enough to do so.
I suggest you do Remembering the Kana and then do Anki decks to review what you've learned rather than learning straight from Anki.
Here is my current Anki. I have two decks (one is a dud and it own't let me delete it):
Each day, depending on how much I studied the day prior, Anki gives me a review time. I have it set to learn 10 new cards a day, so today I'm going to review the ones i've have trouble with and new ones. Since I'm done with Hiragana, I'm setting it to add no new cards today so I can review old material.
It first said sore (それ） in Japanese. I had to hear it without cue. Hence the "listen" note. After that I pressed space and it told me what the definition for sore is. This is a new word for me, but it's easy to remember so I'm going to truthfully click Good which will review sore in 10 minutes, to retain the memory. Tomorrow I'll review sore again and probably tell it to bring it up in a few days time.
Other methods of study: children's books and songs, read manga (shounen and shoujo have mostly kana and any kanji will have furigana - kana marks above the kanji), video games with kana (Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy menus, Chrono Trigger, usually family friendly stuff), Japanese drama (get a Crunchyroll account and watch Daterame Hero plz). Any new words you gain from studying, put in Anki for later review. What about entire sentences? Put that shit into Anki.
Scour youtube for Japanese nursery rhymes. Things like:
Memorize them and understand them. Mine them for vocab.
3. Use srs to study vocab and phrases at a beginner level.
4. Obtain a Kanji poster at
http://www.kanjiposter.com/
5. Get Remembering the Kanji vol 1 by Heisig. With daily practice of 10 kanji a day you can get to 2000 kanji in six months. The average Japanese HS grad knows 2000 kanji. These are mostly taught in school and are the general use kanji.
http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Volume-Complete-Characters/dp/0824835921/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370057796&sr=8-1&keywords=remembering+the+kanji6. Download an Anki heisig RTK1 deck to review daily while doing RTK.
Useful sites:
- Anki
https://ankiweb.net/study/ Make an account, that is required to sync between devices.
- All Japanese All The Time - the author employs an immersion method of learning Japanese without living in Japan while doing everything I just wrote. He became fluent in Japanese in 18 months without visiting Japan. When he did visit Japan his Japanese was so good he was hired as a software developer.
www.alljapaneseallthetime.com It is among the more controversial ways to learn Japanese on the internet and it is kinda extreme. Read the link on the first post to get an idea of what to expect as the ajatt site is disorganized and hard to navigate.
- Kohii - fantastic community for fellow Japanese learners with guides and stuff.
http://kanji.koohii.com/- Crunchyroll - Watch jdramas with Enh subs on first to know what's going on in the story. Then watch without subs to see what you can gain from it. Rip the audio via Audacity (
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/) and put it on your mp3 player/phone. This is a part of AJATT immersion training. Going for a walk? Put on your jdrama rip or jmusic. Studying in Anki? Throw on jmusic. In bed relaxing? Put on the jdrama and see if you can make out new stuff with your new vocab.
www.crunchyroll.com An all access pass costs 11 bucks. Worth it. I'm watching Daterame Hero, and it owns. Maybe even download Japanese subs and see if you gain new insight in grammar and structure and vocab from that.
