Sep 12

There are some 130 million people who speak Japanese. Japanese is a part of the Japonic-Ryukyuan languages. It is spoken mostly in Japan. It is also spoken sometimes in Korea, parts of Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Philippines and some Pacific Islands which were under the occupation of the Japanese during and after the World War II. There are Japanese emigrants communities in Brazil, Argentina, Hawaii, Australia, Peru and the United States who also speak the language. But their descendants no longer speak the language fluently. Japan as well as the island nation of Palau has Japanese as their official language. Words from other languages have been borrowed and incorporated into the Japanese vocabulary. Prominent amongst them are the Chinese words. This has resulted from the interaction lasting 1,500 years. Indo-European languages too are its other source. Some Portuguese have been borrowed during the 16th century and Dutch in the 17th century and particularly English in the 19h century. Japanese script is a combination of three other types of scripts, namely Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji is the modified Chinese characters. Hiragana and Katakana are two syllabic scripts of the modified Chinese characters.

Hyōjungo is the standard form of the Japanese language which is taught in the schools and used officially though Kyōtsūgo is the form that is the common language. Kōgo, the colloquial language is commonly used in writing though the traditional literary written language, Bungo, has become dormant. There are many dialects spoken in Japan. The predominant one is the Tokyo-type, followed by the Kyoto-Osaka-type and the Kyūshū-type. The dialects of the peripheral regions such as Tōhoku or Tsushima or southern Kyūshū are often unintelligible to the mainstream Japanese. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and Amami Islands though distinct are treated as dialects of Japanese. The mass media, education and the mobility of people have made the standard Japanese prevalent nationwide.

The world’s second largest economy is Japan after the United States. Its technological prowess is world renown. The industrial and financial activities of Japan have spread throughout the world. There has been an increased interest in learning Japanese. A spate of courses offering to teach Japanese has also been produced. The Japanese language proficiency test is something many learners seek to clear.

Japan, its culture and language, has fascinated many with the country’s emergence as a global economic power. Japanese words have found its way steadily into the English and other foreign languages. This includes such words as karaoke, haiku, karate, judo, ninja, rickshaw, samurai, tycoon, sudoku, sayonara, sumo, sushi, tsunami and many others.

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Jul 15

Rocket Japanese Review

Some people I meet tell me that they wish they had started learning a language years ago so that they could speak it by now. Well if you are one of those people don’t worry I have a solution for you. Learn how to speak Japanese Online and slash your learning time in half!

I showed you exactly what you get inside a very popular online Japanese course that I use called Rocket Japanese, in order to demonstrate how easy it is to learn Japanese from the comfort of home!

The best online Japanese learning products cut down your learnign time because they start you off listening to real Japanese conversation rather than holding you back with too much boring grammar! This immmediately helps you to pick up the Japanese quickly and doesn’t bog you down in boring grammar lessons.

There are three things that are essential for learning any language and they are visual and audio input and also kinestetics or participation. All three of these ingredients are included in the best online Japanese courses so your learning experiecne is top grade.

Another point I want to make regarding why you learn Japanese fast online is that ‘most’ courses teach you conversational Japanese straight away and leave the reading and writing for later. This way you don’t have to wait month and months to converse in Japanese while you painfully learn hundreds of Japanese symbols.

You will find that you will learn a huge amount of Japanese phrases and actually understand the Japanese sentence structures etc..in days using quality online Japanese courses.

Just to get your started though here are some useful Japanese words for you right now:

Konnichi wa - Hello

Ohayo Gozaimasu - Good Morning

Konban wa - Good Evening

O namae wa nan desu ka - What is your name?

My name is John - Watashi wa ‘John; desu.

In summary Japanese learning software is the best choice for learning Japanese quickly

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May 27

 

If you’ve decided to give learning Japanese a go then here are some language learning tips and reference materials to get you going.

Fluency is greatest impacted by how often you study. In other words you’ll be able to remember more from studying 10 minutes everyday for a week than 70 minutes in one shot once a week.

Reviewing frequently is really important to learn Japanese quickly. It also really aids you in keeping track of how quickly you’re learning the language. You won’t have to wait a week to find out you can’t remember, if you study and review everyday you’ll know the next day.

Take a Break - An important Learning Tip!

It’s a great idea to take a short break every 30 minutes to avoid mental fatigue. Don’t keep grinding at the target or sentence to long. Why? What will happen is that your retention will drop and you’ll catch yourself simply “putting in the time” instead of studying with enthusiasm. Attention to what you’re studying creates the memory of it! When you take a break do something physical and don’t think about your studies. Wash the dishes, vacuum or shoot some hoops!

Tips For Studying Japanese - Save Your Brain Space

Really folks you can only learn Japanese so fast, so memorizing words with roughly the same meaning is a waste of time in the beginning. Therefore, for example if you know that “you” means “anata” , why memorize the other equivelants of “you” like (Anta and kimi)?Use your study time to acquire different or totally new words and phrases. You can come back to the other forms later.

Language Learning Tips - Flash Card Use

Flash cards or word cards. The best way to radically accelerate memorization. Cheap. Versatile. Write vocabulary words or phrases on flash cards. It’s best if you write 1 word per card. Why? So you can really randomize the flash card order quickly. The mind has a tendency to remember order so if you’ve written say 5 words on 1 card you may remember “enpitsu” (pencil) simply because it comes after “hon” (book) on your flash card.

Then when you try to recall for example the word “enpitsu” (pencil) withoug your cards, you’ll have trouble doing it without seeing the previous word target “hon” (book) first. You didn’t memorize the word - you memorized the order. If you write a single phrase or word on a card you can randomize the order by shuffling your cards. If you can tear through your word targets in any order, rest assured you know the target.

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Apr 11

learn Japanese

If you are an individual who has the desire to learn how to speak the Japanese language, then you might be put off by the fact that at first it can seem extremely hard to learn. You would not be alone in thinking that the language might be a little difficult; however, there are those that think just the opposite. These are most likely individuals who have some understanding of the vocabulary and dialects that are used in Japanese. Many of the words that are used in the language of Japan have been taken from other languages, such as the English language, the Chinese language and even the Portuguese language.

There are many different dialects that are used in the language of Japan. The dialects normally differ in the accents, the vocabulary and the particle usage. There are some that have differences in how the vowels and consonants are used. The latter is the most uncommon, but it does happen. The two biggest differences in the language of the Japanese society are within the Kyoto-Osaka type and the Tokyo type. There are subdivisions of these two types of languages and they too have their own explicit ways of being spoken within the Japanese culture.

While Japanese may not be a universal language, more and more people want to learn Japanese. Many schools that once only taught languages, such as Spanish to small groups of students, are now choosing to widen the students’ horizons and teach them to speak in other languages. This type of practice can now be found in primary schools, high schools and even colleges. There are now schools in Britain, Ireland and the United States that offer such programs in Japanese.

For many, the thought of learning to speak in Japanese may seem a little scary, yet many languages can seem this way when just beginning. If you are familiar with the language at all, then you know that there are many differences in how the language is spoken, depending on the locale. This language is now being taught in colleges, high schools and elementary schools in an attempt to both learn the spoken language and to better understand the Japanese people and Japanese style of living.

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Mar 30

If you want to know how to learn Japanese then you are in the right place. In this article I am going to introduce some simple Japanese sentences that you can start practicing with.

To kick things off let’s have a look at how to ask for something. Let’s take the example of asking if someone has coffee. To say this in Japanese you say: “koohii ga arimasu ka”, however often you can drop the ‘ga’ and simply say ‘koohii arimasu ka’.

Here the verb ‘have’ is the word ‘arimasu’ and is used only for objects and not people or animals.

If you want to ask ‘are there dogs?’ for example you would say ‘inu imasu ka’ where we replace the verb arimasu for imasu.

In the Japanese language there are different verb forms, for example ichidan and godan verbs, and they are altered or conjugated in different ways. I learn Japanese online and some of the better online courses teach all about Japanese verbs in their grammar lessons.

Another important thing to learn is that when you are discussing places in Japanese you use different words depending on what location to the speaker they are. For example if the place is near the person who is speaking then you would say ‘koko’, or if it is near the person listening you would say ’soko’ and if the place is far from both people you would say ‘asoko’.

Finally you may want to start learning some Japanese words to grow your vocabulary, so below I have listed some body parts for you:

ear - mimi

mouth - kuchi

head - atama

nose - hana

arm - ude

stomach - onaka

foot - ashi

eye - me

hand -te

leg - ashi

If you want to learn some japanese colors then you may want to check out this video:

Learn Japanese Colors

The are a number of ways to learn Japanese these days but I have found with out a shadow of a doubt that online Japanese lessons is the best. There is so many great courses available and you can take lessons when you feel like it! A review of the course that I found to be the best is found here: Rocket Japanese Review

Hope this helps,

All the best!

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