Reason #9
Japan controls both the video game and Anime industries.
This allows you to learn a language while enjoying an Anime or playing a video
game! What other language gives you such opportunities?
Reason #10
Japan has a lot great music. It's very enjoyable to listen to it, but to hear it and
actually know what's being said is an even better experience.
Ok, there was a bit of a trend in most of those reasons, but learning Japanese is a
great idea even if you're not a hardcore anime fan (as I personally am not).
How will you teach me Japanese?
This is the first in a long line of lessons that you will find here on Maktos. A
number of them were written years ago and are currently being revised, so you
will see those arriving bit by bit in the coming weeks. In the long term, I plan to
extend the lessons in this site beyond what has currently been written. So visit
often, updates are popping up all the time.
I will start at the very beginning, assuming that you know nothing about
Japanese right now. All you need is the desire to learn it, and I'll help with the
rest!
Here are some of the many areas I will cover:
l Getting started
l Getting and staying motivated
l Getting the books you need
l Learning the spoken language
l Learning the written language (when the time comes)
l Learning Japanese on a tight budget
l
Finding Japanese language resources on the vast Internet
Getting free Japanese word processor software
l Getting a really good computer dictionary - for free
l Using many different resources, to make learning Japanese fun
l Finding things you can do - easily - to speed up the process
l Finding the best way for you learn
1. "Japanese is hard"
After much study and talking to several people, I must say that Japanese
is not "hard" or "complex", but "different". It's true that it is very
different from English or Spanish. However, the grammar, spelling, etc.
is very straightforward. Making sentences in the language, conversing,
etc. can occur very early on. The pronunciation is very close to Spanish,
although the accent is different.
2. "You need to learn all those difficult symbols"
Those "difficult symbols" are the Kanji, borrowed from the Chinese.
There are 1900 Kanji in daily use in Japan. While it is true that the Kanji
are probably the most difficult part of Japanese, you can ignore them for
quite a while and still enjoy the rest of the language. I will teach many of
the beginning lessons in roman characters, so you will have nothing new
to learn as far as reading the lessons. I will slowly make the transition to
phonetic characters and perhaps in the distant future, I will teach you
some Kanji.
