On a note about rosetta stone I would advise against it. The reason being is that I have recently *ahem* aquired rosetta stone japanese levels 1-3 and found that it does indeed not teach you kanji or really that much aside from something they call romanji (or something like that).

Yea, the Russian version expects you to have pretty much mastered the cyrillic alphabet by the time you start.

"Yes, I'd like to order a double cheese, double pepperoni..."

 

Their education system is good enough, if you could write that, you can order the right thing. I'd rather choose some other country too, there are cheaper pizzas around.

 

Anyways as basically trilingual (English is my 3rd language) I'd have the following to say:

* First study the grammar and basic ideas behind the languages: without understanding the logic you will have really hard times learning the languages.

* Get into touch with the "living" language. Read forums, magazines or anything you can. This way you will learn more and more new words and the grammar will turn from a random gibberish into an automatic thing. No one gives a damn if you don't understand every word as long as you get the idea: eventually you will find a word to match for the unknown ones: they can be picked up from the context.

* USE, USE and USE the language. Post to forums, talk to people in Ventrilo/Skype, get irc or find other ways to talk the language. Also from my own experience I'd advise you to SPEAK the language as soon as possible. With english I'm personally suffering from this: my pronouncing doesn't really match my writing and when you're at my age and stage, it ain't easy to fix it.

 

Anyways, the most important thing is motivation and will. If you don't want it, you won't learn it.

 

What I bolded is a big part. It constantly annoys me that they don't teach you the majority of the grammar first. :(

While some might recommend Rosetta Stone, that might help, but it simply isn't enough. There simply has to be more to fully be at least conversational. Nothing beats having that good tutor/friend/professor teaching you the language.

 

If you have an iPod Touch/iPhone there's several good apps out there which are nice to have to practice while one is away. There's one called Lingopal and they have it for several languages and it has been useful to practice simply the basics while waiting for class or doing it while I'm bored.

 

Right now, what I know is English and Spanish (from childhood), French (four years from high school and practice on and off) and know some basic Italian and Portuguese. I talked to a Brazilian person and he tried out some Portuguese and I understood quite a bit and was happy (and this was simply from the app and him telling me that Portugese is simply Spanish with a french accent.) There's more to it, but I got a good gist. Then there's languages I simply fool around with; Chinese, Japanese, and Korean but those are very difficult. It takes time, but with effort and dedication one can succeed.

I'm learnign Spanish atm...not very well mind you.

My friend found some program for 12$ on iTunes that has lots of Chinese phrases, with their spellings and translations, and you can click them (on an iPod) to listen to how they're supposed to sound. There might be a Japanese version. I looked at it, and it looks decent for learning the basics of a language, although you really need to find someone who speaks fluently if you want to communicate effectively.

Chinese or Japanese are not ideal first langauges, it would be better off learning a language similar to English first (French, German, Spanish etc)

totally learn japanese, but I wouldn't recommend it by yourself, you need someone who knows how to correct you e.t.c or will will throw around Baka da (ばか だ) at everything you don't understand.

 

I've been learning for about 6 months myself and I only really know around 80 kanji and both Hiragana and Katakana alphabets... (Katakana is a real pain i.m.o)

 

何？！

I'm trying to learn Korean and Japanese for two reasons:

 

1. To be able to talk to my Korean family members.

2. To translate Japanese Touhou doujins into Korean.

 

Right now I'm edging toward learning Japanese more because trying to remember all of the Hangul character combinations is driving me insane.

I'm trying to learn Korean and Japanese for two reasons:

 

1. To be able to talk to my Korean family members.

2. To translate Japanese Touhou doujins into Korean.

 

Right now I'm edging toward learning Japanese more because trying to remember all of the Hangul character combinations is driving me insane.

 

 

Ahahaha. You're trying to translate doujinshi? :lol:

totally learn japanese, but I wouldn't recommend it by yourself, you need someone who knows how to correct you e.t.c or will will throw around Baka da (ばか だ) at everything you don't understand.

 

I've been learning for about 6 months myself and I only really know around 80 kanji and both Hiragana and Katakana alphabets... (Katakana is a real pain i.m.o)

 

何?!

 

あぁぁぁ、日本語は難しいね

 

I'm trying to learn Korean and Japanese for two reasons:

 

1. To be able to talk to my Korean family members.

2. To translate Japanese Touhou doujins into Korean.

 

Right now I'm edging toward learning Japanese more because trying to remember all of the Hangul character combinations is driving me insane.

 

I think Japanese would probably be easier. It's easier to read and write Hangul than it is Kanji, but the ordering in Japanese (and the grammar) is fairly simple overall, compared to Korean. I just wish I wasn't scared off by Kanji until now. If only I had picked it up when younger.