Learn Japanese Fast

Learn Japanese Fast - Watching your Ps and Qs

Learning about Japanese culture will assist you in being able to learn Japanese fast. This will keep you in line with how the Japanese greet each other and the prevalent emphasis in Japanese culture of being polite and humble.

In Japanese culture, greeting someone is considered a MUST when you encounter people as you move through your day. In Western culture, this is equivalent to saying please and thank you. Below are three greetings:

Ohayō gozaimasu = greeting in the morning
Konnichiwa = greeting during the day
Konbanwa = greeting after dark

Whenever you are addressing or speaking to someone there are different levels of formality and politeness in Japanese. Therefore, in Japanese you must always be conscious of the social relationship between you and the person you are speaking to (friend, family member, professor, doctor, stranger, boss, colleague) .

The morning greeting Ohayō gozaimasu is a good example to show the different levels of formality and politeness:

Every morning you go to work, you greet your colleagues by saying Ohayō gozaimasu .
Every morning you go to the kitchen to have your breakfast, you greet your family by saying Ohayō.
To a few of your colleagues you are very friendly with, you greet them saying Ohayō.
To your boss or your teacher, you greet them by saying Ohayō gozaimasu.
To a stranger you walked past on the street in the morning, you greet him/her saying Ohayō gozaimasu.

Note: Thankfully for Konnichiwa and Konbanwa, there's only one version for everyone.

Learn Japanese Fast

Learn Japanese Fast

Learn Japanese Fast - Romaji and some Japanese music

The smart way to learn Japanese fast is to start by memorizing the basic common words in Romaji. Romaji is written with the Latin alphabet, therefore you shouldn't have problems with the pronunciation.

When you want to learn Japanese fast, it's easier for you to learn Japanese written in Romaji, especially if you are not familiar with Hiragana and Katana. Also listening to your favorite Japanese music can assit you to learn hearing and pronouncing Japanese in a correct accent. This can help to solidify and improve your learning progress and process.

Learn Japanese Fast

Learn Japanese Fast

Learn Japanese Fast - Japanese Anime (part III: The Impact of Anime)

Some, or should I say, most of us would find it difficult to learn Japanese fast but that doesn't mean we can't find ways to "jazz up" how we learn and motivate our interest in Japanese. Many of us don't realize that Japanese Anime and Manga is one of Japan's biggest multi-milliion dollar industries and that it is gaining in popularity internationally.

Anime has set in motion a phenomenon of fresh ideas that have inspired many films (the Matrix whose action scenes mirrored the Anime Ghost in the Shell) and TV shows (especially Saturday morning cartoons such as Pokemon, Dragon-ball Z, Sailor-Moon and Nickelodeon's popular Avatar: The Last Air-bender whose characters are similar to the Anime Naruto ). The growing popularity for Anime in the media market is seen in the many world-wide conventions, fansubs and fandubs and cosplays.

Anime is a revolution and is taking the world by storm. Are you going to be left behind? Like it or not, Anime or Manga is a means to learn Japanese fast and keep up with our ever-changing world.

Learn Japanese Fast

Learn Japanese Fast

Learn to Speak Fluent Japanese - Japanese Anime (part II: Japanese Poetry)

What better way to keep you motivated to learn Japanese fast than by watching Japanese anime or reading Manga. It is movies such as Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell and its sequel Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, based on a Japanese cyberpunk manga created by Shirow Masamune, that make learning Japanese interesting and worth your perserverence to learn Japanese. The following clip is one of the most beautiful opening scenes to an anime movie I have ever seen, not to mention, the powerful music composed by Kenji Kawai and voices that accompany the song "Kugutsuuta Ura Mite Chiru."



English Translation of Lyrics:

Even the moon will not shine every day, every night
Scaly thrushes cry on the sadness
I turned and looked back, but the flower looks like they’d fallen out
As if the feeling of solitude has faded away

Gods gathers forward the next world, the day breaks, and scaly thrushes cry
A blossom has desire to satisfy and pray to God earnestly
I should grieve over myself at this-time life,
the dream has gone. Left my grudge and gone...

Here are the lyrics in rōmaji and just to remind us of what rōmaji is, to quote Wikipedia: "The romanization of Japanese or rōmaji is the use of the Latin alphabet to write the Japanese language. Japanese is normally written in logographic characters borrowed from Chinese (kanji) and syllabic scripts (kana). The romanization of Japanese is done in any context where Japanese text is targeted at those who do not know the language, such as for names on street signs and passports, and in dictionaries and textbooks for foreign learners of the language. The word "rōmaji" is sometimes incorrectly transliterated as romanji or rōmanji."

In Rōmaji:

Hitohi hitoyo ni tsuki wa erazu tomo
Kanashimi ni nuetori naku
Waga kaeri misuredo hana wa chirinubeshi
Nagusamuru kokoro wa kenuru ga gotoku

Aratayo ni kamutsudo hite yo wa ake nuretori naku
Sakuhana wa kami ni koinoru
Ikeru yo ni agami kanashi mo ime wa kenu
Ime wa kenu uramite chiru

Learn Japanese Fast

Learn Japanese Fast

Learn Japanese Fast - Thai Tea and Caterpillars

A little creativity can go a long way especially when its Japanese. Using creative Audio/Visual means can help your learning of Japanese and increase your knowledge of Japanese culture. The following Japanese commercial for Thai Tea is one way you can
spice up your learning to help you learn Japanese fast.



Learn Japanese Fast

Learn Japanese Fast

Learn to Speak Fluent Japanese - Japanese Anime (part 1)

One of my attractions to want to learn Japanese fast is my love of Japanese anime. I love to draw and appreciate the work and detail that goes into an animated feature/project. One of my favorite Japanese Anime directors is Hayao Miyazaki. I have seen most of his works and would like to share one of his renowned works of Art, Spirited Away. It is just a quick trailer and I hope it's enough for you to go and rent the DVD. I recommend that you watch it in Japanese with English sub-titles of course. It's a great movie and tool to practice listening to Japanese.



Learn Japanese Fast

Learn Japanese Fast

Afraid To Learn Japanese? How To Quiet The Debbie Downer And Learn Japanese Fast

Despite the fact that Japanese is a language that is getting more exposure, thanks to the popular Japanese exports such as sushi, Manga comic books and Anime, Japanese is still not a language that has an abundance of eager students. The individual who embarks on the quest to learn Japanese is often more aware of the wide chasm of difference between English and Japanese. And this Debbie Downer attitude (a.k.a. negative attitude) makes the road of ascent to Japanese seem long, arduous and at times, unattainable. When you ask yourself, "Can I learn Japanese?" Here is some food for thought to nourish you, keep your mind positive and quell your "Debbie Downer" to make your days happier as you learn to speak Japanese.

Double Your Pleasure - All students have to climb up Mount Grammar. For even the most enthusiastic foreign language student, Grammar is the long and arduous road to proficiency when you have to learn a language and Japanese grammar is no exception. However, there is hope. If you know your English grammar, it will help you learn Japanese grammar more easily because most grammatical terms are used in both English grammar and Japanese grammar. You see; studying English in school does have a purpose! O Happy Day!

Keeping It Simple - Japanese is somewhat simpler than European languages in that it has only two verb tenses, past and present and irregular verbs are sparse. There are no singular or plural, gender, or nouns with articles. O Happy Day!

Tag You Are It - The Japanese "particle". Not to worry. This is not physics and we are not talking about the atomic particle. This particle is the "grammatical particle". In Japanese, these structural particles are the central aspect of the Japanese language. These particles act as sentence markers by tagging the subject and objects and also takes the role similar to prepositions in English. However, the preposition-like particles are different from English prepositions in that they come after instead of before the nouns they mark. The function of nouns is indicated through the use of these particles. In a nutshell particles help to establish connections between things by designating a topic or an identifier of something in a sentence to indicate to you how each part of a sentence relates to the other parts. Simply put, Japanese is not as grammatically precise as English. So, if you happen to omit or make a mistake concerning particles, you will not sound as ludicrous or illiterate speaking this "broken Japanese" as you would if you did the same thing in English. O Happy Day!

Jack And Jill Went Up The Hill - The Japanese sentence structure is in the word sequence of Subject-Object-Verb. This simplifies formulation of Japanese sentences because the verb usually occurs at the end of the sentence. In Japanese a sentence is more like an utterance and less like an English sentence. Basically, a sentence is a string of words organized in a specific format but in the Japanese language, it is a series of utterances that are linked together by structural particles along with verbs and a few connecting words. Therefore, if you can get a solid understanding of the functions of Japanese structural particles, you will be well on your way to acquiring competence in speaking and understanding Japanese. O Happy Day!

Mind Over Matter - Student of Japanese be not afraid, you have chosen well. You are the brave soul. You are the one who has chosen Japanese as your language to open wide the gates of the Orient and your life experiences. You are the wise one who will take the road less traveled and embark upon a learning journey that few of your peers will experience. You are the unique one. Remember, the mind is a powerful thing and if you dwell on the fact that Japanese seems less feasible than other European languages, you will have a very difficult time learning Japanese. So don't be a Debbie Downer. Keep your mind focused on the positive aspects and you will be able to learn Japanese quickly and effectively.

Learn Japanese Fast