Postby JohnCBriggs » August 11th, 2006 2:56 pm
Caoch-san,
I have been studying on my own for a couple of years. I have purchased a number of children's books thinking that these would be good study materials. My experience was not very good. Firstly, there tends to be a lot of vocabulary たんご that is not familiar because most textbooks don't cover words like ogre and princess. Secondly, the grammar can be very different than textbooks. It is very casual or old forms of verbs.
I even purchased some bilingual childrens' books, but these were not much better. The translations were beautifully done, but I think we need more of a literal translation to understand the language.
Someone suggested to me to get some nontan (a cat) or anpanman (a character made from bread) books, but I have not really pursued this.
Regarding video materials, these can be a real challenge too. I purchased kodomo no omocha (child's toy) and found that the characters talk way too fast with high pitched emotion filled voices. So that didn't work. I also have purchased Doraemon どらえもん from ebay. This is a little easier to understand. I really like My Neighbor Totoro となりのトトロ because there is very little dialogue and it is simple. Most of these material can be purchased from ebay (Hong-Kong copy) for reasonable prices.
NHK has produced a great many Japanese Language educational materials over the years. This is some of the best material available. For example
Let's Learn Japanese
Getting along in Japanese
The All new getting along in Japanese (intermediate all japanese)
(This is currently broadcasting in Japan)
Standard Japanese Course (all japanese but fairly easy).
Japanese for Beginners
Also worth considering is the Videos that go along with Japanese For Busy People. These are the finest quality you can find. If you are interested in any of these materials, let me know.
At the risk of being censored by JapanesePOD101, I would like to also note a site called YesJapan. They have a number of videos (perhaps 100) that they have produced. These are fair to good quality and can be quite entertaining. However, they are of a lower quality than JapanesePOD101. I think there is one that can be watched for free and it will give you a sense of the shows.
There is a great amount of video material available, but it can be difficult or expensive to get a hold of. By the way, if you have not tried Pimsleur, I highly recommend it. This is clearly the best audio material available (sorry Peter) although much more dry than JapanesePOD101. Pimsleur has carefully controlled timing that reminds you of words before you can forget them. These can be borrowed from a library or contact me for more info.
Jya mata
ジョン
). Though unfortunately I don't remember the name of it. It was mentioned in one of the culture classes here a while back though. It's the one with the counters song. I'm sure Sakura-san could tell you. Unfortunately, I don't know of any games.
