Some tools and resources to learn Japanese
As I have commented some days ago, I´ve restarted my japanese lessons. Our “sensei” gives us some homework to do, but I´ve found that it´s necessary to dedicate extra time to memorize the different alphabets (hiragana, katakana and kanji) and repeat endlessly to avoid forgetting them. To ease the learning process, I have researched some resources, both offline and online, to keep up with this interesting language.
Offline:
I purchased this book long ago in my first attempt to learn japanese. It was gathering dust in my mother´s home. I recovered it and so far it has been really helpful to practice kana writing. It also includes some exercises to write simple words or phrases without using kanji. (As I was investigating, I found that a japanese monk invented hiragana around 800 DC to allow women to read and write, because kanji was “specially difficult ” for them!).
Another nice resource are the flashcards, to help memorizing the kana easily. I´ve found some of them, but the ones that I like the most are these. There are these others but they have a little “Not for resale” mark that can be a little bit annoying when studying.
Katakana on your iPod: If you don´t like to carry papers with you, you can use this solution that consists in putting a “photo” album containing the katakana alphabet onto your iPod using iPhoto. The downside is that hiragana is not available (yet).
Online:
While we are at work (!) or using our computer at home, we can use these tools:
Coscom: This website sells japanese learning materials, but they have some free resources, which are the ones that we´ll use here. There are series of drills to learn hiragana and katakana. The best part is the ability to “listen” to the sounds of each letter and the final exercises to apply what we have learned. There is a “quiz” machine, that can correct our mistakes. It even has a “cheat” button to reveal the correct letter, if we don´t know what to write. It also shows us the sequence to draw each character. Highly recommended!
DreamKana: This is a little Windows application that allows us to have virtual flashcards to help memorize kana.
Last but not least, the main idea here is not to have the latest and greatest tools to learn, but to dedicate plenty of time to study this interesting language. Japanese is not an easy language to learn but beginning to understand what those little signs mean is priceless!
