I’m using the Pimsleur series to learn spoken Japanese - the end is in sight of the recordings and I’m looking to move on from there. When I finish the Pimsleur I’ll still be a beginner, but not an absolute beginner. However, I haven’t done anything more than glance at the kana, so I don’t know anything about that. My focus will definitely continue to be on learning to speak - I’m not too bothered about textbooks which are heavy on the kanji.
Newest Rosetta Stone includes a heavier emphasis on speaking & would be decent for a beginner, although when I tried out Level 3 the other day I found they speaaakkk… veeerrrryy… slooowwwlllyy and only use proper textbook constructions. I found it annoying.
Kana are essential to reading Japanese even if you already have a solid background in reading Traditional Chinese. There are only about 100 characters between2 syllabaries & the pronunciation is very simple - Wikipedia has charts here and here if you don’t already have them.
(ASIDE: A simple mnemonic for Japanese alphabetical order:
“Arkansas Tanner Has My Yellow One”
A-Ka-Sa-Ta-Na-Ha-Ma-Ya-Ra-Wa-N …
Then you add the appropriate vowel A-I-U-E-O, ala ‘Ka-Ki-Ku-Ke-Ko’. Throw in a handful of slight variations (Shi, Tsu, Chi) & simple marks to indicate certain consonants (g,d,b,p) & you can now read and pronounce Japanese.)
Books:
Textbooks tend to cover the same useless crap found in other language texts - school, classwork, airports, being an exchange student… That said, “Japanese for Dummies” available at Page One & Eslite, actually looked pretty decent. Friend of mine picked it up the other day & it seemed like it’d be helpful.
The “Youkoso” series and “Japanese for Busy People” are U.S. college standard. Stay away from the books that strictly use romaji (black pattern on the cover).
For online resources: crunchyroll.com - drama & anime sars-fansubs.com - J-Dramas wwitv.com for international online TV himura-kaoru.com - drama, anime & NHK Japanese lessons
Lots of Japanese stuff on veoh.com too rikai.com for reading Japanese websites (or use Firefox plug-in ‘Rikai-chan’
The makers of ChinesePod are apparently starting JapanesePod.com, but it’s not out yet
Finally, NHK has “Kids News” which is great once you’re at a bit higher level. Might be ok w/kanji background. Somewhere in there they probably have video clips too.
Find a language exchange if possible - there are lots of Japanese in Taiwan. You’re already at a significant advantage being able to read/write Kanji. Japanese grammar is probably the next biggest hurdle as it’s almost, but not quite, exactly unlike English.
Thanks! After 18 months I’ve practically forgotten all the Japanese I did pick up (got interested in other stuff), but I’ll add it to the list of things to tackle (again) in 2009. Oh, and I didn’t/don’t have an aversion to learning kana, but rather to learning kanji - five years of Mandarin has been quite enough torture, thank you very much.