Pimsleur Japanese

I've been waiting to do this one. Why? Because Pimsleur offers amazing audio tapes for a multitude of languages! What's more is that they do them well. As a repititious learner, these CDs did wonders for me. They also made me go broke, but the price is well worth it, and if you can get it used, it should only cost you little more than $100.

Pimsleur's motto says that you don't have to read Japanese at all, the point of fluency being able to hold casual conversation. I don't agree with the Stroll Learning company on that one, so I do recommend that you learn Hiragana at least before tackling these. The pronunciation guide is very good, but if you start with, say, Power Japanese, you'll be able to master it faster and with much more accuracy.

Now, one thing I do agree with Pimsleur on is this: the reason why no one remembers the languages they "learned" in high school is simply this: they don't teach you how to actually speak. They teach you a bunch of vocabulary, some grammar rules, and then you have to peice them together without actually learning how casual Spanish, German, French, etc. people actually speak. It reminds me of a book I was reading, in which a woman traveling in Japan came accross a teacher who boasted that this lady probably couldn't pass an English test in Japan. She. the traveler, replied, "No, I probably couldn't. However I can do something your students can't do: communicate." That's paraphrased, by the way, but it's completely true. You can learn all the grammar trivia, punctuation, etc., but until you can actually hold a conversation with someone and be understood, you're nothing more than a student. Well, you'll always be a student, but you get the point.

What Pimsleur does is it engages you in real conversation, forcing you to answer as a Japanese person would, not as a textbook would encourage. It still manages to implement some of the various forms of politenss, since the Japanese live by the rules of heirarchy, and, what's better, the information is very easy to retain. That's why I recommend it.

The first few lessons are very easy, and for the absolute beginner. Even if you're not an absolute beginner, however, I recommend you listen to them anyway. They'll get trickier later on, and you'll probably have to listen to them a few times in order to understand it. Since the Japanese is spoken up to speed, it'll really tune your ear.

Now for the bad. First of all, they're priced horribly high. In order to recieve even one of the three volumes, Stroll demands that you chop off either an arm or leg with a blunt axe and offer it to the Stroll Learning Company as a burnt sacrifice! Okay, I've seen CDs at a higher price, and at $274, it's well worth your money. Now, you could download them via a torrent, but I recommend buying them, as I'm still waiting for Pimsleur to release the rest of the Hungarian volumes, as well as start on the Finnish tapes. It seems that every language company hates Finns, for some strange reason. I want to learn the Scandinavian languages my ancestors spoke, darn it!

Anyway, another bad thing about them is that the woman is Chinese, not Japanese. At least, that's what I think. The man is a native Japanese speaker, so copy him. Ignore the woman's pronunciation, unless you want to speak Japanese with a Chinese accent.

All in all, it's a great series. Moreover, it's one of the only language-learning companies that actually promises that you only have to devote 30 minutes of your day in order to learn it quickly, and they actually deliver! Most of the time, when you see a book that promises to teach you a language in 10 minutes, you should avoid them at all cost. Pimsleur is the one exception to this rule.